Pristine Firsts

Pristine Firsts

That first kiss
the first date
the first time to give the heart away
Oh, to catch the joy only once partaken

The very first can only come once
Once here, it is gone
Joy is wasted on the youth
while old folks remember the thrill

Larry M. Binion

2016-01-24

Questions

Questions

Questions

To be answered of humanity

Why am I here?

What am I doing?

Why?

If only I knew.

The circle of life

Life imitates art or

Art imitates life.

Does any of it matter?

Like the throwing stars into the sea,

"I saved this one"

I hope the one that was saved

May just have been

Me.

Larry M. Binion

(March 2015)

SUZANNE

SUZANNE

CARICATURE #023

Drawn 1997-06-14-221

      With a flourishing script, she wrote into my yearbook. I gaped at her, the most beautiful girl in school was signing my 1962 yearbook because I asked her to. I couldn’t believe it. She was two years older than I was. She was a graduating senior while I was just a 10^th grader. I hoped she didn’t notice how stupefied I was. She was way out of my social order. She was of the elite society, very pretty, and highly intelligent.

      Then, abruptly she asked “Where’s your brother, Danny?”

      “I haven’t seen him in the past two years. Where is he?” she queried.

      “He moved to Dallas two years ago”. I said.

      “I’m sorry to hear that”, she said. “I always wanted him to ask me out. I really liked him. Do you care if I sign your yearbook for him?”

      “I don’t mind a bit”.

      “You promise you’ll show it to him”.

      She signed for Danny as well, and turned to the mob who was begging her to sign their yearbook. I was stunned. She had wanted to date my brother, and he had the nerve to move to Dallas. I couldn’t wait to tell him. She could easily have been a movie star queen. She was that pretty.

      It was six months before I saw Danny again. I told him about the incident and showed him what she’d written. Naturally, he wanted to move back to Wewoka to find her, but he was now a High School dropout, and she was already in college somewhere.

      Danny would later finish High School with a GED, but for now his only comfort was to stare at the words she had written to him: “Love Always, Suzanne.”

✥

the wordmaster says:

❝Wish I had been her age.❞

CIDER MANIA (1954)

1998-06-04-267

ESSAY Personal #030

CIDER MANIA (1954)

    Sometime in the summer of 1954, Kiddo had gotten a lot of apples. He decided to make apple cider out of them. He put them is a rain barrel and let them rot. After smelling that awful rotting smell for a week or two, he put some of the juice in a gallon jug.  He took the sample and put it in the refrigerator. When my mother and Kiddo went to town, seven miles away, my curiosity got the best of me.

    Now, I liked apple cider, having had some several times before. I looked forward to it with delicious expectation. At last, it was here in the refrigerator.

    There were two jars in the refrigerator, one directly behind the other. The one in the front had little pieces of apple floating in it and tasted pretty good. The one behind, however, was a lot clearer and tasted much better. I vaguely wondered how two completely different textures and tastes could come from the same source, but I shrugged it off. I was pretty ignorant at eight years old.

    Well, I was at the house all by myself with nothing to do. I decided I’d just taste the apple cider and report back to them how good I thought it was.

    When my mother came back, she had to coax me off the roof. I couldn’t walk, couldn’t talk. I was totally messed up. I climbed to the top of the tree by our house, leaning out and raving like an idiot, and taking chances I never would have taken otherwise. I kept trying to talk to her, but I couldn’t understand why the words didn’t seem to come out right. I was drunk.

    My mother was so mad at me, I thought she was going to kill me. But she began laughing. She laughed so hard she cried. This was the first time in memory Kiddo actually told mother not to spank me. Mother told me later that Kiddo had put some real wine into a jar so us kids wouldn’t know it was wine, and put it in the refrigerator. He thought we wouldn’t  find it. Well, I had drunk about two-thirds of a gallon of the wine he didn’t think I’d find. That wine tasted so much better than the cider.

    They bottled up the rest of the cider. It took a long time for me to drink any more of it, but when I finally did, with every sip I kept thinking that it wasn’t nearly as good as the wine in the other jug. No wine ever appeared in our refrigerator again. Mother saw to that. For that matter, no apple cider appeared in our refrigerator for many  years.

◆◆◆

the wordmaster says:

❝It wasn’t funny to me.❞

◆◆◆

SCRINCHING

SCRINCHING

CARICATURE #030

Drawn 1998-04-01-253

            I had gone to High School with Linda. We hardly knew each other, barely spoke. After High School however, we both went to work at Big Yank, Incorporated. It employed about 600 people, most of whom were women. The women sewed the material together to make blue jeans. It was my job to see to it they had thread, material, and anything else they might need in the production of pants. I was the “Bundle Boy.”

            There were two main lines: the “Blue Jean line”, and the “Dress Line”. Charles Chaddick, my best friend at the time, worked the Dress Line, and I worked the other. I took care of about three hundred and fifty women and Charles took care of about two hundred and fifty. Nita, my floor manager, placed Linda under my care.

            On her very first day I told Linda, if she needed anything at all to just scream. About thirty minutes later, I was startled to hear a blood curdling cry.

“LAAA.........RREEEY.”

            I thought someone had died a horrible death. I came running, breathlessly “What’s the matter?”

            “Nothing. I just need some thread.” She laughed as she scrinched her nose at me.

            “Why did you scream like that?”

            “You told me to.”

            We became fast friends after that. We began scrinching our noses at each other. It was something I’ve never done with anyone before or since. She said the same. We came to be special friends, with a special way of greeting each other. I found she was a happily married woman with a baby girl. But our scrinching was harmless. We kept saying we were going to run away with each other. We told each other the secrets no one else knew. We were friends.

            One day, I had about a thousand pair of pants stacked up almost to the ceiling. As I put the last stack of five dozen on the pile, the entire stack came sliding down to the floor. I was upset. I’d worked on it for hours. Now it had to be done over. It would take the rest of the day to put back.

            “LAAA.........RREEEY.”  Linda needed something. I ran to see what she needed.

            “What do you need?” I asked.

            She answered slowly and deliberately, “You dropped something,” and grinned broadly and scrinched.

            I wanted to kill her. But it was funny.

            We agreed that we probably would have had a good time dating in High School, if we had discovered each other sooner. We probably would not have married each other, but we would have had a good time.

            I really looked forward to going to work each day. She was always a bright spot in my day. One day she wasn’t there. Word spread that she had run off with one of the sewing machine mechanics.

            I was devastated. She had left her husband and her baby. It bothered me that even in jest I had talked to her about running away together. It was harmless, wasn’t it?

            She had never spoken to me about being unhappy at home. I became jealous in a way.

            My friend I loved so dearly had apparently been scrinching someone else.

✥

the wordmaster says:

ŸShe really was a sweet person. I had been scrinched for sure. 

✥✥✥

DO YOU HEAR ME ROSE?

1980-03-19-079

POEM #057

DO YOU HEAR ME ROSE?

I like to have these chats with you, Rose.
You listen so attentively, never complain; never did.
I’ve loved you these forty years,
But lately you don’t talk very much.

Do you hear me, Rose?

Do you remember how we fell in love?
We knew very little of life as we do now.
Together we learned of life and love and play.
But lately we don’t play very much.

Do you hear me Rose?

I wish the world could have enjoyed what we had.
For many years we had laughter, joy, and fun,
But lately there seems to be more tears than joy
And fun seems to be something I’ve forgotten.

Do you hear me, Rose?

We grew old and I didn’t want it to end.
You grew ill, and I cared for you every day.
It’s been so lonely since you passed away
I talk to this stone and I can almost hear you answer

Do you hear me, Rose?

Rose?

◆◆◆

 the wordmaster says:

❝A man goes crazy over losing of his wife.❞

◆◆◆

THE FIRE

1969-03-25-047

POEM #032

THE FIRE

Your hot flesh burning,
Your soul is yearning
To know the reason why.
You feel obsessed,
You were not blessed
And you look at the dark blue sky.

The hot sweat pours
And the blood just soars
To your already aching head.
You're cut and bruised,
You've been abused,
And you wish that you were dead.

The tears roll down
As you recall with a frown
The reason for  all of this.
The people were scared
They never dared
To offer you one little kiss.

Men came in the night
And wanted to fight
And you screamed your anguish so,
That they knew right then
That a prick of a pin
Would tell what they wanted to know.

You never knew why:
All you could do was cry:
For some old crazy bitch
Thought that she knew
That it was you
And you burned at the stake as a witch.

◆◆◆

the wordmaster says:

❝I seem to have taken a dramatic turn for the better. This is the first one I was proud of.❞

◆◆◆

THE BOY WHO LOVED TOM SAWYER

1981-03-31-082

STORY #001

THE BOY WHO LOVED TOM SAWYER

    Robert Timothy Birmingham, the rich kid from Highland Park, had just put down his favorite book, HUCKLEBERRY FINN. Downstairs, his father called “Lights out, Tim. Vacation starts tomorrow, 6:00 O’clock sharp”.
       
    At last, a chance to visit the land of his favorite heroes: Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. He knew he’d never be a Huck Finn, or have the same adventures as Tom Sawyer. He was still dreaming what he would do as he fell asleep.

    When the family arrived at Sawyerville, Louisiana, confusion was prevalent. They were able to rent a cabin right on the park campground. Tim’s dad issued instructions to help clear away the baggage to the twins, Mary and Jerry, and his mother Susan, and big brother Ben. Little Terri Lynn was too little to help, so she was to keep track of the dog, Shamus.

    At last everything was in place. Tim couldn’t wait for dark, for he couldn’t wait to gaze out upon the Mississippi River, just like Tom Sawyer.

    “Hullo”, said a voice behind him.

    “Hi, who are you”, replied Tim.

    “Hank Finkel, what’s yours? Are you on vacation? How come you came here?” Tim smiled at the torrent of questions, for this is how friends were made.

    “My name is Robert Timothy Birmingham and we’re going to spend a few days here in Sawyerville because I never get to anywhere to have fun.”

    “Well”, suggested Hank, “I’ve got a raft. Why don’t you ride the raft dowhn the Mississippi with me”?

    “Yeah”, was Tim’s instant reply, but my dad would never let me go.

    “Who said anybody has to know. We’ll be back in an hour or two.”

    ‘This is heaven’, thought Tim as they floated down river. There was no one to see his extreme joy as Tim, Hank, and hank’s dog floated majestically along. Somewhere to the right, a streak of light lit up the sky for a split second.

    The silence was broken by Hank “It’s gonna rain on us before we get back”.

    Tim quickly thought about the trouble he would get into once he got back, then replied “Let it rain, hank. We’re adventurers!”

    Soon the wrath of the heaven’s were being felt. The storm was at full strength. It became impossible to hang onto the little raft. There was a small, sandy beach up ahead. If only they could reach it.

    Suddenly, they heard someone yell at them from two different directions. A boat with two people in it were coming from one direction, and on the little beach, Tim recognized his dad’s car and the whole family was with him. All the confusion made Hank fall in the water. All Tim could think of was the trouble he was going to get in. He would never forget the wonderful adventure he had on the Mississippi.

    “Robert Timothy Birmingham! Wake up! It’s time to start our vacation. It’s 6:30 already! We’ve got to get going. Robert groaned. The adventure on the Mississippi was only a dream. Today they were to leave for Disneyland to have a wonderful, dreary time. At least they could have named him Tom.

Larry M. Binion
3-31-1981