Up, Up, and Away

Up, Up, and Away

“Do you believe it is possible for someone to do something, and not remember until it is too late, why they did it?”

“Don’t see why not.”

I remembered Bonner. One night he was bored. He gets fidgety, the only way to describe it. He starts scratching at itches, itching scratches, and generally bringing the whole atmosphere of the gathering to something that rivals a death march.

One night, he says, after I’m sure having considered all the possibilities, that we should go to the ski hill. None of us were jumpers, so we couldn’t figure out why. It was cold, below zero by a lot. So we said, cause we knew what the rest of life would be like until he got it out of his system, “Sure, why not.” 

We had to make a stop first. He tells me we’ve got to go to this place he knows where they got these toboggans in the garage. We need to borrow them. We follow him and he pulls up in the alley behind my house. I watch as he slips up to the garage, opens the door, pulls out two toboggans, puts them in back of the truck. He then goes back and shuts the garage door. He then writes something on a piece of paper he got from the garbage can, sticks it in the side of the door, jumps in the car and races off down the alley.

We get to the hill and I ask him what he was doing back there. “You know that was my house, don’t you?” 

He says nothing. I can see he’s comin down off the depression that gets him in that way. He’s stopped scratching and now seems fixated on getting his stocking cap situated on his head, just so. After a few minutes, he smiles, takes a toboggan out of the truck, and pulls it towards the ski hill. I'd forgot to ask where the pencil came from.

Theodore Worth Park, is also a golf course in the more accommodating months. The ski jump is an old wooden skeleton of crisscrossed wood and a set of steps that tests your heart getting to the top. The bed of the jump is made of two-inch weather worn slats. On a good year, the normal snowfall keeps the ski bed covered. The snow is then packed, as is the hill, before jumping begins. The hill is relatively steep, not quite like falling off a cliff, but close. Jumpers come from all over the country to fly in hopes of gaining a position on the Olympic team. Something to do with points. 

The idea, of someone with little to do, and not much chance of finding anything, came up with the idea of jumping off this platform of wood onto steep hill, whose purpose is to provide a chance of remaining alive, or less injured. The hills slope absorbs the shock of the flattened sticks when hitting the snow. Hopefully, the back of the skis come into contact with the ground first, providing the opportunity to remain upright, and have a sporting chance of stopping your high-speed descent before entering the frozen, in some years, the pond near the bottom of the hill.

The challenging edifice and subsequent athletic prowess necessary, to not only attempt this daredevil feat, but survive, remains to this day. It was never, however meant, to be traversed by a larger than average flattened stick, referred to as a toboggan.

The night of the incident, as I prefer to remember, it was snowing lightly. Enough of the full moons magic slipped past the clouds and illuminated the new dandruff like snow. A million diamonds of light dancing with each breath from the north. I watched, despite the surrounding beauty as he pulled the toboggan up the snow-covered stairs to the landing at the top. The platform was the last chance to say a prayer, kiss the cross from Grandma and try to talk the dedicated champion of attempted things, out of his obvious need to rid himself of any remaining elements of depression.

There were several people on site besides my dedicated friend. We all watched as he climbed onto the platform. We expected to see his descent end in devastating fashion, but he failed to leave as anticipate. He began to wave his arms as if trying to get our attention. There was no need of him wasting the effort, we all wanted to watch him launch to an unknown end. He began to yell, like a crazed person. His words, not understandable, but the intent was evident. 

Those observing the frantic example of attention getting, began to search the snow-covered ground as if each and everyone of them had lost the new founded invention, contact lenses.

Having been in similar situations before, I knew what was expected if the evening were to conclude, and we’d return to a civilization that promised heat, lights, and more heat.

I climbed the steps carefully, placing my foot in the print of the one that had preceded me. I reached the top and realized my heart was either beating so fast I couldn’t hear it, or was no longer beating at all. We were, to the best of my frozen judgement, about sixty-feet above the ground. The wind blew twice, if not three times as forceful as it had at the bottom of the hill.  It made me feel more naked than I had ever felt, including that time in gym class. 

“Well, you made it. I didn’t know if you could hear me. What do you think we should do?”

I was standing on a platform I was not sure was capable of supporting both our weights, while starring down the canyon slope of at least sixty degrees, and those who remained below, continued their search for their contact lenses, wondering, why.  Everyone appeared to have shrunk since I'd left, and my calls for help were unheeded.

“Why did you come up here, and what do you intend to do now?”

 I believed I was being objective about what I anticipated he’d had in mind.

I have been called, a spineless ameba. It had little to with my present predicament, but it came to mind, nevertheless. I knew what he was going to ask, demand, and I really wanted no part of it. He was good at persuasion, while I was not good at ignoring it. It had to do with a long history of being on the wrong end of empathy. I feel that I have the ability to not only read a person’s psychological pulse, but possess the lack of foresight, to not act on a projected impulse.

Then he says, “Do you see those small people down there. Well, one of them is Jenna Jacks, the one in the red speck of a coat. I’ve decided I need to prove myself to not only her, but all the others who believe if I disappeared tomorrow, no one would notice. I need to do something memorable, and when I saw the jump the idea of simply sledding down the hill seemed too juvenile to be the conduit for the new me.”

When he got like that, I knew from experience that I must find a solution that not only saves his perception of himself, as a man’s man, but one that will allow him, us, to live another day.

“Do you remember when you thought it would be fun to go into Ted’s Burgers, eat as many as we could, and then leave without paying. You were convinced Ted would be so impressed by the number of hamburgers we could eat in one sitting, kind of like the hot dog contest on the boardwalk in Brighton Beach New York. The one on TV. But Ted wasn’t impressed.  The counter kid who runs for the cross-country team managed to catch us before we could get to the end of the street, where you were positive, we could make a clean get away.”

My parents rescued us from county jail, and we were both the recipients of the immortalized words, “What were you thinking?” Obviously, he, we, were not. I knew it was a bad idea, but he was sure it would make us heroes and our entire social status would go from zero to at least one.

He seemed to be paying attention to what I was attempting to tell him. I knew this could not continue. We were not fourteen any longer, we were sixteen, on the verge of manhood. Probably becoming veterans of wars, nowhere jobs, and lives that resembled our parents. I had attempted to explain the dangers involved in a stunt no one I was aware of, had ever attempted. His reaction, although not surprising was not what I expected.

“Great! Just the trick.”

Before I was able to draft a version of possible dangers and the probability we could be killed, he pushed me onto the sled, and we were off. 

The downward grade caused us to accelerate to a speed I wouldn’t have believed possible. And then as the pitch turned slightly upward, we were launched. I was surprised how quickly we became air borne. I being in the front, realized that if we, according to ski jumping physics, didn’t land with the tail of the sled hitting the ground first, it would be disastrous. I slid back wards hoping the transferred weight would cause the front to lift, it didn’t. I slipped further back and then as I had hoped, the front began to rise. It was then I realized I was at the back of the toboggan, alone. He was gone, vanished, all I could do is scream as the sled leveled and then headed nose first on to the frozen hill.

While recovering, I had plenty of time to think. I realized I could no longer continue to disobey the survival instincts that had allowed several of my families past generational heroes to avoid death; the Revolutionary War, Civil War, and my fathers fight for freedom at the Democratic National Convention War, in Chicago, in 1968.

Apparently red coat Jacks, became involved with JT Benson the night of the failed flight, so I could understand his inability to comprehend what I was attempting to tell him. He left my room without signing my cast.  I assumed the incident would bridge our differences, and his past digressions; it didn't.

He had never managed to get entirely onto the toboggan, and fell off the back, half way down the jump. Observers who all signed my cast, said he sat on the end of the jump as I tumbled down the hill in Hollywood fashion, laughing like a deranged hyena.

I hadn’t seen him in several years. After we left school, he moved. I heard, to Sandusky. His uncle offered him a job in the junk yard business. 

Winter once again, came and went. I found myself on many a weekend going to the old ski jump, climbing to the top and sitting there inhaling the smells of the newly mowed grass. On that particular day, I noticed a figure making his way along the sixth hole fairway. He walked with a familiar swagger, I believed I recognized. He hurriedly walked to the bottom of the hill directly below the jump, and looked up. 

I don’t know if he saw me or not. He made no attempt to signal if he had. He lowered his head and jogged off towards the club house. I couldn’t be sure, but I’ve always hoped it was him returning to the ill-fated night and realizing what he had done. But then, it may not have been him. Perhaps it was just some stranger that saw me sitting on top of the rickety old jump and decided to go off and call 911.

The view from the jumps platform was no less frightening in summer than it had been so many years ago, in the glistening light of new fallen snow.

Contemplation often serves as a sieve, catching the reality of a time that had been lost in the art of wishful remembrance. 

I was considered a victim, he, immature and reckless. As I watched him walk along the edge of manicured lawn, I realized that I had been the immature one when it came to endorsing the belief of his recklessness.

Standing on the deck, so many years in the past, I saw her standing there. The red coat, radiating a confidence I lacked, but wanted. When I jumped onto the toboggan, him grabbing at the rope handles in an effort to stop our descent, I was on my way to being who I needed to be, and nothing could stop me.