Friday, November 8, 2019

Computer Chips and Refrigerator Boxes


I was rummaging through some old papers when I found an old piece I submitted to a few magazines.  It was the first thing I ever wrote that got summarily rejected.  There would be plenty more to follow.  What the hell.  I'll reproduce it here in order to give me the illusion it was published.


My eleven year old son's newest computer toy is an electronic football game.  It is a small device with a miniature football field on screen.  When turned on, it plays the first few bars of "The Star Spangled Banner."  It comes close to approximating the real thing.  It is possible for the offensive player to run down the field, dodging the glowing red tackler on the screen.  It throws passes.  It also throws interceptions to the tune of "The Raspberry."  When the offense scores a touchdown, the big, red offensive player spikes the ball and the electronic fans trapped somewhere in the transistors cheer.  My sons have been known to turn down invitations to real football games with the neighbor kids in favor of the electronic magic of their new toy.

They have an electronic version of Clue called Electronic Detective.  It has twenty suspect cards that can be used to ask questions of the computer.  The contraption flashes electronic answers on the little screen.  They can play an entire game without ever having to talk to each other.  Gone is the wonderful parquet floor game board of Clue.  There is no conservatory filled with plants, or library filled with books.  The mysterious Miss Scarlett is nowhere to be found and there is no Holmsian counterpart to Professor Plum.  Worse yet, there is no bumbling Colonel Mustard to provide comic relief.  The computer answers all the questions in black and white.  It has become a serious exercise in sleuthing.

They have a Computer Perfection received last Christmas.  The thing is guaranteed to beat its owner into submission.  Through a combination of flashing blue lights and clicks and beeps, it asks its players to follow a pattern of lights decided upon by the computer.  The room darkened, it hypnotizes its owners into following those flashing lights and beeps.  It wins every time.

Their most insidious possession is a complete set of Star Wars figurines.  The Star Wars player, thanks to the Mattel Corporation and over generous parents, does not have to get directly involved in the action.  A Star Wars fanatic does not assume the role of Han Solo or Luke Skywalker.  He simply moves the little plastic Han Solo one-tenth life size model to and from the one-one thousandth life size model of his X Wing Fighter.  If Darth Vader gets into a fight to the death with Han or Luke, the only things directly involved are the figurines.  The manipulators of the figurines are safe in their third person omniscient world.  They never spill their own blood, or personally feel the sting of a death ray.  Their play, even though I will grudgingly admit it is creative after a fashion, is depressingly risk free and antiseptic.

Playing Tarzan in 1954, on the other hand, was anything but risk free and antiseptic.  I didn't have a figuring to do my fighting for me.  It was my knee getting scraped and my elbows getting bloody and my wrists and ankles with rope burns from being tied up by invading hordes of Monkey People.  I must admit that my plots were not as elaborate or peopled by as many bizarre creatures or pieces of equipment, but my plots virtually stunk of humanity and the sweat that results from hours spent wrestling inside a refrigerator box.

I purchased a new refrigerator a few months ago and I proudly took my children to the back yard to show them the empty box waiting for the worlds to be created inside.  My oldest son looked at me with horror and beat a fast retreat to the safety of his bedroom where he was embroiled in a Pong game on his television.  The refrigerator box is still sitting in the back yard because the trash man refuses to pick up anything that big.  It is depressing to think that the computer chip has rendered refrigerator boxes obsolete.  The same technology that has opened up the universe for Carl Sagan, who I'm convinced logged a number of hours in his own refrigerator box, has turned the cosmos inside out for my children and their friends.  The entire Galactic Empire resides neatly in a black box on the second shelf of my children's closet.

I even had my first sexual feelings while playing Tarzan.  I'd like to see that happen with a Princess Leia figurine.  There I was dressed in my leopard skin loin cloth and there was the little girl who lived next door dressed up as Jane.  And there we both were, sweaty and nearly naked, inside a refrigerator box.  We would tie each other up a lot.  We would take turns untying each other in the nick of time..  I was after verisimilitude in those days and I knew that the real Tarzan, when tied up, was probably hurting a little.  I would be struggling in the refrigerator box in my loin cloth, waiting, but never screaming, for help.  The little girl would show up every time to free me.  We would take turns and I don't think it ever mattered who freed whom.

I had a lot of myself invested in Tarzan.  It was an important part of my life and to this day is one of my most vivid memories.  I have a difficult time believing that my sons, when they reach the ripe old age of thirty-one, will have the same kinds of memories of playing Star Wars.  I refuse to believe that plastic figurines of Han Solo, Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker are as memorable as the sweaty flesh of a little girl in bondage.

My Tarzan game was infinitely more portable than the plastic and electronic paraphernalia that characterizes my children's games.  When my family moved from Freeport, Illinois to Estes Park, Colorado, my game moved with me.  Instead of Tarzan, I became Marshall Dillon, or Paladin, or Lash Larue (my personal favorite).  Instead of that little girl by my side playing Jane, there was Cheri Quick playing Miss Kitty.  Nothing had changed.

We had an ideal set up for playing  cowboys and Indians in our neighborhood.  We lived next door to the fairgrounds, the home of the Morgan, Appaloosa, Arabian, and Quarter Horse shows, plus the Rooftop Rodeo every August.  When the fairgrounds were not being used, they made the perfect arena for our games.  The entrance was flanked by two guard houses made of logs.  These were the real thing.  They had a bottom level with a straw covered floor and a perfectly scary ladder leading to the upper level through a hole in the middle of the ceiling.  The upper level was where the men folk would stay to fight off Indians while protecting the women and children.  The top level was also straw covered and had little holes in the walls for guns to stick out of during Indian attacks.  Once inside the  fairgrounds, the verisimilitude became unbearable.  There was a horse race track, rows and rows of empty stable, a rodeo arena complete with five empty chutes.  There was also an empty stadium, ticket booths, grooming sheds, a few miles of winding dirt roads, and two covered wagons.

The covered wagons provided wild west realism for the rodeo.  They doubled as snack bars and occasionally they would be hitched up to a couple of horses so they could take a group of tourists from Chicago up into the hills for a genuine chuck wagon dinner.  I think they would serve hot dogs and something called "Trail Drive Beans."  I always wanted to go along for one of those chuck wagon excursions.  I was sure that Ward Bond ate the same menu while dodging arrows in Wyoming.

Our neighborhood was on the west side of the fairgrounds.  In fact, Ricky Carmack's house was just across the street from the entrance.  My house was next to Ricky's.  The fairgrounds covered four or five city blocks and on the east side stood the Estes Park Recreation Area.  This provided the final, key locale for our cowboy games.  The Recreation Area alternated as the stronghold for the Indians, or the hide out for the bank robbers, depending upon which fantasy we were embroiled in.  It made a great stronghold because while the Indians were waiting for the right moment to attack the fort on the other side of the property, they could fend off boredom by playing a few games of ping pong in the main building.

There were two groups of rock formations there.  Each of them were large enough to provide hiding places for as many as fifteen to twenty warriors.  There were climable cracks in the rock walls and flat summits large enough to safely allow an Indian lookout to stand full height with hand to forehead looking for unwanted company.  The rock formation furthest away from the fairgrounds provided the main camp.  It was forty feet high on all sides, but there was a crack in the formation that allowed access to an interior area surrounded by rock.  The only way in was through the crack, or up, over, and down again, the forty foot rock walls.  The central, fortified area was large enough to accommodate the whole Indian tribe in comfort.

Occasionally, a scout would be sent to check out the goings on at the fort.  He would sneak out of the crack in the main fortress and madly dash and dart from swing set to slide, hiding until he got to the other group of rocks.  The scout, if chosen carefully, could easily climb those rocks and post a lookout.  Then, when he had looked out enough, he would whistle.  If Ricky Carmack had been chosen scout, he had to holler because he hadn't figured out how to whistle yet.  The whistle, or shout, was the Indians' clue to attack the fort and the game was on.

Our neighborhood, on the other side of the fairgrounds, became Dodge City.  Cheri Quick's back yard became the main residential part of the city because it was surrounded by a white picket fence.  The cowboy families lived there.  The general store was there.  If the Indians ever managed to get by the protection of the fort, Cheri's fence provided the last barrier between the settlers and their attackers.  My back yard was the saloon and the glassed in porch at the end of my house doubled as the school.  Cheri's sister, Janelle, was usually the schoolmarm.  The Baker kids and my little brother rounded out her class.

We created in Estes Park a perfect scale model of Kansas,  We had our pioneer village, our old western fort, the wagon train to help increase the population, and the Indian stronghold to make the whole thing interesting.

I only had one item of store bought paraphernalia to aid my play.  Interestingly enough, it was made by the same people who manufacture my children's Star Wars toys.  I had a Mattell Fanner Fifty.  That gun was wonderful.  I wish I had it with me right now.  It was a shiny, silver six shooter with perfect balance and a flattened hammer that allowed me to fan it with the heel of my hand during particularly tight moments when I was surrounded by Gary Graham and his gang.

My entire life was given over to playing cowboys and Indians in our wild west replica.  Whole evenings were devoted to preparation for the day to come.  I spent one night pestering my mother for empty bottles to use in our bar.  I filled the bottles with various flavors of Kool Aid, wrote labels on them, and even thumbed through a copy of Old Mr. Boston's so I could help our bartender, who was only six, mix any strange orders.

My cowboy career lasted only a year, but it, along with my career as Tarzan, reserves a special place in my memories.

I think my childhood games were essentially more playful than the games my children play.  I was confronted by a world bigger than me and by manipulating that world, became part of it.  The scenario of my children's play can be captured at a glance.  Like dispassionate gods, they move their plastic and electronic world and have no stake in those movements.  Their imagination is not fueled by sweaty bodies and scraped knees.  They pack it away every night in a black box while a refrigerator box filled with yet to be discovered worlds waits in the back yard for a trash man willing to it cart away.


1 comment:

John Rove said...

I really enjoyed reading that and over the years I have enjoyed quite a bit of what you've written. You might want to consider editing some of this stuff down (you can be a little wordy) and resubmitting it.