Never the Same IC#2

The boy Kirk endured more notable childhood challenges and circumstances that inherently influenced and molded him into who he'd eventually become.

 

Influence Cluster Two: The Kid

Cue:  “Life in a Northern Town” https://youtu.be/GsIRt0bge1Y

Life went on while Kirk became a skinny autonomous kid because he began to spend more time outside alone. Actually, he didn’t know if it was his idea to spend most of his days outside or if he was encouraged out of the house, but he grew to like it. Seeing he spent his days outside in this northern clime, Kirk seemed to take notice of the weather that in turn dictated how he felt. Sunny days meant happy-go-lucky wanderings. Cloudy, dark, and rainy days produced a housebound Kirk who was sullen and glum without a shred of motivation. And besides, the outside was always in a state of flux as much as Kirk’s mercurial moods. Attuned to the weather and seasonal changes, Kirk took notice of new plants growing and different birds to watch and hear on a daily basis. He’d watch the clouds admiring the puffy cumuli on warm days or shivered and shrank in the cool as the autumn gray stratocumuli skid by. No fuzzy bunny rabbits, cuddly kitties or other cute animals in those cloud formations for Kirk. He saw mountainous terrain and castle embattlements.

In early winter when the first snow was likely, he’d repeatedly go to the back door and flip on the bright yard lights, searching the air under the beams for that first real snow of the winter.  It’d be an exciting time for him to see those first fat flakes swirling about at night under the lights. In the morning after the first snowfall, he made tracks everywhere before concentrating on shuffling in circles making spirals that looked like dizzying hypnotic black holes in the newly fallen snow.

Winters proved to be rough back then. The family burned firewood for heat with a huge scary furnace that Kirk’s father would heave large chunks of wood into on a regular basis. There were heat registers on the first floor where the heat roiled up when the furnace burned at full blast. The registers were nice, hot places to sit on a cold winter’s evening equaling comfy hot buns versus the eternally cold linoleum floors. On the other hand, the registers on the upstairs floors were open to the first floor spaces, but because they were not directly hooked to the furnace the upstairs rooms were essentially unheated. The nights proved cold and with blankets piled high and seeing he slept with his head under the covers most of the time anyway, Kirk could breathe under the blankets to keep the bed temperature up. In the morning, the windows would be frosty and on those snow-stormy nights there’d be little snowdrifts in the corners of the windowsills. So goes life in a drafty old farmhouse.

Having no one to talk to or interact with on a daily basis, the family dog became Kirk’s best friend. The first of several dogs was named Doc Pete. He didn’t know where the strange name came from or who named him, but he was a small mixed breed white and blond dog. They were inseparable. Sometime during Kirk’s formative years, Doc Pete decided he didn’t like the mailman and bit him. Not long after that, Kirk never saw Doc Pete again.

Smacked

One of Kirk’s favorite childhood winter pastimes was knocking down icicles from the eaves of the house and outbuildings just delighting in the smashing, shattering, and scattering of the crystal-clear ice shards. He would either throw snowballs at them or wielded the weathered eight-foot long clothesline pole to knock down those offending icy shafts.

On one extremely biting cold winter day saw Kirk wielding his trusty pole on the hunt for icicles. Finding some potential victims, he moved along a frozen gutter that had a perfect row of beautiful one to two foot long icicles that fell and shattered one at time to his delight.  At the end of the gutter was his goal�"a huge, beautiful six-foot crystalline specimen. Stretching up on his toes, Kirk swung the pole and smacked the big icicle hard. The pole just stopped dead, the massive icicle being too thick to give way from his puny attack. With his second strike, the icicle tip fell off and the gutter rocked, but still the main icicle remained hanging there. He just had to knock the whole stubborn thing down to ground, he just had to! What a glorious smash it’ll make. Getting closer to the house under the gutter and wielding a tighter grip, Kirk reeled back with all his might and swung as hard as his little puny arms could manage. Crack! Too late Kirk saw what would happen, but he couldn’t duck in time. The bigger, heavy end swung over and down falling right onto his head. He went flat. The world went black…

For how many moments Kirk laid there in the cold snow, he had no idea. As his eyes flickered open, that mocking massive chuck of crystalline ice laid there right in front of his big blue eyes, the bright sunlight sparkling and gleaming through its offending girth. He struggled to his feet and rubbed the lump on his head through his thick wool hat that still covered half his head. Apparently and thankfully, his hat absorbed some of the blow. Teary eyed, Kirk went in the house where his mother rubbed his head and gave him a fresh backed cookie which always fixed everything bad.  But after that hard smack on the head, Kirk was never the same again.

Tossed

The farm family lived on a long driveway, so that meant snow removal was a project when old man winter kicked in and buried them in snow. To combat the heavy snow with the least amount of mechanical contrivances, Kirk’s father spiked a snow plow together made from big, heavy rough cut planks and towed it behind the old John Deere. For a real dashing through the snow fun adventure, his sisters and he rode on a cross plank nailed onto the roughshod plow when his father plowed. So they rode back there watching the piles of snow push off to the sides behind the tractor that went “pum, pum, pum” under power.  Spot lit by the tractor back light, the snow kicked up into the air by the clanking tractor tire chains and with the frosty breeze biting cheeks and noses, the ride proved unforgettable.

Well, there Kirk sat taking in the experience on his end of the cross board, not paying much attention to safety. Somehow, if they hit a bump, Kirk can’t say, but he tipped and fell forward going right underneath the cross plank. He hit the moving snow-covered ground and tumbled�"and tumbled. Kirk’s sisters most likely yelled, but he couldn’t hear anything as he rolled, slid, and bumped around in the rear boxed-in area of the plow. It seemingly went on for minutes before his father knew what had happened and got the rig stopped. His father jumped off the tractor, ran to the back, and pulled a much tussled Kirk up. Quite discombobulated and dizzy with snow stuffed in his cuffs, down his snow pants and down his neck, he managed to pull himself together. He shook the scary mishap off though he was never the same after that terrifying tumble.   

Spring Sprung

Spring warmth brought Kirk more outside time with fuzzy p***y willows and pristine white snowdrops blooming despite the melting piles of snow and deepening mud.  Spring saw red-breasted robins snagging early worms, black and white chickadees dee-dee-deeing all about, and great hawks soaring high with screeches to their mates saying look at me, I’m handsome! Kirk with his bulldog jaw and grim expression never felt handsome at all.

Springtime meant high water in fast moving streams and creeks. In the north climes, spring came late and they were always cool and wet, but playing in running water and puddles with his little buckle galoshes was always fun. Kirk dammed up little streams or drained puddles to direct the small torrents to wherever he wanted. Running water is used as a literary symbol to reflect life’s ceaseless progress, and life is especially continuous in the great outdoors as Kirk figured out in his observations of nature. Playing in the high running streams, he made little wooden boats and tossed them in the water and chased them to the viaduct and then scurried across the road to watch them appear on the other side.

He dreamt of following them down the stream, to the creeks, to the rivers and finally the ocean wondering if some other kid in a foreign country might come across it. So, in that expectation, he’d find small bottles in his wanderings and scribble a note with his address on it before tossing the bottle into the stream. He never got a reply back pessimistically assuming the bottles probably all got stuck around the next bend just out of sight. He imagined a pile of his bottles and boats jammed up in the weeds against the streambed destined never to go anywhere outside his little confined world. In his confined lonely world, he began wondering if the world really existed beyond his small limited realm.

Cue:  “The Reflex” https://youtu.be/FjlM3awYS2A

Lonely Kirk explored every crook and cranny in his local surroundings around and on the farm. For Kirk, play in the great outdoors invited expeditions to find new and interesting natural places, plants and animals. Even as quite the small boy, Kirk traveled far and wide on foot, and yet�"no one seemed to care or ask about his adventures whence he finally returned. Many cubby holes and corners were never used in the barn and outbuildings and the hay lofts were expansive, isolated, and shadowy so they needed thorough investigations with his little flashlight. He elected himself in charge of finding treasures whether useful or otherwise in those dark places. Outside, he would engage in a constant search for four leaf clovers and of the couple he found, he coveted because Kirk knew he needed all the luck he could garner. The warmth of late springtime and early summer was another time of transition for man and beast with tons of work and tasks to be accomplished in the upcoming few short months of good weather.

And so, as spring waned and summer loomed, it became time to work the fields for crops. Early on in his young boyhood, Kirk’s father would take him out to plow on the old tractor with the distinctive “pum, pum, pum!” Incidentally, Kirk’s father went deaf from driving that noisy tractor for all those years and years. Anyway, at an early age Kirk stood on the tractor’s footboard while his father operated the tractors controls. It was a little tractor obsessed boy’s dream to feel the vibration of gears and engine noises while they turned over the soil or worked it with a disk or harrow. This multi-sensory event provided a smell of fresh-turned soil, sights of birds and small animals, and the constant head resounding pounding of that noisy tractor.

                At about 5-6 years old, Kirk’s father let him loose on the tractor. Any other tractor would be impossible for a little boy to drive especially the difficulty of pushing in the clutch, but the John Deere had a hand clutch that could be operated by little short arms. Kirk’s father couldn’t be happier seeing his “boy” driving the tractor at such a young age. Kirk’s proud father even took an action picture of “his boy” solo driving the tractor. There is the short story about this event entitled, “Green and Yellow Tractor in a Black and White Memory.”

Kirk’s father always referred to Kirk as “his boy” when they’d stop to sell seed corn to other farmers. Not as his son and never by name, Kirk pondered his father’s reference to him as “his boy” forever. Did that provide answers to their strained relationship?

Fair Day

As summer waned, the dreaded approach of school came. But despite this undesirable foresight that hung out there like a specter, there was always that one last gasp grand event of the summer. That event was the big and bustling county fair. Kirk hated seeing the posters with the dates highlighted around for the county fair because it reminded him that school was lurking, but the fair usually meant a good time to be held by all. There was plenty of food never tasted anywhere else, fun amusement rides for all ages, skill games, farm animals to gawk at, and various farming displays, especially the farm equipment area with all those shiny brand-new tractors.   

Fair day began at dawn with a trip to the Grandparents’ house. There Kirk’s family would join up with the aunts, uncles, and cousins, but first came breakfast. A unique experience, Kirk could eat cereal right out of the single-serving box after carefully cutting it open and pouring milk right into the box. What fun!  After the preparation of food and drinks for a lunchtime picnic and various other survival sundries for a day at the fair, everyone would get in their cars for the caravan trip to the fair. On this one particular outing, Kirk’s family rode with the grandparents to the fairgrounds.

Right off the bat, adrenaline would build in everyone, though for different reasons, just seeing the huge teeming parking field that required an army of people just to direct traffic. This was mind boggling for a little boy, always quite the eye-opening excursion even though Kirk had been there before.  After parking a hike away from the fairground entrance, the family started right in with the buildings showing livestock being prepped for judging from cows to pigs to sheep right down to the small cuter animals like rabbits, Guiney pigs and chickens. The family took it all in. The morning soon gave way to afternoon.

On the fairgrounds main causeway, Kirk’s mother made the critical mistake by mentioning a visit to the health building to get Kirk tested because of his many medical problems and the health problems that existed in the family. Kirk didn’t like the idea of more “tests” one bit. Later that day after a picnic lunch with the extended family, Kirk and his mother headed to the health building.  

Runaway!  

Cue: “I Ran” https://youtu.be/S9jwXUITbtU

Kirk fussed a little, dragged his feet a little as they went inside the octagonal health building to impatiently wait in line. Taking a look around, Kirk saw children all around getting stuck with needles resulting in red-faced crying, wailing and whimpering. While his mother was talking with someone, Kirk quietly slipped away.

Within seconds, Kirk’s mother saw that he was gone, nowhere to be seen. She alerted those of the family nearby knowing that he couldn’t have gotten too far away. Nevertheless, the search went on for an extended time looking in all those places Kirk might want to return to such as the animal pens, fish display, Midway, or the tractors, but they didn’t have any luck finding the little wayward boy.

Finally, they gave up and alerted fair officials to announce the lost little boy’s description with a hope someone would bring him to the fair office. Some family members continued the search as Kirk’s mother waited and waited. As the day waned, a tired Grandpa T went to the car for supplies he had left behind. Having parked several rows back and off to one far side of the parking field, he had a bit of difficulty recalling where his car was parked. When he finally got to the car, which he had left unlocked as they did in those days, he found little Kirk curled up fast asleep in the back seat.

After a gentle reunion and a snack, Grandpa T convinced Kirk that they had to get back to the fair because his parents were very worried about his walking off. Considering the two probable outcomes, Kirk assumed his especially grim, worried expression. Grandpa T assured him that he would not have to go back to the dreaded, torturous health building. At least that eliminated one outcome though Kirk anticipated not avoiding the other by any means so he steeled himself for a stern talking to.

Kirk and his grandfather walked hand in hand back to the fair office while giving the health building a wide berth. Kirk received a mild scolding for running away as he expected, but Grandpa after all, put in a good word for Kirk.

 Everyone wondered out loud on how the heck little Kirk ever found the car in an ocean of cars, but in his typical style of answering, Kirk just looked to the ground, kicked a stone, and shrugged. That particular adventure would stick with Kirk, and he’d never be the same about the fair particularly that health building.