I wasn’t yet Yo-Yo Man. Hell, I wasn’t even eight years old.
I’d had my eye on a sparkly blue Duncan Satellite on the toy shelf at Harvey’s Market for a long time. Weeks! The thing may have cost as much as a buck thirty-nine.
Probably less. I knew if I saved the 25 cents Dad paid me for pushing a mower over the grass in the side yard, in no time I’d be traipsing back through the almond orchards behind our house from Harvey’s with that blue beauty lashed to my finger. Mom was excited that her youngest son would have a goal, so she sewed a cloth pouch with an old shoelace for a drawstring.
“It’s special. For your savings,” she said with a proud, motherly-loving look in her eye.
There would be obstacles. Red licorice, primarily. Five vines for a nickel at Harvey’s. Some weeks, no percentage of Dad’s quarter would make it into the little cloth bag. At least, not for long. Looking back, this might have been my initial object lesson about the evils of addiction.
Secondarily, come fall, our St. Augustine grass went dormant, and there was nothing to mow for the duration of the dark months. And months were what those anticipatory yo-yo weeks would turn into. With the spring however, the grass began to flourish and the quarters began to roll in again.
Around Memorial Day weekend – I was eight now – while Beebo and Dad watched AJ Foyt or someone race in the Indianapolis 500, I hiked through the orchards and across Nord Avenue with five or six quarters and some nickels and dimes jingling in my pockets. I’d stop frequently ankle deep in orchard weeds to fish out my coins and count them. Curiously, by the time I got to Harvey’s I’d lost a quarter. But I still had enough.
“Shouldn’t you be home watchin’ the race?” the old storekeeper said as he slid my change across the counter.
It was less change than I expected – I didn’t get sales tax – but I wasn’t going to quibble. The Duncan Satellite was as beautiful as anything I’d ever ‘boughten.’ As blue and sparkly as the midnight sky. So intent I was on tying the thing to my finger…
“Uh, son,” Harvey said, “wrap it around your middle finger so you can catch it in your full hand.”
I wasn’t very good at knots, so wrapping the string around my middle finger was what I did and as I pivoted toward the door, Harvey said, “Don’t forget your change.” I fumbled with the coins, because the Satellite was clutched by my good hand.
The springtime air out front of Harvey’s Market was a special kind of fresh this day. I let the yo-yo go toward the ground and watched it spin there for a number of seconds.
The thing didn’t jump up into my hand. Winding the thing up I tried again and again and soon remembered you’re supposed to jerk on the string when the yo-yo is at the bottom. The wrap on my finger had loosened, so I took a moment to rewind it. Sure enough, that little jerk was all I needed for my first yo-yo success. I moved a few steps further from the door. And tried twice or three times more. What a cinch! Next trick would be tossing the Satellite out in front of me and jerking it back.
The old woman was older than my mom. Older than any of the moms in the neighborhood, but not as old as Gramma Carah who read Bible stories to us kids on occasion. I know I’d never seen her before in her dark full dress and clunky black shoes. And I can’t say exactly what happened except that my first attempt at throwing the yo-yo flew out of my hand like a Don Drysdale fastball and ended up smacking the old gal in the forehead just above her eyes. Had she been wearing glasses, I’m sure they would have flown off. I suspect her hat had been bobby-pinned into place. Her moan was immediate as was her stagger. I didn’t know what to do. I watched her wobble as my Duncan yo-yo rolled toward the curb and out onto Nord Avenue.
I chose to run up to her and see about her. Was she hurt? Did I knock her out? Fracture her skull? Was she going to die in the parking lot of Harvey’s Market because of me?
She wasn’t mad. Just stunned, I suppose. She did put her arm over my shoulder and her wobbling stopped. I think I was teary-eyed when I asked if she was okay. I don’t recall what she said. Mortified, if an eight-year-old can fathom mortified, I eased along with her as she shuffled toward the front door. Harvey had opened the door and, after calling her by name, asked if she was okay. Apparently, she nodded and then Harvey looked at me and said, “You’d better skedaddle on home, young man.”
My midnight blue Duncan Satellite was resting in the middle of a lane in Nord Avenue. It had been driven over more than once. I remember wincing as cars passed over it. But it never got hit. Scuffed and no longer beautiful, it lay there waiting for me to pick it up and march home. The yo-yo was still serviceable, I found when I picked it up, but in that moment, I wished I’d opted for a handful of red vines.
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Church of the Open Road Press
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