We kept notes on cases in ledgers
lifted from a paper mill
that caught fire one evening,
some said the owner burned it down
for the insurance,
and we smoked paper rolled into cigarettes
during that baseball-laden summer,
trailing anyone who wandered
into our neighborhood -
a girl with a baby carriage,
an old woman folded over a shopping cart,
a drunk toddling his way to salvation.
We were detectives.
Our detective agency
with telephones made out of plastic spools
from a local knitting mill
was located in my friend's cellar
where the sweet smell of bell peppers
filled the air, and where my friend's uncle
home from Korea with a plate in his head
spent his days working out
with shiny metal exercise equipment
in a pine-paneled back room
off-limits to us.
Of course we used aliases -
Booferous Boggs and Herbie Small -
and longed for adventures to rival
Holmes and Watson's
which aired every Saturday morning
on a round-screen Stromberg Carlson
in my grandparents' doilied parlor and
in the window of the neighborhood furniture store
where the owner had placed this new invention
that no home should be without
for all to see, in order to lure customers
into a monthly payment plan.
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| Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce |