Always good to have a friend
In the Ice Cream Department.

Two weeks ago, I got a short email from an old childhood friend, Tad Brilhart. Tad shared a small memory from 1956 when I worked at a soda fountain in north Berkeley.

I thought his note was pure poetry, almost like a Japanese Haiku. I broke his note into four stanzas,

Mint Chocolate Chip

I remember you worked at McCurdy’s 
In the Ice Cream department 
I would order a 25 cent cone 
Of my favorite ice cream
You would give me a generous helping of 
Mint Chocolate Chip.
Always good to have a friend
In the Ice Cream Department. 

For our biweekly Berkeley High Zoom meeting, I suggested everyone recall what I called “Small Memories” from childhood – up to the time you left home for college, travel, work, the military – like Tad’s memory of the soda fountain.

The conversations were rich in humor, poignancy, insight. A total delight.

In preparation for our meeting, I came up with a list of tiny memories. In just 10 minutes I recalled 27. Here is my list, in no particular order,

• Mr. Martin – House of Harris Department Store
• Helicopter ride as a yell leader at COP
• Traffic Boy Parade denial by Miss Maslin
• Stealing lumber for an illegal tree house
• Building a wooden duck in kindergarten that my mother didn’t like.
• Mr. Edwards, seventh grade teacher, slapped me in front of the class for my misbehavior
• Tennessee William’s broken vase in drama class
• Promoting Berkeley Junior prom and forgetting my lines
• Pissing in the radiator when my car over heated
• Blowing up a mustard jar in the Boy Scout overnight
• Pissing in the bathtub in nursery school
• Last words from grandpa as they put him in the ambulance
• Working on Don Jarman’s ’32 roadster
• Christian Science testimonial meeting where a man claimed his arm grew back
• Falling on my back on cement when the rope broke
• Hitting a student from 25 feet in the neck with a cherry pie in junior high
• My dad hit me a pop fly ball in Father / Son game, which I missed
• Driving my grandfather’s Packard at age 14
• Older cook at the soda shop said if I got stuff out of the freezer, he said he’d “Let you in my pants.”
• Stranded black woman offered me sex after I drove her to her house
• Cop pulled gun on me
• As a reserve policeman, dad told me about an arrested man who couldn’t raise bail money or even a “hard- on”
• My mother signed off for my cub scout Wolf badge even though I had not done the work
• Chester Nimitz awarded me my Star scout badge
• Breaking into private swimming pools with other kids in a gang we called “The Pool Creepers.”
• In Geoff Johnson’s hot ’50 Olds as he nearly crashed in the Orinda Tunnel
• Getting caught shop lifting and having to return stolen items with my angry father

So there you have it…a childhood of adventure, crime, risk-taking, humor, fear, etc., revealing a picture of a bad boy who takes risks and was lucky to survive childhood.

Why these memories in ten minutes? I’m sure there are a million others, but these came up. Great material for future therapy. A childhood Rorschach? They are intense, emotional, and visual.

So what memories would you come up with in ten minutes?

For me each of these memories contains a five to ten minute story of elaboration. For our Zoom group I selected four of them.

Poetry Looking back on Tad’s “poem,” I thought, how could I turn each of these memories into a short poem of no more than four stanzas – like I did with Tad’s poem?

I chose four.

Small Memory Poems

Don’s ’32 Roadster (1955) 

I’m filled with excitement

Never held a wrench before

We fired up that engine

With a deafening roar

Grease on my shirt

And under my nails

The beginning of manhood

Forget the emails

Pool Creepers (1957)

Armed with wire cutters

And adolescent bad judgment

We scaled walls at Cal’s gym,

The Montclair Swim Club,

And the private pools in Orinda

To take a swim

At one pool we dumped

The lawn furniture in

After the swim

We broke the Golden Rule

I always felt bad

About the furniture in the pool.

 Illegal Treehouse (1958)

Steve and George and I

Dreamed of a treehouse

50 feet high

We had no wood

So in the middle of the nights

We stole it

From local building sites

Stolen four by fours

And two by fours

For the foundation

And plywood for the floors

No idea who owned the lot

Lucky no one fell

We had no permission

Dodged lawsuits from hell

Cop Pulled a Gun (1964)

Cop car behind me as I turned left

Lights blazing, tires screeching

Kept both hands on the wheel

Passenger door flew open

38 police revolver

Three feet from my face

Cop paused “Oh wait. Sorry buddy,

You have similar traits

To a murder we’re tracking”

I checked my underwear.