Some nights, I still dream of that house on Carter Street, the best of all the houses of my childhood. Small by today’s standards, it loomed large to me. She had everything a little girl could want. There was a great backyard, good climbing trees, and mimosas bursting with hot pink flowers teeming with hairy caterpillars, perfect for mini-runs up the driveway.
Mom kept the big kitchen warm with the best of her Eastern North Carolina cooking and all the hugs we needed. Dad worked for Lindale Dairy and brought home so much ice cream that we had a separate freezer to store it all. (We were popular with the neighboring children on hot summer days).
Lindale’s products were so good that Hopolong Cassidy himself came to town to advertise them. Hoppy led a parade down Main Street, riding his white horse, Topper, and using his six-shooter. He gave dad, a Lindale manager, one of his distinctive black hats. Years later, after moving to Colorado, I took that hat to a western clothing store to have it cleaned and preserved. Word got around until every employee in the place came to look at it like it was the Shroud of Turin.
As you can imagine, we were all inspired to play cowboys. Wanted to be Dale Evans, and I would watch “The Roy Rogers Show” every time he beat my older brother in the Saturday morning test pattern. Otherwise, I was stuck watching “Sergeant Preston of the Yukon.” His dogs weren’t as impressive as Trigger, Fury, or Flicka, let alone Dale’s horse Buttermilk.
But the TV was all mine when my brother came out to play his biggest hero, Tarzan. He, his friend Dennis, and our cousin, Skip, spent countless hours in the trees and on top of the garage reenacting their adventures in the jungle and crying out the Tarzan screams that would give Johnny Weissmuller and Carol Burnett a break. I was jealous of the only “Tarzan Club” guys, so I soon started a “Jane Club”. It was not very popular.
Of course, the missing element was the animals. You can’t be Tarzan without cheetahs, elephants, lions and other jungle animals. Who would summon you when you were in trouble, yelling “Ungowa!” at the top of your lungs? When I scolded my brother for that little detail, he told me tea Tarzan’s secret club. There was a zoo on the base. And the elevator to the zoo was in his room.
We didn’t even have a base, but I believed him. Besides, I was determined to see that zoo. But there was a small problem. She didn’t know which bump on his bedroom wall was the elevator button, and the club didn’t speak. I spent weeks pushing as hard as I could on every point on that wall. My brother delighted in acting as if he had just come down the elevator if he heard me walk into his room.
Hey, I was only three or four years old. I eventually discovered that the zoo in the basement was just as delightfully imaginary as Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. But I like to think that I won in the end.
I kept Hoppy’s hat.