A Novella in installments, tracing the intermingling autobiographies of a boy and a violin, spanning over a century. The previous episode is right here. To find any episode, look here.

(The protagonist posing with some old friends: a Japanese shakuhachi, A Zimbabwean mbira, and a good ol’ American jaw harp.)

(6) – The Honeysuckle Bower, NJ, 1962

A whole year had passed since my now forgotten about assignation with Mrs. Markey and it was once again summertime, summer of glorious free days, of endless reverie within a sea of childhood activities and dreams and adventures. I was off to see my friend Johnny, who lived by the river. Right by the river! In fact, his father had placed a crude sign out front declaring “CLEAN FILL WANTED”, which I asked about the meaning of at various intervals during my visits. What at last got revealed is that the steep river banks only 10 feet or so out the back door were constantly eroding, and needed piles of new dirt to refresh the slopes periodically. This caused me to wonder about how dirt could be ‘clean’, but enough side-trips.

I liked visiting Johnny’s house. It was not one of my more frequent stops — maybe every two weeks or so. I never took my bike; I just walked the three blocks. Often they were lengthy visits. I mean he had a river to play with! Catching frogs. Which he was shrewdly skilled at. Tossing in bottles and then trying to sink them with rocks before the river current removed them to safety. Or just sitting by it and talking. He was good at this. Talking. One didn’t befriend Johnny for athletic activities or bike battles. No — one visited him because he was different and unusual. Which meant that most of my other friends routinely ignored him or even cast derisions. After time passed I came to see that this made for more peaceful, private, and imaginative visits for me. I was multi-modular and could hang out with anybody.

You had to go down a sloping slim sidewalk between Johnny’s house and garage in order to get to a brick stairway. The river was directly in front of you at this point, but down a scary dirt pathway, maybe twenty feet below. It was a lazy river, hypnotically tranquil. Then you would turn left and ascend maybe nine or ten steps to the entrance patio and his doorbell. On the right, a trellis decorated the metal banister and it was covered with a thick luxuriant flowering vine. The flowers were called honeysuckles. Johnny told me it was because bees and wasps loved them, but more secretly, it was because humans too could eat a single precious drop of their nectar, which reminded one of honey. More subtle though. The flowers were creamsickle orange and pure white, about half and half. Johnny’s younger brother Jimmy said the orangish ones tasted sweetest, but he was always imagining stuff. It was like with M&Ms… some kids would try and say how one color tasted a little different from another color, but they really all were the same. I do admit I liked it whenever I got a yellow one though.

That particular morning, feeling in a good mood, I pressed the doorbell boldly and waited, looking out over the scenery. I always had time to wait and glance at the river cause for some reason Johnny’s house always took forever to answer the door. I always wondered what they were doing in there. While we wait, I may as well take the time to tell you what you had to do to get the secret honey drop from the honeysuckle flower:

1) Carefully pluck a flower from the vine by pinching it off right below the flower bottom.
— 1A) Make sure first no bees are inside it! (IMPORTANT)
2) Gently pull the little green ball at the base of the flower downwards.
— 2A) You probably have to pinch it slightly to help it detach from the petals.
3) Keep sliding the green ball down till you feel it blocked.
— 3A) When you pull it down the entire style slides down thru the pistil.
4) Stop when it reaches bottom; a clear drop of nectar will appear.
— 4A) (Because the stigma pushes all the liquid in the ovary down.)
5) Lick the drop into your mouth, Discard and Repeat.
— 5A) (For sure I had no clue aged nine how sexy all this was.)

Glancing out over the terrain I began to daydream over the unusual circumstances in play when I first came to meet Johnny…

It was the year I was six, and Johnny was about one year older. We rode the same school bus home, but I was only vaguely aware of him. I knew his face. I always got off the bus before him, so he continued onwards some few blocks. But one day, he surprised me and got off at my stop, and he came right up to me and said hello. Exchanging names, he asked where I lived, and I told him the next block over. He asked me why then did I not just wait on the bus for the next stop one block further on, for he knew all the stops. I told him I just liked to walk around this longer way, and there was something I liked about this street. I liked even the extra time it took me, time to transition between bus life and home life. He looked at me a moment as we walked, and then told me I seemed very familiar to him for some reason. And that he knew he had to meet me when he saw me. Like he recognized me. We talked about different things. I remember learning he was a dinosaur enthusiast. I only knew a little about dinosaurs, though I thought they were way cool. He told me he had many of them and that we were going to play with them one day soon. When we got to the road where our routes had to diverge, he told me goodbye and that he lived by the river — I knew of the river but was not supposed to go there by myself, though my parents were not strict about it — and that he knew we were going to become friends. He repeated that he knew for some reason that he had to meet me. Then he was off…

Suddenly I heard the inner door being fiddled with and it was opened from the inside, and a face appeared at the other side of the outer screen door. The face amazed me. It was the face of the most beautiful girl I had ever seen in my short sweet life this far. We both waited a moment. She was maybe three years older than me, and her voice was like flowing water. “Hello”? I was silent a little too long but then I gulped “Is Johnny here”? She whirled about without a word and moved rapidly into a doorway in the long room or hallway, her hair long and dark brown and wavy with a few streaks of lighter golden color in it. Then I could see her no more. But her water-music voice was calling out “Ma, It’s one of Johnny’s dopey friends”! I was too little to have even a crush much less be in love, but this was the closest I had ever come to it, no contest. A hint of the future.

_______RS

NOTE: The next episode, if it exists yet, is right here. To find any episode, look here.

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