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.)

(8) – Ma — It’s Johnny’s Dopey Friend, NJ, 1962

Johnny’s beautiful sister’s flowing locks dissappeared into a wide doorway to some other room, along with the trailing audibility of her impatient complaint concerning my existence. I heard some jumbled exchange which I could not make out, but the tone of it seemed to be a mild admonition, encouraging politeness. She returned again after less than a minute inviting me in and asking if I’d like to wait for Johnny in the dining room, with a glass of water. I stammered an “OK”, stunned at the reappearance of her face and voice, this time rendered by degrees more radiant because she wore a slight smile. Only, it wasn’t a glass of water; it was a cup. Like the same materials and size my parents drank tea or coffee out of. This peculiarity astonished my habituated child mind for some reason. What was a dining room, even? She quickly presented me the drink from the kitchen and went back to whatever she was doing, calling out “Johnny will be there in a minute”.

It was more than a minute though. That was Johnny — never consumed with urgency. I had time to lose myself in the unfamiliar furnishings. A tall thin grandfather clock stood next to the doorway to something which looked like a living room, where the Mother was busily folding things off to the side. Behind me was a long series of windows taking up the entire wall, a view facing down onto the river. White curtains you could see through. Out in the backyard, to the left, the land widened a bit and several large piles of sands and gravel stones created an ideal fantasy terrain, perfect for all sorts of different adventure games I could imagine. A beautiful bright gray solid plastic brontosaurus, maybe ten inches from nose to tail tip, stood watch near the top of one pile, its enormous feet partly buried in the ground beneath. A few other dinosaurs lay scattered about nearby, but not yet positioned into any real life scenarios. What an amazing habitat! I could not wait to go out there and play.

Johnny walked in. A casual “Hi, Kaden”. He saw what had attracted my attention and told me sure, we’ll go out there and play soon, but first he wanted to show me something cool in his room. My disappointment at not running immediately outside was balanced by a true curiosity about the inner portions of his house, and I agreed. I followed him back through the living room — his mother had finished and gone to do something else — and we came to a long hallway with several doors off of it, in both directions. He turned right. We were passing bedrooms, and Johnny’s, which he shared with his younger brother Jimmy, was at the very end. We had to pass a couple of other rooms, and one had three girls, the youngest and cutest of which being the one I’d already met. They ignored us, talking excitedly about nonsensical things, posters of teen idols, whom I did not quite know, on the walls. When we got to Johnny’s room, which had an oddly sloped roof and wooden cabin type walls, a vocal shouted argument erupted between him and his sisters. “Angel, turn the music lower, it’s too loud, plus it is crummy, and I am trying to talk to my friend”. “We were here first Johnny, just shut your stupid door!” Variations of this went on a few moments until Johnny closed his door. “Two of my sisters and their friend”, he explained. I asked how big his family was, and he told me five kids: three older sisters, himself, and Jimmy who was about seven. But one of the sisters, the oldest, was moving out. To New York City. Getting married! I marvelled at this, that one of my friends could have a sister old enough to move out and marry. The beautiful youngest sister was called Angel, which intrigued me no end. You could name a girl Angel? Johnny explained she was going to become a teenager in a few months and was getting some attitude. But still he said, she was by far his coolest sister. Johnny was the oldest male child. And in Italian families, this meant he was the undisputed king. No matter what.

It quickly got calm with the door closed. First he asked me what dinosaurs I knew. Only two: the brontosauruses and the fearsome hunter Tyrannosaurus Rex. With the puny arms and six inch long teeth. Johnny told me he knew more than twenty kinds and that there were four things important to know about each dinosaur species. First came what geological era they lived in, the Jurassic, Cretaceous, etc. And it also mattered to know how many millions of years ago each era was. For example no Brontosaurus was ever hunted and eaten by a T-Rex because they walked the earth almost 50 million years apart in totally different climates and geographies. Then you had to know the dimensions, its height and its length. (Brontosauruses were 70 feet long and scientists knew this from digging up their fossils.) Finally, you had to know if they were plant-eaters or meat-eaters. But Johnny used the technical terms: herbivores or carnivores. I found out during this consultation that we humans were omnivores cause we ate all kinds of stuff. The room entered into a magical bubble of childhood imaginations. I listened with delight at how Johnny tossed about terms like ‘Lower Cretaceous period’ and ‘Paleontologist’, which he assured me he was going to be one day.

“But this is what I really really wanted to show you, Kaden.” He opened a wooden drawer, which magically was built into his bed under the mattress. There were over a dozen colored plastic dinosaurs in there, all pretty realistic looking, and many with interesting shapes I was unfamiliar with. I thought he was going to bring them out for individual inspection, but instead he grabbed a large hard cover colorful book with a spectacular image on front of a T-Rex staring down a smaller but formidable-looking three-horned dinosaur called a Triceratops. There were enormous jungle-like trees all about and huge ferns. And in the skies, below distant hills, flew pointy headed Pterodactyls — which became my new favorite English word for awhile. Johnny sat next to me and leafed through it, pausing at many neat illustrations. The artwork was well done and I could read well enough by then to see that the writing, which I browsed over briefly, was very descriptive and imaginative. He stopped at the page where the same image as which decorated the cover was, except it spread across two pages. And text covered portions of both pages. And a little story, or history, as he called it, spilled on to the third page following. I could see why he liked this book.

Johnny then announced that he was going to recite the story to me. I assumed he meant read it. But then he closed the book, and briefly his eyes. He took a deep breath, and composed himself. His eyes became dramatic…

_______RS

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

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