One Foggy Night

One Foggy Night

What would you do if you could go back to when you were 10?

By Jimmy Lynch

Copyright © 2015 Jimmy Lynch

All rights reserved.

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

1

January 19, 2015. That’s when it happened. When I went missing. Or at least that’s the way my wife, kids, friends, family, co-workers and neighbors would put it.

It was a Monday. MLK. Martin Luther King Day. We had no school or work that day. It was a foggy evening, rather mild, about 8 p.m. I decided to take our family dog, my dog actually, Lady, for a walk.

It was a dreamy night. That welcome January thaw time. The fog made it hard to see to the end of the block and the streetlights cut through the mist and gloom to hint that perhaps magic was in the air tonight.

At 51 soon to turn 52 years old I still tend to be a dreamer but tonight as I walked I was thinking about how all I did all afternoon on this bonus day of no work, was run errands.

I checked the tires on our truck since my wife reported to me that a tire pressure light was flashing on the dashboard. I checked on our camper which is in storage at our local 4-H fairgrounds. We are lucky to be able to keep it in indoor storage. I drove up to a big white barn of a building with a half-circle roof, Building C, which during the fair houses cows and other assorted animals for people to see; now it’s the winter home of our travel trailer. Gary meets me outside the building. He’s the caretaker here. He’s probably mid-forties with a big bushy brown beard and it seems he’s always smoking. He’s an amiable fellow and he waits while I tend to our camper

I diligently added new dryer sheets and two new air fresheners to the inside while ending up by depositing two boxes of mothballs near the wheels on the outside. All this to keep mice from roaming about our camper. Mice can do nasty things to a camper and we try our best to prevent this.

I chat a bit with Gary when I’m all done. I tell him about our planned camping trip to Colorado and he tells me of the times he’s been there. Then he mentions the Smoky Mountains, a place he says he has been going for about the last seven years in a row.

We talk about this for about another 10 minutes because the Smokies are on our five year plan. Now that our daughters are getting older, almost 15 and 13 1/2, we’re trying to ramp up our camping trips a little bit. My wife and I keep hearing that when they get into their late teens, the thrill of summer vacations with dear old mom and dad become less and less wonderful for them.

We almost did the Smokies last summer. We were going to go to Myrtle Beach and on the way down there stop in the Smokies. But when we called a campground down in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee the woman there told us that if we were only staying three nights it would be just a drive-by trip.

She told us that the Smoky Mountains really needed to be a vacation all by itself. The more we read about the area the more we figured she was right.

Did you know that the Smoky Mountains are the most visited National Park in the United States?

So we decided to head to Destin, Florida last summer and put the Smokies on our list of vacations to do soon.

Of course I had to run to Target to get the fabric softener sheets and air fresheners. Plus a few other items my wife asked me to pick up as well. I had to go to Ace Hardware to get the mothballs.

Then I went the opposite direction and tried to get our truck’s DVD system fixed at a place called Auto Toyz, where we had it installed. The DVD system itself was working fine, the problem was the screen and support for the screen had cracked and it was loose.

Since we had a Colorado camping vacation coming up this summer we thought we better get this fixed, plus it seemed as if at any time the monitor might fall off and bonk somebody on the head. My job to get this fixed.

Then I realized our truck, the one my wife normally drives now since it is more economical for me to take the V-6 van instead of the big V-8 truck because I am the one running the kids all over the place after school, was in need of an oil change and tire rotation.

So after a quick call I went back downtown to take care of this at the same place I started this afternoon with the tire check, our old reliable Firestone dealer. The place that hasn’t changed a bit since I was a kid delivering papers on my downtown paper route. Whenever I go there I feel like I am 10 years old again, slinging papers with my little sister, Dawn, aged 6, helping me out.

Dawn and I were close, still are. If I live to be 100 I will always remember Dawn following me on my paper route. Her little legs hurrying to keep up to big brother, her cheeks rosy red from the cold bundled up in a purple coat with a matching purple and pink hat.

Errands. I swear they are the curse of society. A time eater. The complete mind and creative thinking brain sucker.

Most men live lives of quiet desperation. I keep thinking of this quote as I walk along on this foggy moonless night. As our dog goes about her business, I am a million miles away. She senses this too. Occasionally she pulls on the leash and I am standing stock still with my eyes closed. She looks at me, cocks her head as if to say, C’mon man get with the program! Wake up already!

I oblige her and we continue. I am wearing my heavy down filled navy jacket. I have my Packers hat complete with earflaps which I have tightly secured with a Velcro strap around my chin. I’m wearing blue jeans and dark blue gloves. On my feet I have a pair of tan Merrill hikers.

On Lynncrest Drive right in front of Molly McLenathan’s house is where my foot steps in the snow disappear but not Lady’s.

Molly is in the fifth grade presently at the school where I am employed as a Paraeducator. A Paraeducator, since most people don’t have a clue what that is, is basically a teacher associate. We help the teachers. We are usually assigned special needs students. We often work with behaviorally challenged students.

It’s tough work so of course we are paid very little for our services. We do such things as lunchroom duty and recess duty. Jobs regular teachers don’t want to do.

You need no college degree or even A.A. degree to do what we do, they say. Any kid out of high school can do our job. I have a B.A. in Journalism and Mass Communications, earned Phi Beta Kappa, and have about 10 years social work experience as well as eight years as a sportswriter and freelance writer.

For having all this I am paid about 50 cents more an hour than a high school kid might make.

So why am I here? Simple. It works for our family. My hours are the same as my kid’s hours. I get summers off so we can camp like crazy and we have never had to pay for daycare. That adds up. Plus in the grand scheme of things, I’d rather raise my own kids than some stranger, thank you very much.

But back to Molly. She and her dad, Jim, are huge Boston Red Sox fans. Jim’s originally from Boston, so he’s a die-hard. Molly was in my classroom last year and boy does she know her baseball. I’ve enjoyed many good chats with her during the season last year.

But they have not seen me as I approach their house in the gloom. In fact no one has seen me tonight and I have seen no one in return.

No one is around when I simply fade into the fog.

2

One minute I’m walking on Lynncrest Drive with Lady on her leash and the next I’m standing on the sidewalk of the Dodge Street bridge with another dog on a leash. I notice that it’s snowing hard, big fluffy flakes fall out of the blackness.

Lady is an apricot colored Standard Poodle who is getting up there in years. She’s almost 14 1/2 years old. She still enjoys daily, or on rare occasions, nightly walks, but arthritis has set in hard on her left foreleg and she walks with a noticeable limp.

She hasn’t a mean bone in her body. When strangers, especially children ask if they can pet her, I always say the same thing. The worst she’ll do is lick you.

She’s a great family dog. She’s accustomed to long naps on the couch during the day when we are at school. She’s losing her hearing but when we come home and she wakes up, man her tail wags about a million miles an hour and she’s ready to play.

But as I mentioned earlier, this is not the dog at the end of my leash just now.

No, this dog is much smaller than Lady and while it is the same breed it is also a different color. This dog is black and has a red color unlike the Green Bay Packers leash that adorns Lady.

I stop in my tracks and rub my eyes once, then twice. I close my eyes and slowly open them again. I look first at the unknown dog with the black fur and eyes looking at me quizzically, the same way I am looking at him.

I look at my feet which are now warmly encased in black snow boots, the kind you can’t find anymore. They have the metal buckles that close them up.

I notice that instead of wearing my warm down jacket I am now wearing my trusty Green Bay Packers jacket, the one with the fake yellow leather sleeves and the green felt on the chest and back with the big yellow G proudly displayed on the right chest pocket.

This is the jacket I wished my mom would have stored away for me. I loved this coat just like I loved this team and still do. I wished that I could have given this coat to one of my daughters to wear.

But I was the proud owner of this coat when I was 10 years old.

I then gradually look up at the big puffy snowflakes falling from the sky. I see that I am wearing a matching Packers stocking cap of dark green.

Man, nothing is making sense just now, but at least I’m styling!

I raise my eyes past the strange dog and notice as I am standing a train is moving slowly beneath me and four others are stationary.

Then I realize, this is not a strange dog at all. This is Blacky, my first poodle. A dog that slept every single night at the foot of my bed and kept my feet toasty warm.

This is the very same dog that I thought I had killed with a batted baseball in the park that I am gazing at right now just to the left of this bridge.

I was about 10 years old and Blackie and I were playing in the park. She was wandering around sniffing all over while I with my Louisville Slugger 28 inch wooden bat was hitting balls and then retrieving them.

I hit a really hard grounder and it hugged the grass before taking a big hop right into the chin of Blackie who had somehow walked right into the path of this screamin’ meemie.

Blackie fell like she was shot by a 22. I froze, unable to comprehend what just happened. Then as it sunk in, adrenalin sped through my body and I bolted for home.

I ran all the way at lightning speed. I needed to get home now. I just killed my dog!

I raced up our front porch steps and ripped open the door and fell upon the braided multi-colored oval rug that covered our hardwood floors.

My dad was, with WAS being the key word here, calmly reading the paper in his La-Z-Boy recliner when his hysterical son flung himself to the floor sobbing and yelling at the same time, I killed him! I killed Blacky!

Dad bolted from his chair and came to my aid, still not having any clue what was going on. He said, What, what happened son? Just as I was about to explain, dad walked over to the screen door that led to our front porch and opened it to let Blacky in.

Blacky, apparently was not only not dead, but after the blow that probably knocked him out for a moment, got up and ran all the way home to find me.

Oh Blacky! You’re okay! I couldn’t believe my eyes. Hugging him around the neck I gazed