Though we were all several generation American, our family reunions were typically Irish. My siblings and I would commiserate about our dysfunctional family by immersing ourselves in it. Generous amounts of alcohol were imbibed, and wild driving on the country roads and various escapades were almost always involved.

On one such occasion my brother said he'd seen an ad for "Jim Morrison" night at our favorite local tavern, "The Wild Turkey" As it was owned and operated by a drug dealing Deadhead, we thought it might be fun. Armed with glow-in-the-dark squirt guns, full-face,dark wraparound ski goggles, military-issue ammo belts, half-laced hiking boots,we strode through the door. We looked like some wild-eyed South American revolutionaries. I'd found this 1940's "zoot suit," with peg legs and wore it over my "Che Guevara" t-shirt. The "Abbie Hoffman" American flag vest I'd constructed was hidden beneath too--the matter to be flashed at the right moment. Several pitchers later, consensus was reached and I removed the grey, outer suit coat and, shouting Viva la Revolution! and squirting everyone in range, I jumped on top of the bar....

Even my buddy the bartender thought that went a wee bit too far, and we were escorted out the door. Down the street was one of the 21 watering holes in a town of 5,000--and a stone-cold redneck hangout. Nobody quite knew what to make of us when we sauntered in and sat down at a table. We didn't know what to make of the change in music--from Jim Morrison's come on baby light my fire... to this inane C & W song about ya pissed me off, ya fuckin' jerk (then something about so it's off to the rodeo!...And maybe we were a wee bit disoriented. In any event, neither side took a liking to the other, and licketedy-split, as the locals liked to say, the barstool row of belly`d up to the bar good ole boys roused themselves, as a unit, from their squinty-eyed stupor and managed to give chase...

One night we all took magic mushrooms and walked all over the little town--finding overlooked oddities which became objects of fascination. Passenger trains had become a thing of the past even before our family had moved there, so we walked the abandoned railroad tracks undisturbed. The rails were rusted, but the oiled, machine-pungent wooden tees beneath were faintly luminous in the moonlight. The gravel bed crunched from our otherwise silent footsteps.

At the boarded-up station we found an old sign indicating "Owego." With the rotting wood having blistered the paint, though, it could be Omega--with the right lambent angle and "doors of perception." Thus was formed our "Omega Club." And having properly initiated ourselves, we giggled our way to the local kid's park and took turns pushing the "Zen Merry-Go-Round" till nearly dawn...

But usually in that area somebody would find a way to turn things nasty--resentment, hard-scrabbling lives, third-generation on welfare ignorance, whatever...

One afternoon we were coming back from an afternoon in Ithaca--where Jim was thinking of going to Cornell after his stint in the Navy. We were in great spirits after a day of hiking the gorges and visiting such old staples of our youth as Camp Barton, our Boy Scout camp along the shores of big Cayuga Lake.

We were doing the back, scenic dirt roads and encountered an old American van in front of Jim's new little Toyota sedan. The driver slowed to a crawl and wouldn't let us pass--swerving left or right to cut us off. When we finally got by Jim laid on the horn, and, family tradition, we all flipped him the bird. He responded by trying to ram us and run us off the road. When we reached our house, we pulled over; the guy tossed a beer bottle and hit the front fender (narrowly missing me in the passenger seat). We tried to cut him off, but heard get the guns from inside. So after a brief confrontation, we let the clown go.

But, later that eve, Jim--he's got a Navy buddy along, we're all drinking beer-- and I looked at each other; nodding in agrrement we shouted "Commando raid!"

His buddy had led a rather sheltered suburban life and was not ready for the routine--all black Navy sweaters and knitcaps, dark pants, burnt-cork faces and boots. We were pros from years of teenaged raids on the local farmers--who'd sit all night watching television with shotguns loaded with rock salt. You had to be slick and fast or you'd catch some very painful particles that would burn for days.

We picked the lock on the passed-out old man's gun cabinet. As he's a card-carrying member of the National Rifle Association, it's an extensive collection. I grab my favorite, a Mossberg 12 guage with which I'd been a crack clay-skeet shooter. Plus these special "M-80's," explosives loaded into shotgun shells that could be shot and launched a good hundred and fifty yards...

Some recon from an old friend still local had given us a target--Weiss Road "Hollow," a place on this dirt road a half-mile down the hill where several trailers had cleared spots from the swampy land arounbd a creek and set up camp. We were advised to be careful,though, they had a rep for being nasty hillbillies.

I had the Mossberg, Jim a Smith & Wesson 357 pistol, and his friend a lever-action 22. "Cool," he'd gushed, "I get to be The Rifleman".

Clouds have pretty much bocked out the moon--just faint pink and blue swirls--but we know the land very well. The old man never used the farm for anything--he just liked the notion of being a country squire--and the roads and fences are in the state of entropic decay all too typical of the region. I tell Jim's friend to watch his step and we head for the far southwest ridge.

Soon enough we cross a rusty old barbed wire fence marking off our land from the neighbor's to the north. From the safety of brush on the crest above the "hollow" we do a survey. There are three trailers on this side, a couple on the other. They hadn't been there when we'd grown up, but already the backyards were cluttered with the usual local lawn ornaments: hulks of cars in various states of disrepair, old fashioned washing machines gone to seed, & other strange junk seldom otherwise seen.

Jim's friend, excited, starts giggling. Down in the hollow a dog--big-looking, in the back yard--barks and growls. It makes a run towards us and the hill,a chain rattles than snaps the beast into the air at its end

I've got both barrels loaded with M-80's and I launch the first towards the trailer at far right--we were looking for the telltale van but the dog getting wind of us changed our plans. At it's thunderous boom--too far wide to the right--the dog shuts up. Next shot went too far to the left of the one at left end--even with altitude correction. I reload and for my third I say Fuck it and launch it straight for the back window of the middle trailer--it hits and explodes, shattering the window...

After a momentary silence--as "incoming" these M-80's are mighty impressive--we hear, as we're hightailing it back up the hill to the safety of deeper cover, the grinding and spluttering to life of pickups and the van. A few head wildly in one direction, the rest mudslide off into the other. By the time they reconvene--from high atop a couple-of-hills-over vantage point we see the beams of light--its too late. No way in the world are they going to risk coming into the thickets after us; even the dogs had been whimpering too much to give chase...

While we're hiding out and moving about, we see several Sheriff's cars arrive at our house and try to arouse old John. Lights are off, looks like nobody's home, so they give up and leave...

I think that was the night that, after a few more celebratory beers, we shot up the family canoe. For years it had sat uselessly on its side, with leaks in the aluminum from exposure to the elements--wintertime freezing and cracking--that had made it unusuable for even our farm's pond.

As we were on an "expedition," we were talking about how dictatorial our father John--with his Hemingway-esque white-beard, i.e., the Great Sportsman used to be on our canoe trips to Canada's Algonquin Park. Our first year, before he got hip to the ways of the wild, he'd made us carry, on portages, this very heavy wooden chest-- coated with lacquers and decorative Formica--in which were too many backpacking taboo's to recount (big heavy metal grill, too big cast-iron frying pans, etc.). With nothing but square wooden handles on each end, the thing quickly became utterly unbearable for Jim and I as we'd hike the sometimes several mile long portage paths carved out of the pristine wilderness between lakes...

Too, John used to use the matter of inheritances--that mythical masculine influence over the world of material things--as a power control trip. All senex embittered he'd say things along the lines of "I know that none of you have any likings for me, but you better do what I tell you or you won't get a penny of my money when I'm gone..."

At various stages, each of us had gotten the "that's it for you!" trip. Yet, we'd managed to counteract, all having made a solemn vow to make a four-way split no matter what the damn words on paper said at the old man's demise...

Though at our school I was the All-American Kid, when it came to John I was very much an early-on given to be written off. The worst came while I was a student at SUNY Buffalo, for my refusing to drop my Marxism and "free thinking" classes. I'd done a 70 page paper on "Why Are We in Vietnam" my freshman year that had my Poly Sci teacher a bit taken aback at my enthusiasm. I'd turned the paper in late and he'd called to make sure I picked it up from him at his home; I'd wheedled the old man into dropping by on our way home from my dorm's moveout day. As we stood chatting my old man laid on the almost innocuous horn of our VW van (as an engineer he admired German precision), the professor had sadly smiled, shook my hand and made my promise to look him up next fall. When I showed John the "A+" he--annoyed at the title--grabbed and almost tossed it out his window. Our brief discussion ensuing almost got me having to hitchhike home from Buffalo.

I'd also taken a "History of Consciousness" class known as a "mick," in which we read Aldous Huxley and Carlos Castenada. The final had a legendary reputation, the professor would pass a joint around and, at each student's toke, go, "great, another A!". ..

John's ultimate temporal machination, however, was his refusal to allow a lawyer to represent me after a motorcycle accident my freshman summer. Several lawyers back at Buffalo had told me that I should get compensated a bare minimum of around 50 grand, and were willing to take the case without a retainer, but the old man did his grinding teeth drunken monkey grin in my face and said, No way!. Being under the legal age of 21 then, I could do nothing about it--except transfer to Berkeley and California's legal age of 18. Looking back the money didn't matter to me--what never healed was my track and hoop careers--my track coach had plans for me to star in the pentathalon and my hoop coach called me "the best natural defender he'd ever seen, if you owrk hard you got a shot at the pros..."

So that night, perhaps remembering all these things, we jump up, grab guns again, go into our big side yard and fire all kinds of volleys into the hapless and most innocent canoe. ...

Over even more congratulatory beers, Jim's buddy is highly impressed. "Wow, do you guys do stuff like this every time you get together?"

That sad look of Irish recognition arises between Jim and me, as we look over the tears and gashes of the burst-marks in the canoe. It lays right between the old rusted-out swingset and the big oak tree with a tire swing where we'd spent many a happy summer afternoon in our idylic youth...

Yes, I'm afraid so...

TaMo, a.k.a. Tom (not the actor) Noonan...
summer of 2001, revised 2006