..."magooshans"

sycamore trees...
the streets of my neighborhood in Mudville...
are lined with them...

and now...the leaves are turning yellow...



then crackly brown...and falling to earth...

we had several on the ranch... big ones...
that provided me with hours of companionship...
growing up pretty much alone...out in the country...

my brother didn't count...
he was almost 4 years younger...
and liked other stuff...

we'd play sports stuff for a while...
but he always had to win...
and would cheat if he had to...
or sulk if he lost...



I had imaginary friends when I was really young...
before my brother was born...
I'd make up stories involving them...
have long conversations with them...

I was always very verbal...
almost from the moment I learned to talk...
Mom said that it was a constant dialog...
[I hear you LOL, MM...& I don't blame you...]

when I moved on from imaginary friends...
I "taught" my stuffed animals...
or the birds in the trees...

my brother didn't want to be taught...
that may have been the beginning of the gap...
that still lies between us...

as I was a child of the 50's...
and a fan of Roy Rogers, Hopalong Cassidy...
and every other cowboy on TV...
having a set of small cowboys with horses...
[think "army men"...but with 10 gallon hats & horses...]
gave my active imagination a direction...

and soon, I was spending all my time "playing"...
out behind the barn with the toy cowboys...
I made houses & barns...with beds & used lawn cuttings for hay...
but soon I began to be limited in my scenarios...

until one fall day, I looked down and saw this...



a ball from the huge sycamore tree behind the barn...



had fallen and was losing it's seeds..
and as they fell off.. it left a fuzzy ball...



when I picked it up, I noticed...
that some of the fuzz had been pulled off...
and what was left looked sort of like a person...
[come on...I was a little kid...]



there were tons of them...
and I also discovered that the fuzz or "hair"...
could be removed strategically...
creating a Mohawk or a beard...

suddenly...my world expanded...
I had lots of potential new characters for my stories...
I created an entire culture...a tribe...
I showed my brother...
who was occasionally interested in my kind of "play"...

he, being quite young at the time named them "Magooshans"...

we had a neighbor whose name was Mahdajian...

my brother had heard Dad mention his name as having the ranch...
back up, behind the barn... but he couldn't say his name...
so my "tribe" of indigenous sycamore natives...
"out behind the barn"...
became Magooshans from them on...



for years...

I would sit out behind the barn...
mostly by myself..making up stories...
resolving conflict...making families...
having control of the situation...
feeling a part of something...
that I had no where else...

they were expendable...
they could be washed away by the irrigation waters...
burned in a fire..blown away by the wind...
but there were always more...
waiting for the next story...

as I walk Molly along the fall streets today...
50 years later...I see the fallen sycamore balls...
the furry centers surrounded by the seeds...

and suddenly...I'm 9 or 10 again...
by myself...
out behind the barn...
playing with the Magooshans...

if I close my eyes...I can smell the raisins curing...
a faint whiff of "winery"in the air...
wood smoke from the workers camp fire...
the few who have stayed to box the raisins...

it's getting dark...
the north wind is chill & smells of rain...
there's also a whiff of sage...
as the wind picks up rattling the big dry leaves overhead...
sending a shower of them down on my head...

I put my cowboys, horses & Magooshans to bed...
shiver with the chill and go around the barn...
as the gloom of evening is settling in fast...
the kitchen windows glow with a yellow light...

Dad's in from the fields...
and is getting cleaned up for dinner...
Mom's bustling about fixing it...
my brother's sitting at the table coloring...

I pause, just out of the warming circle of light...
watching...wondering why I don't seem to fit here...
why with all that is warm & comforting in front of me...
I feel so lonely...so unwanted...
wanting something I can't describe...
so much that it hurts...

but the wind is cold...and I'm hungry...
so I go inside...
knowing that something is missing...
just not knowing what...
and trying not to think about it...

and 50 years later...

I still haven't a clue...but I remember that feeling...