The Sons of Starmount: Memoir of a Ten-Year-Old-Boy

The Sons of Starmount: Memoir of a Ten-Year-Old-Boy

Copyright © 2019 by Mark Elliott

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Publisher’s Note: Although this is a work of non-fiction, some character and locale names have been changed.

ISBN (Print): 978-1-54395-794-5

ISBN (eBook): 978-1-54395-795-2

Contents

Chapter 1: The Boys

Chapter 2: Rock-Salt Shotgun

Chapter 3: Beyond the Pond

Chapter 4: Olly Olly In-Come-Free

Chapter 5: Fight Night

Chapter 6: Trash and Trashy Down the Ditch

Chapter 7: Bass-Trap Ponytail

Chapter 8: Ants and Buffalo

Chapter 9: Eight-Track with an Engine in Back

Chapter 10: Blue Beams and June Bug Shadows

Chapter 11: The Belly Flop, the Buoy, and the Old Front Door

Chapter 12: More Bowden than Baseball

Chapter 13: Metal Arms

Chapter 14: Gone Fishen’

Chapter 15: Snakes in the Grass, Birds in the Closet

Chapter 16: Strychnine Strangers in a Bundy World

Chapter 17: The Lost Language of Ten

Chapter 18: Six Million Dollars

Chapter 19: The Babysitter’s Boobs

Chapter 20: Rattlesnakes and the Dreaded Middle Name

Chapter 21: Pup Tents, Head Fakes, and Midnight Rambles

Chapter 22: The Ghost in the Trash Can Lid

Chapter 23: Dracula’s Got A Cavity

Chapter 24: Call for Them One Morning and They’re Gone

Chapter 25: Searching for Bigfoot and Finding Faith in the Long Stride

Chapter 26: Insulated By Infinity

Chapter 27: Seasons in the Sun

Chapter 28: Ten Won’t Come Again

Chapter 29: The Neverland Effect

Afterword

Acknowledgments

Credits & References

About the Author

for my father

Dr. C. Courtney Elliott

Chapter 1

The Boys

Your best friends are waiting in the rendezvous tree

At the edge of the wild wood by a bottomless creek

Come on and get your feet wet now

Weekend Runaways

I remember Starmount like a reincarnated soul remembers a past life. Memories begin as involuntary neural firings, déjà vu moments you just can’t seem to hold on to. But they don’t give up on you. They come back for more. They are not surface memories, like the kind you thumb through in dusty photo albums, or the ones springing forth from the bottom of a water-stained cardboard box after you cut the old, yellowed masking tape free. And they certainly are not throwaway party pieces for you to use in one of those hackneyed remember-when conversations. They are deeper than that. They are the marrow memories. The ones connecting blood, bone, and soul. And for me, they are the lifeline back to a time and place I apparently have no interest in leaving behind.

I am older now, in fact, forty years older than I was when those marrow memories were born. Wrinkles have replaced freckles, and thinning strands of gray hair have all but pushed out the roots of a once red clay-colored, bowl-cut mane. From outside appearances, I fear I may be utterly unrecognizable to that ten-year-old boy. But on the inside, I am his doppelgänger. And like water from another time, senses flood my brain as they did in 1977. Primed with the memories of yesterday, I can still feel, hear, see, and smell my life on Starmount.

I can feel the tingling mix of dewy grass and spongy earth beneath my feet, and the sharp tug of an eight-pound-test fishing line against the inside knuckle of my left index finger. I can feel yesterday’s wind warm across my face as I charge through clouds of katydids and dragonflies at full pelt through a knee-high August field.

I can hear the grinding of steel skateboard wheels giving way to their failed bearings as they careen over the hot blacktop. At a distance, those wheels sound like the rattling of old boxcars heading to places I have never been. And when everything else is quiet, I can hear the low croaking of bullfrogs, the heartbeat of the south, echoing in the humid night air, and best friends calling my name.

I can see a metallic-blue streetlight bouncing around in my mind’s eye, like some magic orb bleeding Halloween shadows through the October woods. Sometimes I stare into a rain-filled parking lot puddle like it was a wishing well. And when I do, I swear I can see the roiling green water just above a largemouth bass that has overconfidently taken my bait. And always, probably because I’ve grown one of my own now, I see my father’s doctoral school beard, dangling like Spanish moss in the live oak trees.

I can smell a faint whiff of sweet honeysuckle blown about by butterfly wings as it slips away on a mightier magnolia breeze. And just as sweet, at least to me, I am randomly overtaken by the musty smell of a dew-soaked sleeping bag inside a mildewed canvas tent, or the bubbling-up of methane and crawfish as my bare feet pierce a mud-bottom creek. Hmm. Who said that you can never go home again?

I arrived on Starmount Drive as an only child, but by week’s end, I had brothers. The year we spent together fishing knee-deep in alligator ponds, kicking down shaded forest paths, and riding tire-swing time machines beneath century-old live oak branches allowed us a degree of childhood autonomy, now lost to the ages. Flanked by a few important months either side of my tenth birthday, I consider 1977 to be the most soul-defining year of my life. Through countless adventures, mishaps, and life-affirming realizations, my friends and I became the vagabond children of a new family. A family mothered by soft green fields, warm waters, and the random flicker of fireflies. Her perfume smelled of loblolly, honeysuckle, and chewing gum. We were a family fathered by screeching bike tires, whistling mud balls, and seventies songs. His cologne smelled of frog guts, wet sneakers, and peanut butter. We were the perfect mix of those two spirited lovers. We were, and will always be, the Sons of Starmount.

Jim Maples bounded down the embankment between his house and mine wearing oversized brown Dingo boots, mud-splattered camouflage pants, and a shirt with blood-red streaks of Kool-Aid down the front. He looked like a cross between G.I. Joe and a murder victim. Holding a fishing rod in one hand and a big burled stick in the other, Jim uttered his first greeting to me like you’d flip a baseball underhanded to an old friend: Hey! This stick is for catching snakes. Wanna go fishin’?

I didn’t know whether he meant fishing for rattlers or largemouth, but I didn’t care. He was selling adventure and I was buying. We became instant best friends, connected first by the hill between our houses, and only minutes later by a shared longing for everything wild, and a restlessness beyond our years. We were separate halves of the same boy. We complemented each other like a left boot does the right. We walked beside each other mostly, and then took turns leading the way, and in those rare moments when we stepped on each other, well, we both fell down.

As we walked the well-worn path through the field toward Alligator Pond, careful not to step on the stinging nettles with our bare feet, he told me everything he knew about snakes, especially the kind that could kill you. And what he knew about snakes blew my mind. All of ’em, except for the coral snake, have arrow-shaped heads, and you better grab ’em right behind the bony part or they’ll twist their heads around and get you right there, Jim said with half a smirk, pointing to the fleshy part of his hand near the thumb.

Not to be outdone, I blew his mind with everything I knew about what hides in the shadows and lurks beyond our sight, like the Loch Ness Monster, aliens, and my favorite obsession, Sasquatch.

It’s out there, man, I’m tellin’ ya. Famous hunters have been looking for him for years. But you and me, Jim, we’re gonna find him first—back there, I said, pointing wildly toward the dark woods, far beyond the point where the large live oaks in the field gave way to the taller loblolly pines.

Feeling an instant and reciprocal appreciation for the absurd, we never once considered questioning each other’s stories, no matter how far-out the subject matter or exaggerated the delivery. Together, we stirred up chaos like the occasional Panhandle dust devil stirred up the red clay beneath our feet. Jim was fearless, always the first to dive headlong into the tall weeds to catch a snake and the last to care about what kind of snake it was. More important to me, he never blinked an eye at whatever ridiculous plan I put forth. It seemed alright with him as long as he was part of it.

I would later learn that it’s difficult—no, nearly impossible—to find a friend like that in adulthood. One’s capacity for second-guessing and mistrust is limitless in adulthood. Betrayal and intolerance become dogged companions, taking the place of blind loyalty and clueless acceptance. I wouldn’t call it a fair trade, even for all the knowledge and experience in the world. Not unlike his best friend, Jim walked around half-witted much of the time, but never, ever, half-hearted. And his taste for adventure seemed unquenchable. If he were looking for a line to cross, he eventually found it several steps behind him. He embraced wild abandon and trouble early on. And both qualities had a hand in defining his later years.

Jim’s younger brother, John Maples, made his entrance into my life chewing more squares of Bazooka bubblegum than one mouth should be able to hold, at least while trying to breathe. He flew down the same hill that introduced me to his brother, wearing his best efforts at some kind of Superman costume, red cape and all. His first words to me were, Hey, I’m Superman. What superhero are you?

It seems a simple enough question, but you try answering it. Go ahead. It’s harder than it sounds. He caught me by surprise and maybe that was his intention. Maybe that was even his superpower. With a little heads-up, I would have been able to fire back the name of at least one superhero. Instead, I opted for the lamest of all responses. Uh, yeah, hi, I’m the superhero called…Mark?

Most people who know me well would nod at that reply, without surprise, but it was born more from an embarrassing lack of knowledge of the superhero family tree, and less out of gross self-importance. Maybe my answer confused John, or maybe he was just kindhearted, but he didn’t challenge me on it other than to reply in an unconvinced and slightly mocking tone, Okay. Is that your superhero suit, then? Cut-off jeans, no shirt, and red Chuck Taylor tennis shoes without socks most definitely made up my superhero suit.

John was several years younger than the rest of the soon-to-be Sons of Starmount, but he had an unrestrained spirit that mostly bridged the gap. John established himself in our motley group through his eagerness to keep up and his competitive need to outdo us. Both were characteristics we older boys admired.

John would further distinguish himself through countless acts of life-risking volunteerism. The word, volunteerism, is used here as loosely as possible because he was the designated test dummy for most of our experimental vehicles and harebrained schemes. It was important to protect him from injury so we older boys could stay out of some measure of self-inflicted trouble. With that in mind, we developed a few safety standards. Those standards included never telling our moms about any of our risky ideas, and requiring John to wear his safety suit, which consisted of an oversized red, white, and blue football helmet; shoulder pads; and, of course, his cape. The makeshift safety suit was not an undue burden on him. It made him feel like we cared and, well, he usually ran around the neighborhood in that getup anyway.

Without reservation, he happily climbed into or on top of whatever contraption we had engineered. We’d finish the few preparations we could think of and then, in full-throated unity, yell out the countdown: Ten, nine, eight…

John would close his eyes, chomp down hard on his Bazooka bubblegum, and when the countdown reached one, he’d yell, Liftoff! Sometimes he would indeed, lift off; most times though, rolling, flipping, and crashing were more the arc of the launch. I’m not sure it was ever his aspiration to be a good sport, but that’s what he was. Superheroes don’t have to aspire to be superheroes. They just are.

For John, carving out his personal slice of Starmount history had less to do with his daily risking of life and limb, and more to do with pulling off a coup of sorts. He made his mark with a simple cane pole and a gob of white bread, reeling in the prehistoric, oversized, softshell turtle from Alligator Pond. We had all been trying, both together and in secret solitude, to be the man who would bring in the monster. For months, all our efforts had been in vain. Ultimately, I’m not sure that John was even trying that hard, but he was successful: he’s the boy who caught it, and more importantly, the boy who landed it. Call it luck, skill, or payback for being a good sport: it would always be his win.

The five Stege kids lived kitty-corner from me and directly across the street from Jim and John. Two of them were much older, and as cool as we thought we were, they were not interested in hanging out with us. But the youngest three Steges were critical members of our troupe.

Matthew was my age, and he was one of those friends that you always remember as just being there. He didn’t make a grand entrance into my life the way Jim and John had on my first day, with snake sticks, fishing poles, and a cape. He must have known instinctively that how a friend arrives in your life is less important than whether a friend arrives.

It happened on my second day in the neighborhood, as I walked down the middle of Starmount Drive on my pilgrimage to find glass, rocks, and the much-prized Indian Head penny. And back then I believed I had an equal chance at finding all three. Suddenly, I looked up from the pavement and there he was. I didn’t have to walk by myself anymore. Matthew was affable and open. He was, in the best sense of the word, simple. What you saw is what you got. He was a gentle giant with a lanky frame that rose above the rest of us. I remember him first for his kindness, but also for his willingness to fight for and alongside his friends. There was no adventure, no dare, no trouble we found ourselves in that didn’t feature Matthew right smack-dab in the middle of it. He was fiercely loyal. What else could you want in a friend at ten years old? (Or at fifty, for that matter?)

Matthew was my bridge to the rest of the Steges. His brother, Tommy, was the middle child of the three younger Steges. He had a great sense of humor and was rarely in a mood that disallowed a smile. He was bright and eager, with a maturity that often served as a necessary, if only temporary emergency brake for the rest of us.

Tommy was our strategic thinker: he thought before he spoke and paused before he acted. That was a characteristic the rest of us appreciated in him but had little use for in ourselves. Many of our adventures were based on a young boy’s impulse. Jim Maples and I took the group off a cliff, both literally and figuratively, on an almost daily basis. Although Tommy’s innate ability to manage disaster did not always prevent us from going off the cliff it often served to mitigate the sudden stop at the bottom. He was able to balance the often-opposing forces of unrestrained fun and common sense. His standard advice, said on endless loop, seemed to fit any situation: I don’t think that’s the best idea, guys, but if we’re gonna do it, we should at least wear the Army helmets.

Timmy was the youngest Stege. All the other Steges were towheads, but Timmy’s hair seemed damn near white. You could see him coming for miles; he was like a walking, talking Q-tip, a real inconvenience for him during our night games of Kick the Can and Hide-and-Seek. Like John Maples, he was younger and smaller than the rest of us, and because of that, he had to work harder to keep up with the group’s momentum and attention. There were two areas, though, in which Timmy never had to keep up; in fact, he led the pack. He was the consummate angler, blessed with a degree of skill, patience, and luck that seemed to elude the rest of us, and he possessed a freakish knack for rehabilitating engines, especially old, forsaken go-kart engines.

Timmy also seemed to wield diametrically opposite communication traits. He was mostly quiet and reserved, but when you least expected it, he would let fly a sarcastic question or train of cuss words that reminded you of hornets jetting out by the hundreds from a battered nest. If riled, his mouth could match that of any one of us older boys. He would watch us carefully rig our fishing lines and then say, "So that’s what you assholes are using for bait? Yeah, that’s a brilliant idea."

How we decided to bait our lines—bread, worms, lures; it didn’t much matter—the point was to rib us about our fishing skills. His cutting sarcasm must have been God’s way of helping him even the score as the youngest of five siblings.

Matt Bourgeois lived further up the street from the rest of us. His house was closer to the main road, which didn’t hold the same mystery as the dead end. We spent some time up at the top of the street, but most of the significant events occurred at the bottom. Quick to crack a joke, Matt was also keenly athletic and always the first one picked for our backyard football games. Though he was up for any adventure, he rarely initiated them and oftentimes served as rearguard on our missions into the dark woods. That trait never struck me as significant at the time, but now it suggests the earliest evidence of his protective nature, a trait central to the man he would become.

Though not as careful as Tommy, Matt similarly served as a bridge between reasonable thought and the adrenaline-infused agenda Jim and I constantly pushed. I remember him as a profoundly peaceful person, but Matt was in love with the military and dreamed of becoming a warrior one day. All his male role models, both within and beyond his family, served in the military. Matt’s grandfather retired after thirty years in the Navy, his dad served ten years in the Army reserves, and his uncle Carl often talked to Matt about his time as a Crew Chief and Door Gunner on a Huey, performing recovery missions on downed choppers in the Central Highlands of Vietnam in 1967 and 1968. I remember Matt spending hours watching his favorite show, M*A*S*H. We all had our thing.

Long after I left Starmount, Matt, Jim Maples, and Matthew Stege all headed down to the local military recruiter’s office to sign up—evidence of the power of the bond they still shared. Though they walked into the recruiting office together, it was Matt Bourgeois’s fate alone to walk out a soldier.

Joey Fearnside lived just a few houses from me on the other side of the street, next to the Steges. He was my age, but could have easily passed as older. He had a strong will and a talent for pushing the group past its safer dares. We mostly saw that as a good thing, because it included doing things our parents forbade, like sneaking into his family’s pool for late-night swims.

Troublemaker is not the right description for Joey, because at ten years old you don’t make trouble so much as you divine it. Joey’s ability to intuit trouble was second to none, but he was as rudderless as we were when it came time to steer himself, or us, out of a jam. He got caught all the time, which meant that we did, too. We didn’t care though; Joey was one of ours, and the Sons of Starmount were nothing if not loyal to one another. Besides, we were quite capable of stirring up trouble on our own, so he can’t take all the credit.

Joey owned a 1972 Yamaha Mini-Enduro JT-1 motorbike that we all loved to ride. It was faster than anything else we had access to and could go where big wheels and bicycles could not. We were all under strict orders from our parents to stay off that motorbike, which of course pushed riding it right to the top of our list of things to do each day. We would sneak out to the field behind our houses or the trail in the woods behind Joey’s house, out of eyesight, but unfortunately, not beyond earshot of parents. We’d race that bike to just shy of the point of death. Death by falling off, death by hitting a tree, or death due to the over-exposure to throttled-out joy. We loved pushing the limits.

Jim Maples bought that bike from Joey when he was thirteen, and he still owns it today. Though it’s barely more than a knee-high ride now and makes Jim look more like a Shriner than Evel Knievel, he still backs that old bike out of his shed from time to time, jumps down on the kick-start, and rips down a country road, just like we all did when that bike was larger than life.

Joey was part of nearly every adventure on Starmount that year, but his impact on me went beyond rafts, dirt bikes, football, and fishing.

In my five decades of life, I can count only one true, anger-filled fight and that was with Joey. I don’t know why we fought, but looking back, I think we were less alike than any other pairing in our group, and at some point our differences must have come between us. Truthfully, it may not have had to do with the kids we were at all, or with anything else of any real consequence. That’s just the way some, maybe even most fights begin. The justification for a fight is often overlooked in the heat of the moment and impossible to resurrect in all the moments after.

I don’t remember the argument, much less the trigger, but I do remember riding the bus home from school one day, just knowing in my gut that it was finally going to happen: we were going to fight.

We had barely stepped off the bus and had not yet turned to walk toward the lower end of Starmount when my premonition came true. Words flew out of nowhere and then fists. It lasted only seconds and was not physically brutal; it should not have been even memorable, especially four decades