Noah Matthews

by Noah Matthews

Back in the day before seatbelt laws, I used to lie in the space just behind the back seat, tucked up beneath the curve of the back window of my mom's car. There between the cool of the glass and the velvety upholstery, I would watch the stars peek at me between dark branches overhead as we drove the meandering tree-lined gravel roads that made their way through the farmland that surrounded us. The ping of an occasional rock being thrown by the tires into the undercarriage of the car completed the almost hypnotic music of the engine and the general rumble that gravel makes under the wheels. On rainy days I watched the streaks of water race down the glass, tendrils of liquid silver. Snow was like a meteor shower. And on some nights, I was chased by the moon. There, in my little sideways V-shaped universe, I was at peace.

Back in the day, rowdy boys (as we were known by anyone over 70) wore Toughskins jeans.  I vividly remember a rust colored pair of pants with reinforced knees and sturdy stitching in the ... ahem ... area where the pant legs attached, that could have withstood a nuclear blast (though I am happy to report never having had to subject them to that test).  We were sent out the door summer, winter, spring, and fall in Toughskins.  Video games didn't become a household phenomenon until I was nearly ten years old  (yes, indeed life was possible as a child without them),  and we did the unthinkable and played out-of-doors. Far from being vaporized by the rays of the sun as some readers with gamer's thumb might think, we actually enjoyed roaming the fields and woods that surrounded our home.  I remember we used to slide down one particularly steep wooded hill on our bellies or behinds, as the mood may strike us, like human surfboards adrift in a sea of fallen leaves, prickly weeds, rocks, decaying logs, saplings, trees, and dirt.  We generally came home at the end of the day looking like something that had been dropped from a plane over the city dump.  And remarkably, our Toughskins bore it all like some sort of alien armor; withstanding the tortures their rowdy bearers subjected them to day after day.

Poppy, as we called him, was a man of many words.  Most of them would curl the toes of your work boots and none of them were intended for the ears of anyone under fifteen.  When we were growing up, and indeed still to this day, my mother was not one to tolerate bad language.  The mere whisper of the first letter of one of the more popular four letter words would get you at best a withering look; one eyebrow shot heavenward over a countenance bereft to understand what she had just heard, and may just as readily garner a rap to your offending lips from the back of her hand.  Just the solitary letters S, H, D were all the same as if you had marched straight to the Vatican and cursed directly into the Pope's ear in her book.  I still remember the near collision we had when I dared to utter, "Who gives an S?" as she sped down Route 7 in her white Thunderbird with pneumatic light covers and red leather-like interior.  Mind you, I uttered only the letter S.  Not the full word.  So, you can imagine that as kids we sat spellbound listening to our grandfather, whom she respected (and feared) too much to dare chastise, and we could not help but enjoy the irony of her father stringing together curse words as one would fine pearls, and to our tickled ears, these auditory gems were far more valuable.    However, in time you learn that a free tongue enslaves.