Beech Tree News Network

     I recall a sweltering and sunny afternoon. The sun lay strong overhead and cast its gaze as far as the eye could see. I stood in the back yard with my feet on a small concrete slab and my eyes affixed to the basketball goal only feet above the ground. Being 6 years old, the prospect of attempting to score a point would prove futile if the goal were at the standard height. Sweat beamed from my body, through my striped polo shirt and khaki shorts as I attempted to calculate the trajectory of the ball. I was going to be like Michael Jordan. I would be in the next Space Jam movie. At this time in a young mans life it's only natural to assume that anything is possible, especially the things that are conjured in the beautiful imagination of a first grader. I took a deep breath and released my grasp from the ball. With my eyes closed, my imagination took control and an image of my silhouette came into view. The ball was in slow motion, arching across the sky on its precise destination to the goal, which was 1,000 feet above the ground. The ball slowly crept through the net before an overwhelmingly bright series of flashes lit up the stadium from all the photographers. At this moment, I had won the world championship for the Chicago Bulls while simultaneously saving the planet from alien invaders. 

"Dang, almost made it bub!"

The brilliant imagery had been replaced with my view of the lowered goal and the wide open field that lay behind it. 

My brother stood to my left in cutoff denim shorts and a white shirt. He quickly vacated the concrete pad to pursue the ball, which had missed the backboard entirely and came to rest at a small water spicket near a cedar fence.

"You have an "S" now." He stated, jogging up the hillside with the ball. We were playing "Horse".

He dribbled the ball, staring intently at the goal. It was his turn to shoot, and I knew I was doomed. My 11-year old brother was a giant compared to me. He dribbled the ball twice more and squatted to ground his feet. Suddenly, a familiar but unexpected voice rang from behind us.

"Boys, lunch is ready!" 

Immediately, the game was voided and we completely discarded our progress as we dashed toward the house. We knew what was waiting inside, and it was the best time of the day. Mom had prepared our favorite meals with all of our desired trimmings; Grilled cheese with extra butter, ketchup, and a tall glass of orange Kool-Aid. Of course my brother crossed the threshold of the back door before I did. We always raced as if the winner would receive some form of commendation. 

Our home was small, built as a tiny ranch house many years before our family came along. Dad had worked fervently to purchase the tiny cottage along with the land it sat upon, investing in what was necessary to accommodate a small family along the way. 

Dad was gone a fair amount of the time, but not out of neglect to his family. In fact, it was to the contrary; he left the house each morning before the sun rose, traveling to what I thought were exotic lands full of interesting people. Working as an honest man by the sweat of his brow to provide the American dream to his humble family, who meant the world to him. I recall him returning once from Alabama, telling me that he had been to Greenbow to see Forrest Gump and Lieutenant Dan. Today was no different, and he was away on what had to be an incredible adventure.

Mom stood in the utility room wearing a bright orange tee with denim blue jeans as she folded towels and underwear. She paused her work and looked at us

"It's on the table, don't make a mess. Wash your hands!" She warned, before returning to the towels.

Of course we didn't wash our hands. My brother rushed ahead to retrieve his plate, taking the way of the crow to his bedroom to engage in his share of "Super Punch-Out", a popular game at the time for the Super Nintendo Entertainment console. I retrieved my plate and passed the doorway leading from the kitchen into the living room. Although there were plenty of places to sit including a small recliner and couch, I favored the floor. I took a seat on the blue shag carpet merely inches away from the family television, a wood paneled tube television that sat nested into its own small cabinet against the far wall of the room. I pressed the switch and heard the high pitched droning as the fuzzy image became clear. The afternoon sun cast its rays through the open window of the room, projecting bands of intense light across the glossy surface of the screen. I rose from the floor to close the blinds. The theme music for my favorite show began to play. Filled with excitement, I lunged back to my place in the floor and settled in for the episode. 

The show was called "Dexter's Laboratory". It was an animated series about a young boy living in middle-class suburbia that had constructed a secret research facility beneath his families home. Dexter had always made his best attempt to better the world through his inventions, but would inevitably cut his losses and arrive once again at the early stages by the end of each episode. He would trash the invention, having witnessed its negative consequences and the episode would end. As I watched this episode, it was different.

In this episode, Dexter had lost something in his laboratory and went on a quest to retrieve it. His laboratory was presented as a labyrinth. As he traveled deeper into the maze of machines and conveyor belts, neglect became evident. Many machines had broken capacitors, with vines growing along their sides. Buttons and meters which were once lit to indicate a functioning device willing to fulfill its potential were now corroded and missing. This instilled in me a great intrigue. 

"How far does Dexter's lab go?" I thought. For the remainder of the daylight hours I pondered heatedly about his lab. Before long I established a connection between the depth of his lab and the depth of outer space, something I had lightly considered until this point.

It was shortly after sunset by the time dad had arrived home from his work. He entered the doorway in his grey and black plaid flannel shirt, marked with copious amounts of transmission fluid and engine oil. His bushy hair escaped from beneath his hat. He gave my brother and I a hefty embrace and asked us about our day before kicking off his steel-toed boots which were coated with an evenly mixed concoction of transmission fluid and oil-dry. Mom was standing in the narrow kitchen with the telephone cable stretched across the dining room. She had been talking to her sister as she prepared dinner.

We sometimes had dinner together, but the dining room had been converted to a makeshift bookkeeping and storage area for the family. Seeing that my brother and I took little interest in grown-up shows, we generally took to his bedroom and played Ninja Turtles on his Super Nintendo. We were nearing the end of the game when suddenly a monstrous thunder echoed from outside. The walls shook violently before the thunder subsided. This was a common occurrence in the early evening hours of our residence. Dad had finished his dinner and arrived in his top secret world; a detached workshop some 50 yards from the house. It was filled to the brim with decorated artifacts alluding to his interest in drag racing. The routine thunder we would hear meant that he had fired the engine on his 1973 Chevrolet Vega. To my knowledge it was the most terrifying, dangerous, and fastest car on the Earth. To my brother and I, it meant that we could play outside of the workshop on our bicycles as dad and his various friends would shoot the wind and make adjustments on the car. Although he would be busy with his guests and the car, our dad made it a point to be mindful and check on us when he knew we were outside playing.    

We raced (as usual) from my brothers room into the kitchen to address mom, who had called a friend to chat after dinner. 

"Going to the garage, momma!" I proclaimed.

She turned from the counter, her left index finger entwined in the phone cable and sternly told us,

"Don't let him run over you with that damned thing, be careful." Although she knew that such a thing would never happen, it often irritated her when the Vega would be fired later in the evening, and the concept of the dangers affiliated with such a car weren't something that she particularly approved of. 

My brother and I made a mad dash from the front door of the house to the large patch of pavement that encompassed the opening of the garage. My brother was always excited to be "one of the boys" in the workshop. Dad would often hand him tools to carry around, finding ways to nurture his interest in the engineering and honest work affiliated with drag racing. I certainly held a great degree of respect for my father and all that he had done, in life and on the car. I made my best attempts to gain an interest in racing as well as building high performance engines, but in vain. Albeit amazed at the ingenuity of the car, I consistently found myself frozen only feet before the entryway of the garage. I would stare into the sky, dazzled at the sight of millions of minute points of light that faded away into a great void. Each distant point was merely a small pixel of a grand assemblage of other points that painted a magnificent image across the night sky. I reflected on Dexter's Laboratory; if I launched myself from the ground so fast that I could fly past the points that I see, would more points come into view? Would they have broken capacitors and vines growing on them?

"Hey son, how's it going?"

I looked back to the ground and to the right to see my dad standing in the large garage door. I glanced at him.

"Dad, there are a lot of dots up there. They are really small." I said inquisitively, turning my attention from him and back to the sky. 

"There sure are! Those are called stars. They are pretty. You can't see those in the big city! If you need me, I'll be right in here." He replied. My eyes were still fixed to the sky. I was amazed at this sight. What if they weren't all just tiny dots? What if each dot was enormous and had people living on them? What if one of them had dinosaurs and race cars coexisting? Why were the people in the big city deprived of such magnificence? 

That Christmas, Santa Claus was kind enough to bring me a small telescope. Santa had a lot of gifts to bring to children across the world, some of which had no mom or dad, and many of which had no view of the mysterious dots in the sky. I was very thankful to him for bringing me something that would nurture my curiosity. The telescope came with a small manual. I opened the manual and began to read,

"Come closer to the stars than ever before! The closest star is the sun, but don't look at the sun with your new telescope! At the right time of the night, you might be able to glimpse Mars, Venus, Jupiter, and even Saturn!"

It had a diagram of the solar system, and it amazed me. 

"Wow! 8 other worlds that orbit our sun! Who knew? What they are like? Did the aliens from Space Jam came from one of them?" I wondered. 

For many weeks I exhausted many failed nights looking into the sky with my precious telescope. I would grow disappointed after a short time and attempt to go into the house. Mom or dad would lead me back outside and help me search for Saturn, my favorite planet. To no avail. It seemed that Saturn was impossible to find. Only moments before giving up hope, I aggressively nudged my telescope to the right. In the viewfinder I detected a very faint dot, bright tan in color. My heart pounded. I focused more on this tiny dot and discovered pale white fuzz emitting from the corners. This was Saturn. I had found Saturn. I had viewed images of Saturn in textbooks at school, but now I had really seen it. I knew from personal experience that it was there, floating alone in the abyss of space. It had been for my entire life. But what lay beyond Saturn?  It was at that moment that I became obsessed with the art of space. I learned at that moment that each dot in the sky was in fact enormous. Each dot in the sky was a sun, much like the one that distorted the television screen with its light the day I watched Dexter's Laboratory. Each dot might have 9 planets just like ours does. Elegant, beautiful, humbling.