Tales from the attic: Reaching teenhood in Philly

Sam Smith - My parents and their children moved to Philadelphia as I was slowly approaching teenhood. My room was in the southwest corner of the third floor. It was about the sunniest room in a Victorian house, at the end of a long hall. It consisted of a bedroom that had been divided with a thin partition by my parents. My older brother occupied the other room. In my corner, I constructed a stage for my imagination. At times the room was the bridge of a ship, at other times the repair facility of the HO gauge Pocono Valley RR, or a radio studio, a writer's garret, and best of all, a place to sleep in peace beneath a wall covered with my large military insignia collection, including numerous Nazi ones given me by a cousin who had been a guard during the Nuremburg trials.

I also began building a collection of Pogo comic books. Okefenokee was a great place for a troubled boy to visit. It was the world set right, a gentle locale in which even enemies managed somehow to accommodate each other. At a time when people were learning to be afraid to say anything, Walt Kelly was always sneaking up and whispering something subversive in your ear.

Besides -- contrary to the teachings of church, school, and dining room table - in Okefenokee life was fun.  It never occurred to me to have insomnia for it was in those precious moments before losing wakefulness that I concocted some of my most vivid experiences. Years later I would learn that James Baldwin, "curled up in the center of the stillness of the night," also thought of the dark as his best time.

For me, it would be a new adventure every evening and I could never predict whether the wanderings of my mind would lead me to triumph or to a tragic end. Each was equally thrilling. These tales had their roots in Jack Armstrong, Sgt. Preston of the Yukon, and the Shadow. Comic books had slowly faded as I learned that I no longer needed each line drawn and colored in. The stories also borrowed heavily from my growing collection of books about the sea and the Arctic, in which I found men dealing with forces even more immutable than those in my home. I especially admired Horatio Hornblower, the 18th century midshipman who rose, book by book, to become at last an admiral. One of the things I liked about Hornblower was that he, just like me, was given to throwing up. Even after gaining flag rank he suffered seasickness.

Later I became infatuated with the idea that I would not survive past the early twenties. My demise constantly varied and often brought tears to my eyes as I developed, under the covers, the dismal denouement of the night. If I prayed for anything in those days, it was that I would live long enough to be an adult man able to carry out the plots I had devised for myself. Later, I gave myself an actuarial extension, in order to enjoy being a good father.

There was surprisingly little morose about this, though I knew, from my reading and radio listening, that a polar bear might attack you at any moment -- that is if you were living a truly interesting life. This would be tragic but --  in a literary sense -- a story that others would tell and weep about for years to come. It made me sad to think about it; on the other hand it would be a good story and it was, it seemed, far better and more interesting to die young by polar bear attack in the Arctic than of respectable, stultifying old age in Philadelphia.

Besides, I was too busy to be morose. I had to practice being a radio disc jockey, construct rolling stock for my model railroad, design elaborate charts of things that interested me, put out a family newspaper, and search for new jokes to add to my repertoire and growing reputation as the family wise guy. I had found my invisible sword and shield: I could make people laugh. Later, after I had discovered by accident (for my education in such matters was extraordinarily limited) the pleasures associated with my capacity for procreation, I had to devote considerable time to investigating that phenomenon as well.

My brother and I would listen regularly to Grand Old Opry and other programs such as the black DJ Jocko Henderson on WDAS, who proto-rapped the commercials:

Get a little cash from out of your stash,
And make like a flash in the hundred yard dash
Right down to my man John Kohler at 4th &  Arch
And tell him JOCKO sent you!

Many years later Jocko Henderson would be recognized as one of the fathers of rap and hip hop. And, despite my pre-teen longevity projections, I actually lived long enough to learn about this.