Jun 11
8
My Cousins and the Pogo Stick
I’d only seen them in comic books, but to my ten-year old mind, they were the coolest form of transportation known to man. It was my birthday, and my taste in toys had gotten so weird that my mother had no idea what to buy me for a gift. I really didn’t have any ideas either, but I was sure I would know it when I saw it.
We had gone to a tiny toy store in the neighborhood that was packed with every imaginable kind of toy. The guy who owned the place was always brusque and irritated whenever a kid came in alone or with friends to buy some model paint or a tube of airplane glue, but today I had my mom with me, and he practically oozed fake charm. He had dollar signs in his eyes, and I could swear I saw him rubbing his hands together when we walked in. Mom would have none of his nonsense, though. When he started to follow us, she told him we wanted to look ourselves, and if he followed us it would just make her uncomfortable. Reluctantly, he slumped back up to the cash register.
I knew I couldn’t take long, because this was a toy store, and mom wasn’t interested in looking at toys. My time was limited, so I scanned the shelves quickly, from top to bottom and left to right. Some good things, more good things, but I hadn’t seen the right thing yet.
Finally, I saw it. It was next to the bicycles and pedal-cars. A pogo stick. I’d never seen one in real life before. It was beautiful. Shiny red steel, with foot rests made of silver metal, and a greased pole coming out of the bottom with a crutch tip capping the end.
I lifted it gingerly and set the crutch tip gently on the floor. A shadow fell over me, and I looked up to see Mr. Toy-Store Man blocking the light.
“Can I help you?” he said with syrup in his voice.
“We’ll let you know,” mom said, already getting bored with this toy store excursion. Then she turned to me and asked, “What in God’s name is that thing?”
“It’s a pogo stick, I told her.” What do you do with it? she asked. “You ride it,” I explained. “Like a witch’s broom?” she asked. “No, you stand on it and hop down the street.” I told her.
Of course she didn’t understand, and she wasn’t interested enough to try. She just asked, “Is this what you want?” Oh, yes!” I said. And we walked out with the pogo stick wrapped in two of the store’s biggest bags and fastened with masking tape.
When my dad saw the pogo stick, he was a lot more interested. He wanted to know how it worked. I demonstrated for him, falling down a couple of times. It took some doing to catch and hold my balance. Dad just laughed and shook his head.
“What do you think of it?” I asked him.
“Looks like a good way to bust your butt,” he answered. “But, it’s your birthday, not mine, and I guess you’re as entitled to something stupid for a present as you are to something sensible, if that’s what you want.”
Pretty soon, I had hopped all over the neighborhood. I had let all my friends ride it, and everyone within a quarter-mile radius knew what a pogo stick was. I even took it when we went on vacation. Basically, it was a trip to visit my grandparents, but it also included side-visits to innumerable other relatives.
Dad’s parents lived on a farm, and they had another son who lived a couple of miles away. My uncle was also a farmer, with four sons, all teenagers. They were all older than me, and bigger than me, plus we were on their turf—the farm. I was a city boy who didn’t know anything about farming, so my cousins and I just stood around scuffing the ground and looking at our shoes in the ninety-degree summer heat.
Dad came out of my uncle’s house with a glass of iced tea and saw us doing nothing, and being awkward, so he said, “Why don’t you go get your pogo stick. I doubt these boys have ever seen one.” So I went to the car and got it.”
When I showed up with the pogo stick, everybody was amazed. They circled it, like it was alive and it might strike like a snake. I showed them how to ride it, and the ice was broken. They hopped on the hard clay, on the wooden porch, and on the flat rocks. We went from cousin-strangers to cousin-friends, thanks to the pogo stick.
When it came time for us to go, my youngest cousin handed me back the pogo stick, as we were saying our goodbyes. Dad called me to one side and said, “You know, these boys have never seen a pogo stick before, and if you take this one away, they may never see one again. Why don’t we just leave it with them. We can always get you another one.”
I thought it over for a second. My cousins were really having fun with the pogo stick. Maybe more than I was. Plus, Dad said we could get another one. So we left the pogo stick with my cousins. They loved it.
I never did see another pogo stick anywhere, so of course Dad never replaced the one I had given to my cousins. But I always suspected that Dad knew we wouldn’t find another one. After all, there was no eBay in those days. I can still picture the pogo stick in my mind, the way it looked, all shiny and red. But even clearer, I can still see the looks on my cousins’ faces when they were hopping around in the dust that summer day.
