Waldo And I

We were fellow travelers he and I, him with his straw blonde hair and toothpaste-white smile, me, some years younger, with a stringy, unkempt, greasy mop and bottom teeth the victims of parental penury. Still, we had more in common than you might think, specifically, a boyish enthusiasm fueled by the high of adventure and freedom.

I was 13, just 13, and, as an afterthought of a gift I guess, my father had just given me permission to go the movies by myself. By myself! An exhilarating first.

I was completely aware, with every step to the nearby bus stop, with every rickety mile the bus took me, with the secure feel of the warm summer air that continued to caress me as I turned under the rusting marquee into a plush red lobby reeking of over buttered popcorn, that he – that dashing figure upon the screen just out of my sight– was experiencing the exact same thrill as I, Waldo Pepper in a vintage WW1 airplane, Dan Lalande in – after hurriedly setting down his dollar twenty five –a low, well-used movie seat.

The sky, in the era in which the film takes place, was uncharted territory; the world of the movies was, for me, was the same. I had seen few, and wondered, much like Waldo, what lay beyond the borders of my circumstance, what adventures, what disappointments, what heroes.

Some two hours later, Waldo’s journey ended, and so, as a result, did mine. To the simplistic, tinkly theme that has remained in my head to this day – though I have not seen the film in many a year - I exited into a fresh-feeling summer night, with the sounds of downtown – the grumbles of drunkards, the cry of sirens, the hot roar of crisscrossing bus lines – intermingling under a pink and purple sky. Though I had left the confines of the theatre, I was awestruck once again; never before had I experienced this, the added bonus of another kind of poetry, the urban landscape at nightfall.

As I stood there, drinking it all in, I realized that though I was no longer flying alongside Waldo, I was still flying; that the tradition of what the two of us had shared was living on.