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A summary. . .
photo by Kathi Warner
Charlie Bogle was a good kid.
A little weird, but good. So what if he liked red tennis shoes, and
the only ones he could get were girls'? Superman had red shoes,
didn't he? Charlie grew up with a stepmother whose eyes seemed
painted on, a father who occasionally turned into the Frankenstein
Monster, two big brothers as alike as snowflakes, The Beatles,
Beethoven, kind-hearted hippies, and oak trees. Thousands of oak
trees: dour ones, brooding ones, frivolous, skinny ones, gentle, maternal
ones. It was a paradise, really, this tiny brand-new 1961 bedroom community
carved out of rolling hills and meadows and rugged backdrops where
the likes of John Wayne and Gary Cooper once posed for cameras.
But---
What were "peons?" This is how his stepmother referred to
everyone in the town. Were they people who got peed on? Why did his
father drink something called Early Times and talk about something
else called Boo-genie? Why was a WWII German ambulance parked
in his driveway? Why did rockets fly past his window? Why did they
build an Episcopal Church in his back yard, and why did the priest
keep a banana in his robes? Who was Mabel Stark, the world's
greatest lady tiger tamer, and why did she glare at small boys? Why
did God's pajamas fall on his head? Why did his stepmother want him
to leave home when he was barely twelve? After he had actually saved
her life!
Charlie Bogle grappled with these and many other things, sometimes
haplessly, sometimes heroically, for ten years. And no one ever knew
of his struggle. Until now.
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