Giants

I was a gullible kid growing up and it was easy for people to fool me. Check it out (here).

 

The Panic

I prefer art that asks more questions than it answers. It’s unlikely this painting by Goya was intended for a client. It isn’t dated (most likely painted around 1809-12) and the title The Panic was ascribed long after the artist’s death. Goya left no notes or letters enlightening us as to the meaning of this painting, but check (here) to find an interesting clue as to what this painting means.

 

Conclusion: Giant Killer

Ricky let out a shrill whistle and waved urgently to stop me from staring at the Scottish lady on the billboard. A mistake. He drew unwanted attention before running away.

Chris Ferris and two of his henchmen, Donny Greco and Phil Jaggly, approached like jackals about to pounce on Bambi. Chris Ferris, a head and a half taller than me, had long ago assumed the task of making my life miserable. Jaggly, who had so many freckles it looked like a fountain pen had exploded in his face, spent many an afternoon in detention. Greco, like Ricky, was becoming well-known by the police. I was too fat and slow to get away, and they took their time surfing the gravel slope to the bottom of the creek.

Ferris, with his trademark toothpick dangling from his lips, looked even more vicious than he did when adults were around. “She’s got big tits,” he said, jutting his jaw in the direction of the pretty lady on the billboard. “Like big tits, do ya?”

I had nothing against big tits, but kept quiet.

“Know what I think,” Ferris said, “I think you’re sweet on her.”

He reached down for a rock and threw it with all his might.

I don’t know how long the Scottish lady had hung there, or what type of surface she’d been painted on, but the first few throws bounced off of her, after which she disintegrated easily. First to go was her beautiful smile, with a rock taking out several pearly teeth.

“Leave her alone,” I begged, as if she were real and could feel pain.

A mistake.

Greco and Jaggly snickered at me before joining in. They worked up a sweat blitzing that beautiful face until it was a grotesque ruin of what it had once been. As if in response to her agony, a breeze kicked up, twisting and spinning the fragments raining around us.

It felt like an execution. I tried to leave.

“Not so fast, “ Ferris said, blocking my departure with a beefy hand. “What you got there?”

“An albino tadpole.”

“No, I mean on your wrist.”

“You mean my Zorro watch?”

“Yeah. Hand it over.”

No way. The Zorro watch was a birthday present, one of my most cherished possessions. Maybe he could be distracted. “Check out this albino tadpole.”

Jaggly tore the jar from my hands, peered through the glass at the tadpole swimming about in murky water and handed the jar to Donny Greco.

“What the fuck do we want with a freak tadpole?” Greco said. “Let’s dump it on a hot rock and watch it fry.” He passed the jar to Ferris.

Ferris grinned. “Not a bad idea,” His eyes were dark and menacing. “I bet you wouldn’t like that. Just look at you—about to blubber. Give me that watch or this thing’s gonna sizzle like bacon.”

The watch was too precious to hand over. I tried to convince myself he wouldn’t harm an innocent creature, but I knew better. Ferris was known to run through the neighborhood, whacking butterflies with an old tennis racket. “You can’t have my watch!”

“We’ll see about that. But first things first…” He threw the jar high into the air in the direction of a large chunk of concrete surrounded by a sizable puddle. The jar caught the bright slanting light before it collided with the concrete and shattered. The tadpole made like a Mexican jumping bean on the griddle-hot concrete, but with one impressive leap rose into the air, spun about several times and kerplunked into the muddy puddle, disappearing under the concrete.

Ferris noticed the look of relief washing over my face at his failure to torture and kill something I cared about.

“Hand over the watch, Porky!”

“No.” I’d take a beating, but I wouldn’t hand it over.

Ferris approached and stood so close I could smell cigarettes on his breath, undoubtedly smoked on the scaffold. All was quiet while I anticipated that first punch, until the silence was broken by a voice behind me. “You can’t have his watch.”

I spun around and saw Ricky quickly approaching. In years to come I’d always recall him dashing to my rescue with a shimmering sword and knightly armor, but in reality he was unarmed, until he reached the shattered mayonnaise jar and reached down for a shard of glass. Ferris and company had been too distracted to see him returning.

“This isn’t your business, Delgado. Get your bean-shitting ass out of here,” said Greco.

Ricky was the smallest guy present, but when challenged he could puff himself up like a cobra. “It’s a fuckin’ kiddie watch; you don’t want it,” he said, addressing the three of them calmly.

Ferris bent down and plucked a rock from the ground. Greco and Jaggly did the same.

The broken piece of glass in Ricky’s fingers reddened when his grip tightened on it. “C’mon, we’re leaving,” Ricky said, pushing me toward home with his empty hand.

“There’s three of us, Delgado,” Ferris growled, “and only you and this fat sack of shit.”

If Ferris thought Ricky would back down, he was mistaken. Ricky never backed down, not even when beaten by his drunken old man. Ferris took a step forward; so did Ricky. Ferris took another, but never reached us. At that moment a chunk of billboard, sporting a giant eye, caught the breeze, sailed down and caught Ferris on the side of his face. The material was sharp enough to cut. Ferris dropped his rock and pressed a hand to the side of his face, now seeping blood. He moaned and sank to his knees.

Ricky punched me in the arm to shake me out of my paralysis. We beat a hasty retreat while Greco and Jaggly stared at their leader and wondered what to do.

By the time we reached our bikes dinnertime had come and gone. An hour later we peddled to a stop in front of my house, where hell would break loose as soon as I opened the front door. I pulled off the Zorro watch and handed it to Ricky.

“What’re you doing?” he asked.

“Take it; I wouldn’t have it if it weren’t for you.”

He reached for it, his hand caked with blood from clenching that piece of glass. But he changed his mind. “Naw, don’t want it. Got my eye on one with real jewels inside. But I might borrow it sometime, if you don’t mind.”

I didn’t.

This wouldn’t be the last time Ricky Delgado would slay a giant for me.

He never did borrow my Zorro watch.

Giant Killer

Several of you asked if I ever found the albino tadpole mentioned in "Burgie the Carpet King." As Paul Harvey would have said,"Here's the rest of the story."

In the early 60s, I whiled away summer days under the sycamore tree in the front yard of our modest Kilarney Park home. Never far away was my best friend Ricky Delgado. One morning Ricky said, “Let’s go check out Cabrillo Creek.”

“Naw.” I was enjoying a library book about a pet turtle that solved crimes.

Ricky stretched like a bored cat. “Maybe we’ll find something interesting. My cousin lives in Sacramento and once saw an alligator sunning itself on a floating refrigerator in the Sacramento River. Maybe today we’ll find something even better.”

“Better than an alligator?”

“Did you hear that Bruce Moxley spotted an albino tadpole in the creek last week?”

I slammed my book shut. “No way!” Moxley was the most popular kid in the fifth grade.

“I swear.” He held a hand over his heart.

An alligator would be super cool, even though my parents would never let me keep one. But tadpoles fell under the category of “Flushable Pets,” the only type my parents allowed.

Cabrillo Creek began as an irrigation canal back when peach, apricot and pear orchards blanketed the county. The canal now channeled rainwater away from new housing developments, such as Kilarney Park. Over the years, compost heaps and discarded landscape materials had been dumped into it. Surrounded by houses and strip malls, Cabrillo Creek contained only a trickle of water during steamy summer months, but we kids thought of it as an untamed Amazon.

In anticipation of capturing an albino tadpole, I dumped screws and bolts from a mayonnaise jar Dad kept on his garage workbench, wedging it between the jaws of the bookrack on the back fender of my Schwinn. Ricky told me not to ask for permission to go because my mother was the neighborhood’s reigning queen of NO. She didn’t approve of Ricky, who had a juvenile record for stealing.

The day was warming up as Ricky and I pedaled to the creek, my face turning red as I struggled to keep up with him. When we reached the creek we stashed our bikes under shrubs and descended to the trickle of slow moving water at the bottom. With the sun beating down on us, we hunted for the illusive albino tadpole. As usual my mouth was working at full throttle; I chattered nonstop until Ricky finally broke down and said, “We don’t have a chance in hell of finding that tadpole unless it’s deaf, so shut the f*ck up!”

Several times I stumbled and nearly broke the mayonnaise jar. This was starting to feel like a bad idea, far less desirable than sitting under my sycamore tree reading Waterberry the Crime-Solving Turtle. The space between puddles grew longer as we squinted into every puddle we encountered. I finally glanced at my prized Zorro watch and saw that several hours had passed. Time had come to abandon the search and head home, but Ricky wasn’t one to accept defeat easily and pressed on.

Near a bend in the creek we encountered a deep puddle with a rusty washing machine peppered with pellet gun holes. It lay on its side in a puddle, its interior filled with brackish water. The detached lid was submerged a few feet away. Ricky and I were about to move on when something caught our eye; we both sucked in gulps of air and silently pointed—sunning itself on the white washing machine lid, invisible to all but the most observant eyes, was the illusive albino tadpole.

Its tiny brain managed to sense danger; it dashed from its resting place and disappeared inside the washing machine. With the mayonnaise jar in hand, I scurried over, bent down and swished the jar back and forth inside the washer. When I examined the jar, swimming frantically inside was the tadpole. I couldn’t believe my good fortune. This tadpole would grow into a white frog, a guaranteed crowd pleaser for Show and Tell when we returned to school at summer’s end.

In our quest for tadpole treasure, we’d traveled farther than I’d ever been without parental supervision. I’d be in hot water if my folks knew I’d come this far.

“What’s that?” Ricky said, pointing at shiny objects on the shadowed slope leading to the top of a nearby overpass. They looked like bikes. Ricky climbed up to explore, and retreated with breakneck speed. “We’re outta here!”

“Why, what’s wrong?”

“C’mon, move your ass!”

He’d obviously recognized the bikes, but he was beating a retreat without further comment.

I’d been too distracted by the albino tadpole to notice the billboard towering above us. Dad and I often drove down the El Camino Real on our way to visit Grandma so the colossal woman should have been familiar, but she wasn’t.

Piercing the blue unblemished sky, the billboard’s wood scaffold rose thirty feet above the cars whooshing past on the highway below. Written in big letters was:

New

Kilarney Park Homes

in Five Miles

Had we come five miles?

My emotions, triggered by the giant lady painted on the billboard—a behemoth beauty with golden hair, pearly skin, perfect teeth and cherry red lips—were ricocheting in my head like a pinball. I knew little of Scottish clothing and would have had difficulty finding Scotland on a map, but I was enthralled by the giantess’ loose-fitting vest laced up the front, and her jaunty tartan tam and matching sash. I’d never seen bagpipes and could only wonder what it was being squeezed in her hands. I had no idea that this enormous lady, whose Ipana smile beamed down on me like sunshine, was an advertising tool marketing Kilarney Park. At that moment she seemed like a guardian angel, and I was about to need one.

Big Chris Ferris, the terror of my fifth grade class, who’d been tormenting me for as long as I could remember, descended with his henchmen like a cluster of spiders from behind the billboard.

Conclusion on Wednesday