In a Brownie box-camera photo my mother snapped around 1948, I appear in full drag, standing with my neighborhood playmate, Karen. We are posed on my front lawn happily draped in her mother's castoffs, dresses, hats, shoes, belts and other accessories including makeup. Karen's play-clothes. In the photo she is wearing a dress with what appear to be designer palm tree tops in dreadful all-over pattern. I, in a dark, floor-length number, probably navy blue, with white polka dots. With a small purse hanging from my neck and stubby-heeled black shoes, I look like a seven year old version of Milton Berle. Karen seems to have rolled up her trousers to hide them beneath her dress and is wearing her dark leather play shoes with dark socks --- a fine touch.

Karen had a shoe box full old cosmetics, powder boxes, lipsticks, short mascara pencils and rouge. We would take turns standing on the toilet, using the bathroom mirror, raining face powder, wiping gaudy red on our lips and smudging balls of rouge on our cheeks. Then off we would head through the neighborhood to play our favorite game, super-sniffing dog turds.

Unless you have a degree in child psychology you may want to skip this next few paragraphs. I saw Karen a few years ago at an opening of my paintings --- the first time we'd seen each other since childhood. Mercifully, she had forgotten this particular game, although she remembered well our funeral services under the lemon tree in her backyard. But, I'm getting ahead of myself.

Over the neighborhood yards we traipsed, ever vigilant for the worst, most vile dog monsters we could find. We had rules. We didn't sniff just any old dog turd. For one, the fresher the pile, the better, as in "more horrendous". Each gob was approached from upwind by crawling on our hands and knees, the last few feet side by side. Then we'd blow as much air out of our lungs as possible, stick our noses up to the turd --- count three --- and SNIFF HARD. A flash-lag moment would follow, while body, mind and spirit joined hands in a fruitless attempt to figure out what the unholy hell  just happened. Then a heinous brain rush, a bio-cataclysm of despicable poo-terror, worse than any Nightmare on Elm Street, sending us squealing and clopping away as fast as we could run.

I've wondered over the years if Mrs. Miller or Mrs. Marquart ever happened to glance out their windows and see a couple of midget queens crawling over their lawns sniffing big ones? My god, kids are weird. Andrew Weil, the famed drug expert, wrote of how children will "naturally" do all sorts of things to change their consciousness. Spinning, breathing deep then having someone squeeze their chest, huffing gasoline, etc. No wonder I ended up a junkie.

On Mr. Swinerton's horse around 1946
© Dave Archer 2002

Around the same time we also had a go at retailing. Mr. Swinnerton was an old man who wore bib overalls and kept a horse across the street from my house. One day he taught me how to catch lizards using grass snares. Formally called California ground swifts, to us the small creatures were always "blue-bellies," nicknamed for the bright iridescent bands of color running the length of their shiny abdomens.

To catch lizards we would pull the oats off a piece of long green grass, the longer the better, then loop the thin tip of the grass back over itself, using it to form a small noose, which was then completed by tying a loose knot around the shank of the grass. Thus armed we could reach out four feet or more and gently place the noose over the head of the unsuspecting miniature dragon, then pull. Lizards live with grass blowing in their face all day long, so we could practically swat them and they wouldn't run, unless of course, the shadow of our bodies eclipsed the sun, poof, gone in a wink. Snaring them was easy once you got the hang of it. Karen and I loved catching lizards and decided one day to go into business selling them as pets.

Our only problem was the swift in "ground swift" was there for a reason. These reptiles could run so fast they virtually disappeared in a wink. Who would spend fifty cents on a pet that would do that?

Hence, our brilliant marketing plan and sales strategy: One-Legged Lizards.

The public would love them, because when a one-legged lizard runs, it only makes a tight circle. We discussed three-legs, two in front, two in back, one on each side. Somehow, one seemed the only solution. It would be great. With our grass nooses, lizards were as limitless as a Texas oil reserve. Soon we would be rich.

Okay look. This all happened way before animal rights and we were kids and other than that I have no excuse. If it helps, Karen went on to graduate college with honors and has been a highly respected veterinarian for decades. During the Los Angeles earthquake in the 90's she rushed to the scene to help save pets. As for myself, I'm still guilty as hell.

Karen's playhouse had a shelf-like table for our operating theater. We tied strips of white bed sheet around our faces for the "operations" and actually employed anesthetic. Karen's father had a small bottle of carbon tetrachloride he'd used at one time for butterfly collecting.

I of course, played the part of Karen's nurse. She wielded the knife, a blunt thing that had no doubt come from a military mess-kit. It was aluminum with US Army stamped on the handle.

Then mimicking something we must have heard on the radio, Karen began:

"Cotton".

"Cotton," I replied.

"Carbon tetrachloride..."

"Carbon tetrachloride..."

"Scalpel..."

"Scalpel..."

I applied cotton with the anesthetic to the nose of a lizard while Karen quickly crunched off three legs. It's a good thing lizards are an ancient life-form with near miraculous healing powers. Because within a few days they were, in fact, "healed". Then we took them around the neighborhood in a shoe box, with air-holes punched in the lid. Presaging Gary Larson by several decades, on the side of the box we scrawled in crayon this ad:

One Legged Lizards --- 50 Cents

I have no idea why we thought anyone would actually buy a one legged lizard, piteous sight that they were. One peek inside the box displayed seven or eight of them, writhing in circles like tiny flippered snakes.

Our first potential customer --- also the last --- was a neighbor boy. Johnny was our age. His lot in life: suffering parents who were outrageous knee-walking drunks. Over his young years Johnny had developed a keen sense of the absurd to cover his pain. His mom and dad would often stagger out of a Yellow Cab and pass out together on their front lawn trying to make it to the door. I remember driving past their house in our big Buick and mom would say, "Oh gosh, there's poor Ann and Pat, SLEEPING on the lawn ... again ..."

Evidently our sales pitch topped any sense of the absurd Johnny had yet to imagine. Because when we lifted the box lid and he saw our lurid amputees Johnny screeched out a laugh like the cry of an eagle and collapsed on the grass like his parents, but instead of smashing his glasses, he just kept chortling and rolling around  pointing at us and turning bright blue.

Then, when Johnny finally got control of himself he looked up at us with an evil leer and said, "One-legged lizards fifty cents ... now that is the stupidest thing I've ever heard of!"

We tried explaining our "circling pet theory", causing him to laugh all the harder.

Perhaps this wasn't such a good idea after all. So we let all the one-legged lizards go free. Well, sort of ... I guess.

Another endeavor, running concurrently, was our nonprofit cemetery under the lemon tree behind Karen's playhouse. Buried there lay a quart Mason jar full of small dead things we'd collected from around the neighborhood. Among others, a black bird, a frog and a potato bug.

Karen and I always had a ceremony before we opened the jar to add the latest corpse. A poem, "Who Killed Cock Robin," was read aloud while sitting side by side on our knees facing the grave marked with a cross we'd made from small sticks.

The only part I remember is Karen reading, "Who'll toll the bell?", and my response, "I'll toll the bell. I am the bull and I can pull." Pretty good for me.

Then, ding ... ding ... ding ... we'd ring a small bell.

Removing the jar's lid was definitely the "high" point, saved for absolute last because, while holding out breath, we had to: unscrew the jar, drop in the corpse, screw the lid back on, then bury it again fast and replace the cross and run like hell.

Karen's mother took me aside one day and told me I couldn't play with her daughter anymore.

"David, it's time for you to play with boys," simply crushed me. After all, Karen and I planned to be married when we grew up, and her mother didn't even know about it. Should I tell her?

I decided against that and went home devastated. Eventually a new plan formed. Since I didn't know another female well enough to propose, I would ask the only woman I was sure would never say no: mom.

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