Boy Stuff

14 bare wooden steps
led down from the kitchen
to the cool concrete confines
of the basement
of  my father's house.

True, one corner
behind the stairs to the left
was set aside
for the women-folk--'cuz  that's where
the washer and dryer were kept-- 
but the rest of the basement was
strictly
boy stuff.

In one corner
at the foot of the stairs
to the left
we had or own,  miniature
rifle range.
I used to sit on the steps
halfway between 
the basement and the kitchen
and watch, while 
my father and brother 
lay behind a rolled up carpet and 
fire lead pellets from a CO2 powered rifle
at paper targets that hung from
a white steel box on the far wall.
I asked my father once
if maybe next week
I could shoot the rifle too, 
and he said,
"I doubt it."
because where my father was concerned
I was always too little

 In another corner 
behind the stairs to the right
is where the trains lived
on two sheets of plywood
clipped together with brass hooks
and lying on top of
two folding aluminum tables.
The black, cast-iron locomotive
made its rounds along the the
shiny steel rails
past all the accessories money could buy:
	a log loader
	a milk loader
	a cattle loader and
	a little plastic man who popped out  of
	a little plastic house swinging
	a little plastic lantern when the train when by;
each wondrous in its own way
with its belts and vibrators and 
solenoid-activated mechanisms.

My father dismantled the trains one day
and told us if we wanted to play with them again,
we'd have to set them up ourselves.
I think he expected my brother to jump right to it
but he never did
and the Monmouth Avenue RailRoad
with its cast iron engine
and the coal-car that whistled
and the milk car
and the cattle car
and the log car
and the oil car
and of course the caboose
all sat on a shelf for years
until I managed somehow to set them up
myself
without any instruction
or any permission
or any approval
because Daddy had long since
disembarked for that great 
Lionel station in the sky.
 

But the best part of the basement
in the corner 
at the foot of the stairs
to the right
was the tool bench
with its meticulous arrangement of tools
carefully organized into peg-board racks
of hammers and screwdrivers
ball peens and claws 
phillips heads and flat heads
and  a tool we called 
"The Mechanical Man:"
a pair of plyers that looked like the head 
of  a robot
that stripped the insulation off electrical wires
between its claw-like jaws.

I still have that mechanical man
somewhere in my own toolchest.
There was not much my father left me
just  a few tools 
and a spirit
that lies dormant deep within
screaming for release
before it's too late.