By Tom Dodge, KERA 90.1 commentator
Dallas, Tx – When A.J. comes over we sometimes watch movies - but not those animated, sanitized, exploitative movies designed to make kids think alike and want to buy the useless plastic spin-off products shamelessly marketed along with the movie. One of our favorites is "Stand By Me." I know that more responsible grandparents than I will endeavor to shield their perfect little generic children from the kind of imperfect words that issue from the mouths of the boys in this movie. But we know these words are a part of life and we know this movie has value, even for a five-year-old, so we take our chances with them.
The four troubled boys of this movie think that if they can go down the railroad tracks and into the woods and find the body of the boy killed by a train, they will be famous and liked by all. But when they find the dead boy, they are so changed that they forget about fame and other superficial things.
Where I live there are lots of railroad tracks but few woods left, because houses are going up every day where they used to be. But between the railroad tracks and Highway 67 west of town, there is a small growth of dense forest that I always look at when I drive by. I think of it as our own little wildlife refuge in the center of runaway suburbanization. Now, developers have cut a swath through it and put it up for sale.
I wanted A.J. to see it before the groundgobblers come. Once the groundgobblers are done, there's nothing of interest left to see. One suburban tract is just like another. All the trees where the birds and squirrels, cottontail rabbits and coyotes live will be leveled except for a cosmetic few. All the tangled vines where the rabbits hide will be scraped away to make room for antiseptic back yards and driveways for tank-like four-wheel-drive vehicles whose tires never touch any terrain rougher than freeway pavement.
The wild critters living there must run for their lives. Their homes will be devastated and their food supply reduced to whatever they can scavenge from back alley garbage bags. When out of desperation a starving coyote eats a suburbanite's cat or dog, open war will be declared on all coyotes.
So we hiked down the tracks toward the woods. As we walked, we sang Lollypop Lollypop, Get a Job, Come Go With Me, and some of the other songs from the film. A.J. threw a stick into a little creek that runs alongside the tracks. "That's what Teddy did," he
said. He wondered if there were leeches in the water. The boys had gone into the water and got leeches in places where there should be only pleasure and never pain.
A shower came in and we went into the woods for shelter. But it was dark in there and he was scared and we had to come out. "What are you afraid of?" I said.
"There's mean things in there," he said.
"No, there are no mean things in the woods," I told him. "The mean things are elsewhere. You'll learn that soon enough."
Our little trek down the railroad tracks and into the woods was no life-changing episode for us as it had been for Gordy and his friends, but it was fun. And, someday, maybe A.J. will be fortunate enough to have a grandson and there will be a railroad track and woods for them to take shelter in during a soft summer rain.
Tom Dodge is a writer based in Midlothian.