The Petition Parade

8/14/2019 The Petition Parade

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tennis!”) At the Quik!Stop coffee stools the spread of ages is about the same, but now the

range of ages is forty-five to ninety, and I’m closer to the wrong end of that range.

Another thing we have in common with that old crowd was that nobody much at the

Quik!Stop cares what anybody else’s labels are. I know there are some Republicans in this

group, I’m pretty sure one gent my age is a Jew, and one man is well-known to be gay. But

the thing is it doesn’t matter because none of us would ever say “gun nut,” or “Jew-boy,” or

“queer” anyway, we’re all just too nice for that.

What I’m remembering these days on my Sunday morning walk to the Quik!Stop is

what happened one summer at that other gathering place so long ago. It’s the dog, or lack of

a dog, that reminds me, and since now I walk because I don’t have a dog to worry about any

more, it’s natural that my mind always wanders back to that time.

The way it worked back then was, town players would get there when they could, the

earliest at eight or so (I would bring my little dog Moses and tie him up outside). The first

one in would unlatch the chain-link gate to the clay courts (never the asphalt courts). Like

now, he might have his paper and a cup of coffee (which he would have brought with him,

unlike at the Quik!Stop), and sit in the front row while he waited for someone else to show.

If he didn’t have a paper, or if it had rained, or if the clay otherwise needed brushing, his

waiting time could be spent walking the eight-foot drag cross-wise (never long-wise) in

stripes from the near corner of Court One to the far corner of Court Two.

When a second player had arrived the process of lining the courts could start. This

involved opening up the shed (the combination was scratched on the side of the building),

bringing out the string, and topping off the lime in the rickety liner. One person pushed the

liner while another held the string. Sometimes the two would wait for a third person to



arrive, since valuable time can be saved if the ends of the string are being held in place

simultaneously instead of serially and both held, and then moved, by real people. That way

there’s a lot less walking, and more time for play. If a fourth person showed up in time, he

could be locating the line markers (wooden pegs, spikes, some marked with a wisp of colored

nylon but others not); as he found each one he would center the ball of his foot on the marker

and do a half-pirouette, leaving a distinctive swirl in the clay.

But only with the right shoes, because a pirouette on a clay court with any other than

perfectly flat-bottomed tennis sneakers will dig into the clay and leave a ragged concavity.

Worse yet, if such wrong shoes have actual treads, as they are walked to the next marker they

will leave behind mini-clods of clay that will deflect a hard-hit ball in ways you can hardly

imagine. Ditto for bare feet, so nobody in this group would dare show up in anything but

smooth-soled shoes.

Jim Q and I were the acknowledged fastest liners, though Stinky Jones and Carter

made straighter lines; we’d hear about it all day if a ball would have been in or out but for

our wobbly line. Percy was the all-time pro at lining without benefit of a string -- he’d

hunker over one marker, eyeball the marker at the far end, and make a beeline for it without

diverting his gaze. Klinker was best at doing the pirouette over the markers -- his swirls were

legendary, and sometimes they could still be made out a week later.

When the lining was done, four players (the first four players -- didn’t matter who

was pals with whom) would start a match. Usually on Court Number One, acknowledged to

be the superior court. Sometimes pairs or triplets (incomplete doubles teams) would warm

up on the other court. Once the two courts were full, newcomers would wait until a pair was

defeated and then take their place against the winners, thus winners could stay on the court





would be too complicated to explain (as it was then). But they do know about the hand

because I had to explain why I always try to take the stool on the far left. I was in an

accident once in which my right hand was pushed through a mass of bent sheet metal as

lethal as a razor blade sculpture. The doctors put the hand back together and I can open and

close it all right, but can’t feel much of anything. When I’d learned to use the muscles to

grasp things, and eventually to hold onto things without crushing them (using the evidence of

my eyes to gauge how tight to squeeze) I got to showing off, using the hand as though it were

perfectly normal. Then once I grabbed and held tight to a steaming coffee mug that had just

come out of the microwave. By the time it got through to my brain that something was

wrong the skin on my hand was burned smooth. I still hold things in my right hand, but

never coffee mugs.

Tennis wasn’t only for summer. It began after the last frost if there was a dry spell, or

by the first of May at the latest. (It also didn’t end with the summer. If you think a clay court

is a slow court just try a frozen clay court -- didn’t matter how cold it got, we played until the

first snow came and that put the courts to bed for the winter.) The field of players was

sparser when we started again in the spring. It wasn’t just that some of the players were

sensitive to the cold, or that they tended to have more free time in the summer, it was also

built into the history of the place -- before it was a suburb it was a summer resort. The clay

was native, and practically free; if you dug a basement you got a free tennis court (after

adding a little labor).

Native clay makes a good, hard court, but unless it is tempered with some aggregated

material it becomes too hard when it’s dry and too slippery when it’s wet. It needs this extra

material to keep it flexible. Our courts were not only native clay, meaning from the area, but



also natural clay, meaning that the clay was still in the place it had formed millennia ago.

There was so much near the surface that you wouldn’t say it was thick, you would say it was

deep.

This clay needed to be rolled and dragged and its aggregate replenished regularly to

keep it flexible. Over the winter the aggregate would sink into whatever depth the clay

possessed, and in early spring it was vulnerable to hardening up as though baked in a kiln. I

remember one year in which it had received the sloggy footprints of large boys doing some

act of vandalism. It was impossible to roll or drag those footprints out. Dogs were never

allowed into the court area because it was fundamental that they would leave near-indelible

impressions of pads and claws.

At the Quik!Stop we talk mostly about our environment (not The environment). If

it’s wet we talk about the rain, if it’s cold we talk about snow. We talk about crops (not that

we raise any, but we know people who do), and we talk about fish even though we don’t fish

(Tonoloway, right out the window, is an endangered trout stream). We talk about roads and

traffic, but we only talk about schools (the high school is out the windows on the other side)

as they relate to property taxes. We don’t talk about religion or politics. Even our gossip is

spent on the out-of-staters who stop at the Quik!Stop for gas and snacks -- there are some

strange people in the world, and some Sundays it seems that a significant percentage of them

stop at the Quik!Stop.

At the tennis courts we talked about our environment, too, which was tennis. You

don’t talk religion at a political rally, and you don’t talk about politics in church. As Ollie

Sirk once said when someone remarked that he seemed to have left home without his racquet



(and then repeated it as often as he was set up), “No, I didn’t forget my racket. My racket’s

tennis.”

There’s always an old guard. There was an old guard in town and at the courts, too.

You could tell the old guard because they were in the government; heck, they were the

government. Ollie was part of the old guard and I was part of the new guard. Of course

Carter was part of the old guard, the oldest of the old. But what that meant for Sunday tennis

was only that they were cagier and we were more reckless. We were faster but they were

more efficient. The doubles teams could be an old and an old against a new and a new, or an

old and new versus a new and old. Oddly enough, though the odds are even, the combination

of three of one and one of the other seldom materialized.

The year was 1973, a watershed year in public opinion about the war -- the majority

had turned against it, at least in their hearts. People like me thought it was high time we told

our government how we felt. Several of us had been on the Mall for the march on

Washington and participated in the one-day Strike for Peace, and now we were frustrated

with the lack of response by the government. Some of the municipalities, and not just the

California nut-case type, had gone on record as opposing the war. We thought our little town,

with its annual June Election coming, should step up and be counted among them.

The town paper, always eager for items, had published the text of our petition and

publicized our “Petition Parade.” We intended to get a solid majority of registered voters to

sign the petition, which asked only that the town fathers place a referendum question to be

voted up or down, yea or nay, whether the town would send this statement to the White

House: The Town of Shady Grove hereby calls for the immediate and total withdrawal from

Vietnam.



We made up a banner that read, “Give Peace a Chance” in large letters and “Vietnam

War Petition Parade” underneath. Jim Q had added “TIME TO GET OUT” under that. We

wore armbands with a peace sign magic-markered on. (Years later I found my armband in a

drawer. I was ashamed to observe that the tail of the peace symbol had been left out -- it

looked like a Mercedes star.)

One Sunday, six of us adults started down Grove Avenue, with three of the kids

fanned out ahead with petitions on clipboards. We still needed forty names -- a tall order --

to achieve a majority, but with the names we already had, the Council would have to accede

and place it on the ballot anyway. Within two blocks we had added six names and two more

marchers and we were feeling pretty good about it all. As we passed the last house before the

tennis courts I think it was I who came up with the idea to approach the players.

The afternoon session was underway, but it was a small crowd. A doubles game was

in progress on Court One. Shill and Doc were waiting on the stands. The players were

Carter and Mandy on one side and Stinky and Flatbush on the other. Instead of sending the

kids out with the clipboards I waved the “parade” to a halt and approached the courts,

clipboard in hand, by myself. A point was concluding as I clinked through the gate, so I

continued onto the court, stride unbroken.

Carter gave me a quizzical little smile as I neared, but it was a warm enough greeting.

I strode right out onto the court and asked him would he sign our petition. He took it from

me and scanned it quickly, once and then again.

I will never forget how the innocent silence of the few seconds it took him to read the

important paragraph and absorb its meaning turned into a different kind of silence, a deadly

calm-before-the-storm silence, a silence suddenly loud by the change in his features which



had been transformed from politely mystified to downright menacing. Then how his head

nodded up to look me straight in the eyes, a look that said, “I don’t know you.” Nor how his

head nodded back down to stare at the hand -- his hand -- holding the clipboard, then up at

me again, then down to my shoes, not smooth-soled shoes but a pair of Hushpuppies with

hard-edged soles and distinct rubber heels, then over at Moses, innocent but standing just

behind me, clearly in the service area of Court One.

Then he acted, thrusting the clipboard directly away from him as if he had suddenly

noticed it was burning. It struck the court beyond my feet and dug up a little divot. The pen

went spinning away as eager as Carter to be rid of the thing. Through clenched teeth he

seethed the words, “I will not. This is the President’s business, not our business. Good day.”

At that point I could no more have asked the others to sign than I could have tried to

make a joke of Carter’s reaction. It was all over. I retrieved the clipboard and pen and

tiptoed off the court on the balls of my feet. Moses was close at those heels that did not

touch the ground until I was out of the gate. The silence had followed me out -- the clink of

the gatelatch had the impact of a gun being fired -- and we resumed our parade in that silence

until we had left it behind.

Everyone knew to keep quiet until we were out of earshot. Then Ellen hissed,

urgently, “What did he say?” I didn’t let on what I knew, that I had offended a friend and

broken some important rules. Instead I tried instead to laugh it off. “Carter’s old guard -- he

said it was the President’s business.” That cracked her up and I was grateful not to have to

say anything more.

We did two more blocks and picked up four more signatures, but the time between

signatures was stretching out. The afternoon was moving along, so we decided to take a



shortcut across the park and onto Maple, where the higher density of older cottages would

give us a better shot at making our goal. We had turned onto Maple and reached the point

where the drainage ditch crossed under, just before the houses started, when we heard a car

coming up behind us. This had happened on Grove and the car had been patient enough to

wait until we could rearrange the banner and move to one side. But this car was bigger and

not patient and came up faster than those in the rear were comfortable with. The kids were

quickly pulled to either side, but the ditch prevented them from getting far enough off the

pavement. The car horn blew a frightening warning, but then it did slow way down. We

were relieved when we could see that it was Carter—however ill-humored his countenance—

behind the wheel.

He maneuvered the car as though to thread the space between the children, but it was

too narrow. The apologetic moms redistributed the kids to one side while we got the banner

out of the way. The car had never stopped moving, though very slowly, and it now seemed

poised to make its move past our group. But just as the way was clear for Carter to drive

through, Moses did what no dog should do to a man in a new Cadillac whatever the motive --

what he should not do to a policeman who has pulled over to ask why he is on the loose,

what he should not do to a tattooed man with a pony tail in a brand new pickup truck, what

he should not do to a mother pushing a carriage with her brand new baby girl in it. He

jumped up to his full height with his paws extended and his claws full out in front against

Carter car door. He jumped up repeatedly, barking as he was doing it, each time landing his

claws on the chrome, then sliding them down off the chrome to the paint, and then along the

paint, and in spite of the barking everyone could hear the click and slide as the nails dented

chrome and dug into paint.



Carter yelled, “Hey!” and then tried to push the dog away. He accelerated a little to

scare the dog off, all the while looking left and right lest any marchers be in the way. His

face got redder than usual as he kept pushing at the dog while his head swung wildly left and

right and his foot kept tapping the accelerator and the car lurched forward in short gains.

Suddenly the road ahead was clear. Carter took the open path and accelerated to get away

from the marchers and the dog. But Moses’s paw got caught under the door handle so as the

car started moving so did Moses. Moses knew there was trouble and tried to pull away, but

his paw was caught sideways under the handle. As the car moved forward Moses’s back legs

were picked up off the ground and swung forward. Carter swerved left then right, and

Moses’ captured paw gave way and his body started to drop away. His back legs hit first and

he tumbled into the ditch just as Carter’s Cadillac’s left rear wheel slipped into the ditch, off

the drain tile and onto Moses. It hit him in the neck and pushed his head into the mud,

running right over it.

I heard, or think I heard, the sound of a bone breaking. Carter righted the car and

stopped it immediately. It was as though he had heard that awful sound, too. He got out and

looked, and looked away, and looked again. Moses was behind the car and half in the ditch

now, gasping, I guess you could call it -- a sound like an animal without vocal chords.

I was stricken dumb like everyone else. Eventually I was down on my knees, with

my hands on Moses muddied side and chest. His breast was rising and falling in some kind

of desperate way, but his eyes weren’t open; it was as though he were in a dog-dream. I

stayed there in that position waiting for some change, and eventually there was a

diminishment of the gasping, then a new silence. I didn’t know what to do with him but I

knew he was dead. After some time passed, in which I thought both about the strangeness of



my situation and the loss of my dog, it occurred to me that I had some duty to do. I thought

about walking home to get my car but I realized that wasn’t the right thing. So I just picked

him up (there was only a little blood by his nose and mouth) and started off toward home. I

didn’t know what I was doing, and neither did my two close friends, but they let me go.

Then all of a sudden Moses and I were home and I told Janet and that was the end of Moses.

We buried Moses in a corner of the yard. I didn’t go back to Sunday tennis that summer and

two years later I injured my hand. It wasn’t long before people connected the accident (with

the hand, I mean) with the fact that I didn’t play tennis any more. They didn’t connect

Moses’s accident with tennis, just with the parade. But it was all connected somehow. The

casualties of war are often unenumerated.

Documents

The Petition Parade