Cowboys and Tarzans

The other day I had more than the usual amount of spare time on my hands, consequently I began looking up on the Internet people from my past. I found Paul Green at Facebook.

From the late 1950s to early 1960s Paul Green and I were best pals. Between the ages of about 7 to 12 we were almost inseparable. We were a mid-20th Century Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer.

One Saturday afternoon Paul stood before about three or four neighborhood kids and proclaimed that toilet water was nothing more than tap water, “just like what you drink out of the kitchen faucet”. I had never given a thought as to where toilet water came from, but it just didn’t seem right that it was regular faucet water. But Old Greenie insisted that was exactly what it was. Obviously he needed to prove his claim, so a Tootsie Roll was tossed into a freshly flushed toilet with the instruction that if Paul really believed it was clean water, he would eat the candy. 

I can still see Green’s nervous facial expression as he stared at the dripping wet piece of brown candy, then slowly, reluctantly, inserted it into his mouth and began to chew. To this day I still don’t care about the origins of the water in a toilet, but I can say with complete confidence that it is ordinary tap water.

Green and I watched a lot of television together. We would often spend a rainy Saturday afternoon watching some old movie being shown on one of the three local channels. One of the movies we saw was a western. I couldn’t begin to tell you which one it was, but I do know it made quite an impact on us two kids. We vowed to save all of our money so we could buy a ranch out West. We were going to carry six-guns, herd cattle, and after sunset, ride into town where we’d drink a little whiskey, and play some poker. For a week or so I actually saved some money to put towards this venture. I probably amassed about 9 cents.

A few months either before or after Green and I hatched the plan for the ranch, we saw a Tarzan movie and immediately vowed to travel to Africa were we would live together in the jungle. We had it all figured out. We would be two Tarzans, swinging through the treetops on vines, and using some distinct yodel-like call to summon all the jungle animals, should we need them. I liked the notion that there would be no more school.

These days I can easily see that the concept of two nearly nude Tarzans living together in the jungle might appear kind of gay. But at the time this plan was formulated, Green and I were perhaps all of 10 years old. Undoubtedly if we had retained the “Tarzan” scheme until the age of 15, it would have included at least two “Janes”, and perhaps more.

According to Facebook, Paul Green is the father of three, a grandfather of four, and a certified public accountant. I haven’t laid my eyes on him in over 40 years, but I’m sure he could still remember the kid with whom he used to hobnob. But if Paul’s Facebook photo suggests anything, it suggests that a lot of time has passed since those days, and that he, and probably we, are better off where we are because, well, we probably would be no match for a ruthless band of cattle rustlers.