By 
Some nights, I still dream of that house on Carter Street, the best of all the houses of my childhood. Small by today’s standards, I found it large. She had everything a little girl could want. There was a large backyard, good trees to climb, and mimosas full of hot pink flowers full of hairy caterpillars perfect for driveway mini runs.
Mom kept the big kitchen warm with the best of her eastern North Carolina cooking and all the hugs we needed. Dad worked for Lindale Dairy and brought home so much ice cream that we had a separate freezer to store it all. (We were popular with the neighboring children on hot summer days.)
The Lindale products were so good that Hopolong Cassidy himself came to town to advertise them. Hoppy led a parade down Main Street, riding his white horse, Topper, and wearing his six-shot shooters. He gave Dad, a manager from Lindale, one of his distinctive black hats. Years later, after moving to Colorado, I took that hat to a Western clothing store to have it cleaned and maintained. Word spread until all the employees of the place came to look at it as if it were the Shroud of Turin.
As you can imagine, we were all inspired to play cowboys. wanted to be Dale Evans, and I watched “The Roy Rogers Show” every time I beat my older brother on the Saturday morning test pattern. Otherwise, he was stuck watching “Sergeant Preston of the Yukon.” His dogs weren’t as impressive as Trigger, Fury, or Flicka, let alone Dale’s horse, Buttermilk.
But television was all mine when my brother came out to play his greatest hero, Tarzan. He, his friend Dennis, and our cousin, Skip, spent countless hours in the trees and on top of the garage enacting their jungle escapades and shouting Tarzan’s screams that would make Johnny Weissmuller and Carol Burnett stop. I was just jealous of the guys from the “Tarzan Club” so I immediately started a “Jane Club”. It was not very popular.
Of course, the missing element was the animals. You can’t be Tarzan without Cheetah, elephants, lions, and other jungle animals. Who would you summon when you were in trouble, yelling “Ungowa!” at the top of your lungs? When I scolded my brother for that little detail, he said tea Tarzan’s secret club. There was a zoo in the basement. And the zoo elevator was in his room.
We didn’t even have a basement, but I believed him. Besides, he was determined to see that zoo. But there was a little problem. He didn’t know what hit on his plastered bedroom wall was the elevator button, and the club wasn’t talking. I spent weeks pressing as hard as I could on every spot on that wall. My brother loved to act like he had just stepped into the elevator if he heard me enter his room.
Hey, I was only three or four years old. Eventually I discovered that the zoo in the basement was as delightfully imaginary as Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. But I like to think that in the end I won.
I kept Hoppy’s hat.