The adventures of a Florida boy (part 5)

In the 1960s, kids ran as far and wild as their imaginations would take them

ONE OF AN OCCASIONAL SERIES: My boyhood was spent in Florida in the 1960s on an island called Coquina Key. My parents’ waterfront home overlooked a large expanse of Tampa Bay. Back then, parts of the island were undeveloped, which left plenty of room for climbing trees, digging forts in the sand, and swimming in shark-infested waters (though we didn’t give the latter much thought).

This is part 5 of a random and mostly light-hearted series that I might eventually combine into a memoir. I’m telling these stories to the best of my recollection and changing names and physical descriptions just because it seems like the right thing to do.

The Diving Bell

Throughout my childhood in Florida, I spent most of my free time outdoors. But even back in the 1960s, Florida got very hot in the summer, routinely approaching 95 degrees. And of course, there’s the famous “humidity” that everyone talks about. Well, it’s famous for a reason. It was humid, which made it feel even hotter.

My best friend and I did some crazy stuff outdoors, but we weren’t complete fools. It made more sense some afternoons to stay indoors. And from about age 8 through 12, our number one form of indoor entertainment was playing with our G.I. Joe dolls. We both had more than a dozen of them. And I’m talking the Hasbro originals that stood 12 inches tall, not the inferior versions that followed.

Our parents were huge fans of G.I. Joes. They kept us out of trouble for hours at a time. And they also made birthdays and Christmases very easy. A couple of G.I. Joes with some cool G.I. Joe outfits and accessories and we were good to go. We didn’t want anything else.

When I said we played for hours, I meant it. We would shut the door to his bedroom or mine after lunch and not come out until dinnertime. Our imaginations were limitless. The G.I. Joes were soldiers, astronauts, super heroes, professional wrestlers, adventurers, athletes, and rock musicians. For the latter, we had a little 45 rpm record player. My friend’s biggest hit was The Night Has a Thousand Eyes. Mine was Oh, Pretty Woman. We even snuck into our sisters’ rooms a few times and “borrowed” their Barbies so that our rock stars could have some female companionship after a big concert. (It wasn’t as bad as it sounds.)

The original G.I. Joes were incredibly well made. You could throw them all over the room and they wouldn’t break. We even took them outside sometimes. Once, we made parachutes out of cloth and heaved them high into the air. The parachutes didn’t work, but the G.I. Joes survived intact.

The durable dolls did have one flaw. Their right hand was shaped like a fist with a thumb sticking out. But the left hand was held open, which meant it had four fingers in addition to the thumb. These fingers would sometimes break off. You knew a G.I. Joe had some age on him if he was missing fingers on his left hand. But my friend and I had a fix for this. The arms came off at the elbows and were replaceable. So he and I would sneak into a nearby department store on occasion and steal a few left arms from the new G.I. Joes on display. We never got caught, but we must have bemused the heck out of the people who worked there when customers kept returning to demand left arms for their new toys.

One time, I became obsessed with one of the special G.I. Joe outfits I had gotten for Christmas or a birthday. The outfit was blue and I wanted it to be white. Why? Who knows? I had probably seen something on TV. Anyway, I filled a garden bucket with about two inches of bleach and soaked the outfit in it. For a couple of days, nothing happened. But finally, I checked on it again, and this time the outfit was a dazzling white. However, when I scooped it out of the bleach, it fell apart like wet tissue paper. The only person I told this to was my mom. Per usual, she thought I was nuts.

At one point, my friend was given another doll (he and I didn’t call them dolls, of course) that was similar to a G.I. Joe, though inferior. But the doll was very flexible, and when my friend tossed him around the room, I liked the way he flopped when he landed. I traded one of my best G.I. Joes for him. Soon after, I realized how stupid I had been, but it was too late to turn back. So he became my trash doll. I even used a marker to draw tattoos all over him.

One day, my friend and I found a metal box in his garage. It was about the size of a shoebox, but it had a sturdy latch and it closed snugly. We even sprayed a hose on it and were delighted to find the inside still dry when we opened it. Then an idea came to us. We would conduct a grand experiment. The metal box would become a diving bell that we would tie a rope to and then drop off the end of my friend’s dock.

Now, all we needed was a volunteer for this epic but dangerous adventure.

Mr. Floppy Tattoo Guy volunteered. (Okay, I volunteered him, if you want to get technical.)

We put him inside, added a few heavy rocks for ballast, and then tossed the metal box into the water. It sank immediately, and we tied the end of the rope to the dock. The underwater experiment began. It lasted six weeks.

We checked on it every day, sometimes several times a day. The water was too murky and deep to be able to see the box, so we mainly checked just to make sure the rope remained intact. Despite being impatient boys, we somehow found the discipline to not haul the box up and examine it from time to time. In our minds, that would have ruined the experiment.

Six weeks finally passed and the big day arrived. In a dramatic scene televised around the world, we brought the diving bell to the surface. Other than having a couple of small barnacles on it, the outside remained relatively unscathed. Now came the moment we all had been waiting for. We opened the box. Somehow the saltwater had found its way in. Mr. Floppy Tattoo Guy was soaked. He looked scared, shrunken, and sad.

Even after drying him in the hot Florida sun for several days, he never smelled the same. But to honor his bravery, we gave him a soldier’s burial in one of the sandy fields near our houses.

For all I know, he’s still where we left him … fifty-five years ago.

Read Part 1

Read Part 2

Read Part 3

Read Part 4

PROMOTIONAL NOTE: The ebook version of my latest novel, Do You Believe in Magic?, is currently available for only $1.99. The trade paperback version costs $9.99. Do You Believe in Magic? is book 1 of my new epic fantasy series titled Dark Circles. I’m almost finished with the first draft of book 2 called Do You Believe in Monsters?. I plan to release book 2 in late September. Then I’ll jump right in to book 3. To learn more, please visit my author’s website.