‘I don’t want to be a bum; I just like living like one...but I wouldn’t want to sleep here…’
‘Especially now, Ray; winter never seems to end…’
As Angie was swimming with her YWCA friends, the Down and Outers pondered life’s important questions on their favourite park bench in front of their small city’s courthouse instead of their usual wisecracking with Angie and Rico at his restaurant.
The winter sun faded into the overcast early darkness.
‘I love watching the world go by’, Joey sighed.
‘The Passing Parade…’, mused Stash.
‘Hold out your left hands.’
Ray and Stash instantly complied. Joey opened a box of Cracker Jack and poured relatively equal portions into their palms.
‘Thanks Joey! We still have lots of fun for a dime!’
‘Thanks’, Ray passed over the paper satchel in his hand, ‘It’s your pack, so it’s your prize!’
Joey placed it in his pocket as the three ate their molasses-coated popcorn and peanuts piece by piece.
Ray’s nostalgia began,
‘Remember the great metal prizes before the war? I still got my streetcar. They were made by TootsieToys.’
‘After the war they were made in plastic by the same people who made that 100-piece toy soldier set Joey bought from the comic book…‘
Joey’s addiction was ordering things from comic books, breakfast cereal boxes or Bazooka bubble gum comics. His olive drab two-dimensional hard plastic ships, planes, jeeps, trucks, tanks, howitzers, soldiers, sailors, officers, WACs and WAVES came packed in a cardboard ‘footlocker’ the size of a box of kitchen matches. Ray joked he was gypped. Joey expertly painted them to look as if they stepped out of a comic book story, with red and blue bases for two equal sides. Stash dreamed up rules for a Kriegsspiel; Joey’s gyp became fun.
‘-but now they’re made in Hong Kong.’
‘It took so long to arrive, it probably was sent by Slow Boat from China, but it came from Hollywood. I’d love a Hong Kong stamp for my collection.’
‘Everything’s made there, or Japan. It’s so cheap because they don’t pay their workers much. Generalissimo Joey got a lot of bang for his buck! A penny apiece to be a tabletop Eisenhower!’
‘A buck and two bits, Ray; maybe the quarter’s for postage…’
‘Advertising.’
‘It wasn’t a big gyp like the Ventrilo Voice Thrower or those X-Ray Glasses that had a feather inside them.’
‘Remember when Ray drove Angie nuts pretending the X-Ray Glasses really worked? “Get outta here yuh pervert!”’
‘Then Rico pulled the glasses off me, looked at Angie and said, “They’re fake”…’
‘And Angie belted Rico!!!’
The gang howled.
‘I got my money’s worth thanks to Ray!’
‘I wonder if that stuff stamped Made in the Crown Colony of Hong Kong is really made by slave labour in Red China?’
‘My grandfather said when he was a boy all the cheap toys at Woolworths were made in Germany’, Joey recalled.
‘They declare war on Uncle Sam and lose, then they become rich, just like The Mouse That Roared.’
Joey fondly remembered watching it with the gang in the Genesee Theatre’s balcony,
‘I liked that movie.’
‘I like the trailers as much as the films’, Stash laughed.
‘Movies for remembering; trailers and posters for anticipation. You’re gambling whether you get what you want. You pay for the fun of anticipation and the laughs when you find out what that junk really is. Selling dreams is what advertising’s all about.’
‘You’re right, Ray; just like a magic show. You pay your money, and you get your thrills. If you really knew how the magician did his hocus-pocus ala-kah-zam you’d think it’s a big gyp, but when you’re watching the stage, or when Joey’s waiting for the stuff in the mail, you’re on top of the world.’
Two women dressed for the office laughed with each other as they walked by the trio.
Ray instantly turned pensive,
‘Then at the end of the day you’re stuck with something you can’t get rid of…Joey only spends a buck now and then. He didn’t spend his life savings on a house and marriage...I lived someone else's dream, not mine…Her dreams were my nightmares…’
‘I guess all women are like Angie…the infinitesimal is paramount…’, Stash translated, ‘Small things for small minds.’
Ray’s usual grin returned,
‘Your dreams are fun, Pal Joey; and your dreams are wonderous, Stash. That’s why you two are so great to be around.’
The streetlights came on as they finished their treats; now it was time to find out what Joey’s prize was.
He pulled the paper packet out of his pocket and held it up as his friends studied it.
‘It doesn’t look like a compass; that’s the best prize they’ve got now. You can find your way through the jungle!’
‘I like the magnifying glass; you can look close-up at mysteries…’
Joey visualised Ray as two-fisted Jungle Jim fighting his way through Unexplored Territory and Stash as Sherlock Holmes using the latest scientific crime-solving methods. They were not only his best friends, but the most exciting two he ever knew; fun and small adventures were always around the corner with them!
‘…but it doesn’t look like one of them, or one of those put-the-balls-in-the-holes games either…’
‘Maybe it’s a ring and you can get engaged to Connie!’, Ray quipped, ‘I like her, she’s nice.’
Joey blushed; Stash drummed a roll on the bench as Joey opened his prize.
It was a plastic strongman inside a wheel the size of a twenty-five cents piece.
‘Wow, it’s Hercules!’
Joey rolled it on the pavement, the gang laughed.
‘Rollin’, rollin’ rollin’…’
The others joined Ray singing the Rawhide song.
‘Hong Kong Hercules!’, Stash exclaimed.
Darkness had fallen.
‘”Hong Kong”…’, Ray imagined himself as Rod Taylor in his favourite TV show, ‘Instead of Rico’s, let’s go to Ho Wah Chop Suey!’
‘OK, Ray! I’ll bring Hercules!’
Ray hand-signalled ‘follow me’ and shouted,
‘Gung Ho!’
They rose from their bench as one.
Joey eagerly anticipated their fortune cookies…
FIN
Author Notes: Happy Chinese New Year, you snakes!
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Australia • 68 years old