I Wish I Had Fallen More

I wish I had fallen more,

It would have shown I was trying harder than I should,

I wished I had pushed more doors open, cried more often,

Listened more, started more fights, started more smiles,

Made more friends, held more people,

Dried more tears, caused more fun.

Wished I had laughed more,

Until the pee ran down my leg,

I wished I had said ‘sorry’ more,

Talked to more hearts,

Wished I had fallen more,

Got rejected by more strangers,

It would have shown I was trying,

Wished I had failed more,

It would have meant I was alive,

I just wish I had fallen more.

bobby stevenson 2020

Los Angeles, Autumn, 1941

He’d come all the way from Kansas, and this was his last shot.

If he couldn’t get these Hollywood guys to take him seriously, then he’d promised his father, that he would do as he was asked. Peter had been in love with movies and writing since he was a kid.

He loved all those action stories that he saw weekly down on Angel Avenue. Whether it was cowboys, or Vikings, or maybe even the evil Doctor Fu Man Chu,

Peter would act out the stories on his way home. 

When he returned to his little room in the attic, he’d start writing his versions of the world. And boy, did he get good. A treat at Christmas was one of Peter’s own stories being read out to the family.

Each year they just got better and better. His father wanted Peter to join the Navy, just like he had done, and his father before him. There had always been a member of the Brook family in the Services which would come to an end if Peter went down the Hollywood road.

For his own sake, Peter had to give it a try and yeah, if it failed he’d go into the Navy just like he’d promised. He had brought two story ideas with him to Hollywood: one was an adventure set in space about fighting the overlords, and there would be robots and animals and space ships – he wanted to call it the Star War Adventures, but he wasn’t sure about that.

The other story was about a kid who was a magician and who lived with an average family. He wasn’t sure what he was going to call that one, but he loved the idea of it all.

Peter spent three weeks knocking on door after studio door, but no one wanted to talk to him or see him. Yet everyone back home, who had read the stories, had all said the same thing, these should be turned into movies.

So he made himself a promise, he would try the Navy just like his dad wanted, and after Christmas, or perhaps next year, Peter would come back to Hollywood and try again when he was on leave.

A while later, after Peter signed up, he waved goodbye to his father and family  as he set out to meet his first naval ship.

It was based at Pearl Harbor.

bobby stevenson 2020

Eight Minutes and Twenty Seconds

 

That's how long it took for the lights to go out.

Some 93 million miles away it was being eaten up by a Black Hole. None of us had any idea that those eight odd minutes of light were coming from a star that didn't exist anymore. Those on the other side of the world were already in the dark, but at least they could see the Moon, lit by the Sun for the next eight minutes and twenty seconds.

We'd grown up believing that the Sun would come up every day. There was always sunlight. Always a sunrise. There wouldn't be, tomorrow.

I wasted those eight minutes and twenty seconds arguing with a neighbour about whose turn it was to clear the yard.

Others around the world were busy living, making love, dying, eating, bathing, sleeping – just being human, I guess.

First, the lights went out. Darkness during the day – only the stars up above with no longer any Moon. Then the Earth rolled and turned as the Sun's gravity disappeared – we were drifting off to another place. All of this in the time it took to clean a window.

In the distance, I could hear screams, while other folks called on God, and my neighbour was laughing his ass off. It had been his turn to clear the yard.

bobby stevenson 2020

The Bus

I don’t remember when I joined the Bus, but you can be sure it was a long, long time ago. Many folks have got on and off the Bus since then - many. Always a few, young and old would stand and vacate their seats, and then get off at the next stop.

At that halt, new folks would step in and find a seat.

So many of the other passengers, I got to know and love - and many of them are gone now. The sad thing is the newest people never got to know the old ones, just like when it’s my turn to get off, I won’t get to know those who board in the stops ahead.

But what I try to do it remember those who left the Bus – talk about them to folks who knew them and the ones who never got to meet them. They say you leave the Bus twice. Once when you get off and the second time when your name is mentioned for the very last time.

And for those who left earlier than me, some far too soon, I look out the window and take in what is happening out there – for them – I try to live a little for those who didn’t get to travel as far as me.

My stop will be coming soon, and I just hope that maybe once, someone will mention my name in the long journey ahead. Then one day, my name will never be mentioned again, and that will be that.

bobby stevenson 2020

photo: Night Bus by Nick Turpin

The House of Laughter and Crying

Now I’m not saying this story is true, but I’m not saying it’s a lie neither – mainly because I don’t want to be sued by any of you folks out there. I am just saying that it is, what it is. If you push me on it, I’ll just have to say that it’s the rabid memory of an old man and leave it at that.

So let me start the story by telling you about the house.

From the outside, it wasn’t anything special, just a little old place built in the early 1820s to show the folks of the town just how well, Samuel P. Northbody was doing in his business.

However, Samuel spent so long accruing money that he never got to finding love (except the appreciation of the dollar, that is) and so the house fell into disrepair for a time when Mr Northbody went to where rich people go after they die. I heard some folks say that place was New Jersey, but I’m thinking that’s just plain cruel.

Apart from the occasional snake, the house wasn’t visited by anything or anyone in particular until a crowd of soldiers hid in the house for two weeks. That would be during the Civil War of these United States when brother fought brother.

Now I’m not too sure if the soldiers were Northerners returning home, or Southerners going in the opposite direction, but whoever they were, they took to hiding while the other side was camped right outside – I kid you not. How they never got caught, well only the big man in the sky knows the answer to that. Folks only found out they’d been there because one of the soldiers (and by soldier, I mean a fifteen-year-old boy) had left a notebook behind.

Now here’s where things start to take a crazy turn. It was said that John Wilkes Booth hid out in the house after he shot (and killed) President Lincoln. Booth had broken his leg when jumping from Lincoln’s box at the theater on to the stage. Booth then got some help from a Doctor Mudd, who never told the authorities about the killer’s whereabouts. I reckon that’s why some folks say ‘your name is Mudd’, even to these days.

Apparently, Booth hid in the house for three days and nights, while the army folks were looking up and down the land trying to catch him.

I am thinking that maybe there is something about this house that makes it a sanctuary for a person – and not necessarily for the good souls, either.

But the story I want to tell you is a lot later than that last one. This story took place in the late 1970s when I was living in the house after it became a sort of hotel. It was known, locally, as Mrs Johnstone Home for Businessmen (guess she didn’t think there might be businesswomen too). We folks around here had always known it as the ‘House of Laughter and Crying’, and I ain’t exactly sure why that was.

I had been helping out my uncle build a barn, a big one out by the creek, and earning some money before I went off to college. My uncle was sleeping under the sky and my Ma, thought it better if I slept in a real bed every night, so that’s how I came to be at Mrs Johnstone’s.

But it was the man who lived in room 7, on the top floor, who used to get my curiosity excited. He never mixed with the other guests (even although sometimes that would only be me). He ate in his room, and I never really saw him coming or going.

I could tell by the way as he passed my room and rubbed against the wall outside that he was a large built man.

Probably ‘fat’ would have been a better description.

He would sometimes sing to himself as he left to go to the kitchen, or on his return to his room, and I could swear to you that it was…………………now I know this sounds really stupid like, but it seemed to me like someone impersonating Elvis.

He was real good at it, too. You’d almost think it was him. One night after I heard him singing his way to the kitchen, I hid in the cleaner’s store at the end of the corridor because I knew that if I opened the door a little, I would be able to see his face.

I waited and waited. Man, it was a long time, but then I heard his heavy footsteps coming up the stairs. I heard him walk along the corridor and so I pushed the door a little, but that was when the brushes fell on top of me, which made me let out a yell and I slipped out the door.

I landed at the feet of the man, and I swear to you when I looked up it was………Elvis.

Elvis himself, as I live and breathe. Now, remember that this is in the year 1978 and the man was apparently long dead. So if it was him – I have to ask myself, what was he doing in a little house on the corner of a street, in a little town? If it wasn’t him, then I have to apologise for all the craziness that I’ve put down on these pages.

But I swear to you, on my Grandma’s Bible, that I’m sure it was him.

The man stepped over me and continued upstairs, singing. I knew, that he knew that I knew who he was, and it so it came as no surprise, that when I went up to knock his door in the morning – the door swung open and the room was empty.

“Checked out, real early. Around 5 am,” said Mrs Johnstone.

There you have it – not much of a story, I grant you, but it’s had me thinking all these years.

I’ll leave it with you, and you can make of it what you will.

bobby stevenson 2020

My Uncle Henry, The Bampot

The technical term to describe my Uncle Henry is ‘Bampot’. Sure he was run out of Glasgow for trying to sell the horseless carriage concept to the City Council. It involved taking off the horse from a carriage and replacing it with six little people from the local circus. But he was still my Uncle Henry, and a kinder heart would be hard to find.

In the end, his genius was all rolled up into one mighty concept, that of the ‘Auto Copter’.

He trialled it in the middle of the night, and it led to a few stories in the newspapers of Phantom Riders in the streets of Edinburgh (the city he snuck into after his Glasgow debacle).

It could reach a nose bleeding speed of 18 miles per hour – a factor that inspired my uncle to attempt to sell the beast to the Edinburgh Police Constabulary. To be fair, they did try it out one Sunday morning on Princes Street. It hit three people, cut off Mrs McKenzie’s hat, and then careered down the embankment into the park below Edinburgh Castle.

Uncle Henry still had the cheek to ask, ‘so what do you think? Brilliant or what?’

After they run him out of the City of Edinburgh, my uncle and his Auto Copter rode all the way to Eastbourne, on the English South Coast.

My uncle spent his final days there, having adapted the beastie to pull passengers – he would take them along the front of the town for a farthing a trip.

It all went well until Henry decided to cash in on his Scottish heritage and wear a kilt while driving his invention.

As the local Police told the judge in court - when the Auto Copter got to a speed of 15 miles per hour my uncle’s kilt blew over his head – thereby not allowing him to see where he was going – and enabling the unfortunate population of Eastbourne to see everything he had under his kilt.

As I said, my Uncle Henry, the Bampot.

bobby stevenson 2020

Good Things Will Happen

Good things will happen

When you least expect it,

They did before and they will again,

It may not be the things you wish for,

But when it does - you’ll see they’re right,

Good things will happen,

When you’re looking elsewhere,

They’ll grab your heart

And guide you home,

Good things will happen,

I promise –

Trust me,

They have before,

And they will again. 

bobby stevenson 2020 x