"The Moonie"
Author's Note
This is a children’s sermon. It's a story out of one of my memories, a story about some of childhood playmates.
The kids who played together then in that place were all about ten years old. There was George Markovitz, Martha Fell, Tommy Douras, Richard Kline, Alex Bell (no relation to Martha), Judith Shapiro, Peter Golanidas, Patsy Spraig, Nancy Kelly, and Billy Thomas.
The story you're about to hear is true. The order of events may have been changed a bit to protect the innocence of storytelling, but the names are the same.
These kids lived in the same neighborhood, mostly in apartment buildings, except for two of them – no three, whose fathers were richer than the rest. One was a Chevrolet dealer and another a fuel and coal dealer … the third rich kid, well, the kids never did know what his father did, not even the son maybe, but they didn't talk about it anyway.
These kids saw a lot of each other and played together constantly. Well, they played some things together. There was that one thing they didn't play together. The boys, during part of the year, were marble shooters. The girls had more important things to do, one imagines. But the boys seemed to play marbles all the time when the weather was dry and no too hot and not too cold … marble season … in places where the earth was packed hard and flat and a good ring could be drawn in the gray dirt.
Sometimes the girls would deign to watch. And the boys, in training for free enterprise, accumulated great numbers of marbles, by playing to win,by saving their pennies for more marbles, and by trading. They'd also trade picture cards that came with flat red pieces of bubble gum. War cards they were, we shudder to think today.
George Markovitz was the best marble player. The others used to think it had something to do with his shooter. George, you see, had a “moonie.”
It seemed a little heavier than other marbles, the moonie. It was very smooth but not glassy, pearly looking and translucent rather … you couldn’t see through it. They said it was made from moonstones, and it did look like that: white or pearl-like with a blue tinge, cool but not cold. A beautiful moonstone is a perfect sphere. At least that is what they thought, and that is why they called it “the moonie.” Perhaps it was not a moonstone, but it was made from stone, andthe name stuck.
Everybody wanted a moonie.
But they didn't sell “moonies' at the store where the marbles usually came from. George had the only one around.
And what a shooter it did make.
One or two of the boys used “steelies” for shooters … little steel ball bearings, and they were good, but they had to be a little on the small side in order to keep the weight down.
The moonie was just about perfect.
George would sort of wrap his fingers around it, knuckles on the ground, or with a handkerchief under them, when they played a lot, to keep from skinning them with so much action.
He took aim, poised with power, at the dirt line and S-Z-OOM-M, fired away with dead stop accuracy at the marble in the center, and sent it catapulting from the ring. There, in the center, at the point of impact, his moonie stuck in the very spot where the target marble had been, the moonie spinning around like a top, working its energy off after having done its assigned task.
George Markovitz sure was good at marbles.
Often these kids visited each other’s home or apartments and talked and ate and played the games kids play, and, in those days, there was a great deal of show-and-tell at each home of a marble collection or hoard. Sometimes there would also be the flipping the bubble-gum picture cards, to see who would win them, or pitching them to a line, the one who got closest got all cards thrown at that time.
Whenever they went to George’s house, sometime during the visit, as a special treat to everyone, he would take out his moonie and past it around, and, one after another, they would comment or exclaim, or throw it up and down and catch it in the palm time and time again, testing its heft.
How nice it would be to have a “moonie.”
When the weather started to get colder, the kids continued their visits to each other’s homes, but the marble playing stopped for the season. They would play more active outside games … and the boys and girls played them together … particularly a game called KICK THE CAN.
Everybody has played Kick the Can. It is like hide-and-go-seek, except that you put a tin can in the middle of a circle on the ground or sidewalk and the one who is “It” goes out from there to find the others who are hiding. If he catches someone and gets back to the circle before that one, the one caught becomes a prisoner.
But the prisoners can be rescued if someone who is free dashes in to kick the can out of the circle before the one who is It gets there. Then all the prisoners may run and hide again. “It” replaces the can and starts all over.
Those kids would play Kick the Can as it grew colder in the fall right up to Hannukah and Christmas. That was about the cut-off-time for Kick the Can, as sledding and other activities usually came along in January.
Richard Kline and Judith Shapiro were Jewish and celebrated Hanukkah in their homes, receiving money and presents usually a short time before the others celebrated Christmas. George Markovitz was Hungarian and Roman Catholic. Pete Galonidas and Tommy Douras were in the Greek Orthodox Church, and the others were in various Protestant Churches.
One year … it was the year when they were about ten … one of the mothers decided it would be nice to have a Holiday Season party in between Hanukah and Christmas. The kids were invited in a note to their folks, and it was clear that each would bring a small gift for each of the others, each gift to be inexpensive, perhaps from the ten-cent store, perhaps each gift worth about ten cents.
It was a good idea, at a cost of about a dollar for each family or person.
Some of the gifts turned out to be, of course, marbles. Others were little handkerchiefs, small games, puzzles, comics, things like that.
And, of course, the gift opening came at the end, after playing indoor games and eating cake and such, and, on this occasion, all of the gifts had been passed around and opened … all except one.
George Markovitz had a small package, the smallest of the packages, that he took over to Martha Bell and handed to her. As Martha opened it, George started to blush.
She unwrapped the tissue inside the little box, and there was the moonie … just quietly glowing there, pearly and bluish, cool and beautiful. George had given his moonie to Martha.
For a moment, everybody hushed. What was happening? Was George growing up … or breaking up the innocence of the gang? Was he getting older? In fact, he and Martha were just about eleven now...
Anyway, Martha became very quiet but sort of warm and smiling-like and touched George’s arm and wrapped the moonie in a handkerchief, where it too grew warm in her clasp.
And Alex Bell broke the spell …. Hey! George likes Martha … George loves Martha … O … Yeah …. Yeah … Yeah!!!
“Aw, come on, let’s play Kick the Can,” said George, not waiting for an answer but heading for the door.
Outside, all was safe … outside, in the cold air, the game went on at a more rapid pace than usual … George came tearing in one time to kick the can … SPLANG … and the sole came loose under his left shoe and started to flap with every step he took … but the game went on.
And Peter Goldstein captured a few when he was It, and he captured Martha. It was George’s big chance.
Pete was ranging a brave distance from the can, seeking the few remaining free kids, and lightning struck … well, lighting with a flap in it.
George came in moaning low from behind a hedge … flappida … flappida … flappida … flappida!!!
Martha and the other prisoners stood by cheering him in. Then came George, ready to kick that can all the way from Hanukkah to Christmas … flapping lighting!
And just as he started to let it go power-driven at the rumpled tin can, he slipped on the flap of his left shoe, and, like Charlie Brown aiming to kick the football into Kingdom Long-Gone just as Lucy pulls the ball away, George went up in the air and ... THWACK ... fell on the flat of his back, lying there stunned in front of Martha, his love.
Martha bent over as if to pull him up. “George, are you hurt?” came out of her somewhere.
And, as she bent over, she dropped the handkerchief with the moonie in it.
George saw it and raised up on his elbow … “The moon…” He didn’t even finish the word. Instead, now ignoring the moonie, he lay back down, lowered his head to the ground laying there on his back melting in the presence of the Great Thaw … and Martha looked into his eyes … eyes so deep she was afraid she was going to fall into them.
And when everyone saw that George was not really hurt, they started to laugh the way we all do, humor having its gently brutal side, our banana peel humor.
It was the most wonderful game of Kick the Can George and Martha had ever played. If George had been able to put it into words, he might have said, “Christmas is seeing the moon and the stars and Martha, all at once and all together…..”
No, he wouldn't have said that. That Christmas he would only have said (because he did) – "Martha … Martha …" That was enough.
George is grown today and in his middle years. Perhaps he doesn't even remember why it is that every time he sees a game of marbles or watches kids at hide-and-seek, he goes “kinda” limp, and a smile reaches through him from all the way back at the Hanukkah – Christmas party when he was ten going on eleven.
jake wrote
I have a small suspicion that it "George" is really Bob. Maybe I'm crazy, but it sounds like Bob knows both that moonie and George's love for Martha pretty darn well...
Posted on Thu, May 15, 2008