H
ey, I wanted to see ‘Peanuts,’ Ronnie,” Chris said as we retrieved our unfinished watercolor paintings from their storage slots, and took our seats around the art desk.

For several days, I had been reading a paperback collection of Charles Schultz’s earliest comic strip panels, bringing the books with me to class. Chris Dendy had been thumbing through one of them the previous day when the bell rang at the end of the period.

“I’ll bring it tomorrow, Chris.”

“I want to borrow the one with Snoopy as the flying ace, battling the Red Baron,” he said.

“You won’t find von Richthofen’s flight plan in a comic strip,” Alan Milford said, looking back over his shoulder as he filled a small dish with water.

“Richthofen?” Chris said. “I don’t get it.”

“Manfred von Richthofen,” Alan said as he took his seat at our table, and pulled out a short plastic tray of watercolor paints. “The Red Baron was his nickname.”

“Well excuse me, Mr. Antiquity,” Chris said. “When I’m in my history class, I’ll memorize names and dates, but not in art class.”

The class assignment was watercolor painting on a transportation theme. Alan was working on a picture of a motorcycle race. Chris was painting a antique biplane. I was busy with my version of the Starship Enterprise hurtling through space.

“Alan, if you’re so smart,” Chris said, “why did they call him the Red Baron anyway?”

“Well, the plane he flew—which had three pairs of wings, by the way—was painted bright red,” Alan said.

Alan had noticed Chris’ interest in biplanes, and often joked with him during class, telling him he was living in the past. Chris was fascinated with aviation in general, and often checked out library books with photos of vintage aircraft.

“You know they have enclosed fuselages nowadays,” Alan teased.

“Yeah,” Chris said, “but the open cockpit makes it so much easier to step out for wing walking.”

Chris recognized that Alan often got the better of him when they traded jokes and barbs, but never hesitated to engage him. The banter seemed to energize both of them.

“What’s wing walking?” Bob Norton asked, looking up from his painting.

“Haven’t you ever seen old films of wing walkers?” Chris said. “Back in the early days of aviation, pilots used to climb out of the cockpit, and walk along the wings of their planes.”

“Why would anybody do that?” Bob asked.

“Same reason they flew through open barns,” Alan said. “They were all ‘plane crazy.’”

“Oh, very funny,” Chris said. “Plane as in ‘aeroplane.’ I get it. I get it.”

Alan and Chris were always trying to have the last word, and their spirited exchanges often made me laugh. Chris struck me as more the clown, with his expressive face and broad humor, always looking for a laugh. Alan was more cerebral in his humor, and often engaged in clever word play that made Chris the brunt of the joke. Chris would listen to all this for only so long, at which point he would deliver a karate chop to Alan’s arm, or pretend to strangle him where he sat.

Bob and I would mostly sit and watch their antics, although I often added my 2¢. Bob was the quiet one in the group, and I often thought he must be even shier than me. If the others at the table fell into broad laughter, Bob often would just smile and look down at his artwork, as though he were embarrassed to make eye contact.

Recognizing his shyness, the rest of us were very surprised when Bob came in a few weeks later with a funny story about his experience at a local carnival where he said he saw a live mermaid.

“Give me a break,” Chris said. “A live mermaid?”

Bob seemed embarrassed, and looked down at the desk for a few seconds. “That was just the name of the sideshow,” he said. “I know it wasn’t really a mermaid. But she looked pretty in the picture hanging by the entrance. It only cost a quarter to get in, so I thought I’d have a look.”

Bob went on to describe the exhibit. After paying their admission, he and several other carnival goers were directed through a doorway beside a large painted sign that read, “See the Live Mermaid.” Inside, behind a thick glass wall—ostensibly under water—the life-size mermaid appeared to be asleep, hands folded across her chest, leaning back in the top half of a huge fake clamshell. The pretty young woman’s costume consisted principally of a huge fish tail that curled majestically around the bottom of the clamshell. The midway barker spent several minutes recounting the history of mermaids, and how this one had been captured. Bob said that during all this speech, the mermaid didn’t move a muscle.

“Don’t tell me you honestly thought it was a real mermaid,” Chris said.

“I didn’t say that,” Bob replied. “I said she was pretty, but she was lying there so still, I wasn’t sure she was alive. So I asked the man, ‘Are you sure that’s not a wax dummy?’

“At that exact moment, she opened her eyes…almost as if she somehow could hear me through the plate-glass window, under all that water.”

“Obviously the woman in the mermaid costume was not under water,” Alan said.

“Well, yeah,” Bob said. “Nobody could hold their breath that long.”

“That’s not what I mean,” Alan said. “If she had really been under water, she couldn’t have heard you asking the sideshow guide if she was made of wax.”

Bob hesitated for a moment, saying nothing. I couldn’t quite tell if he was blushing. It was unusual to see him drawn so actively into our conversation. He seemed embarrassed, but a moment later he continued his story.

“I asked the man, ‘Can she blow bubbles?’” Bob said. “He didn’t say anything for a minute. I noticed that several kids were just leaving the exhibit, and the man waited until they reached the exit door. Then he leaned down close to me and whispered, ‘For 50¢, my good man, you can see a little more of the pretty mermaid.’”

Laugher erupted around the art table.

“That sideshow of yours sounds more like a peep show to me,” Alan said.

“What did you do?” Chris asked.

Bob hesitated for a moment, looking down at his watercolor.

“Come on, Bob, don’t leave us wiggling on the hook,” Alan urged.

“Well,” Bob said, “I reached into my pocket, pulled out two quarters and handed them to him. Then the barker gave a hand signal to the mermaid, and she lowered the top of her fish tail costume—the part that covered—that covered her…”

“Cleavage!” Chris said, slapping his hand on the table.

“Her bosom,” Alan said.

“But all you could see was a layer of fishnet fabric,” Bob said.

We roared with laughter at our friend’s “fish tale,” and for weeks, we teased Bob about his mermaid. At the end of the semester, I signed his yearbook with a mermaid graphic I had fashioned from the letters of his last name.