Transformation (a short story)

By Richard Friswell

All day long I dreamed of what I would do when I got home. School, recess, lunch and homework were small obstacles on my way to the adventure that awaited me each day, just a few backyards away from my own.

I would not allow for any distractions- the Brooklyn Dodgers-Yankees game droning on Mr. Hill’s radio just inside his open kitchen window on the walk home from school; the household chores that always awaited me there; my heavily-perfumed Aunt Ethel, sitting at our kitchen table drinking pale tea out of a too-fancy cup and eating Lemon Coolers, dusted with white confectionary sugar that stuck to my face when she kissed me.

I was on a mission! I ran to my room where I strapped on my guns (matching 6-shooters with white pearl handles), pulled on my boots, cocked my cowboy hat jauntily to one side of my head and, hopping on my red Schwinn Hornet complete with handlebar streamers, I galloped off to… THE WOODS.

Entering the woods held all the transformative power of a magic spell for me. I left the boy behind and became the western hero of my Saturday morning, grainy, black and white television world. This place was filled with all the props a hero needed: rocky outcroppings; low-slung tree limbs for spying over the ridge; bad guys just around the bend; the forbidden railroad tracks bordering the woods that rumbled with the clattery sounds of late-night freight trains. But as dusk settled in, even busy cowboys keep an ear tuned for the dinner bell and a brisk gallop home to the chuck wagon on ‘Charger’.

I remember lying in my bed late each night, listening wide-eyed to the mournful whistle of the Boston and Maine locomotive as it crept along the moonlit rails, ever imagining the dangers my cowboy hero would have to confront tomorrow…


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