Swinging on a Star

Two ten year old boys are pedaling their bikes north from Mt. Prospect, Illinois in the summer of 1944.  Their moms aren't worried about them as traffic is almost nonexistent.  Today that same road is clogged with honking cars, growling trucks, and the occasional motorcycle.  The warm air cools a little and a sparse sprinkling begins—ignored by the boys.

The flat prairie land moves slowly by as they approach their destination—a meandering creek feeds a pond not far off the side of the road.  In 1944's pre-television quiet, these boys have very different ideas from today's kids on how to have fun.  For these bikers, creeks and ponds are high on the list of fun things to do.

Would you like to swing on a star?

They dismount, wheel their bikes away from the side of the road, and get out the jars they've brought along for their hunt.  They're looking for tadpoles.  Call them polliwogs if you will—they're really the first post-egg form of a developing frog.  To catch them, you have to be quiet and stealthy.  Sometimes whole schools of them can be found near the side of a pond and a swift scooping with strainer into a large jar can capture a bunch of them at once.

The boys think life is perfect as they hunt.  They've heard about terrible things happening in other parts of the world, but their world—the here and now of 1944 Illinois—is a picture of peace and enjoyment.

 Carry moonbeams home in a jar?

They head home with their jars of squirming, nascent amphibians.  Back down the same long flat road toward their homes.  Their moms aren't too happy with their new pets with good reasons.  How will you feed them?  You can't expect them to survive in a jar with a screw-on lid.  It's hard to argue with a mom on these matters, and she plays on their attachment to the little swimmers.  Soon the kids are convinced the nicest thing they could do for the tadpoles is to release them in a nearby pond.

And be better off than you are?

Dejected, they start toward a pond a few blocks away.  They had hoped to keep them long enough to see the little frog legs grow out from the bodies right by their stringy tails.  Not this time—not this bunch of tadpoles.  One of the boys said, "Mom's right, we can't keep them," and as the jar's contents splashed into the pond, the tadpoles happily swam away, refreshed, free, restored to their element.

So you see, it's all up to you

You could be better than you are

You could be swinging on a star.

 

Les Inglis

 

With thanks to Bing Crosby, Jimmy Van Huesen, Johnny Burke, and a kid I used to know