“I can’t believe all this,” she admitted.  “It’s just surreal.  Like it’s someone else.”  

Sandy turned towards the scenery and away from her husband, fearing if she stared too long at him she’d cry.  The overlook where they’d pulled over in the new Buick provided an expansive view she hoped would put things in perspective.

Her husband leaned against the rear flank of the new Green Mist Buick Roadmaster convertible and lit a Chesterfield while his wife gathered herself.  Where they were standing befuddled him as much as it did her, but he was more adept at concealing it.  After a moment she turned back towards him.  “We’d best go or we’ll be late.”  She moved towards the passenger door, but didn’t make it past him.

“Do you think they’ll start without us?” Chuck whispered.  Then he grabbed her and kissed her, his tongue darting into her mouth unexpectedly.  Seemed like the natural thing to do; they’d done it a dozen years earlier in this very spot.  That time they were seniors at Jim Bowie High.  They’d dated a while, but were saving themselves for marriage, waiting till he finished college.  Then get married and live the American dream.  Right there in Fort Stockton.  He’d get a degree in history, come back and teach at the high school they’d met at.

Turns out the whole ‘waiting’ thing was a lot tougher than they thought it was going to be.

After the Homecoming dance they’d met friends in the parking lot of the Dairy Twin to keep the party going.  One of them, Dale Hempstead, brought a couple bottles of liquor from his dad’s cabinet.  Four Roses bourbon.  Chuck still remembered the label on the bottle.  The aroma inside.  And certainly the effect it had.  Feeling no pain, the two of them crawled into the front seat of his dad’s DeSoto and drove up to the same overlook.  Then they crawled into the back seat.

Remembering something a friend had told her about not being able to get pregnant the very first time you had sex, the resistance she put up was more for show than substance.  While she was whispering ‘No!’ in a muted voice, she was unzipping Chuck’s pants  and sliding them down to his knees.  They say actions speak louder than words.  His Fruit of the Looms being tugged down to his ankles spoke much louder than anything Sandy whispered.  A month later she was chastising her best friend during gym class for peddling faulty physiology and preparing to tell her parents to plan for a quick wedding.  

Chuck’s plans for college and a history degree gave way to renting a single wide mobile home out at the Modern Manors Trailer Village and a job at the plant where his dad worked.  He started at the bottom.  Moving out of the trailer or up at the plant was not a forgone conclusion.

Two more kids followed.  The American Dream turned into a bit of a sleepwalk.  Playing with the progeny beside the trailer, Chuck thought back to his days studying history and somehow remember the Romans and their use of plumbata, basically weighted spikes thrown from a distance meaning to land in something soft.  Like an enemy.  A Budweiser or three later, it dawned on him that the weapon of the Romans might just be the perfect family game of the 50s.  He took the spiral notebook out of the back pocket of his Wranglers, sketched a few small drawings on it and had another beer.

That Saturday Chuck woke up early and stumbled out to the kitchen where Sandy was already one Chesterfield and a half pot of Folgers ahead of him.  How long you been up?” he asked her.

She got up and headed over to the stove, grabbing a fry pan from the cabinet.  “Maybe an hour.  Sometimes I just come out and enjoy the silence.”  He poured a cup of coffee and grabbed her ass, still firm and shapely after three kids.  “Don’t forget, you gotta fix the bathroom sink today or the water bill will be higher than the rent this month.”

Of course he’d forgotten all about it, but reached into his back pocket and pulled out the spiral to make a list of what he’d need from the Rusty Hammer Hardware Store to fix the leak.  Hoping he’d remembered everything, he made his way out to the ol’ ’52 Ford Mainline sedan and headed to the hardware store before the kids woke up and demanded to go with him, turning a 20 minute trip into an hour and a half long torture.

On his drive into town Chuck could see the spot off in the distance where the dastardly deed was done in the DeSoto that diverted plans for a different life.  It was bittersweet every time he passed it.  “Everything happens for a reason,” he muttered under his breath.

Once at the Rusty Hammer, Chuck poured a cup of the free coffee near the register, right next to the nail bin, and pulled out the spiral pad from his back pocket.  On the back of the page of plumbing supplies were the sketches from the yard.  Studying the drawings in a more sober state, he jotted down a list of additional supplies to see if his idea could work.

When Chuck pulled the Ford back into the gravel driveway all three kids ran out greeted him with dramatic indignation.  He slipped each one a piece of bubblegum, their compensation for being left behind.  He made short work of the bathroom sink repair, a job he could’ve easily stretched out to an hour or two if he didn’t want to tackle the possibilities of the yard game he’d come up with.  That afternoon, kids buzzing around him like gnats, Chuck cobbled up the basic design he’d sketched.  It really didn’t change significantly thereafter.

When Sandy stepped out the door to tell him the King Ranch casserole had just come out of the oven she was nearly hit by a stray yard dart Little Chuck had thrown, the sharp metal spear missing its circular tubing target by a good ten feet.  “What the hell, Chuck?”

“Can you believe how far they sail through the air?  Even further than I’d a thought!” Her husband excitedly replied.

“What if that thing had landed on my foot?  Or THROUGH my foot?” Sandy asked.

“They have to have enough weight to stick firmly in the ground, or the game wouldn’t work.  They’re darts, but for the yard!” Chuck said enthusiastically.  But she was gone, back in the trailer tending to the casserole and making of pitcher of sweet tea, completely missing the monumental moment that would have nearly as big of an effect on their lives as a bottle of Four Roses had a dozen years earlier.

Staying at the plant after work and going in to the plant on Sunday afternoons after church, Chuck made test samples of Yard Darts for family and friends, then enough to fill a small display at the Rusty Hammer. He eventually eventually got Burt at over at the Ben Franklin to add a display as well, causing a minor rift with Rusty at the hardware store.  Over a couple years’ time Chuck sold enough Yard Darts for he and Sandy to eventually buy a three bedroom, two bath ranch in the new Roadrunner Estates subdivision south of town.  The real payday came a few years later when a major toy company got wind of Yard Darts.  Chuck had been insightful enough to patent the idea.  Their purchase of the patent and the rights to produce Yard Darts on a national scale brought wealth beyond anything either he or Sandy could ever have imagined.

A gift to himself, the green Buick convertible was the first big purchase Chuck made after landing the deal.  Special ordering the ragtop from Stockton Buick-International Harvester, the Roadmaster was one of the most expensive automobiles in Fort Stockton.  Not  a Cadillac, but more expensive than some the the lower end ‘Standards-of-the-World’.  He’d picked it up only the week before he and Sandy found themselves on the lookout where their lives had taken the first turn.  Chuck insisted they stop at the lookout on their way to the Rotary Club Man-of-the-Year Dinner at the Silver Slipper Super Club.  The guy who never went to college and the girl who wasn’t allowed to walk the stage at graduation because she was ‘showing’ were seated at the head table with Mayor Goodman and all the town dignitaries after pulling up in a brand new special ordered Buick.

That may have been the pinnacle.  A peak reached too early, some later said.  By 1986 an estimated 6,100 hospital emergency room  injuries had been recorded, 81 percent of them being children under the age of 15.  Two children actually died.  The father of one of them, David Snow, became a one man army to have Yard Darts outlawed.

In 1988 the Consumer Product Safety Commission banned the manufacture and sale of Yard Darts.  Though Chuck had nothing to do with any of the controversy at that point, having sold the rights, he was consumed by guilt having been the one to invent the game.  Having kept the Roadmaster in the garage and even restoring it in the early 90s, he and Sandy would occasionally take the grandkids to the Dairy Twin for a soft serve cone and then drive out to the overlook and remember times in the same spot that had impacted them in ways they’d never dreamed of.  Same spot, different peaks scaled before tallies that followed.

Yard Darts and Roadmasters both seemed right for the times in the 50s.  It was only years later folks looked back and wondered to themselves, “What the hell were they thinking?”