© 2014
Back in fourth grade we went on a field trip to the Helms bakery plant. Helms delivered fresh bread to your door, like the milkman. You saw those boxy Helms trucks everywhere and sometimes, like the Good Humor ice cream trucks, they'd show up on your street, while you were playing football. One time this little rich kid, Lugo, stopped the Helms truck and he bought something called a "cream puff". They cost a lot, like a month of allowances, like more than ten D.C. comics, so I'd never experienced a cream puff before. But from the look of sheer ecstasy on Lugo's face, I could tell they were really good.
"Come on, Lugo, let's go... finish your cookie, we gotta game goin' here..."
But Lugo didn't hear us, he was like in this altered state, eyes closed, completely consumed with experiencing every little morsel, chewing slower than a toothless grandma, stopping to lick his fingers, to wipe his lips with a thumbnail and suck the crumbs off; there wasn't an atom wasted.
When Lugo was finally done, he got up and said, "Oh man... I can't play anymore... that was just too good... it was too good..." and he went traipsing off in his own little food induced dreamland.
That day I decided to save up and get a cream puff. It happened the following summer, the year before Gail and the Beatles, when life was simple and a boy could just burp and spit and roll in the dirt without a care. Anyway, a bunch of us were at The Park playing baseball when a Helms truck pulled up and stopped. Normally they would drive by slowly, looking for someone waving to them, looking for business, but this time he stopped and parked, almost like he knew, like it was fate.
"Time out", I shouted. "Here, Reggie, hold my mitt, I gotta go do something."
I intended to pull a Lugo. I sprinted to the Helms truck. My friends were yelling, "Hey! What's he doin'? You can't just stop, I'm up. Aw... forget about him."
I scrounged through my pockets and pulled out the lucre, a fist full of gleaming and grimy quarters. The Helms man opened the back of his boxy truck and pulled out this long shelf filled with gorgeous pastries ladled with chocolates and caramels and creams and icings.
"I want a cream puff," I said.
"Ah... a cream puff man," he replied.
I didn't know there were 'cream puff men'; it felt like a special club.
And then, there it was, on a piece of wax paper, the size of a softball, my cream puff. The outside was this golden tan flaky crust that had little sparkles in it. I didn't know about the inside yet. I gave the man all my money. Whoever said, "The best things in life are free" was about to get a serious argument.
"Thanks," I said, and I bolted off, cream puff cradled like a baby bird in my palms, away from the ballfield and into a glen where we had The Cave, a clearing between the endless sumac bushes.
I set myself down and inspected the pastry ball, turning it over slowly, careful not to lose a crumb. I smelled it, 'ah... it's so fresh.' Then I took my first nibble, the crust was heavenly, soft but flaky, it melted in my mouth into a million little crusts dissolving onto my tastebuds, flooding flavor onto my tongue. Now, some filling; it was colored an off-white with golden hues. I took a little bite, some crust and filling. "Ohmygod... I have never... how do they do this?" The filling was rich and sweet, it was like they turned the most delicious flavor into a creamy cloud, it flowed around your tongue causing explosions of goodness as it went. It was like eating the breath of God, light but substantial, and you can't get enough.
I understood Lugo, now.
For what seemed like an eternity that went by all too quickly, I sat in the glen, in The Cave, nibbling on and experiencing the best thing I had ever tasted in my life, sucking my fingers clean, licking the wax paper, pulling a Lugo.
