"Gaily bedight,/A gallant knight,/In sunshine and in shadow,/Had journeyed long,/Singing a song,/In search of Eldorado./But he grew old,/This knight so bold,/And o'er his heart a shadow,/Fell as he found,/No spot of ground,/That looked like Eldorado./And, as his strength,/Failed him at length,/He met a pilgrim shadow;/"Shadow," said he,/"Where can it be,/This land of Eldorado?"/"Over the mountains/Of the moon,/Down the Valley of the Shadow,/Ride, boldly ride,"/The shade replied,/"If you seek for Eldorado!"

 

El Dorado

With every row of houses we passed, the excitement in the eggplant van grew more tangible. My cousins and I gleefully pointed out every pretty balcony and every unusual hue, anticipating what our own place would look like. Finally, we cruised to a stop and the van's heavy purple doors slid open, unleashing a flurry of oohs and aahs as my cousins and I slipped out and fawned over the house that was to be our home for the next two weeks.

The house was just a white box with a covered porch and cream-edged windows, everything accented neatly with a faded pair of jumping dolphins at the top. It was not nearly as fancy as some of the luxurious ocean side palaces, nor as nice as most of the other homes that stretched along either side of the wide, flat roads, but it was new and it was charming and it was ours.

I had first heard about the possibility of this house at the end of the school year, when my dad told me that my uncle's family was renting a summer house in Avalon, a typical vacation town in Southern New Jersey. I had been to New Jersey nearly every year of my life, but I had always stayed up in Asbury Park with my Grandma, whose Parkinson's made movement an ordeal. It didn't feel quite right that we were staying somewhere else with so little of the family but when I heard the plans I eagerly embraced a chance to spend some weeks away from my parents and have fun with my cousins Jane, Lucy, and Claire. Now, we were all here at last, any discomfort from hours in the car and the unrelenting heat wiped out by the idea of prospective adventures.

After grabbing our share of luggage from the trunk, we cut across the lawn of smooth stones and clambered through the doors. Dumping our bags and suitcases on the floor and taking in our first view of the first floor's living room and kitchen, Lucy and I glimpsed the pool and rushed out the sliding back doors where the sight of sparkles on crisp, blue water tempered the discomfort of a fresh wave of humidity that came rolling into our faces. The pool took up most of the back yard, its edging rippling close to a plastic white fence. I noticed a shed next to wall and cracked open the door.

"Lucy, come check this out!" I called, my voice muffled by cobwebs and thin wooden walls, "there's a shower in here, and a bike!"

"Sweet, we're gonna have to pull that out, hopefully the guy who owns it doesn't care," she said, peering around the door. 

Of my three cousins, Lucy was closest to my age--we were only a month apart and consequently I was most consistently close with her. Where Lucy was the goofball of the family, Claire was the baby—the most naïve and cheerful--and Jane was the most mature, sometimes more serious and emotional.

We finished exploring the upstairs and scoping out sleeping arrangements and as the day wound to a close, all of us unpacked and slept, content to dream about the days ahead.

Over the next few days different people I had never met came over to stay and visit. One of these was my cousins' cousin, which forced to me confront the idea that, yes, my cousins do have family other than my own. Two other girls who came to visit, the Gorman sisters, had stayed in Avalon before and were already bored with it all, declaring the water too cold to swim and the town too boring to visit.

We scorned their wimpiness. First thing the second day we decided on a beach excursion and Lucy and I managed to pump up the flattened tires of the little bike. With her laboriously pushing the child-size frame and me trying to maintain my ungainly perch on the handlebars, we whizzed (or wobbled) gleefully past the others down to the ocean. After that we managed to rent a couple more bikes and would ride them all the way up the sand before running down the shore to eagerly embrace the icy water (if only for a few minutes). We boogey boarded and even learned to surf, riding the biggest rolling waves in until their churning foam ground us into the sand.

At night we took shopping or movie trips into town, riding our bikes through the dark and the stars in our short summer dresses. We rode downtown for grocery market snack stops, passing packs of teens lounging on benches or in front of Wawa's. Occasionally one would throw out a lazy "ey, where the party at?" and we would turn our heads and laugh into the night as we cruised by, returning the question. We escaped into the dusk and stared into the expanses of black night, and dark water, and gleaming sand, suddenly tentative when faced with the churning of the solid black water that gripped our legs with cold and salt.

In many ways this routine mirrored the childhood we had spent in Asbury Park, swimming and adventuring. It was not really the same, though. Not only were the people I was staying with different, the places were different, the stores and restaurants and landmarks that defined the atmosphere were changed and we could never quite get the originals out of our head. One such original was Wizard's World. Every summer spent in Asbury my cousins and I used to trek to Wizard's World Arcade: our veritable Shangri La of bargain-basement games and plastic prizes. The games lined the walls in all their dusty vibrancy, filling the background with muffled beeps and spitting strips of orange tickets into our impatient hands. We would lean on the front counter and peer at the trinkets laid out behind glass panes.

And there they were. There, among Tootsie Rolls and Airheads, beaded rings and buildable planes, there lay the basket that truly mattered. Handfuls of little yellow figures shaped in the simplified silhouette of man always lay in that blue basket, each one with a black smiley face imprinted on their round heads. These little toys held a strange fascination for the cousins. In the lights of the arcade, in the sun of New Jersey, in the brightness of childhood, that squishy yellow flesh may as well have been gold. We dubbed them: "smiley guys."

It's not that we didn't appreciate the other prizes. We just had a strangely intense compulsion to get our hands on as many smileys as possible. One time I was finishing up a bowling game, proud of my ten tickets. Claire and my brother, Ben, who had always had an affectionate connection, endearing and slightly comical considering their six-year age difference, were struggling with a game in the corner. I finished up my own game, tearing off my tickets, when I heard Claire shriek. Running over, I saw the delight on her face as orange tickets came churning out of the slot in a steady stream, folding over each other in long strips as they hit the ground. She (or rather Ben) had hit the jackpot and now had at least a hundred tickets. She folded them all up and, like a hunter with a prize kill, presented them triumphantly at the counter, where she proceeded to buy out every smiley guy they had. 

            There was too much to explore in New Jersey and the smiley guys weren't truly interesting enough to really hold our childhood attention for long, but in the midst of our escapades we always had a couple tucked in our pocket or clutched in our hand. We would stretch their skinny little arms to the breaking point and fling them against walls and ceilings where they would stick. It seemed to us that they would cling there forever, looking down from their permanent new residence with black mouths curved ever upwards in unwavering optimism.

            That was then. In Avalon, in this new house, we were many miles away from the ruins of Wizard's World and at sixteen, seventeen, eighteen and nineteen, many years away from the children we were. But still we yearned for the little figures, every year conversation inevitably coming back to our escapades with smiley guys. We made it our mission to find some again.

One day, about a week into the vacation, we all went off to a nearby amusement park in a town just outside of Avalon. We walked along the boardwalk that stretched between the roller coasters, looking at the shops lining either side.

"Arcade, ten o'clock!" Claire said. I followed her and Lucy inside as they weaved through pinball machines and candy claws but turned around almost immediately when I saw the disappointment on their faces: no smiley guys. We continued on down the street, checking every arcade we passed but had no luck. We gave up for the day and just enjoyed the roller coasters that looped and twirled against the backdrop of pink-tinged clouds and a setting sun.

Somewhere between our house and the downtown was a "water wars" place, just a tiny thing somehow shoved between a bar and a clothing store. We didn't really care about the place itself--we were used to the heat and had an ocean and a pool to cool off in for free. What caught our eye, though, was the booth at the front that awarded prizes to the winners, prizes that could, possibly, include smiley guys. Whenever we drove past it we made it our mission to go there and check it out. One day we did—we grabbed the bikes and were off, weaving from side to side over the sunny roads. Lucy and I rode the rented bikes, leaving Claire pedaling behind, looking like a little girl on the miniature one. It wasn't far and when we got to the corner we propped our bikes up (knowing no one would steal them here) and approached the stand where two guys were sitting behind the counter, bored and sweating.

            "Do you guys have any little yellow guys? They're rubber. With smiley faces?" Lucy asked, excited.

            "Uh, we definitely had some but not anymore," one of them said.

            Oh. Ok. Disappointed, we wheeled our bikes back to the road and started home. But at least we had a lead, a thread that we hoped we could follow back to those childhood days.

Over the next week, whenever we made a trip to Hoy's or the supermarket we would ride up onto the sidewalk when we got close to the water place and call out—asking whether they had any smileys yet. Always, they replied with an unfazed "no" and we'd roll on without pause. One time we actually went up to them and starting asking them when they would have them again, where they came from, the name of the company who made them.

"Look if you really want them that bad, there's a bunch stuck to that thing," one of them said, pointing to a wooden sign on stilts twenty-five feet away, advertizing the place.

"Seriously? Why the hell didn't you tell us that sooner!?" Claire asked, half joking, as we ran over. We darted around to the other side of the sign and saw them. Hundred of little yellow men stuck to the faded wood, the wood that seemed just too high to reach. For a few seconds we stood still and silent, mouths agape, squinting through the sun at the little yellow guys we had not seen in years. And then something snapped. At once we all started yelling and laughing, proclaiming our happiness and our frustration. Claire hopped up the green picnic table and clambered onto Lucy's shoulders, her arms upraised. I grabbed my bag and scrambled through it, grabbing two half-empty water bottles. While Lucy wavered and wobbled, trying to hold steady while Claire stretched, up, up, up, I hefted the water bottle and lofted it towards the sign. The bottle soared up in smooth arc, the water sparkling as it caught the sunlight, and collided with the sign and a smiley guy. And then dropped to the ground, unaccompanied. Again I grabbed the water bottle and heaved it up, up, this time with more force, and it smashed into old wood once again. And it once again dropped to the ground with nothing. Over and over I picked up the bottle and launched it at the wall as passerby's stared curiously at our antics and the guys at the stand tilted their plastic chairs forward a few inches to see what we were up to.

 I looked around for something, anything to use to knock them down. My glance swept over the street and came back. There, almost invisible against the grey asphalt, I saw little spots, matte against the sun glinting off the dark street. I bent down, picked one up, and screamed.

            "It's them! You guys get over here they're all over the street!" I cried, grabbing handfuls of soft rubber. I couldn't believe it--we had finally found some after so long. They were, for some reason, black, but they were still ours…

            Claire clambered off of Lucy's shoulders and they rushed over, bending down next to me and grabbing fistfuls of the blackened men. We carried them back to the bikes, exclaiming over their darkened state, but determined to get home, to wash them off.

            Pedaling as fast as we could we finally made it the five blocks back and jumped off, leaving our bikes twisted on the gravel drive-way. We ran inside, banging the doors, screaming for Jane to get over here, that we had found them. Jane, wide-eyed, came swinging around the corner and we made it to the counter, where we dumped our catch onto the granite.

And it was all wrong. Every one was mangled, scorched black by exhaust, or flames, or dirt. We grabbed some, running them under water where some of the blackness rubbed away to reveal the dull yellow below. But was it worth the effort? They weren't even shaped right: bodies too skinny, heads too small. We stared uneasily at the pile of twisted memories, unsure now what we had planned to do with these things once we got them. Our bubbling excitement fell flat, fading to sadness and unease.

            Nothing was the same.

            Everything was gone.

Our innocence was gone. Once, our adventures, sneaking around hotels and arcades, breaking rules and elevators and smiley guys, seemed to be just childhood mischief. Now our escapades, though just as fun, had taken on an almost sinister tone--tinged with teenage angst and recklessness.

My brother was gone. My brother was no longer the young boy with the easy smile who gave all his arcade tickets to his little cousin. And my brother wasn't here. He didn't even come to New Jersey.

The condo was gone. The Rubin brothers, my uncles, had sold it. The brothers had sold the apartment in Asbury that was my home away from home. They had sold the core of my childhood, the place which housed, up there next to the boxes of stale cereal, endless happy memories. They had sold it and it was now forever locked to me.

Wizard's world was gone.

Two of my cousins weren't here.

Uncle Peter was divorcing.

Grandpa was dead.

And the gold of our smiley guys had tarnished.

But no, these weren't our smiley guys--true gold can't tarnish. To find the real thing we didn't have to search every arcade, every shop, every town; we only had to turn inwards, where a little lump of squishy gold would forever be tucked away in some jeans pocket or stuck to some ceiling in the back of our mind. Anything we tried to find outside of that either didn't exist or could only be a corrupted imitation.

Though we had searched and searched for something else, we had actually been having the most fun on this vacation than we'd had in a long time; we had been ready for change all along. We always have our memories. And we have now, we have each other. We have endless opportunities for new experiences and new traditions to grow from the old ones.

Without speaking, we turned our backs on them--we left these blackened imposters in the sink and together stepped outside to greet the Jersey sun.