KICKAPOO JOY JUICE

When I was five years young my family moved into a crumpled shack in Kickapoo, Illinois. The town had no formal or legal name. It was a collection of shacks, shanties and lean-tos huddled together near the headwaters of Kickapoo Creek, halfway between Dogpatch and East Peoria.



These were the idle days of my youth. I had few worries. I had no idea the world was in the grip of a devastating depression. I spent most of my wintry days sipping hot sassafras tea by the wood fire. My summer days were spent lolling about in the woodland shade sipping on iced sassafras tea.

Kickapoo was the sassafras capital of Illinois. There were a multitude of sassafras trees scattered around Kickapoo. But they were almost impossible to approach by motorized vehicles. Although the roots of young sassafras saplings were highly prized by Root Beer Companies and Sarsparilla Bottlers, our area was too labor intensive to attract the large contractors. So, our fertile area, replete with the highly prized root-of-the-beer remained virtually un-mined and virginal.

Sassafras tea was brewed from the roots of young saplings or the bark of older trees. It was so readily available it was the mainstay of our small community. Technically it was called sassafras tea, but we called it "Kickapoo Joy Juice".

In the halcyon summer of my fifth year, while lolling in the shade of a spreading sassafras tree and nonchalantly sipping my cold tea, I was approached by my older brother. "You're in big trouble!" he announced.

"Why so?" I replied.

"Don't play the innocent with me," he said.

"Look, Len," I pleaded. "You can vouch for me. If anything bad has happened it was that Hoke boy from across the creek. He's always causing trouble."

"You can't blame this one on Ernie Hoke," he said. "I'm standing right here watching you commit the crime."

"Say what?"

"You're drinking Kickapoo Joy Juice," he said, "and you're not 21."

"I turned 21 yesterday," I announced defiantly.

"You can't be 21," he said. "I just turned 21 this week myself and you're a year younger than me."

"I think you're hallucinating, Len. You turned 21 more than a year ago as I recall."

"I guess I know my own age," said Len.

"Actually," I said, "You are only six. And I am only five."

"Go ahead," he said, "get technical."

"Also," I added, "there is no alcohol in Sassafras. No caffeine. No tannic acid. No bad stuff. Why would you have to be 21 to drink it?"

"If you call it tea," Len said, "then I think it's OK. But if you call it root beer you're in trouble. You must be 21 to drink any kind of beer."

"Sounds reasonable," I said. "Anyway, what's the big deal? I've been drinking this stuff since I was knee-high to a stunted pup and nobody ever said a word. Why is it so important right now?"

"Because you took the last glass of tea and there's none left for me. Now," he added, "I'm going to beat the sassafras right out of you!"

I walked slowly around him, measuring him carefully. "About four feet long," I muttered to myself, "and two feet wide. A foot and a half deep. I should be able to dig a grave that size in fifteen minutes."

We both screamed epithets and charged. One of our semi-weekly battles ensued. We managed to roll around in the dirt, collect a few abrasions and bruises and insult each others ancestors. Then we realized we were insulting the same ancestors.

In later years we became more than brothers. We became best friends. We both looked back on our formative years and wondered if Kickapoo Joy Juice hadn't somehow addled our brains.

"What do you think?" Len asked. "Do you think there was something in the sassafras root that caused us to be mentally disturbed?"

"Nah," I said. "It's genetic."