MOGO

I once spent the better part of a summer worshiping a piece of an old toilet.

Once again I'd seen some strange movie about a tribe of strange people in some strange jungle who worshiped some sort of a strange relic or mysterious object.

I was about 10, and Susan was about 9, and of course she was immediately on board as my assistant when the recruiting began. With my pied piper like influence in the neighborhood, our project once again just flew off the ground.

We lived on a dead end street that ended up with a "cow path" that led into a fairly large woods, and if we weren't riding our bikes on the street, or jumping around like monkeys on our pogo sticks, we were in the woods. I was determined to find some object for us to "worship", and after scrounging around the foundation of an old farmhouse, I spied my treasure....a little white porcelain thing that kinda looked like a rounded cross. I rushed over to get Susan's opinion...and was somewhat disappointed when she said " It looks like part of a toilet". I was of course indignant, and disgusted with her brutal assessment. After I convinced her that it just FELT like a toilet she agreed to support my view, and we headed into the woods.

Susan found the perfect spot for our secret society, where we'd be able to hold our rituals and spend our days in service to our false god. As our flock grew, we constructed a shack (of sorts) and dug a hole for our forbidden campfires, and focused on our holy of holies grotto where our little thing-a-ma-jig would dwell.

  Somewhere in my ten year old twisted dreams I came up with a name....for the object that I was now adoring every day....MOGO. Susan loved that from the beginning, and in the blink of an eye had organized the kids into a circle around the fire pit chanting " MOGO MOGO MOGO ".

We collected broken colored glass to decorate the throne, tried to transplant weeds to make our sacred land more hidden, and spent lots of time dancing around like little idiots while we praised and honored MOGO. Now and then we would have a terrifying interruption...as would occur on a semi regular basis when we'd be in the woods.

Our frightening nemesis was always the " Panther Club "....a group of older boys who roamed the same woods and would beat up anyone they happened to encounter. Every once in awhile someone would whisper " the panther club is coming".....and we'd all run home. Now I don't ever remember seeing the actual panthers....I guess it was just kinda the boogeyman that we created.

None the less, we were cautious and always vigilant.

When we finally got tired of MOGO and decided instead to do a big switch-

a-roo and start rehearsals for " The miracle of Our Lady of Fatima ", poor Mogo was abandoned...but one of these days I always think that Susan is going to show up at my door with a little box....with something VERY special inside.