Christie, Debbie, David and Mel

I used to work in a little restaurant making pizzas when I was a teenager. In the short time I worked there, I got to know kids from school in a different environment. I began to learn what real friendships were made of.

The girl I had a crush on worked there. She was a flute player in band and was two years ahead of me in high school. I was able to talk to her and get to know her more than I would have staring at her from across the band room in school. I remember she would always take time to talk to me on breaks. She was so down to earth and accepting of me that the fact that she didn’t consider me as boyfriend material didn’t seem to hurt. At least not in her presence, but that just might be the symptoms of a crush. That was one relationship that I treasure because I realize I had friendship with her.

Another girl left the impression with me of being a bit stuck up. She seemed rather snippy with me on a regular basis. I thought she was beautiful, but when she spoke to me, it totally ruined any pleasant effect.

That began to change one day when we were working the same shift one hot summer day. We had so many pizza orders that the manager asked this supposedly stuck up girl, Debbie, to help me put the pizzas together. The radio was playing and everyone was so bogged down with the business, that we turned the station to listen to “our” music instead of “elevator music”.

Debbie and I made pizzas and began singing with the radio. She turned to me and asked me if I liked all of REO Speedwagon’s songs. I told her I did.

The most beautiful smile broke out on her face as she began to tell me how REO always seemed to cheer her up. We talked about the band and she showed me in one of their songs some obscure lyrics that were only heard by real REO fans. I reciprocated by telling her of the Rolling Stones’ song “You Make A Grown Man Cry”.

It seems that Debbie was a bit of a partier, which was something I hadn’t begun to dabble in at that time, because I hadn’t had my heart broken by a certain cute brunette yet. (See “Marrwage, Marrwage Is the Weason We Are Gathered Here Today” October 5, 2004) After that, Debbie was a lot nicer to me. We had found some common ground.

In this small town I lived in, I found that liking and knowing about certain rock bands was a ticket into an inner circle of many partier groups. There were Rush fans, Styx fans, Kiss fans, Led Zeppelin fans, and Black Sabbath fans. I also discovered that playing “Stairway To Heaven” was a good icebreaker with any party girl…but I digress.

David was my friend even before I worked at the restaurant. He was the owner’s son. His dad later became the mayor of the town, but David was always the same. He was one of the first computer geeks, but I don’t think he became rich from it.

When the girl I had a crush on (Christie) quit, another girl took her place that I had been introduced to by a good friend who was also a preacher’s kid in the same denomination as mine. This girl’s name was Melanie. I used to call her Mel.

Mel was drop dead gorgeous and a Christian girl that every Christian mom prays for to be set aside for her son. I was a friend with her right off, but I never was as gone on her as I was on Christie. She and I did more things together. She played bass in her daddy’s southern gospel band, and she used to like to jam with me. One time she even invited me to go see Hall And Oates at the Lansing Civic Center.

Another thing, she drove a 1967 Mustang. It was maroon and a ragtop. I think I was as taken by her car in some respects as her. I’ve always wanted one since.

One time, Mel’s family band played at our church, and they let me play one of my own songs with Mel and the drummer. That whet my desire to be a performing musician. I think I even surprised my parents a little bit.

So whatever happened to those people?

I saw Christie once or twice after her graduation. She was married not long after that. The one time I remember best was when I helped her push the stroller with her new baby in it as we talked. She was always nice to me. I will always remember her fondly.

Debbie died in an auto accident not long after I graduated from high school. Mom sent me the clipping and I’m sure I still have it in my school stuff. My last and best memory of her was making the pizzas with her and singing with the radio.

David kind of faded out of my life and I’m not sure what he’s doing now.

Mel married while I was in the Air Force and had several children, but I never actually saw her again. Mel, if you’re out there, drop me a line, e-mail or something.

These people are a special part of me because I allowed them to be. I didn’t let the initial irritation of Debbie stop me from knowing her. I’m glad. If ever I were to see these people again, I’m sure I could pick up as if I’d never been away, and fairly easily. I would hope so.

Thank you, Christie, Debbie, David, and Mel!

Fish and Occasional Torture

I lived down south for a year when I was in second grade. Dad was pastor of a little country church. The church was set back about a hundred yards from the two-lane highway that ran through the small town. We lived in a doublewide mobile home behind the church.

Our stay was from summer to summer that school year. It was my first experience with culture shock since I was a northern boy. I enjoyed listening to people speak with a southern accent. I can remember being asked if I was from up north. I said “yes.” They told me they could tell from my accent. Funny, I was sure all the people in town were the ones with the accent.

This was the time when baby sister was not expected until the final summer of our living down there. That summer was more eventful in several ways than the whole year up to that time. My brother the bold one was my constant shadow and baby brother was learning to walk with the bruises on his head from falling against the furniture to show for it. Baby brother was probably seven years old before he took a formal picture without sporting a head wound.

Well, this last summer, Mom and Dad bought us a membership at the public swimming pool where we could go swimming every day and all we had to do was tell the teenager at the desk our membership number. My bold brother and I were allowed to go together without adult supervision to the pool. I was to keep an eye on him, but they had a couple lifeguards on duty at all times, so I didn’t think anything of it.

I was eight years old and my brother was four. He would go back and forth between the warm wading pool and the big pool where I always played. On this day, he had a friend who brought an air mattress to play with in the pool. This friend would let him float on the mattress from time to time.

When this friend was called by his mother to go home, he called to my brother to get off the mattress and give it back. Bold brother didn’t (or wouldn’t) hear him. In desperation, he jumped in the pool and chased after the mattress as it was heading toward me and deeper water. This kid caught the mattress and flipped my brother off into water that was over his head.

I could have sworn my brother sunk like a stone. Instantly my life and my brother’s passed before my eyes including newspaper headlines reading, “Northern Boy Lets Brother Drown!” I reached down into the water in that same instant and lifted my brother up into the air.

He and I both gasped and our eyes met. He was alive!

Alive? He wasn’t even fazed! I hadn’t even set him on the edge of the pool yet when he said, “I saw fish!”

***

Also when we lived down south, we had cousins that lived nearby. At least we got in the car from time to time and visited them on their farm.

There were three cousins: Billy, Debbie and Patrick. Patrick and I mostly hung around with Debbie, the middle child. Patrick was the youngest and was younger than me but older than Bold One.

We didn’t hang around Billy much because he was a teenager and was unpredictable. Sometimes he had a mean streak and other times he would nearly tease us to death. It was hard to tell which mood he was in sometimes and even harder know when he’d switch. He would tease poor Debbie cruelly and regularly.

One day, Patrick and I braved some time with Billy in his room. He would let me look at the model cars he’d put together and Patrick was as much my shadow as Bold One. This time, Patrick had done or said something to tick Billy off and was grabbed and held down on Billy’s bed. I just stood there helplessly.

Billy said something like he was going to kill Patrick this time, and as he held Patrick he said, “Where’s my knife!”

Patrick and I believed him, but before I could do anything, Billy pulled his comb out of his pocket and showed it to me. He had a devilish grin on his face, and I couldn’t help smirking once I caught on to what Billy was going to do.

Billy began sawing his comb on Patrick’s leg without allowing Patrick to see, and Patrick began screaming bloody murder thinking his leg was being cut off.

I was laughing both at how funny it was and with relief that Patrick wasn’t truly going to die. (This time.)

Patrick was sure glad when Billy showed him he was just using the comb on him.

I always wondered how Patrick survived while Billy still lived at home!

Pearl's Eye: War's Haunting

You could see several states from the top of the bluff. Grand Dad Bluff allows one to see the Black River and the mighty Mississippi coming together in the distance. The grid of streets that was La Crosse is nestled between those rivers. You may be able to see the trolley cars if you have sharp eyes.

As you bring your sight closer to the bluff itself, the grid of streets fades into prairie until you see the foot of the old Grand Dad itself. A few houses have dared to sprout up on the prairie, which is a sign of the future of the town.

To the left, there’s even an airfield for the biplanes that have earned their place in the modern world by their contribution to the Great War and their use by the United States Postal Service.

As the sun sets, our view floats down as if we were in one of those wonderful flying machines across the town toward the evening colors to the western end of Jackson Street. The sun disappears as we drift down to Fourth Street and quiet of evening.

Pearl herself is very likely at this moment playing her grandfather’s Victrola or helping her grandmother clean up after supper, but the neighborhood has several family members nearby. Her uncles haven’t moved very far away since coming home from the Great War twelve years ago.

Bill Hatke sat in his yard on Fourth Street after supper that evening, with a couple of bottles of his home-brewed beer. Prohibition, what a nuisance. When a fellow came home from the war everyone was buying plenty of drinks for you. Now you have to make it yourself and in secret to stay out of jail.

He leaned back and closed his eyes in the dimness of the streetlight, letting the crickets sing their song to him. In his mind, he found himself back in France during the war, hearing the same cricket sounds as he stood guard...

Camp was barely within earshot, and a breeze was picking up that Bill could start to feel through his khaki uniform. "I must be soaked through with sweat," he thought, "but the breeze sure feels good."

The young soldier only half consciously noticed the crickets gradually falling silent.

He was staring out into the darkness, when he began to be sure he heard rustling noises somewhere ahead. Bill padded as quietly as his boots would let him toward the rustling with his bayonet fixed onto his rifle.

Someone was out there! He could just make out a figure crawling toward camp. With his bayonet ready, he was determined to impale his intense fear as well as any enemy soldier.

Now, he was close enough. He knew he must put everything he had into killing a man at close quarters. He had to leap into such an act despite all fear or hesitation as if diving from a swimming pool's high dive for the first time.

He lunged...

"Bill!" It was his brother Bob. All in a moment he saw that Bob was weak and wounded, just managing to drag himself back from contact with the actual enemy. His brother's hand was already clutching a wound just inches from the tip of the bayonet that could have finished him. Bill's recognition of his brother had stopped him just in time...

Bill jerked his head up. The crickets still chirped in his yard. A policeman, walking his beat, had just passed the house and was disappearing up Jackson Street. France was just a memory; just a story that his sister Elsie had thrilled to when he lived on Johnson Street with his parents.

Pearl's Eye: A Boyish Bob

Young Pearl stood in her front walk; actually Grandpa Hatke's front walk, absently staring across Johnson Street. Her Grandma had just put her little brother Rowland down for a nap, and she didn't expect her mother to come home from work for several hours, yet.

They had come to live here after Pearl's parents got a divorce. Her Dad was in the Army and was living somewhere else, which was all she had known for half of her young life.

Her life was not lonely by any means. The house was also residence for two uncles, Bob and Bill, and a spinster cousin Annie Neuman. All the men in the house seemed to be firemen, and the two younger women worked at different factory jobs, like the candy factory at the moment.

Grandma Hatke came out the front door. "Be sure to pick up the yard before Opa comes home, Pearl."

Pearl ignored her Grandma, intent on looking out for the boy who lived in the house next door. Maybe an ambush would be fun, since facing him in a fight seemed a simple victory.

Before Pearl knew it, Opa was coming down the street on his bicycle at the end of his work day.

"Pearl, you must pick up all these things laying about!"

Seeing her Grandfather straddling his bike, she calculated that he would be too encumbered to enforce his wishes. "I don't have to!" she cried.

She almost forgot to run when she saw how quick Opa was off the bike and after her. That was the only spanking she had ever received from him.

After supper, in the livingroom, Pearl sidled up to her Opa in his chair. "Could I play the Victrola?"

With a pat of her hand and a smile, he nodded. Before she could rush to the phonograph, he admonished, "You shouldn't bully the boy next door so much. They are renting from us, but some day that house will belong to my 'Dandy Girl'."

Old Wilhelm listened contentedly as his granddaughter played every record in the cabinet. What a joy to watch his grandchildren grow up in his house.

Elsie, Pearl's mother, entered the livingroom. "You should take dancing lessons, Pearl." Then sitting and becoming serious, she said, "You are going to see your father tomorrow. You need to take your brother down to the barber's for a haircut. You could use a trim, too. I'd like to see those ragged ends gone."

It promised to be a sunny day as Pearl and her brother, Rowland walked down to the barber shop.

After watching her brother's hair being cut, she informed the barber that she needed a haircut also.

"Well, hop on the chair and tell me what you would like done," replied the barber.

"I want a boyish bob," declared Pearl.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes," said Pearl, "Give me a boyish bob."

Elsie Selbo was surprised to see how identical her children looked with practically the same hair cut. Pearl's dress was the only thing that kept her children from looking like a pair of boys instead of one child of each gender.

Perhaps it was to document her daughter's deed as well as to keep a momento, when she decided to go ahead and take the picture she wanted for the occasion.

At my feet is the broken body of my dear brother
Gazing into Heaven, he will no longer walk my dreams or my waking hours
A part of me would gladly trade places with him so that the world wouldn't lose such a noble man so soon
It is now up to me to carry what he brought
To teach what he presented
To live on with his banner a permanent part of mine

"Touch your lips with a magic kiss, and you'll be a bluebird too."
Paul McCartney