JIMMY BOY
NOTE : At the end of this recording, you will hear the mad laughter of this song’s namesake : Jimmy, himself.
The laughter came from a different track in an ancient recording session we had in my makeshift recording studio in a house I rented on Custer Avenue in Lyons in the early 1990’s.
What had happened was that I had accidentally turned on the digital delay unit and had it assigned to Jimmy’s vocal track, and every time he said something, he’d hear it echo back to him two or three times as the feedback would decrease with each repeat, and Jimmy found that to be quite entertaining as he’d say “Hello” and he’d hear “HELLO, Hello, hello” repeated back and eventually he just burst into laughter and deliberately started speaking gibberish, just to hear the echoes.
Those crazy moments were the source of the laughter you hear on this song’s ending.
JIMMY BOY
Words and Music
By Floyd Allen © 2020
All Tracks played by Floyd Allen
@ Man Cave Studios
(Lansing, Illinois)
Verse 1
Nineteen Hundred Seven Four
Was our first Cigarette
We smoked a bowl and drank a beer
Those days I Won’t Forget
Much Too young, I can’t deny
The past can’t be undone
But if I could , Not sure I would
“Cause I had so much fun
Refrain 1
I wish we took some pictures Then
Some memories to enjoy
Some super eights of merry Mates
The Fun That we employed
The Jokes we pulled, the laughs we had
Just hangin’ in the woods
Never sad, and always glad
We always had some goods
Chorus
‘Cause I’m Floyd
You’re Jimmy Boy
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Verse 2
From Seven Five to Seven Seven
We hung with Chris and Dave
We tripped on Dots, at Party Spots
The Roads that we would pave
We played guitar and dreamt afar
Of Stardom in the Sky
We rode our bikes, the girls we liked
We thought We’d never die
Refrain 2
But Now I see that’s just not true
A brother’s left the band
You’re not the first, but it’s the worst
That I can’t shake your hand
But that’s the deal, the way I feel
There’s nothing I can do
To bring you back, from dark and black
Back into the crew
Chorus
‘Cause I’m Floyd
You’re Jimmy Boy
Solo
Verse 3
From Seven Eight to Ninety One
We went our separate ways
I stayed at Home, and you had roamed
Those were some darkened days
But Ninety Two Brought Me and You
Together once again
We played guitars, and healed the scars
Like reunited twins
Refrain 3
The last few years, avoided tears
We tried to keep in touch
But miles apart, we could not start
The distance was too much
To say goodbye, before you go
I would have been there, Friend
A chance I missed, I pound my fist
I’ll miss you in the end
Chorus
‘Cause I’m Floyd
You’re Jimmy Boy
How do you remember your best friend growing up ?
I didn’t meet my best friend until the end of 5th grade ( May or June 1974 ) .
I had never connected with any “friends” prior to that time mainly because for whatever unknown reasons, my father kept moving us on the average every two years—give or take six months.
But finally in 1974, at the age of 11, I met my best Friend, who, even though I really only hung out with him for roughly three and a half years, those were happiest years of my life, short of marrying my wife, Traci.
After our short, life-defining time together, we ended up not seeing each other for approximately 15 years ( 1978 – 1992 ).
Then we hooked up again in 1992, where we ended up having parties and jam sessions at the house he grew up in.
Unfortunately, that chapter of our lives ended in either 1994 or 1995, when Jim lost the house due to all kinds of financial ( e.g., not enough income ) and structural ( health of house failing due to badly-needed repairs ) reasons, and our little get-togethers had come to a sudden ( and sadly ) permanent screeching halt!
I never lived in an apartment or house that could host our jam sessions.
Suddenly, we found ourselves with no place to gather—except, of course, at the bar, which, Jimmy liked, because he liked to drink; whereas, I was starting to become disinterested in the bar scene, unless it was a live music act.
But just to sit at the bar and drink?
I couldn’t do it. But Jimmy could. Every night!
So, we drifted apart….again.
For all intents and purposes, although we talked on the phone throughout the last few years, we never again physically saw each other.
Then, I called in December 2017, just before Christmas, but he didn’t answer his phone, and instead my call went into his voice mail, where I left a message, and waited for him to call back.
He never did.
Then, a month later, a mutual friend of ours, Kim, sent me a private message on Facebook, linking me to ….
.
.
…Jim’s obituary.
Apparently, Jimmy had passed away from Stage Four lung cancer, which had metastasized far too much by the time he was diagnosed.
He was in hospice for something like literally, one day. One lousy day! And he died.
I wish I had been there for him in his last moments.
The following story is why Jim was so important to me.
Unfortunately, if you’re expecting a story with wholesome content, you’re going to be very disappointed, because the story between Jimmy and I is one centered on substance abuse—and amongst children, yet : in this case, 11-year-olds.
But I went from having absolutely zero—I repeat, zero!—friends to hanging out with Jimmy—not exactly any parent’s idea of the ideal kid for their children to associate with, but I enjoyed every minute I hung out with him, and I regret none of it.
We just had so much fun together.
In any case, if you can hear me, Jimmy, from that cloud on high, this song is for you : Jimmy Boy!
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I—My Pre-Jimmy Days : No Time For Friends
* A—Places We Moved To
**1—In The Very Beginning : Pine Crest Avenue, Colonial Village (Bolingbrook) , Illinois ( 2/1963 to 8/1966 )
**2—Warrenville, Illinois ( 9/1966 to 6/1967 )
***a—The Barn Fire
****(i)—The “WHO” of the Fire
****(ii)—The “HOW” of the Fire
****(iii)—The “WHY” of the Fire
**3—26th & Komensky, Chicago , Illinois ( 7/1967 – 6/1968 )
***a—My Fractured Ankle
***b—Nightmare Reruns
**4—26th & Karlov, Chicago , Illinois ( 8/1968 – 7/1969 ) Kindergarten
**5—Rural Route 1, Monon , Indiana [TORN DOWN ] ( 8/1969 – 7/1971 ) 1st & 2nd Grades
**6—Francesville , Indiana [TORN DOWN ] ( 8/1971 – 5/1972 ) 3rd Grade
**7—Hessville ( Hammond ) , Indiana ( 6/1972 – 7/1972 ) Summer Only Between 3rd & 4th Grades
**8—Summit , Illinois [TORN DOWN ] ( 8/1972 – 12/1972 ) 1st Half of 4th Grade
***a—The Architectural Anachronism
***b—Pneumatic Tires and Concrete Pavement : What A Growing Boy With a Bike Needs
***c—My Short-Lived Desire To Be a Lutheran Minister
II—The Jimmy Years ( 6th Grade Thru 8th Grade, and First Half of Freshman Year ) : From Zero Friends to Best Friend in 18 Months
* A—The Only Home That Led To Friendship
**1—Lyons, Illinois ( 12/1972 – 12/1980 ) 2nd Half of 4th Grade Thru Mid-Sophomore Year in High School
***a—“Connecting” With Jim
***b—“DIS-Connecting” With Jim : The Nickname Conundrum
***c—Jimmy Connects Elsewhere : The Kenny Connection
***d—“RE-Connecting” With Jim
****[i]—Jimmy Loses The House
****[ii]—Jimmy And The Can ( Sometimes Bottle )
****[iii]—Jimmy’s Letter of “Sobriety”
***e—A Brief Encounter on Gage Avenue…Then Tumbleweed again
***f—Losing Track of and Re-Connecting With Jimmy…Again…and For The Very Last Time ( His Last Earthly Phone Number )
***g—Jim’s Passing
***h—The Memories
****[i] Our First Cigarette
****[ii] Our First Beer ( and other Assorted Liquors )
****[iii] Our First “Doobie”
****[iv] Our First “Trip”
*****{001} Our Best Trip
******(aa) Captain Cloud
******(ab) The Conversation With “Myself”
******(ac) The Death
******(ad) Digging The Hole In The Woods
****[v] The Lilac Bushes and My Knee Injury
****[vi] The Big Bust At The Woods
****[vii] The First Avenue Quarry—Coke Bottles and Trespassing
III—The Post-Jimmy Years
I—My Pre-Jimmy Days : No Time For Friends
Just when I got to know the name of the kid sitting next to me in class, it was time to move on to our next home, which was always, always, always, miles and miles and miles away from the location we were now leaving — definitely could not ride my bike, much less, walk the distance.
With one exception, it was never “just down the street” from where we had just left.
Different town, different schools, and in some cases, a different state altogether—moving back and forth between Illinois and Indiana.
There were no obvious reasons for the frequent relocations. We weren’t on the run from the law, and we weren’t exactly poor, in the sense that my dad was earning a union scale wage.
Although my father was a truck driver, he was not an over-the-road driver. He was strictly local—and union!
He was home every night as a Local 705 Teamsters, Tractor-Trailer driver, handling local cartage pickups and deliveries for a company called Orscheln Brothers Trucking, which, although still in business ( I think ) in Moberly, Missouri, they pulled out of the Chicago area a long time ago, in the early 1980’s, because of the high cost of dealing with organized labor, which didn’t really exist in Moberly in the early 1980’s, although today it might be an entirely different story. Who knows?
But I’m guessing that they’re non-union in their outfit in Moberly.
In any case, being home every night and making pretty good money ( approximately $11 or $12 an hour in mid-1970’s—which is probably closer to $25 or $30 per hour in today’s income bracket ) so, it wasn’t like we didn’t have enough income to settle down with a 30-year mortgage to acquire a “long-term” address for a couple with three of their six children still living with them ( the oldest, Gail, Tom and Linda, having already moved out on their own ) .
A—Places We Moved To
1—In The Very Beginning : Pine Crest Avenue, Colonial Village (Bolingbrook) , Illinois ( 5/1963 to 8/1966 )
#1—My First Home
In fact, when I was born, my parents already owned our first, last, and only home they ever actually purchased. In fact, I believe they had just purchased it in mid-1962; a little less than a year before I was born..
The purchase price : $16,000.
My guess? Today, a similar house, in that same area, brand new, would probably be between the mid-$200,000’s to lower $300,000
It was a five bedroom 2-bath, bi-level, with a finished basement out in what used to be called Colonial Village, but is now part of Bolingbrook, Illinois, off of I-55 and Route 53.
In fact, you can see the back yard of our former home from the expressway as you’re driving south on I-55 approaching Route 53.
But….
For “whatever unknown” reasons, we only stayed there three years ( my first three years of life—1963 to 1966 ) , and then we ended up selling the house, where we began this seemingly-never-ending odyssey of moving every two years ( like I said, give or take six months ) .
2—Warrenville, Illinois ( 9/1966 to 6/1967 )
#2—My Second Home
From Bolingbrook, Illinois, we moved to Warrenville, Illinois, where we rented a farm house, but we weren’t farming the land; merely residing in the house on the property, while my dad remained a local truck driver, at a terminal in Summit, Illinois, at least 30 miles away.
a—The Barn Fire
One interesting side note about this house is that although I was only about three or four years old when we lived there, I can actually recall an event that happened on a very “special” night ( people generally don’t remember anything from such an early period of their lives; but I believe significant events, especially those involving heightened emotions or even traumatic events, might actually stay remembered, instead of forgotten about ).
In my case, one evening at dusk, after dinner, I was in the kitchen with my mother, as she finished washing the dishes, and then I wandered out the back door out into the back yard that faced the barn, which was only about 20 or 30 feet away.
I remember staring into the wide open doors of the barn, where I could see two faces ( which were largely obscured by the darkness, and only dimly-illuminated by the light coming from the back porch light fixture, but there were definitely faces ) looking back at me.
There shouldn’t have been anyone out there since all my siblings were in the living room watching TV with my father.
The strange part of the sight, was the fact that the faces were low to the ground, and one was above the other, and the one on the bottom was upside down.
How does a three- or four-year-old, who has not yet mastered the language even at a kindergarten level, articulate such a scene to his mom to tell her what he just saw outside in the barn?
I went back into the house to tell my mom but I guess my talking just sounded like babble coming from a child barely out of his toddler stage—meaningless phonetics of children imitating their parents.
Understandably, she ignored my warning, and nonchalantly picked me up and killed the kitchen light as she whisked me away to go into the front room to watch TV with the entire family, despite me pointing at the back door pointlessly continuing on in my attempt to warn her of the “stranger danger” in the barn I just saw.
I was not yet linguistically equipped to successfully convey my message of potential danger to the people directly in harm’s way—me and my family.
Unfortunately, that night, our barn burned down.
(i)—The “WHO” of the Fire
Barn Fire
My guess?
The two faces I saw out in the barn were likely the culprits in the starting of the fire—or, should I say, deliberate setting of the fire?
It could have been arson, and not accidental, but not likely.
Moreover, what about the weird location ( near the ground ) and strange positioning ( one above the other, and the lower one being upside down) of the two faces?
I think I might have solved the mystery.
It was a young man and a young lady ( more than likely, teenagers ) in the barn ( in the trespassing sense ) on the barn floor, doing the Horizontal Cha Cha in the only private place they could find to explore each other’s bodies.
On the one hand, the “upside down” face was the woman, lying on her back, and looking up at me, from her “lying-on-her-back-with-her-feet-facing-away-from-me-and-her-head-toward-me” position.
On the other hand, the “right side up” face, was the man, lying on top of the woman, looking up at me.
I saw their faces as they both looked up at me—probably startled at me suddenly coming out of the house and noticing them in the barn.
That’s the “who” of what I saw—people!
(ii)—The “HOW” of the Fire
The “how” of the fire is still a mystery : accidental or deliberate?
On the one hand, if they were teenagers, just partying and looking for a place to have sex, then the fire was likely accidental, since they probably brought along a kerosene lantern for light and “ambience” and they spilled it, and it started some hay on fire, and it spread far too fast for them to safely put it out themselves, so they pulled their pants up, and high-tailed it out of there as fast as they could, hoping nobody saw them in the vicinity and tie them to the guilt behind the fire.
On the other hand, about 40 years after the fact ( mid-2000’s), somebody once told me that around that exact time frame, there was an actual article in a newspaper ( Which newspaper? I’m not sure, myself) regarding a series of Warrenville barn files in one single night!
Whether or not our barn fire was the same night as the multiple-barns-on-fire night, I do not know.
If it was, then the fire was likely deliberate.
Who knows?
The mystery continues…..
(iii)—The “WHY” of the Fire
As far as the “why” teens would have used our barn to “get drunk and get it on”, well, I really don’t see any mystery there.
Teens will go anywhere for a good time.
I know that my “first one” ( the mother of my daughter) and I certainly went through great lengths and traveled far to go do our thing.
It wouldn’t surprise me if teen boys in any other era ( even the 1960’s ) would trespass into abandoned barns with the modern day equivalent of a bottle of Boone’s Farm Strawberry Wine to woo their girlfriends into slowly making their way around the “baseball diamond from first base through Home Run”!
A defunct barn on a defunct farm?
That’s the “equivalent” to an adult “Sybaris”—minus the hot tubs and other romantic amenities, relying instead on the smell of cow manure or horse hay to set the mood for the intimate encounter.
Of course, the barn probably looked so tempting to those adventurous teen boys in search of a “bachelor pad”.
The land wasn’t being farmed at that time, and I’m sure the locals could usually tell when a place might look abandoned, and thus, open to teenage parties.
However, our house didn’t look abandoned; in fact, it looked very lived in with the lights on inside, a car in the driveway, and likely the smell of cooked food wafting out the kitchen window, so, they obviously knew the house was not abandoned and open for teen parties.
But, I guess the the barn was “fair game” according to their rules.
In any case, someone started the barn on fire. That was my moment of “excitement” in my pre-school days!
3—26th & Komensky, Chicago , Illinois ( 7/1967 – 6/1968 )
My Last Home Before Starting School
But we stayed in Warrenville for only a few months ( 9/66 to 6/67) and then we moved to the near west side of Chicago in the 26th and Komensky neighborhood, where we rented an apartment in what I believe was a two-flat bungalow ( 7/67 to 7/68 ).
Just as I got the last pair of socks out of the old moving boxes into my chest of drawers, my dad announced that we were moving again as he handed us new boxes to put our things into.
It never seemed to end.
About the only two significant events that occurred to me while I lived here was : [1] I fractured my ankle in a “Superman” accident; and [2] I actually recall having the same dream twice.
a—My Fractured Ankle
My second oldest sister, Linda, who was 19 or 20 years of age at the time, married, and living out on her own with her husband, Joe, had agreed to stay at the apartment for one week, and babysit the rest of us kids, while our parents went out of town on a badly-needed vacation up in Northern Wisconsin.
It was a Friday, and characteristic of my father, he had the car loaded and my mom sitting shotgun and pulling away from the curb ( we didn’t have a driveway ) to leave before the crack of dawn — he absolutely hated traffic; and I’m exactly like that, too.
Where they were going was in the upper section of Wisconsin near the Upper Peninsula, so their destination was easily eight to ten hours away, depending a speed traveled and other factors.
Factor in stops for gas, bathroom breaks and meals, and you can see how such a lengthy trip could easily be extended to 12 hours, or more.
The point is : They had traveled for hours to get to their destination, and the very first thing my mom did when they arrived at the resort, was find a phone and called us to tell us that they had arrived safely and to check on us, as well.
Unfortunately, either Linda was a terrible liar, or my mom had ESP, because she knew something was wrong the very second Linda answered the phone.
“What’s wrong, Linda?” my mom inquired instinctively knowing something was up.
After only a few, brief, futile attempts to deny anything was wrong, Linda fessed up and told her what had happened.
“Yeah, well, um…Floyd…kinda jumped off the side of the house and fractured his ankle.” Linda replied in an understandably nervous voice.
What had occurred was : it was late morning or early afternoon, and while Nancy and Jim were already outside , sitting in the front porch’s concrete staircase at the bottom where the stairs meet the sidewalk, I was inside with Linda who was working in the kitchen.
I was in a “Superhero” kind of mood, and I wanted to go outside and play “Superman”.
So, I grabbed a small hand towel and a safety pin from the bathroom linen closet, and took it out to Linda and asked her to pin the towel around my neck like a cape.
“Going outside to play?” she asked me.
“Gonna play Superman.” I replied as I waited for her to finish pinning the towel around my neck.
“Well, don’t wander too far from the house.” she concluded as she finished the job, and as I turned toward the front door to exit the apartment.
As I exited the doorway, and closed the door behind myself, Nancy and Jim were sitting at the bottom of the concrete staircase, and they must have heard the door open and close, as they both looked over their shoulders up at me, as I stood at the top of the staircase with my hands on my hips and my cape flowing gallantly in the wind—or so my imagination led me to believe.
“I’m gonna play Superman!” I exclaimed as I looked down at them at the bottom of the staircase.
They both just looked at each other and shrugged their shoulders, and then looked away without a care.
I then climbed up on the concrete banister ledge, shouted “Superman!”, and I leaped into the air to fly….
But I couldn’t.
Gravity yanked me to the ground like an iron anvil, and I ended up letting out a scream and a cry, when Nancy and Jim came running along side the house to see me lying on the ground writhing in pain, well, they knew that wasn’t any good.
The next thing I know, I’m at the hospital and they’re putting my right leg in a cast.
After that, I was home and lying in bed with a leg cast on for the next six to eight weeks, where I crawled around the apartment to get to and fro.
My parents were back home the very next day.
My little adventure ruined their long-planned and badly-needed vacation.
Sorry Mom and Dad.
b—Nightmare Reruns
Another event that I remember while living at that apartment, was having the exact same dream twice!
I admit, it was a stupid dream. But, I remember having it twice!
THE DREAM : I was on my back porch playing with my toys, and suddenly, a very mean Frankenstein came up the back stairs from the basement, grabbed all my toys, and took them down into the basement with him.
I know. That sounds ridiculous, but that was the dream
It wasn’t “just” an act of theft; there was something really ominous about the whole thing with Frankenstein being the main villain.
But, like I said, one broken ankle and two nightmares later, yep, you guessed it, it was time to move again.
Only, this time, the move was extremely short : just a block or two away to Karlov Avenue to a single family dwelling we rented.
4—26th & Karlov, Chicago , Illinois ( 8/1968 – 7/1969 ) Kindergarten
From that apartment, we moved to the 26th and Karlov neighborhood ( 8/68 to 7/69 ), into a single-family dwelling, that we rented from a group called the Rossi Brothers.
Why I remember that, I haven’t a clue. I just simply never forgot the name, “Rossi Brothers”, which was the only move that was literally “down the street” from our previous home.
All our previous and subsequent moves were literally miles away from our previous locations.
26th & Karlov ( 8/1968 – 7/1969 ) Kindergarten
.
Here is where I started my schooling “career” in kindergarten at Eli Whitney Elementary School
Although I didn’t form any long-term friendships, I frequently played with the children of the neighborhood, most of which were Hispanics of Puerto Rican heritage.
I played perhaps a handful of hide-and-seek games with the neighborhood kids, and yep, you guessed it, it was time to move again!
5—Rural Route 1, Monon , Indiana ( 8/1969 – 7/1971 ) 1st & 2nd Grades
This time, 120 miles and two hours southeast of Chicago to super-hyper-mega rural Monon, Indiana—right on Shafer Lake. Our own pier was literally 30 or 40 feet from our living room window.
This was pretty secluded and remote by my standards.
If I didn’t know any better, I’d think my parents were on the run from the law…or the mob.
Anyway…
Thinking that the city was a petri dish for all social evils, my father wanted to move us as far away from the city as possible, to cleanse us from any bad traits we might end up developing hanging around the masses of “dysfunctional” people and learning all the wrong ideas from all the wrong role models.
Obviously, not being a fan of the city, my dad found a place out in “God’s country” of Monon, Indiana, 120 miles away .
Small Cabin On The Lake
The property was owned by some distant relatives on my dad’s side : Uncle Jack and Aunt Bert ( I’ll never forget how the smell of bacon frying up in a pan, wafting out her kitchen window, really set a precedent for me in the “bacon enjoyment” department. When I smell bacon, I think of Aunt Bert “out in the country” ).
- NOTE The House pictured is not our home; our home had long since been torn down—it was old when we added onto it, and what we added probably wasn’t worth saving if new owners ever decided to do a tear-down and build from scratch ; the house pictured is simply a random house I found on Google Maps that somewhat exemplifies what we started off with before adding onto it..
The “community” that Jack and Bert owned, was a series of cabins or cottages in what was obviously a financially-defunct fishing resort of some sort that was located along the shores of Lake Shafer.
I believe my parents did have an investment in this property, too, in that they invested in building onto the cottage to give us enough bedrooms for the three remaining kids — Nancy, 9; Jim, 8; and Floyd, 5.
Socially ?
There were NO KIDS —Zero! Not one!—my age, in our little “rustic subdivision” in Monon.
Not one.
The two kids I tried to hang out with, were two or three years older than me, and didn’t want to be tagged along by a “kid”!
In fact, one of the kids, Carl, had such an aversion to my presence, his desire to make me feel uncomfortable ( and therefore, go away for good ) was so non-stop, he’d went beyond being a simple “devil’s advocate” to make a valid point about a valid subject, and instead, he’d just go immediately and directly into “contrarian mode” in such an absurd way, that it obviously sounded as silly as a Monty Python Flying Circus TV skit, it was that ridiculous — e.g., when I said that my mother took my father’s last name when they got married, Carl, without missing a beat, replied sarcastically, “Nuh, uh! Not in my family! My dad took my mom’s last name!”
Unbeknownst to both of us, his mother was within earshot of our conversation as she was washing dishes at the kitchen sink, and the window at the sink with five feet from where Carl and I were talking.
Immediately, she said through the window, “You know that’s not true, Carl! I took your father’s name!”
That was the last straw for that conversation, apparently, as Carl looked at me with disgust — as though it was I who caused him to be humiliatingly countered — and stood up and stormed into the house.
“Hmm. I think that’s my cue to leave.” I must have edivently thought, since I don’t remember staying there after that moment — or returning there after that day, either.
I don’t remember missing Carl, after we left Monon, at the end of Second Grade.
So, I did a lot of solo fishing and ice skating on Shafer Lake and wandering the adjacent cornfields that surrounded us opposite the lake.
All the cabins, had this particular smell to them. It’s not like the smell of, say, sawdust, but instead like “musty sawdust”; I’m thinking the smell was caused by the high humidity of the lake that was literally only 30 or 40 feet from the cabins, and the wood was probably far more likely to suffer water-related problems, like waterlogged woods in home exteriors or interiors.
Moreover, instead of a refuse company, our camp had an incinerator, where everyone deposited their garbage.
Countless times we heard the sound of exploding aerosol cans reacting to the furnace levels of extreme heat. Most of the time, though, there was nothing accidental about exploding cans, in that they were deliberately tossed into the flames for their entertainment value as a “loud boom”.
Boom!
“Cool!” ( everyone smiles ).
However,…
My dad’s job did not move away with him: his job stayed in Summit, Illinois.
So, being a solid three quarters of a tank of gas, ( in his eight-cylinder, gas-guzzling boat of a Pontiac Bonneville ) and two hours away ( at highway speeds—three or four hours via back roads), one way, and times two for round trips, was obviously too extreme to be feasible for a daily commute, so, my dad had to find a means for “lodging” throughout the work week and came home only on the weekends.
The problem with that setup, was that my mother did not have a car…or even a driver’s license, for that matter, so she couldn’t even borrow someone else’s car and drive that vehicle, either.
Thus, during the week ( i.e., Monday through Friday) when my dad was 120 miles away in Summit, Illinois, with a car to get around in, my mother was a stay-at-home mom with no wheels to transport herself and/or us kids around ( out in the sticks where there was no public transportation and the nearest grocery store, school, or hospital was easily miles away in every direction ).
Should any emergencies have arisen while we were at school, my mom would have had no way of getting to the school to pick us up, if we needed to come home for whatever reason; no way of getting to a drug store or hospital , without having to depend on what few neighbors we did have.
But we did have a phone.
So, communication was not a problem—only transportation.
6—Francesville , Indiana ( 8/1971 – 5/1972 ) 3rd Grade
As usual, two years later, it was time to move 10 miles north up the road to Francesville, Indiana, where I spent Third Grade walking along the railroad tracks by my house, and, as usual, all by myself.
Farm House
It was another farm house, again, on land that wasn’t being farmed, and we were simply residing on the premises.
We didn’t live in town with the houses, but out on a farm a mile or two outside the residential, retail zone.
As expected, there were zero kids of any age to hang out with on a remotely-located farm.
I did join Cub Scouts, however, but it was a short-lived experience because I really wasn’t there long enough to make any friends, and the only kid whose name I do remember was of Ricky Rodriguez, the only kid who would talk to me; and that was in school, not in Cub Scouts.
After school, when I was back at home, I was nowhere near Ricky’s house; nor was he near mine. Ergo, socializing with Ricky was—for geographical reasons—strictly a school-hours opportunity.
After school, it was back to total isolation.
One sad note would be that for whatever unknown reasons, nobody ( in us surviving children ) have one single photo of our life there : none of the interior nor the exterior of the house.
Not one single picture.
Even the house doesn’t exist anymore.
It’s as though, not only were we never there, the house never existed in the first place.
7—Hessville ( Hammond ) , Indiana ( 6/1972 – 7/1972 ) Summer Only Between 3rd & 4th Grades
The exact same thing is true at this house, too : not one single picture, inside or out.
My shortest-lasting residence : lasting less than three months !
I wouldn’t know the house if I was standing on its own front lawn.
Hessville Ranch
We lived a block or two off of Cline Avenue, on a small side street whose name has long been forgotten by all of us surviving kids. But, my sister, Nancy, took a wild guess and thought it might have been on Tennessee Avenue, of which, there is a Tennessee Avenue listed in the Hessville ( Hammond ) area, so, she’s probably correct.
I remember it being a one-story ranch with a front door. But I admit, I forgot what color it was.
It was summertime—i.e., no school !—and both of my parents worked full-time jobs, and as a bored 8-year-old, “sitting at home on an eighty-degree summer day doing nothing” was about as appealing an idea as watching grass grow.
So, out the door I went, in search of entertainment, action, and maybe even a little international intrigue as an imaginary covert spy for the CIA.
I spent most of my time walking—nay, make that wandering—up and down the streets of my immediate neighborhood, mindlessly “kicking cans up and down the alleys”, so to speak, since there was absolutely nothing else to do…nor anyone to do it with.
There were no Saturday Morning Cartoons Monday through Friday, nor were there any “cartoon channels” in those pre-cable TV days of the early 1970’s.
Game shows; talk shows; soap operas, and public TV kids shows ( such as ” Sesame Street”, “Romper Room”, and “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” being the normal fare of shows broadcasted at those time slots on the only six channel pre-cable Chicagoland TV programming ) were the only things on the boob tube, and those were things I had absolutely zero interest in.
Asking me to watch these shows would be like asking me to hold my breath indefinitely.
In other words, there was nothing on TV for me to watch during the week with only channels 2, 5, 7, 9, 11, and 32 to choose from (Although, UHF band, WFLD, did play afternoon kids shows of which one I remember watching was called “B.J. And the Dirty Dragon”—which was later re-branded as “Gigglesnort Hotel”….I think )
I believe WFLD also played 1950’s- and 1960’s-era Warner Brothers cartoons of the Looney Tunes® and Merry Melodies® franchises, featuring such characters as Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, and Daffy Duck with Mel Blanc doing the voice overs for most, if not all, the characters.
But before the afternoon showing of these pre-adolescent delights, there was absolutely nothing on TV for me to watch, so, out the front door I went to wander the streets for hours and hours.
One rather unpleasant memory I have about that place was that there was obviously some kind of a sewage-treatment plant somewhere nearby ( I never found it on my travels ) because the entire neighborhood—for blocks and blocks in every direction—would smell like sewage.
I never forgot that stench.
Lastly, since I never spent a single day in the local school, I never met a single kid—of any age! Not one!
Ergo, there was definitely nobody to keep in touch with, back in Hessville, that’s for sure.
I know I joked in a previous paragraph about having just unpacked the last thing and finally getting settled in, only to find ourselves being handed new boxes because it was time to move again, but, in this case, the boxes were “still in the hallway” still unpacked, and we were told that we were moving again.
Just throw the boxes back on the truck, and do it again.
WTF!
8—Summit , Illinois ( 8/1972 – 12/1972 ) 1st Half of 4th Grade
Carrying on the tradition of no photos of that part of our lives (but, at least knowing the actual location of the house ), I have nothing to reminisce with—or about—at this house.
Not only having no photos of the house when we were there, but also the house no longer being there having been long since razed and removed, all I could do was an attempt to re-create the setup with Google Maps.
The image below is divided into three sections : A, B, and C.
I included B and C because having been 50 years ago, and the house no longer existing, I kind of lost track of the fact whether our house was the second or the fourth lot from the corner.
I thought it was the second lot, but there’s a relatively new apartment standing on the lot now, which still could have been built after the old cabin was torn down.
The fourth lot, however, is empty, and it does show signs of a small foundation inside the red box.
Oddly, though, the location of the driveway does not line up with the foundation, so the foundation was not likely a garage foundation but something that had nothing to do with that driveway—in this case, a 100-year-old cabin.
Cabin In The Woods…on a Suburban Block
Tommy Kwak @ unsplash
Badly photo-shopped into image of unoccupied property
.
From September 1972 to the first half of December 1972 ( about three and a half months ) my father moved us ( all five of us ) into the very “house” he was living in during the week when we lived in Monon and Francesville, Indiana for the previous three years.
a—The Architectural Anachronism
The house was on Hanover street. It could have been joked that it was the smallest house in the industrialized world.
It has long since been torn down.
At the time it was still standing, it literally was a never-torn-down three-room fishing cabin-in-the-woods that was still standing in the middle of a residential block as late as the early 1970’s—the canal was only a few blocks away, and I’m sure there was a time when there were plenty of fish in that canal when it wasn’t polluted.
Nowadays, I would think you’d only catch some three-eyed carp or some mutation with all of the chemicals that get leeched into the water in countless ways.
Anyway, as far as the cabin, itself, was concerned, it was an architectural anachronism, to say the least, that’s for sure!
Like a rusted, dilapidated Model A Ford on a street surrounded by state-of-the-art “Jetson-era” flying vehicles.
The cabin had a bathroom ( with toilet and sink, but no shower or bathtub—so we had to take sponge baths with a small tub of soapy water ); a “kitchenette”—with no place for a kitchen table; a pantry; a bedroom; and a “front room”….for a couple with three kids!
But we did it!
My parents had the bedroom. They threw a set of bunk beds in the pantry for my brother and I, and my sister, Nancy, had the living room as a bedroom.
So, we had no living space; no living room. Just a completely-out-of-place cabin-in-the-woods in the middle of a suburban residential block, turned into a motel of bedrooms, with a kitchenette, and a bathroom-ette.
Not exactly what Robin Leach meant by living the life of “Champagne wishes and caviar dreams!”
This was the place my dad lived at for three years while we were stranded out on the sticks with no means of transportation.
Plus, being understandably embarrassed by the house, I chose to walk to and from school, instead of taking the school bus.
One day, though, for some forgotten reason, I elected to take the bus home, and when I got off the bus, all the kids saw my “home” and they all laughed.
It was the first, last, and only time I ever took the school bus; it never happened again.
b—Pneumatic Tires and Concrete Pavement : What A Growing Boy With a Bike Needs
Despite the anxiety of having to deal with the social ridicule of living in a house that was literally—no exaggeration—smaller than most people’s garages, I was still grateful for being back in the city because I wanted to ride my bike on concrete , which the city offered, and the rural areas did not.
Specifically, the only paved roads out in the country were the interstate highways, county routes, and the business district of most small towns, all of which my parents understandably prohibited me from riding on.
The only places I was allowed to ride my bike, were on the “streets” close to my home, all of which were either unpaved dirt, or gravel, neither of which is easy to do with the skinny legs of a five- to seven-year-old kid.
I’d pedal my hardest, and still, I’d be lucky if I got my bike up to 10 or 12 miles per hour.
But, man, when I dangerously planted my wheels on the concrete of the highway, my skinny little legs were able to accelerate me to what seemed like 15 or 20 miles per hour—much faster!
And much more exciting!
But once my parents found out about my excursions out onto the public highway system, I was immediately notified of the indefinite and permanent prohibition against such rides in the future!
Once I got a taste of that speed I could achieve on concrete instead of dirt or gravel roads, I was forever changed. I couldn’t stop begging my parents to move us back to the city where I could ride my bike on a sidewalk.
Moreover, I think my mom also wanted to move back to the city where at least she had access to public transportation, where she could get to the store and the doctors without needing my dad’s ( or anyone else’s vehicle ) to transport her around all day long taking care of family matters. .
Finally, my father must’ve given in to my mom’s demands because we went from Francesville to Hessville and then to Summit.
Now we were back in the land of paved roads, sidewalks, and public transportation.
Once my bike’s tires hit that sidewalk on Hanover Avenue, in Summit, Illinois, my bike felt like it took off like a rocket!
The exhilaration I felt from such “speed” ( of 15 to maybe 20 miles per hour ) was addicting!
In fact, in my excitement, I rode so hard on my banana seat of my Schwinn “Stingray”, ( which we stored just outside the front—and only—door, since there was no place to keep it in the cabin, without it literally blocking the only “doorway”in the house. With theft not exactly being unheard of in “the big city” I was always understandably worried that someone was going to steal it. Being left outside and unchained to anything, it would be free for the taking for anyone with the balls to walk right up to the house and ride off with it; but luckily, no one ever did steal it) that I actually developed a pinched nerve in my urinary tract, as I was experiencing pain when going “Number One”, and part of the “prescription” was to not ride my bike for a few weeks and learn how to sit differently on my seat to not cause that nerve to get pinched.
Not riding my bike was somewhat akin to a smoker going cold turkey and not smoking any cigarettes and going through attention-distracting nicotine withdrawal symptoms.
By that time, though, that I was ready to start riding again, the autumn weather was history, and snow and ice were everywhere, so my “no-bike-riding” prescription got inadvertently extended until spring, when I was more-than-ready to start riding again.
c—My Short-Lived Desire To Be a Lutheran Minister
While in Summit, for more unknown reasons, my parents decided to send my brother, Jim, and my sister, Nancy, to the local public school, which was Walsh Elementary, but, they forked out actual cash to send me to Zion Lutheran, both of which were on Archer Road, about a half mile from the house—and about three blocks from each other.
The only “friendship” I developed in Summit, was at school, where my teacher, Gloria Seim (again, not sure why I remember her name, but I do) had given me a sendoff gift when she found out I was moving ( again! ) which, in this case, was a one-year subscription to a religiously-oriented, Lutheran-associated magazine ( about the size of a “Readers Digest”—only thinner with fewer pages ) called “Devotion”.
Back then, in my “I-want-to-be-a-surgeon-today-a-policeman tomorrow-and-a-fireman-the-day-after-that” growing-up period, I went through my “I-want-to-be-a-Lutheran-minister” period, and I think Gloria just wanted to keep that desire going in me.
In fact, our next-door neighbor had a tool shed in his yard that was built just like a church—with a steeple, and stained-glass windows—and I was so enamored by it’s image, that I asked my mother if she’d ask the next door neighbor if he’d let me use his tool shed to practice my imaginary sermons.
Of course, for obvious reasons, she never did follow through with my request, and I never did get a chance to give a sermon in my neighbor’s tool shed.
But that phase of my life ended the very nanosecond we moved away from Summit, across the highway, to Lyons, Illinois, the first place where the duration of our stay was longer than the “standard” of two years.
II—The Jimmy Years ( 6th Grade Thru 8th Grade ) : From Zero Friends to Best Friend in 18 Months
Two-Story Wood Frame on a Slab
This time, it was more like seven years : from December 1972 to December of 1979 ( the middle of my sophomore year in high school)!
Unheard of!
And appreciated.
Jim, Roxanne, Chris, Jerry, Donny, “Ben”, Kelly, the Rank brothers, Macko, Sheri, Willie, John and Wayne and so many others, became names associated with the word “friend”—something I had never experienced before.
But those friendships didn’t occur overnight, that’s for sure.
In fact, although we moved in December 1972, my friendship with Jim didn’t start until another year and a half later, in either late May or early June of 1974.
It would be another year and a half after moving in that I finally connected with someone I could identify with.
And, when I say “connected”, I mean that literally. LOL.
A—The Only Home That Led To Friendship
1—Lyons, Illinois ( 8/1972 – 12/1972 ) 2nd Half of 4th Grade Thru Mid-Sophomore Year in High School
a—“Connecting” With Jim
Although I told the story in another post “8650 W. 44th Place, Lyons, Illinois“, it can be retold here since Jim is central to this post’s purpose.
In any case…
The Lengthy Quote below is taken directly from the above-linked post.
The incident that brought us together, was a “fight” between us.
Specifically, we were on a Field Trip literally days before the last day of 5th Grade.
Instead of taking us to an educational outing (e.g., going to Holsum bread or Coca Cola to watch them make bread or bottle soda, like I had done in previous field trips) this was a purely-for-fun trip, and it was only blocks away from school—at Ehlert Park, in Brookfield.
The teacher was Miss Ciccio (who, the following year, got married and became Mrs. Uhler [?]—I’m bad with the spelling of names ).
Anyway, here we are almost at the end of the day for our field trip, and Jimmy starts approaching people asking them if they want to slap box.
He wasn’t finding anyone to take him up on his offer. He must’ve approached four or five classmates before he got to me.
Finally, when he got to me, I wasn’t interested, either, because I really wasn’t a fighter. But somehow we just couldn’t avoid each other and he took a couple of swipes at me.
“Come on, Colbert. Let’s box.” he kept saying as he did his boxing “dance”.
I didn’t want to do it—slap box, that is.
So, he took a couple more swings and he grazed my cheek.
That stung.
So, I returned fire, but not with an open hand, but with a clenched fist.
Crack!
“WTF, a–h—! That’s not a slap, that’s a punch!” he said as he tried to do the same.
The next thing I know, Jim and I are really going at it with punches, not slaps.
Of course, every time kids see a fight in the school yard, they like to shout out “Fight!” to get everyone to notice and gather around and watch it happen.
Well, that also attracts the attentions of teachers, who like to break up fights, which Miss Ciccio tried to do, by saying, “Now, break it up, boys!”—warnings, which we, of course, being boys, completely ignored and continued on in our hand-to-hand combat.
There were no male faculty present to assist in the breaking up of the fight, but Jimmy and I ultimately ended up “ceasing-and-desisting” in our physical attacks on each other, and the next thing we knew….
We were friends—inseparable friends, in fact.
It’s funny how that works—“Violence brings friends together”.
Doesn’t sound quite right, does it?
But, in some cases, that’s EXACTLY how some friendships begin. That’s how OURS began!
Jimmy and I did everything together in 6th, 7th and 8th Grades, and then drifted apart in early high school.
b—“DIS-Connecting” With Jim : The Nickname Conundrum
Jim and I did not fall apart for any reasons pertaining to our relationship with each other.
Rather, it was due to the fact that he didn’t like a certain group of friends we had—or, more accurately, he didn’t like the way they treated him in his nickname.
Specifically, he didn’t like his nickname, which I won’t divulge here, since there’s no reason to or benefit from doing so.
Suffice it to say that we all had nicknames. The brothers in one family had names like “Ben”, when his real name was “Bill”; His second oldest brother, Donny, was “Duck”; the oldest Mike ( R.I.P., Mike) , was “Goat”; because my name could be associated with several other characters, I was called “Pink Floyd” ( the band ) , “Pretty Boy” (the gangster), “Floyd the Barber” ( character on the 1960’s sit com, “The Andy Griffith Show”), among yet others; we had another Mike that we called “Fahrenheit” ( I have a post pending on “Fahrenheit” stories ) ; my brother had a friend , Pat, that we called “Worm”, and his friend Larry,was “Maggot”.
But the name they came up with for Jim was one that none of us had any qualms with, but just knowing Jim hated it that much, I never called him that name—I was friends with Jim before I was friends with this particular group.
But, my brother was also friends with at least two of the brothers, and I, two of them, as well. In fact, my then-girlfriend, Roxanne, ended up marrying the step brother of these boys.
It’s not like I could have just tossed them out of my life, since, I still talk to the youngest two boys to this day.
That’s a going-on-50-year relationship that I would have tossed out the window had I totally cut myself off from these people. I’m glad I didn’t do that.
But, that doesn’t mean that I couldn’t relate to Jim’s hurt feelings in the matter at hand.
c—Jimmy Connects Elsewhere : The Kenny Connection
He ended up meeting some more musicians, in this case, a one Kenny Eismann, an extremely talented musician ( singer-songwriter guitarist ) who was otherwise an unemployed high school dropout who was living on borrowed time at his father’s house in Riverside, Illinois.
Little by little, Jim started hanging out at Kenny’s house and out at the local forest preserves where Kenny, among others of similar ilk, would frequently gather to play live acoustic tunes in the pavilions.
What was sad, was that many of the musicians who played at those “venues”, as talented as they were musically, were actually homeless people who actually lived in the very woods they “performed” at.
Once the show was over, and the ones with homes departed for those homes, those that didn’t have any place to go, retreated to their little corner of the forest preserve to a certain clearing, usually with a felled tree as a log to sit on, “picnic bench” style.
This clearing, they called “home”.
I couldn’t feel at ease with these people.
None of them ever told me any hard luck stories of being thrown out of a home-centered life through involuntary unemployment, or “death’s bed” types of diseases, or a messy divorce, or anything catastrophic.
It always seemed like they just didn’t want to be “held down” by a full-time job and a long-term mortgage, or even a short-term renting of an apartment.
Yet, despite no visible means of income, they always seemed to have enough money for booze.
Where did that money come from?
I’d be afraid to trust any of them to, say, stay at my place overnight, for fear that they’d either steal something…or worse, refuse to leave.
I’ve heard horror stories of squatters exercising their “rights’ on premises that are already occupied…and it still takes a court order to evict them.
That’s absolutely insane to allow a “Michael Meyers” to just move into your home, putting you in such fear, that you sleep with one eye open.
But that’s how our absolutely insane system works in the name of being “compassionate”—but…compassionate only toward the aggressor/criminal, but no compassion for the rightful owner.
It’s absolutely demented the way we think.
In any case, I was just as displeased with Jim’s new friends, as he was with our original group we hung out with.
He hung out with Kenny, and I chose to stay with our original group.
From there, Jim and I went our separate ways.
d—“RE-Connecting” With Jim
This went on from 1978 to about 1992, when we ran into each other at the local gas station ( it’s now a Speedway®, but back in the day, it was a “SuperAmerica“®, or S.A. for short ).
I was walking in to pre-pay for some gas, and Jimmy was walking out after buying a couple of packs of smokes—which later ended up killing him in January, 2018.
Needless to say, it wasn’t a simple handshake that occurred between us, but a massive bear hug between us.
Humorously, a third party, Joe, who had known Jim and I since we were all kids, who just happened to be standing in line waiting to pay for his items, saw us doing the “hug”, and Joe blurts out, “Get a room, guys!” to which, I looked over my shoulder at Joe and said, “You wanna join us? You want in?” to which Joe just bowed and shook his head and laughed.
Jimmy explained to me that he was on his way home, and when I asked him what he was driving, he replied that he was walking. He had no car.
“Hell, let me give you a ride, man!” I said as I took my place in line to pay for my gas. “I just gotta get about ten bucks in my tank, or else, I’m pushing my car home.”
“Cool!” he said genuinely excited about the lift, “Which car is yours?”
“That blue Z-24 out there on the outer aisle.” I replied.
“I’ll wait for you out there.” he said, as he pushed the door open and exited the store, and I waited to pay the cashier.
Post-purchase, I exit the store and Jimmy’s standing outside the passenger’s door waiting for me to unlock the doors, since I lock my doors everywhere I go.
So, I open the doors with my remote FOB, he jumps in, I pump my gas, and then I jump in, and the next thing I know, we’re cruising down Custer Avenue trying to verbally catch up on all the highlights of whose been doing what for the past 15 years, or so.
His house was only 6 blocks from the gas station, so, we weren’t likely to get many words in, in such a short ride.
We pulled into his driveway, at the one and only house he has ever known ( unlike myself ) and we sat there talking for about a good 10 to 15 minutes. I had never forgotten his phone number ( 447-0167) , and I told him I was probably going to call him that weekend, if not the next one.
This was a top priority to re-connect with my very best friend I ever had .
There was a third party , a guy named Mike, who went to grade school with us up to 6th or 7th grade, but he wasn’t there in 8th grade, so he didn’t graduate with us, nor, of course, is his photo in the 8th Grade graduation picture. I’m not sure if his parents moved out of district, or the reason for his departure from us as a school group.
Yet, despite his absence in our academic circles, he was still in the picture, socially speaking.
At least, on Jim’s end his was. Specifically, Mike was also friends with Kenny. Somewhere in the middle or end of our Freshman year ( i.e., Mine, Jim’s, and Mike’s—since we were all the same age) Jim and Mike accompanied Kenny out to California where they were going to make it big as rock stars playing at every gig they could find.
That was the start of not seeing Jim at all, since even not hanging out regularly, we’d always bump into each other at house parties, or the get-togethers at the woods that I did attend.
We just weren’t hanging around together.
But, going out to California, meant that I couldn’t find him if I needed to contact for whatever reasons—of which, there would have been at least one reason, when I was getting married and I needed a Best Man.
But Jim , Mike and Kenny didn’t stay out in Cal’ permanently. They traveled back and forth over the years, and I was almost certain that one of those trips was going to be where they stayed out there permanently.
But they never did.
Jimmy came back, and stayed back.
That’s when, in 1992, our paths once again crossed
[i]—Jimmy Loses The House
But our reunion was short-lived in that approximately two or three years later, Jimmy lost the house he was living in.
He didn’t lose it to a foreclosure or anything like that. In fact, I think the house was actually paid off a long time ago.
But…
The house was actually held in common with his two sisters ( one older, Linda, and the one younger, Sandy ) that they inherited when their mother, Irene, passed away from Leukemia in the late 1970’s.
But, 15 years after her death, the two sisters had long since moved away and Jimmy stayed at the house, which was now in woeful disrepair.
The overhead door on the attached garage was off track and slanted—it would never again go up or down on that extreme of an angle; the front entrance’s screen door wasn’t even attached to the door frame, and was instead simply leaning up against the front wall between the big wooden door, and the front room window; the actual wooden door had no door knob, so there was no way to latch the door. much less lock it; the 30-by-15 foot above-ground swimming pool with a finished deck in the back yard, had long since fell in disrepair, with the water long -since drained, and the external panels all flapping off the sides and falling onto the grass; there was a second full bath ( in this two-bath house ) where the toilet was literally broken in half; the water heater had been non-operative for almost a full year; one of the bedroom doors, had a huge hole in it from Jimmy doing a “Here’s Johnny!” ( as in the movie scene in “The Shining” where Jack Nicholson, playing a demented writer stranded in a remote resort with his wife and son, as he goes into a rant of terrorizing his own wife, played by Shelly Duvall) imitation while drunk one night—yes, he put his head through the door; the front room carpet had been pulled up and all the tacking along the edges left poking up like sharp needles; even the furniture was held together with duct tape.
Jimmy was behind two or three years on property taxes, and his utilities had been shut off—no electricity, no gas, no cable TV, no phone.
He might as well have been living in a log cabin somewhere in Appalachia. He had absolutely NO AMENITIES of modern life.
He got arrested one day, when after Jimmy climbed up the pole to turn his power back on, the electric company filed charges and Jimmy was arrested on theft of utilities or something like that.
Then, his oldest sister, Linda, at that time lived way up north in either the Gurnee or the Lake Zurich area, and she just stopped by unannounced one day—after several years of not having been by the house—and when she saw just how bad the condition of the house was, she knew she had to do something quick, before the house got condemned and the kids would get nothing out of selling the house.
Unbeknownst to Jimmy, his sister Linda got an attorney to get Jim to sign papers allowing the sale of the house before it was too late—since neither Jimmy or Linda had the funds to bring the house up to par.
So, Jim thought he was signing papers pertaining to a paternity lawsuit his then-pregnant ex-girlfriend had filed against him, but he was unknowingly selling the house out from under his own nose.
A few months later, he received a letter in the mail, which he didn’t understand and he asked me to look at it and see what I thought it meant.
I looked at it and then looked at him, and said, “It says you don’t live here anymore…or, you won’t after the house sells. You’ll have ninety days to leave the premises once the house sells”.
“What do you mean?!” he asked all nervous, “I never sold the house!”
“You’re right. It says you’re selling the house.” I added.
“I ain’t sellin’ diddley.” he insisted. “What are you talkin’ about?”
“I’m just tellin’ you what it says here, Jim.” I replied. “I have no idea who’s selling your house out from under you. I’d call Linda, if I were you, and let her know. Maybe she should know about this!”
Jimmy did eventually call Linda,. and ultimately found out that she was the culprit that got that ball rolling.
She tried to explain to Jimmy what was at stake, should they have allowed the house to go any further into disrepair than it already was.
The house had been in the family for three generations—and now, it was no more.
After that, Jimmy lost it all.
[ii]—Jimmy And The Can ( Sometimes Bottle )
You see, Jimmy was an alcoholic.
Beer was his thing, not hard liquor, although it was hard liquor he was drinking the day he got his life-changing D.W.I.
Make no mistake, if offered a free Rum and Coke, he’d never turn his nose up at one, if a cold brew wasn’t immediately available. It’s just that he preferred beer over whiskey or gin.
We started drinking together at 11 years of age—only, Jim was much better at it than I was ( i.e., I don’t think Jimmy ever passed out from drinking too much when we hung out).
I, on the other hand, passed out on more than one occasion, so, for me, drinking was never my thing.
Jimmy received only one DWI (Driving While Intoxicated—which was a relatively “milder” crime than the current D.U.I. [ Driving Under the Influence], where the punishments are much stiffer ) in his entire life—but it did cost him his license.
Although, legally, it was not a permanent revocation, in actuality, Jim semi-deliberately turned it into a lifelong handicap.
Why?
Because Jimmy didn’t trust himself, because he knew his love affair with alcohol was much too strong to want his license back as bad as he thought he did.
For instance, just before losing his house, he told me that he was actively pursuing getting his drivers license back.
That was encouraging.
[iii]—Jimmy’s Letter of “Sobriety”
As part of the procedure to do so, Jimmy needed as many letters as possible ( from relatives, friends, bosses, mentors, whoever ) attesting to Jim’s sobriety and good character.
So, I wrote him a letter.
Although I consciously avoided saying obvious bullshit like, “He helps little ol’ ladies cross the street”, or “Jim has recently expressed an interest in joining the seminary”, or anything that expresses non-existent angelic conduct, I did attest to his sobriety, which, of course, was just as much of a big fat lie, since there had been countless times that I saw Jim with a beer in his hand, like the moment I handed him the letter.
I typed the “letter attesting to his sobriety” up on my PC, printed it out, and brought it over to his house.
We were in the kitchen when I gave it to him, and he walked away into the living room as he perused the letter.
While he read it, I opened the refrigerator door and grabbed a can of Miller Lite®.
I popped open the tab, and pretty much at the same moment I heard the sound of the initial “pssst” of the can’s carbonation getting released, I thought I also heard the sound of crumbling paper.
Somewhat disturbed by the thought of Jim crumbling up the letter, I immediately entered the living room where Jimmy was sitting in this dilapidated Lazy Boy recliner with the crumbled-up letter in the palm of his fist.
“What was that I just heard?” I asked, inquiring about the sound, “Was that the letter you just crumbled?”
“Yeah.” he replied sounding all depressed.
“Why?” I asked genuinely wondering why the change of heart on the letter.
“That’s not me!” he exclaimed.
“I know it’s not you.” I added, “If it was the real you in that letter, I can assure you they would not give you your license back!”
“I don’t care!” he continued, “I’m not handing that in.
I wasn’t inside his head at that moment. I couldn’t tell what his thoughts or reasons were.
He was so much more headstrong about things than I was. There was no way I was going to convince him to do a “180” and go in the opposite direction, and go for the license, even if all our letters were fibs.
He wasn’t worried about the immorality of lying, but rather he was convinced that he would get another DWI the very night he got his license back.
In other words, there was no way he was ever going to be sober at the end of the day, so there was a 100 percent chance that he’d be guilty of DWI, but what would be the chances that he’d be caught.
Fifty-fifty?
All it takes is for someone else ( e.g., some inexperienced teen driver ) to collide with you, and even if you’re not at fault for the accident, per se, the fact that you’re evidently impaired gets you into more trouble than the person in the wrong.
Are you willing to take that chance?
Jimmy wasn’t.
Somehow he was being totally honest about his own doubts about the likelihood that he’d ever be a “sober” driver, which was essentially zero.
So, onward Jimmy trekked without wheels or a license.
Then, he ran into the problem of making money—not all jobs are within walking distance, or even accessible via public transportation.
When you’re in the construction trades ( as Jimmy was as an electrician ), your “jobsite” changes every time you finish a job. You never know in advance where your next job will be.
With that level of uncertainty, one needs the flexibility of his own transportation to ensure arrival at the ever-changing locations of job sites to get the job done.
Jimmy realized he was cornered.
He needed wheels—whether he had a license or not.
When his house sold, it sold for only $75,000 because of its poor condition.
Had it been kept up, they could’ve gotten $200,000 to $250,000 for it easily: four bedroom, two full bath, with attached one-car garage, and a nice spread of a back yard.
In any case, the three kids split the $75,000 three ways, and each got $25,000.
Jim spent a portion ( How much? He never told me ) of his money on a work van that could carry around his tools.
One day, while en route to a job interview, he forgot to use his left turn signal as he was turning left onto the street where the interview was at, and unfortunately, a local traffic cop spotted Jimmy’s error, and decided to pull him over for it.
He pulled up behind Jimmy, flashed his cherries, momentarily beeped his siren, and Jimmy looked into his side view mirror, saw the flashing Mars lights, and thought, “I’m fucked!”
And he was.
The cop threw all kinds of tickets at him, including driving without a license, and suddenly Jimmy was sitting in jail, with no real family, no attorney, no job, and no backup plan…essentially, no hope.
Although he didn’t get any jail time, he was sentenced to several grand in bail, court fees and post-conviction “therapy” costs and you-name-it.
I don’t know how he got through such a challenge, but apparently he did.
From that day on, the days that Jimmy and I got together to hang out became fewer and farther between—until it was never again.
When Jim no longer lived on 45th Place, and his phone number was no longer 447-0167, I was unable to locate him, since we didn’t have any friends in common.
Throughout that time, Jimmy’s life became more disintegrated every day, until he was literally desolate and living in the woods—the same woods, in fact, that Kenny and company played at during their “Forest Preserve World Tour” days, back in the late 70’s and early 80’s.
A clearing that once belonged to a man named “Iceman”, now belonged to Jimmy.
e—A Brief Encounter on Gage Avenue…Then Tumbleweed again
I think it was in 1998 when my van’s transmission decided to take a shit on me, and for the following six weeks, or so, I ended up having to walk to work, which was a good six-mile hike, round trip ( three miles each way ).
One morning, while walking southbound on Gage Avenue about mid-block on the first block off of Ogden Avenue, I could see—a solid two blocks away from me—someone walking toward my direction.
Whoever it was, we’d soon pass each other on the sidewalk, and likely nod or even say “Good Morning” to each other as we passed. We wouldn’t know until that moment our paths crossed, of course.
What caught my eye was that person’s walk.
We all have a “walk”; and Jimmy was no exception. He definitely had a walk.
And this person walking toward me? He, too, had a walk. In fact, his walk was identical to Jimmy’s—almost as though he was imitating Jimmy.
That’s because it was Jimmy.
As we got within about a block of each other, I think I was way more sure that it was Jimmy walking toward me, than he was that it was me walking toward him.
But once we were close enough that we both knew who the other person was walking toward him, it was almost a bittersweet moment of “Oh-my-God-It-Is-So-Good-To-See-You” as we did the ol’ handshake-then-hug thing and went through all the expected salutations of “So, how ya’ been?” and “It’s so good to see you”, “Whatcha up to these days” and all the rest.
When it came to the standard question, “So, where are you off to now?” we both gave the same answer, “Work.”
When it came to the other question of “Where’s your car?” his answer was that he still didn’t have a license or a car, and my answer was “Saving up money for a rebuilt transmission”.
What’s somewhat funny is that we both had a plastic bag in our hands; the kind that the grocery stores give you when they bag your groceries.
The difference between the contents of his bag and mine was that my bag contained my lunch and my daily supply of caffeine—i.e., Mountain Dew—whereas his contained his breakfast—and, a “liquid” one at that.
Why the alcohol?
Jimmy did not like heights.
Roofing would seem to be a bad choice for someone who’s afraid of heights.
But to stop being homeless and living in the woods, and instead, having a roof over his head, he had to get a job that would pay the bills and put food in his belly.
This company offered him a job when no one else would.
To face the near-trauma of working on a roof, Jimmy fortified his courage with…well, yeah, you guessed it : alcohol.
The six pack in his bag was how he got through the work portion of the day : two before going up on a roof; two after those two beers wore off; and then, the final two.
Spreading out a six pack over the course of a ten-hour day, averages out to about one can every 1.667 hours : not exactly a consumption rate that would generate wild, rip-roaring drunkeness, like at most college parties.
In any case, as he explained to me his formula for liquid courage and how it was just enough to “calm the nerves” while working a potentially dangerous job, he explained to me that he could not “just be standing there with a six pack, when the truck pulled into the parking lot”, so he had to sneak the six pack onto the job site, by going to the shop first when very few people were around, and he’d sneak into the shop and put his six pack in with the tools or gear he was assigned to, then he’d go to McDonald’s and nonchalantly get on the truck—empty-handed—with his crew, ride back to the shop, grab his gear, as though everything was just normal, and once on the job site, he’d get prepped with his tools, both solid and liquid, and “dance on that roof like Fred Astaire”.
Realizing that we both had a work-related rendezvous to attend to, we had to say our goodbyes.
Although we talked a handful of times on the cell phone ( ten, or so, years later when we had cell phones, which we did not have at this last encounter or any other encounter prior to that moment ) THAT WAS THE LAST TIME I EVER SAW HIM WITH MY OWN TWO EYES!
After that encounter, I would not talk to him for about another 10 or 12 years later, just after my cancer treatment.
Between that last encounter and the first time we talked on the phone a decade, or so, later, I had no idea where he was.
Living off the grid ( either living in flop houses or being homeless ) as he had been, I had no phone number or address. I didn’t know anyone he knew, so we had no friends in common.
For all intents and purposes, I expected to never see or hear from Jimmy again.
f—Losing Track of and Re-Connecting With Jimmy…Again…and For The Very Last Time ( His Last Earthly Phone Number )
Then, Ben ( the youngest brother of the family we hung out with together when we were kids) , told me that he saw Jimmy on a jobsite, and got his cell phone number for me.
I was so lucky and grateful that Ben was aware of our friendship and saw fit to get Jim’s cell phone number, else, that last encounter on Gage Avenue would have been the very last time we talked.
But I got his number now!
Awesome!
I called.
We talked.
But with Jimmy showing far less energy than he did back in the day, I could feel a crack in the foundation of our youth.
But that was Jimmy’s voice, because that was Jimmy.
Listening to him talk, although somewhat lessened in enthusiasm and jocularity, was still nevertheless a gift to hear.
We talked maybe four or five times over the course of the following years, but we never got back together again.
And every time we talked, the sessions got shorter and shorter, not because of any lack of desire to talk, but because of “beauty sleep” — i.e., he said he needed at least eight hours of sleep each night to have enough energy to get through the following day’s workload, and of that, I have no doubt.
Roofing is exhausting!
Especially when you’re no spring chicken, and you have a few challenges like age and declining health.
So, our one hour, “Remember when…” reminiscent conversation was suddenly only a 40-minute call ( which was still awesome!) on the second conversation, 20 on our third, or so, and by the time we got to the very last call between us, we were probably done in five minutes, tops!
Saying “Goodbye” and hanging up for the very last time—ever!, although I did not “know” that cognitively, I could almost feel it in my bones—with the one and only best friend I ever had, was a privately emotional moment for me.
If I knew then what I know now, I would’ve called him right back and said, “I just want you to know, I love you, Brother! Without you, I would have never—ever—known that feeling of “blood-brother”-like bond we had in grade school. How cold a world it would—not “could” but would— have been without you in my life. Oh my God, I don’t even want to imagine it. Just sayin’, Bro’, you meant everything to me as a kid growing up! I will always remember you in my heart. Your friend, Floyd. Good night, Brother!”
But I didn’t. I didn’t call back, because I didn’t know; at least, not in any definitive sense. It was all a gut feeling—that I should have heeded.
But didn’t.
And now? A multitude of regrets of the “if-only-we-had-one-more-day” types for not having spoken when I could have and, obviously, should have, but didn’t.
But it is what it is, irreversible mistakes are made and life goes on.
In any case, back to the reality of that moment in time when we hung up the phone for the very last time, I was not yet officially thinking of Jimmy’s passing simply because he “isn’t dead yet; I just got off the phone with him a minute ago, so, there’s no reason to be worried or sad”.
“One of us will call the other in a month, or so.” is what complacently goes through our heads as we do not anticipate any problems in re-connecting in the near or distant future.
I feel so horrible that I allowed myself to not reach out to him more diligently in the interim between calls, to keep the momentum going.
But, like I said, the calls kept getting shorter and shorter, and the fear of placing a call that almost felt unwanted ( because of the enforced brevity of the timeframe of the increasingly shorter and shorter conversations ) made the act of dialing his number a “game of chance” of sorts in that I would never know how happy he’d sound, or how long he’d want to talk on the phone.
I know that when I was doing my chemotherapy, I had way less than “zero” energy.
I just slept—literally 12 to 14 hours every day.
I was not in a talkative mood. At all!
I would hope that nobody would hold that against me.
Trust me, chemo will kick your ass, and radiation makes it all that much worse.
I also realize that a person does not need chemo to be as lethargic as I was, since any disease has the potential to turn one into a “couch potato” or a “life-sized bed pillow”.
Despite knowing the true reasons for the brevity, I didn’t want to sub-consciously intensify insecurities on my part by calling someone I know doesn’t really want to talk if it zaps them of energy they need for other, more-important things.
I just didn’t want to feel “rejected”, so, I’d dial all but the last digit, and hesitate to press the last key to place the call, only to hit the cancel button at the last second, and feel frustrated at being stuck between wanting to talk with him, but not wanting to be “rejected” by him, even though I cognitively realize it’s not a rejection of me, per se, but simply a deficit of energy to engage a conversation beyond a few breaths and syllables.
I know! I’ve been there.
You don’t want to be there. Trust me!
I figured, “Well, if he feels up to it, he’ll call me.” and I left it at that.
He never did.
So, I called him one more time, in December of 2017, just before Christmas, got his voice mail, left him a message, and figured maybe a call to him would trigger him into calling back.
Again, he never did.
Then….
g—Jim’s Passing
In January, 2018, a mutual friend of ours, Kim, had shared with us on our group page in Facebook, Jim’s obituary.
I couldn’t believe my suddenly-tearing eyes.
Tower Funeral Homes in Lyons ( Jim’s home town ) was handling the services, but, unfortunately, for me, or anyone else who wanted to “see Jim” for the last time, his two sisters decided to make the affair a private family matter, not open to friends.
I’m not sure why.
But I found out that he’s buried next to his mother, Irene, who passed away in the late 1970’s from Leukemia.
I miss her, too. She was a great mom for Jim.
I think her premature passing is what pushed Jim over the edge of a life of alcoholic excess.
She died way too young in terms of him needing a mother, while still a teenager, and not having a father figure in his life—Jimmy’s father was the Fire Chief in Lyons when his mom passed, but his relationship with his father wasn’t exactly “tight”, so, emotionally, he was metaphorically “orphaned”.
Yes, Jim’s father (who just happened to be the Fire Chief in town, and who also Jim was named after, as in, James Robert Spolar Senior, and Junior) was still alive when his mother died, but Jim’s parents were divorced and estranged from each other.
Although I did visit the fire station on a few occasions with Jimmy, showing that he was not exactly “estranged”, per se, from his father, their relationship was still, nevertheless, less-than-tight.
They never did a single “father-and-son” thing together throughout the entire time that I knew him.
So, up until his Freshman year in High School, the only male figures that were directly in his life on a daily basis, in his life were his cousins—who lived across the street—and male friends, of which there really was only one such person : me.
I was his best friend; and he was mine.
***h—The Memories
There was a TV show, a sitcom in the 1970’s and early 1980’s called “Barney Miller”, which revolved around the antics of New York City’s Police Department in the 12th Precinct, headed by “Captain Barney Miller”, played by actor, Hal Linden.
In their series finale, in the last five minutes of the final episode, Barney, standing in the middle of an office now completely empty of human beings (except himself, of course ), looks around the office and reminisces about the days of the past and other suspects and police officers formerly of the 12th Precinct, who did not do any series-finale cameo appearances.
They simply re-played a few chosen scenes that were the most memorable throughout the years.
After he finishes glossing over the final memory, he walks over to the door of the Detectives Squad room , opens it, steps across the threshold, takes one last look around the room, turns the light switch off, and closes the door behind himself, where the producers of the show threw up an exiting salutation , “Goodbye from the Ol’ One-Two”.
In any case, in the same way that Barney stood there silently re-living old memories, I pretty much did the same thing when I stared at Jimmy’s obituary on the monitor.
I couldn’t believe that I was staring at Jimmy’s name—in an obituary.
I actually have a screenshot of that page, but I misfiled it somewhere in my catalog of thousands and thousands of image files.
[i] Our First Cigarette
I don’t know why we chose so far away to smoke our cigarettes, but back in the summer of 1974, Jimmy and I would ride our bikes to what was called the “Old Field” in Lyons, Illinois.
The Old Field was the original baseball diamond for the local town’s little league baseball games.
It was also physically connected to a portion of a local forest preserve.
Although the town had built a new park, obviously referred to as the “New Field” ( Later named William G. Smith Park, the mayor of Lyons at that time ), there were still some games still being played out at the Old Field, but they were increasingly fewer and farther between as time went on.
In any case, our “secluded” smoking spot was approximately a mile away, as the “crow flies”, but felt more like five miles away when pedaling your Schwinn® Stingray® bikes there.
I’m not sure why we started on “menthols”, but we did.
Specifically, Kool’s®; somewhere shortly thereafter, we started go a tad lighter and went to Newports®.
Ultimately, though, we somehow made our way over to non-menthols. In this case, Marlboro®, but that wasn’t until a few years later.
But when Jim and I started smoking, we were “Kool” guys, not to mention that we were young and stupid, too.
We’d ride our bike’s to the Old Field, in the thick of the trees that visually separated the baseball diamond from the residential street, Fisherman’s Terrace, that ran alongside the park at a parallel angle.
No one could see us, as we’d take a cigarette out of the pack, and light it up with our paper matches, take a drag, cough our brains out, laugh, and say, “Cool!”.
We’d chew bubble gum—specifically Bazooka® brand—as though that hid the smell of cigarette smoke : you know, the way a breath mint fools the cops into thinking that you’ve had no alcohol to drink, after an all-nighter, swerving while driving, and a parade of slurred words when talking to the police officer, who actually feels like he’s catching a buzz from the alcohol vapors emanating from your own mouth every time you utter a slurred syllable .
A friend of a friend who was probably ten years our senior, tried to dispense a spoonful of wisdom by encouraging us to stop smoking before we really became addicted.
But did we listen?
Hell, no.
That guy was closer to an “adult” then a “kid”, so he was actually the enemy and not our “friend”.
That’s how young-and-stupid boys think and behave.
Needless to say, I ended up “quitting” smoking in 2007, when I was diagnosed with Stage 3 Esophageal Cancer with metastasized growths in my stomach, and I ended up on a gurney in an operating room where they spent the next 19 hours removing the bottom three quarters of my esophagus, the top half of my stomach, my spleen, and four lymph nodes—and where I ended up having not one, but two, heart attacks when they tried to surgically separate a portion of the esophagus from the heart muscle, as it had become fused to the heart because the radiation treatments literally “melted” the tissues together.
Nice, huh?
But I’m not going to exclaim “proudly” that I survived two heart attacks, since all that credit belongs to the two surgeons and their assistants who did 100 percent of the work.
I’m lucky; not invincible.
Now, with what’s left of the upper end of my digestive system, 100 percent recovery is not really possible; I can only deal with the post-surgical aftermath issues when I’m confronted by them : nausea ; vomiting; acid reflux; bile attacks—the last of which unleashes a “cracken” of nausea that’s much too intense to be dealt with sans medicinal assistance.
In Jim’s case, though, his cancer had spread to far more areas than mine did.
It cost him his life in January of 2018; approximately six weeks before his 55th birthday.
From what I was told, he was only in hospice for one day. That’s it!
He showed up one day, and he died the next.
I so wish I had been there for him.
From Kool to Newport to Marlboro to hospice to the casket.
He’s alive on Tuesday; he’s dead on Wednesday.
Just like that. Now you see him; now you don’t. It’s over within the blink of an eye.
[ii] Our First Beer ( and other Assorted Liquors )
Tobacco was not our only vice.
We thought we’d try booze, too; and we liked it.
Jimmy way more than me, to be sure, but I still had fun. There’s no doubt about that.
The main and huge difference between us is that I don’t think Jimmy ever passed out from drinking, whereas I did about 20 to 30 percent of the time. I really couldn’t handle my booze.
There I’d be, over in the corner of some room, totally out, either sitting up in a chair or lying down on a couch.
Not that it was a contest, per se, but simply, if the point of getting drunk or high is to enjoy the buzz, that’s kind of hard to do when you’re sleeping it off, or otherwise somehow unconscious and not experiencing anything in the woken state.
Sleeping is not the goal of substance abuse—escapism is.
Anyway.
Our first beer together was in Jim’s back yard.
They were cans, not bottles, I remember that; but I forget the brand name of the beer.
It wasn’t Stroh’s® or Old Style® or Budweiser® or Miller® or Hamm’s®, or Coors® or any of the other gigantic brands here in the Chicago area. It was more like Meister Brau® or Pabst Blue Ribbon® or Schlitz® or some other brand that wasn’t really all that popular here in Chicagoland, at least , not as far as the grocery and liquor stores I had been in at the time.
It definitely wasn’t anything that Jimmy and I actively sought out after that initial experience; if anything, we probably were proactive in avoiding that brand like a plague.
Although I preferred the “green bottle” beers ( Heinekens®, Beck’s®, Lowenbrau®, Hacker Pschorr®—i.e. the ones that have a “skunky”-like taste) my buddies preferred the American Lagers mentioned at the top of two paragraphs back.
Since we bought collectively (i.e., we all pitched in for a case or two, or a half barrell on occasion—kegger parties are awesome! ) I had to settle for what the democracy voted for, which, in most cases, was Old Style® or Stroh’s.
At the bar, when it came to domestic lagers, I’d buy pitchers of Miller® after I knew my friends were hammered enough to not notice the difference, or not care about.
I preferred Miller to Bud, Old Style or Stroh’s, and it made me feel good that I got to drink brands that I liked on occasion.
But when it came to our very first beers together, they were not of our own acquisition, per se, but rather, “borrowed” from Jim’s then step dad, who was not in the picture much longer after we started hanging out with each other.
I’d have to say that within the first 12 months of our friendship, Jim’s mom threw out her second husband, who, according to Jimmy, was a mean alcoholic who abused his Jimmy’s mom.
So, no love lost there between Irene and her kids on one side, and the departing Bob V. on the other side.
But those beers belonged to Bob.
However, Bob’s departure had zero effect on our access to six packs of beer.
Jimmy’s mom worked at the corporate headquarters of Jewel-Osco Grocery Store/Pharmacy chain in Melrose Park, Illinois, so she brought home all kinds of goodies all the time.
In fact, although not technically a “horder”, almost every inch of shelf and counter space was occupied by some cardboard box loaded to the top with things like can goods, boxes of cereal, bathroom products, and you-name-it.
She never put any of it away because there was no place to put it.
In any case, among the things Irene brought home was beer.
Specifically, Michelob®, which she drank rarely. In fact, I’m not sure why she brought it home—maybe there was a beer salesman who had a thing for Irene and he frequently “donated” multiple six packs to her. I don’t know. All I know is that Irene’s basement had stacks of Michelob® six-packs in 12-ounce bottles, just sitting on the floor, staying room temperature and never getting cold.
Until Jimmy decided they needed to be refrigerated—and then consumed : yes, by us.
Much too young, I grant you, at 11 years of age, but it just happens to be when Jimmy and I “met alcohol”.
What did we do when we drank? That is, besides drinking?
We built model cars.
We went to a long-since-departed hobby store at the tracks off Prairie Avenue in Brookfield, Illinois.
We’d each find some model that looked too cool to pass up—e.g., 1957 Chevy, 1969 Camaro Super Sport, 1970 Dodge Super Bee Charger, 67 Mustang, 1972 Chevelle SS, and all the other muscle cars of the era—buy the paints and the glue and ride our Stingrays back to Jimmy’s house from the hobby shop.
Then, we’d go back to Jimmy’s basement, put on an LP on the turntable, such as Led Zeppelin’s “II” album, or Montrose’ “Montrose” album, or Deep Purple’s “Machine Head” album—the heavier stuff.
We had a table set up in the basement with desk lamps for maximum lighting while putting together the models.
While listening to tunes, we’d drink beer and put together model cars.
Then, Jimmy’s mom bought an eight-foot slate pool table for the basement.
So, if we weren’t building models, we were shooting pool…or, swimming in his above-ground swimming pool with a finished deck in the back yard.
Moreover, Jimmy’s back yard was a metaphorical “Garden of Eden” in that it had multiple fruit trees, including an apple tree, a pear tree, and a very productive grape vine that output a ton of deep purple grapes.
No jar of grape jelly ever tasted that good as those grapes fresh off the vine.
But we’d also sit in his back yard and get drunk, too.
But, that’s an area where Jimmy and I departed in that he became an alcoholic and I didn’t.
In fact, I preferred Cannabis over alcohol—and I certainly couldn’t mix them!
No way!
One or the other was fine, but both was not do-able.
If I had consumed, say, a six pack and then smoked a joint or two with someone afterward, I was asking for trouble.
It was a crap shoot : I could either become loud and obnoxious, or so quiet and dizzy that I had to lie down for the duration of the “bed spins”, where it feels like the room is spinning, and blowing chunks onto someone’s carpet becomes a distinct possibility.
For me, it was one or the other, but not both. I couldn’t handle it.
And for that, I am grateful.
If I had been “good at drinking”, it would have been possible that I could have drifted down the same alcoholic path that Jimmy did.
I was very fortunate in that regard.
His liver was actually deemed “destroyed” by a doctor long before his lung cancer came along.
But, despite how the excess of alcoholic intake destroyed his liver, and cigarettes gave him lung cancer 44 years later, I still cherish those “firsts” moments with Jimmy.
Sometimes, I “want” to light a cigarette, sip a beer, build a model car while I listen to the songs we enjoyed in order to re-live and reminisce about those moments that remind me of….friendship : something I never had before meeting Jimmy.
[iii] Our First “Doobie”
The family of brothers that gave Jimmy his nickname ( that he detested so much that he stopped hanging out with them because he hated hearing that nickname that much ) was the same family of brothers that turned us on to our very first joint.
This family—we’ll call them the Daltons—consisted of six kids : four boys and two girls.
It was Mike, Michelle, Sue, Donny, Jerry and Billy in descending order of age.
The boys were nicknamed “Goat” ( Mike ), “Duck” ( Donny), Jerry, and “Ben” ( Billy ).
Jerry, for whatever reason, really didn’t have a nickname that stuck with him—although he had a baseball coach that called him “Rare” because the coach thought Jerry had unusually advanced baseball skills for his age.
But the name “Rare” never stuck on him the way his brothers’ seemingly zoologically-oriented nicknames stuck on them.
In any case, there wasn’t a sober mind in the house all the way down to the youngest child, “Ben”, who, himself, was only nine or ten years old, at that time, and yet, he knew the difference between pot and Lipton Tea when we tested him.
As far as who we were with when Jimmy and I smoked our first joint, it was Jerry ( the second youngest ) and Chris ( a class mate of Jim and I).
Jerry was a year older than us, in that he was in 7th Grade, whereas Chris, Jim and I were all in 6th Grade.
It was mid-autumn—still warm enough where winter clothes were still overkill for what one would need to stay warm in 50- to 65-degree temperatures, yet, cool enough, where short sleeves and no jacket would not be adequate to stay warm for the typical person.
So, there we were, in Jerry’s living room, sitting on the couch, with our windbreakers or vinyl jackets on, on a school day evening, around dusk, and we’re bored out of our skulls.
It’s not really a party night, so, it’s not like we were out to score any beer or anything like that. Just maybe play a game of pool by Jimmy’s house, and then, go hang out at the hot dog joint called “Jimmy The Greek’s”, a place where his “large” order of fries was a massive brown paper bag that had huge grease spots on them once the fries has soaked the bag with excess grease, but, man, those fries were awesome!
Undoubtedly unhealthy with all the grease that was plainly obvious—but tasty!
In any case, we were bored, and Jerry stood up out of the chair he was sitting in, and he exited through the front door, and wandered outside onto the front lawn, where there were several other people who were friends of either Duck, Goat, or the girls.
As Jerry stood up and exited, Chris stood up from the couch and followed suit, and then, Jimmy and I looked at each other, shrugged our shoulders, and figured we’d go outside, too, since that’s where everyone else seemed to be.
Standing on the front lawn, Chris leans over to Jimmy and I and said, “Hey, you guys wanna go smoke a joint?”
Again, Jimmy and I looked at each other, shrugged, and said, “Sure! Why not?!”
With that, Chris looked over at Jerry, who was standing about 10 feet away talking to his brother, Duck, and motioned to him to follow us.
We started walking northbound down the sidewalk on Cracow Avenue and when we got to the corner, which was 45th Place, Jimmy’s street, we started walking eastward on 45th (which is away from Jimmy’s house ) into a tiny, middle-of-the-block park for kids, where there were bushes along the sides to help obscure the view of nearby residents who couldn’t see into the park once the bushes bloomed. Fortunately, the bush’s leaves had not yet departed for the season, and were still attached to the branches providing us with all the camouflage we needed to carry out our devious plan to smoke a joint in the darkness of the park.
It was kind of windy that evening, in that every time someone would try to light a cigarette, the wind would blow out the lighter’s flame, and you’d have to re-strike the flint and try to light the lighter over and over again until you succeeded in lighting your cigarette, bowl, joint, cigar, whatever.
So, to deal with the repeated “blowing out” of the flame, Chris suddenly stopped walking, so he could cup his hands around the lighter as he attempted to fire up the joint.
After several failed attempts, we all huddled around Chris to help him block the wind, and get that doobie going.
Flick. Flick. Puff. Puff.
Finally, we saw smoke.
Chris took the first hit, and allowed the smoke to “curl” into his nostrils as he pulled the joint away from his lips and momentarily held onto the joint, as though he was deciding whether or not he got enough of a hit and was contemplating taking in more of a “toke”, but instead, must have suddenly realized it was, if anything, too big of a hit, as his coughing fit was about to start as he passed the joint to Jerry.
Jerry did the same : he toked, he coughed, he passed the joint to Jim.
Meanwhile, prior to Jerry passing the joint to Jimmy., I watched both Chris and Jerry in their mannerisms, in the way that they held the joint, the way they “puffed” on the joint, and the like, and I got the impression that this was not their first joint.
But it was certainly ours, as I watched Jimmy fail at an attempt to “look cool” while toking on the joint—he held it and puffed on it like a cigarette, and both Chris and Jerry immediately chuckled and instructed jimmy on the proper way to hold a joint, and how to toke on it and ” hold it in” for as long as you can.
All along, as the joint was getting closer and closer for me to take my turn toking on the thing, I was starting to get a bit nervous.
About what?
Well, we had all seen the education department’s smorgasbord of anti-drug propaganda movies, and, based on the “nightmares” the movies warned us about, I was nervously wondering if I was going to suddenly find myself being rushed, in an ambulance, to a hospital due to some overdose.
Having just witnessed a front row class on the etiquette of pot-smoking, I felt a little less threatened by the possibility of looking like a geek when it came to my turn at taking a toke off the joint.
As Jimmy passed me the joint, he also took his turn at coughing up a storm.
Suddenly, there it was was : the doobie—it was in my hand.
I looked at it as tiny wisps of smoke rose off the tip of the glowing ash. Knowing that all eyes were on me as the moment of “my very first toke” was about to take place, I slowly rose the joint up to my lips and took my first “toke”, and I sucked it in, the way I watched Chris and Jerry do it.
Just as I finished inhaling, and Jimmy was still coughing hard, Jerry immediately chimed in to me, “Now, hold it in for as a long as you can!”
So, I did, for as long as I could, after passing the joint pack to Chris.
And within a few seconds, I too, had joined the chorus of “cough-ers”.
Put together, between the four of us, there was not a moment when one of us wasn’t coughing. As one person would stop coughing, another would start, in a somewhat-like “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”-like fashion.
Finally, when the joint was finished, the coughing had stopped, and just the coughing alone was enough to give me a case of the “dizzies”, so, I wasn’t sure if I had “caught a buzz” as they often phrased it.
We smoked that whole joint, and although I felt different, I didn’t feel “stoned” in the sense of what I anticipated what it would be like.
As we walked back to Jerry’s house, I felt like, “What’s the big deal about pot?” I didn’t feel any different.
But…..
Once we walked back into Jerry’s living room, where there was bright lighting everywhere, everything looked different : sharper; crisper; and far more “yellow-ish” in tint.
Now, I knew something was up.
“I think I’m stoned!” was the thought in my head as I looked around the room to verify that the visuals were real and everywhere, and not being caused by some kind of weird lighting snafu or anything like that.
But something was different…and I liked it!
A lot!
I couldn’t wait until the next joint.
While we sat in Jerry’s house, one of Duck’s friends, Pat, walked in from outside to use the bathroom.
By the time he exited the bathroom, Jimmy and I were standing in the hallway, just outside the bathroom door, talking to Chris who was by the refrigerator in the kitchen, which is only like four feet, or so, from the bathroom door, and Pat tapped me on the shoulder and told me to follow him upstairs into Jerry and Duck’s bedroom.
So, I followed him; and Jimmy followed us.
As we left the last upward step, and crossing the threshold into the room, Pat explained to us that what he had was called “Columbian Gold” ( $50 per ounce ) which was better than the Mexican ( $15 per ounce ) that was common on the streets.
Jimmy and I smoked that joint of Columbian with Pat, and by the time we finished, that bedroom was a “smog fest” and we were so baked.
Jimmy and I were both smilin’ and diggin’ the buzz.
And we were both sold on the idea of getting our own bag.
But…
Even $15 ( for Mexican ) was still a lot of money to an unemployed 11-year-old in 1974, when the minimum wage was $2.65 ( maybe less—because it was $2.65 when I got my first part-time job in 1979—and this was in the late summer or autumn of 1974, so the minimum wage might have been even less, making $15 even harder to earn ) ; at that wage, $15 was slightly more than a half day’s wage.
And $50 for Columbian?
Forget it! Out of the question! That would have been a half week’s check right there.
Even for Mexican, how could we raise that kind of revenue to buy our own bag of weed?
Well, the economics of the 1970’s was a bit different than it is today, in that soft drinks were once sold in 8-packs, of 16-ounce glass bottles that could be turned in for cash once they were empty : specifically, 10 cents per bottle.
Therefore, the price for every eight-pack of bottles was 80 cents higher than the actual price of the eight-pack. It was assumed that you’d turn in the empty bottles and get your eighty cents back.
Pepsi, Coke, RC, 7 Up, etc, were all part of the program.
Pretty much all the grocery stores ( major chains and small mom-and-pop-owned stores alike) had a clerk that handled the “return-for-deposit” transactions.
The two stores in our area were :
[1] Srain’s ( later DeGeratto’s ), at Plainfield Road and First Avenue, in Lyons; and
[2] C & C, in Brookfield, on Ogden Avenue, about 10 blocks west of Srains.
Jimmy and I knew that not everyone went through the trouble to return their bottles—too much bother. we guessed.
So, they’d throw them out into the general trash.
Knowing there was a “gold mine” of bottles in the local allies, we would use this wire frame-like cart on wheels and we’d go up and down the alleys looking for those people who threw their bottles out.
A typical day would be about $8 worth of bottles, but, when we combined that $8 with our allowances, we had closer to $20, so we could score a “lid” as they called ounces back then.
Jimmy and I had a few connections that were rarely “out of stock”.
We’d score a lid, split it in half, and life was good!
11-year-olds with their own personal half ounce of weed was the norm for us from those days forward.
Later on in life—like, 20 years later—I discovered that although Jimmy would still smoke when he was around me, he told me he rarely smoked anymore, and preferred to drink than smoke.
I was completely the opposite : I preferred smoke over alcohol.
“To each, his own” as they say.
But when I’d stop by his house, or he stopped by mine, when I’d pass him the bowl, he never said “No”, so we got stoned together.
But, back in those early days, when Jimmy and I started getting stoned, we would go to a head shop on Ogden Avenue in Lyons, called “Lost Horizons” where all kinds of Cannabis-related paraphernalia (e.g. rolling papers, rolling machines, pipes, bongs, screens, containers for your stash, and even non-drug related stuff like tee-shirts, incense and black light posters ) could be legally purchased.
The “puritans” in town , marching down the street with torches and pitch forks, convinced the town government to run him and his pre-Nancy Reagan “Say Yes To Drugs!” campaign out of town!
Ron, the man who owned the business, moved into the neighboring town of Brookfield, Illinois, where, although allowed to open as a record and tee-shirt shop, was not allowed to sell paraphernalia of the Cheech and Chong type , if you know what I mean, and he dropped the word “Lost” from his company name, and he became simply “Horizons”.
So, he sold he remaining stock quietly among customers he could trust, and he initially morphed into an open-to-the-public used record store ( of which I bought many records from Ron, and they still have the oval-shaped, fluorescent-colored, “Horizons” stickers on the album covers), but ultimately went wholesale only, and not open to the public.
Then, I never saw Ron again.
Eventually the store front closed, and Horizons was history.
A huge chunk of my earlier stoner period was slowly wiped out into total oblivion!
[iv] Our First “Trip”
“Different Strokes For Different Folks” was one saying that I grew up with.
Some people like sports; some people couldn’t care less about sports.
Of those that like sports, some prefer the team sports like baseball, football, basketball, hockey, and soccer, while others prefer the more individualized sports such as Nascar racing or martial arts combat contests or marathon endurance bike rides or races, and the like.
Different strokes for different folks.
Well, the world of substance abuse is no different.
Some people are somewhat “OCD” when it comes to the discipline required to achieve certain tasks, and therefore are impressively diligent when it comes to maintaining puritan levels of conformity when it comes to guidance in the realm of things like nutrition and regular exercise, so they don’t smoke, drink, snort, shoot, use foul language or engage in any other activity they deem negative in whatever way.
Others are little more likely to let their hair down a little more often, and are fine with nicotine, caffeine, and a little alcohol.
Some people want to grow their hair “real long”, as they prefer to add a little cannabis in with the nicotine-caffeine-alcohol thing.
Some want to wear a bandana and sunglasses and explore various mindsets by going a little farther out into space, and using either “organic” mushrooms or chemical LSD as the vehicle to transport themselves to a consciousness on a completely “different plane of thought”.
Others, wanting to feel good about themselves, choose to cut their hair, and embrace the confidence-“enhancing” properties of cocaine.
Still others, like cosmic Star Trek explorers, want to actually leave the solar system, and try things like heroin.
Jimmy and I?
We were of the nicotine-alcohol-cannabis-mushrooms/LSD school of thought.
Our first trip?
It was on these tiny little orange dots called “Orange Sunshine”—literally less than an eighth of an inch in diameter.
They reminded me of that St. Joseph Aspirin for children, since they were orange and round, too.
Wow!
What a trip!
We laughed for hours!…and hours…..and hours…and hours!
We smiled so much, that my facial muscles were actually sore from smiling so much.
Even when we weren’t actively laughing, we were still wearing that stupid shit-eatin’ grin on our faces.
We didn’t even realize we were smiling.
At the end of the night, when we were all coming down from our trips, we couldn’t believe how sore our faces and jaws were—our faces because of the non-stop smiling and top-of-our-lungs laughter, and our jaws from subconsciously grinding our teeth, a by-product or side effect of the amphetamine-like “speed” of the drug’s recipe.
{001} Our Best Trip
But our absolute best trip together was on the exact same stuff in the color of purple, as it was called “purple microdot”.
I’ll never forget that day.
I can even remember many of the songs that were played on the radio that day: The Atlanta Rhythm Section’s “So Into You”; pretty much all the songs on both of Fleetwood Mac’s albums, “Rumors” and “Fleetwood Mac”; The Eagles “Hotel California” and “New Kid In Town”; Manfred Mann’s Earth Band’s , “Blinded By The LIght”; Peter Frampton’s “Do You feel Like We Do?”; and Al Stewart’s “Year Of the Car”.
I just don’t remember if we were listening to WMET or WDHF. Either way, I could live that day over again. That was an awesome day!
We had gotten so lucky in that the weather was not only warm, it was spot-on perfect—all day and into the evening.
Our little group that day consisted of five of us—Chris, Jim, another classmate named Dave, Albert—a neighborhood kid who went to Saint Barbara’s Catholic School in Brookfield), and, of course, yours truly.
We all gathered at Dave’s house, which had been our main nightly hangout for approximately a year.
His house had a rather large recreation room built onto the back of it, with a concrete patio and a picnic table just outside the back door of the rec room. His back yard was long enough to play frisbee!
We showed up to Dave’s house around 9:00 AM, because we knew the trips would last all day long, and we wanted to be coming down before midnight, otherwise, we’d still be up at 5:00 AM, if we didn’t start tripping until, say, mid-afternoon, or anywhere in that general time of the day, or later.
Anyway, we were all sitting around the picnic table by 9:00 AM and just itchin’ to drop those dots.
Like a football team, we huddled around in a tight circle, and fired up, not one, but two big fat joints ( smoked consecutively, not concurrently ) while we discussed our totally impromptu itinerary, and how we were hoping the upcoming events would unfold, in what sequence, and other considerations.
It was during this discussion period that we took out our tiny “Purple Microdots” and put them on the tips of our fingers, then our tongues, and then realized it was just a matter of time for the trips to kick in and we could enjoy the ride.
As usual, we arranged for the acquisition of alcoholic beverages ( in this case, two cases of Old Style®, 12-ounce cans ) the night before, but….
Our connection hadn’t yet shown up to drop off the goods. So, for the following two or three hours, we were beer-less—although it has to be pointed out that it was, after all, only nine O’Clock in the morning; so, we weren’t exactly writhing in pain “jonesin’ for alcohol”…yet.
Approximately three or four days earlier, I had purchased a pipe with a bowl that was carved out of “Turkish Stone” which changes color when you smoke out of the bowl—the heat, apparently, somehow triggers the “stone” to change colors when it’s exposed to the high temperatures coming from the flames of the lighter or matches one uses to ignite the leafy cannabis inside the bowl.
Oh, and you’re not supposed to touch the bowl with your fingers, instead holding it only by the mouthpiece and main tube.
Evidently, the oils on human skin have a negative effect on the stone’s ability to produce the reaction it’s popular for producing.
Moreover, the stone was carved into the shape of the head of a sea captain—complete with captain’s hat, and his own tiny pipe sticking out of his mouth.
It was a cool looking pipe; that’s why I bought it.
But…
Like an idiot, I forgot it at home that day, and, being a 13-year-old without a car or even a drivers license, I certainly wasn’t going to go all the way home to go get it, since we had plenty of other common pipes we could use for the day.
Yes, it would have been nice to have it as a conversation piece, but it was, after all, a luxury, not a necessity. Plus, it’s likely it could have ended up getting broken. So, perhaps it was a blessing-in-disguise when I accidentally left it at home that day.
Of course, though, Jimmy did bring it up in conversation.
“Floyd bought this super-cool pipe! You dudes really gotta see this thing!” he exclaimed to everyone getting them all excited, “It changes color when you smoke out of it. It is so fuckin’ cool, man! You gotta see it!”
“Where is it?” Albert inquired.
“Captain Forgetful here, probably left it at home, didn’t ya’?” Jimmy asked knowing me like the back of his hand.
“Uh, yeah.” I confessed, all embarrassed, mocking shame by staring down at the ground.
“Figures.” Jimmy added, with a slight chuckle as he shook his head in amusement at my forgetfulness.
Lacking any beverages of any kind, Dave decided to rob a six pack of soda from the kitchen refrigerator, and brought it out to distribute among the thirsty, which consisted of all of us, given our cannabis-induced, dry “cottonmouth”.
To get things going, Chris, Jim and Albert spread out into the yard to start tossing the frisbee around.
Dave went back into the house for something, while I remained sitting on the picnic bench, all by my lonesome self, filling another bowl, since I wanted to be nice and baked when the microdot started to take effect.
An interesting side note about tripping, is that time seems to fly by—what might literally seem like only 10 or 20 minutes, can easily be a two or three-hour time frame.
That’s exactly what happened here. What seemed like only 15 minutes was actually about an hour’s time.
From the moment Dave went into the house and the other three went to toss the frisbee, I smoked a cigarette, took a hit of weed, then a sip of my soda, and I repeated the process a few times and I probably smoked about three or four cigarettes by the time the trips were kicking in.
My behavior was certainly beginning to show signs of the drug’s influence on my psyche.
_____{aa}”Captain Cloud“______
For starters, when Jimmy brought up the subject of my pipe, an hour earlier, that subject, for whatever reasons, never left my mind sub-consciously.
Every time I’d look down at the pipe I was smoking out of ( which was a typical metal bowl with a 90-degree elbow, connected to main tube that was about the size of 3/8″ tubing approximately two inches long ), I kept thinking about my “Captain” pipe.
Then…
I looked up into the sky, and saw a group of big billowy fluffy white clouds floating by in the distance, and one of the clouds looked exactly like my Captain pipe, complete with the Captain’s face, hat and mini-pipe, and the whole shebang!
Then, the Captain’s face on the cloud came alive, smiled, and winked at me.
“Whoa!” I thought to myself as I couldn’t believe what I just saw.
I looked over at the guys to see if they saw it, but they weren’t paying attention, as they were preoccupied tossing the frisbee back and forth.
I realized that no one else saw it.
Wow! What a vision!
I’ll never forget that sight.
Not only that, but I also noticed that Dave was also out there tossing the frisbee around, as well.
I saw him go into the house, but I never saw him come out.
“How did he get out of the house without me seeing him walk by?” I wondered to myself, since Dave was a monster in terms of size—over six foot tall, and easily in the mid-200’s in weight.
That would be like not seeing Sasquatch walk by.
“And…how much time has passed since Dave went into the house?” was another question I pondered.
“Was I that oblivious to my surroundings?” I silently wondered to myself. “That he walked right by me, and I didn’t even notice? Or, that an hour’s time has passed, and not a mere five minutes.”
_{ab}The Conversation With “Myself”
Despite the fact that all four of them were too far away for them to hear me talking to them, I nonetheless carried on a conversation with them as though they “could” hear me.
“Wow! I can’t believe you guys didn’t see that!” I exclaimed in what I thought was an emphasized tone of voice, when it was actually closer to a soft-spoken mumble, which, obviously could not be heard from five feet away, much less 30 or 40 feet away, where the nearest person was standing.
While I was “telling the guys” what I just saw, Dave’s older sister, Donna, was upstairs on the second floor, in her bedroom, looking out her window, watching me talk to myself.
Technically, she couldn’t hear my voice, but she saw my hands and lips moving, as though I was having a conversation with someone—but, as far as she was concerned, there was no one there listening, with the other four out in the yard, too far away to hear a normal voice, much less a quiet one.
She sat there, watching me carry on, and after about a minute, or so, she finally stuck her head out her bedroom window, and said to me, “Who you talking to, Floyd?”
As buzzed as I was, I knew that her voice was not a hallucination, and, in fact, I knew where it was coming from, even before I looked, simply because she had stuck her head out that very same window countless times before, so I just looked over my shoulder, and upward, toward Donna in the second-floor window, and replied, while pointing at them playing frisbee in the yard, “Dave and them.”
“What?” she repeated, not actually hearing what I said.
“Dave and them.” I repeatedly mumbled, as I re-pointed my finger at them.
“They can’t hear you from there!” she pointed out. “Hell! I can’t hear you from there, and I’m, what, fifteen feet away? And they’re double that! I think you’re gonna need to speak louder, or walk over closer to them, so they can hear you.”
I remember looking over at them and thinking that it was way too much energy to talk any louder than I was already talking.
I wasn’t going to repeat any of it.
“It was my hallucination, and I guess I was never going to be able to share the experience with any of my other four companions.
_______{ac} The Death
The most “ominous” moment of that day, was later on in the early afternoon, when we were on our second round of non-stop frisbee throwing, by which time, I had joined the fun, and suddenly, we heard the slowly-getting-louder-and-closer sirens of what turned out to be an ambulance.
Next door to Dave’s house, was this hundred-year-old, tiny, one-bedroom, late-1800’s, wood-frame house on a slab that a woman easily in her mid-eighties, if not nineties, lived.
We’re not sure who called the ambulance, but for whatever reason, when the ambulance pulled up in front of the house, on the street, they must have discovered some seemingly insurmountable obstacles, because they ended up pulling around to the alley and coming into her house, via the back door, as there was a sidewalk that led directly from her back door, out to the alley.
So, they parked in the alley, and with the rehearsed smoothness of pros who’ve done this hundreds, if not thousands, of times before, the back door of the ambulance swung open and the gurney was wheeled out with the rapidity of a pit stop at a Nascar race, and within seconds, the two paramedics were halfway down her sidewalk en route to her back door.
Of course, with morbid curiosity, we all stopped doing what we were doing in a “gaper’s block” of sorts, as we watched the two EMT’s open the back door and enter into the house.
We all looked at each other, and slowly got back into the groove of tossing the frisbee around.
A side note about the property next door : not only was the house a shambles, just waiting for a village declaration to condemn the property and clear the way for new new development of that particular plot of land, but even the fence was long since past it’s “last leg”. One good wind storm, and that fence should be laying flat on the ground.
Portions of the fence were missing, and of those that remained, none of the fence posts were plumb—leaning on 70-degree angles.
I any case, a few minutes after the moment when the EMT’s entered the house, and we went back to tossing the frisbee back and forth to each other, the back door opened, and the EMT’s were about to emerge with the woman on a gurney, prepped for transport to the nearest hospital.
Or, so we thought.
Instead, and unfortunately, for everyone involved, at the very same moment the EMT’s were emerging from the doorway, the frisbee accidentally flew into the woman’s yard, and Dave dove for the frisbee and as he leaned against the fence, the entire section he bumped into collapsed, and Dave fell crashing to the ground as the frisbee continued on un-intercepted into the woman’s yard.
But, like I said, when Dave clumsily fell to the ground, we all busted a gut laughing at the tops of our lungs.
“Ha! Ha! Ha!” every one of us laughed as we pointed at Dave, having comically gone horizontal on us.
I’m talking real hard belly laughs that keep you trying to catch your breath.
While we’re laughing and having the time of our lives, the EMT’s came out of the house with the woman……..completely covered—head included.
She was dead.
But here we are laughing like we just saw a funniest skit ever on one of our favorite TV shows.
“Aw, man! That was so wrong!” I kept thinking to myself a day, or so, later,after the fact, when we weren’t dosing on trips. “Those EMT’s must have thought we were the worst human beings on the planet!…Laughing at dead old ladies. No class, whatsoever.”
Of course, the EMT’s have no idea that we were not laughing at the dead lady, but rather at a 280-pound Goliath we call Dave who humorously collapsed a 100-year-old fence.
To this day, I wish I knew who those EMT’s were, so we could explain to them that we were not laughing at the dead lady.
Just bad timing all around.
But it is what it is, and we can’t change the past.
But that was gut-bustingly funny when Dave collapsed that fence.
_{ad} Digging The Hole In The Woods
We culminated our ever-changing, impromptu-based agenda by attempting ( but not completing) the digging of a huge hole in the woods that we could use as our private party spot—underground!
Yes, we were dreamers!
Not very smart or realistic dreamers, but dreamers nonetheless.
We all got a bunch of shovels from our houses, and we went to the northwest corner of First and Ogden Avenues, where we dug a hole approximately 15 feet long, six feet wide, and only about four feet deep—we were shooting for 6-feet-deep or better, so people could stand up once inside our boy-made cave.
But we were only at about 4 deet of depth—and we were exhausted, hot, sweaty, sticky, filthy, and all things unpleasant.
Even if we did put a piece of plywood over the top, to create a roof, we would not be able to stand up. We were too tall for a four-foot tall space. Plus, we hadn’t considered various other engineering aspects of how to keep water from seeping into our boy-cave; if water did get in, how would we drain it, since the lack of sunlight with a “roof” over it would prevent the water and moisture from evaporating, in which case, sickness-causing mold and mildew would engulf the interior. Animal feces and other odors would likely be unbearably present.
There were a lot of things we hadn’t thought all the way through.
Then again, we weren’t expected to : we were stoned teens on LSD.
Moreover, it was getting dark, and we were starting to come down off our trips, and all the things we deemed “entertaining” just a few short hours prior, were no longer on the interest list, and we were getting close to that point where we all just wanted to call it a day, and go home and relax until we fell asleep.
So, we stopped at those dimensions, and without yet having reached that realization that there was much more to be done if we really wanted to have our own, secluded, hangout, we actually had the genuine intention to return and finish digging the hole to a depth that would make standing up possible.
But, before actually doing so, we had our little epiphany of just how pointless our little idea was, especially given our erroneous assumption that just digging the hole would accomplish our dream of having an established hangout that no one else would know about.
Once we realized our foolishness, we never did return to finish the job.
But, within two days of digging it, Jimmy and I returned to see what we had done, only to discover that other unknown fellow party-goers discovered our excavation site, and decided to build a fire and throw empty beer bottles in it.
We really didn’t want to clean that up.
We were done with the project.
We left our shovels there, only to end up rusting in the elements.
Well, they were actually our parents’ shovels, but that ‘s another story for another time.
Kids!
I think Jimmy and I tripped together only a handful of times before we went through our first “separation”—which was the longest one : approximately 15 years from circa 1978 to 1992.
Come to think of it, we never tripped together again, since by the time we reunited in 1992, Jimmy had long since been finished with tripping since the mid-1980’s when he first lost his drivers license to a D.W.I [ Driving While Intoxicated ].
But, I’ll never forget the trips we had together, though.
Jimmy eventually toned down the cannabis and tripping, but maintained a steady diet of cigarettes and beer.
Me?
I was a nicotine-cannabis-mushrooms/LSD fan.
The only real overlap was nicotine; but cigarettes aren’t a party drug, so, they didn’t count.
That left Jimmy and I with nothing left in common in terms of substance abuse.
Well, we did both play the guitar, but Jimmy really liked the simplicity of the blues, whereas I preferred the ever-changing complexities and nuances of progressive rock ( e.g., King Crimson ), classic rock ( Led Zeppelin, The Beatles), Southern Rock ( Marshall Tucker, Skynrd, The Allman Brothers), Art Rock ( Jethro Tull, Supertramp) and acoustic folk rock ( America, Jim Croce, Simon and Garfunkel ), anything, but not—definitely not!—three-chord garage rock.
I also absolutely hated punk rock and new wave, while Jimmy seemed to be completely OK with both.
There were other differences, too, but before we learned of our differences and where we disagreed, we first discovered our similarities and where we agreed.
While we were in this state of ” agreement”, we were listening to Zeppelin, Montrose, REO Live, Frank Zappa, and other bands that normally didn’t get any real radio play (Zeppelin excluded, of course).
Whether we were shooting a game of pool or swimming in the swimming pool we tended to agree on what to listen to.
[v] The Lilac Bushes and My Knee Injury
In another post I wrote about a house I grew up in where I made my first friends.
In that post, I discuss these huge lilac bushes that used to “hide” the house from street view, and gave us a degree of privacy that I really enjoyed. Unfortunately, for whatever reasons, my dad decided to pull the bushes out with a front loader and a set of chains.
Prior to that day—much prior ; as in six to eight weeks prior—Jimmy and I had planned an all-day event consisting of riding our Schwinn Stingrays® on the bike trails in the woods on 47th street just east of Harlem Avenue.
I forget what was so special about that particular weekend, but our event was planned specifically for it.
As the weeks went by and the week of that special weekend approached, we rode our bikes around our own neighborhood, planning what kinds of maneuvers we were going to try in the realm of riding up and down ridiculously steep hills, and crazy “jump attempts” across various daring and challenging paths.
Well, at the very last moment, on that very same morning of the bike trip, around 9:00 AM, I was just outside our back door, getting ready to leave for jimmy’s house, when my dad informed me he had a friend with a front loader coming over to help tear out that precious row of monster-sized, privacy-ensuring lilac bushes, that I loved so much.
And I’m thinking, “And this concerns me, why?” as I began to nervously worry that my long-since-arranged plans could possibly be under threat if he’s about to tell me what I think he’s gonna tell me.”
As sure as a pile of shit stinks, he told me that he needed me to help him and his friend pull the bushes out.
Again, I’m thinking, “Help? How? His friend operates the front loader, and my dad ties the chains around the bushes. What am I going to do? Be a mere spectator?”
I was a naughty boy. I ended up sneaking out the back door and cutting through the yard of the neighbor behind us.
I rode to Jimmy’s house, and then we went to the woods to ride our bikes.
Of course, the story doesn’t stop there.
Nah, no happy endings here!
Approximately two hours, or so, into our little “Evel Knieval” act, We decided to take this one hill—downhill. It was pretty steep.
Jimmy went down first and wiped out about three-fourths of the way down, sliding on his left side, the remaining quarter of the way.
When he came to a stop, he stood up with a big smile on his face, and realized that he had no cuts, no bumps, no bruises, no broken bones.
He got back on his bike, and went onward to the next challenge.
When I went down, my front tire caught a pretty thick tree root sticking out of the ground, and by the time I saw it, there was no way to avoid it and I ended up doing an airborne somersault and landing a few feet away from where my bike landed.
Like Jimmy, no injuries.
Or so, I thought—at least, for the next two or three minutes or so.
We both got back on our bikes and rode back up to the main path.
When we got back on level ground, we came to a stop to discuss which daredevil stunt we were going to pull off next…and, of course, light a cigarette, because that’s what “cool” kids do.
While standing there, I suddenly felt “liquid” rolling down my right shin, under the pant leg of my jeans.
“Hold on, man.” I said as I bent over to roll up my right pant leg, to investigate the mystery fluid running down my leg.
Halfway up toward my knee, I saw smeared blood on my shin.
I didn’t feel any pain, like a cut or anything like that.
But, as I rolled up my pant leg yet even further, there it was, just below the knee cap, a gash approximately one inch long, and deep enough to keep it bleeding for a while.
“Dude! You’re cut!” Jimmy said as he watched me dab the running blood with the cuff of my pant leg.
“Yeah, I see that.” I replied as I slowly let the cuff back down and stood straight up. “Wow! I never felt anything.
“That’s gonna need stitches, man, that’s fer sure.” Jimmy said shaking his head.
“Yeah, I gotta do somethin’ to stop that bleedin’.” I added, as I looked around my immediate vicinity on the ground to see if there was anything I could use as a tourniquet.
“Let’s just go to the fire house!” Jimmy enthusiastically suggested . “My dad’ll have one of the EMT’s stitch you up right there in the station!”
It sounded like it was worth a shot to me. It was only about 12 blocks from he trails to the fire station.
So, we rode our bikes the distance, figuring I wasn’t bleeding bad enough to “bleed out” during the bike ride to the station.
As we arrived in front of the station, we rode straight into one of the wide open overhead doors, and Jimmy went straight to his dad’s office, and told him the story that I cut my knee open, and needed stitches, and asked if he’d have one of the paramedics stitch me up.
Jim’s dad came over to the overhead door where I was sitting on my bike, and he took a look at my injury, and decided that my own parents needed to take me to the hospital for stitches.
So, Jim’s dad, called a friend of his—a Lyons police officer—to give me a ride home.
Just what I needed : to be brought home in a police car, after splitting on my dad when he was pulling the bushes out.
Yep. I was hoping to sneak back in through the back door, but no, instead, I’m going to be delivered via a squad car—just the kind of grand entrance I was hoping for.
They threw my bike in the trunk of the squad car, and since I was bleeding, they put me in the back seat of the squad car.
Jimmy stayed at the fire station with his dad, the Fire Chief.
As we pulled up in front of my house, the squad car pulled into our driveway, and there was my dad, standing next to one of the last bushes to get pulled, and he’s looking at the car, wondering who’s going to emerge from the car.
Since the rear doors on a police car don’t open from the inside, the officer had to get out of his seat, come around to the rear passenger door and let me out of the car; then, he popped the trunk open and retrieved my bike for me, at which point, I saw the anger in my dad’s face, when he saw the son that skipped out on impromptu chores to go have some long-planned fun, returning home like the prodigal son I was.
Needless to say, I was grounded for some time—well, officially, anyway, which was like a month. But, in actuality, it lasted maybe two weeks, if that.
In our house, doing house chores was extra credit toward early parole when grounded for transgressions, and when there’s nothing else to do when grounded, you might as well kiss ass and get an early release!
In any case, my dad had my mom take me to Lagrange Community Hospital for stitches, and when I got home from that, I got “The Lecture”.
[vi] The Big Bust At The Woods
Another infamous moment in our time together…
One of the forest preserves that we congregated in frequently was “Plank Road Meadow” which is at the northeast corner of First and Ogden Avenues in Lyons.
Our little corner of the woods was called, “Tableau”, a relatively secluded area with picnic tables.
This particular grove was really tiny : less than a thousand feet of pavement, with a boat launching site.
Because of its tiny size, it rarely had more than a dozen people in the grove at any given time.
Ironically, there were easily 60 to 70 parking spaces—more spaces than the actual number of people ever expected to be present at any one given time.
There was never, say, a group of 50 or a hundred people present. It just didn’t happen.
With the exception of “Critter Brother Saturdays”.
What were Critter Brother Saturdays?
It was a sadly short-lived regular gathering of “hippie” types to play 16″ softball.
During the summer months, all the “long-haired” stoner types in the age group between upper teens and mid-20’s gathered to play softball—weather permitting, of course. .
There’d be approximately 30 to 40 of them ( spouses/partners included ) barbequing, drinking, smoking, playing softball, and what-not.
Well, this particular Saturday included not only the Critter Brother crowd, but a whole lot more people, as the weather was just somehow so perfect that day.
We got to the woods, fairly early, around 10:00 AM, to make sure our group got a bench to call home base.
By noon, the grove already had way more people than it ever had.
This was not normal.
Welcomed, yes; but expected, never.
In fact, there were so many people in the grove that day, that the number of cars present had surpassed the grove’s parking capacity, and people were parking across the street in the parking lots of two taverns, plus they were parking all along the edges of Plainfield Road between First Avenue and Ogden Avenue.
Normally, forest preserves close at sundown, which, at that time of the year, is around 9:00 PM.
It was still mid-afternoon, so we had plenty of time left before having to vacate the woods.
Or, so we thought.
The absolute rarity of a gathering this size at this grove was so unusual and unheard of, that when a Cook County Forest Preserve cop was driving by the woods, he must’ve done a “WTF”? double-take, and thought, “Maybe I should pull into the grove and find out what all the excitement is about!”
So, he did.
He slowly pulled into the grove and realized that there wasn’t even a single parking spot for him to park in; in fact, he would have to drive all the way to the boat launch to turn around.
But he never went that far.
Instead, he pulled about halfway into the grove, and came to a complete stop behind some other parked cars, who would now not be able to leave unless the cop moved his squad car.
He stayed parked in that spot for quite some time, with all his windows up—whether for protection or for the purposes of enjoying some air conditioning, is unclear.
I only remember watching closely as he sat parked in that spot, presumably observing all the activities he was surrounded by.
I was easily a couple hundred feet away from the squad car, and obscured by dozens of people standing between the squad car and myself.
Not that I was wanted by the law, or anything like that, but rather, I was under age, and the beer in my hand could possibly cause me some problems if an authority figure inquired about its presence in my hand.
Plus, having weed in my pocket certainly added to the paranoia of being in the vicinity of a nearby cop.
Anyway, during that time of no visible activity on the officer’s part, I assume he was probably on the radio talking to a supervisor via radio and saying something along the lines of, “Yeah, uh, I’m at Plank Road Meadow, which normally has abound zero to 20 people total, but today has easily a couple hundred people. In fact, there’s not even a single parking spot for me to park in or turn around in. This is a lot of people! What do you want me to do? Let it go, and come back at normal shutdown time? Or do you want me to disperse the crowd now? I mean, it’s only like four P.M. now, and closing time isn’t for another four or five hours. But, something this huge could snowball into something unmanageable a few hours from now…”
Whether it was at the officer’s own discretion, or a direct order from a superior officer, the decision ultimately ended up being to close the grove early.
So, approximately 10 to 15 minutes after he parked idly, the officer got onto the squad car’s p.a. speaker and announced, “Attention everyone! The woods are now closed. Please gather your things and disperse immediately.”
Apparently, some disgruntled drunk asshole about three or four crowds away from us, decided to zing an empty beer bottle at the squad car’s windshield.
Bad move!
The officer immediately backed up his car to the grove’s entrance, turned on his lights, and blocked the entrance to the grove, so that no one could enter or leave the grove, as he called for backup.
Within seconds, we could hear the sounds of more and more sirens getting louder as they were getting closer.
And boy, did backup come : it wasn’t just Forest Preserve police, but pretty much every available local municipal cop, as well—Lyons, Brookfield, Riverside, North Riverside, LaGrange, Countryside, regular Cook County police, state police.
Pretty much everybody and his brother was there in the realm of law enforcement.
A few of us lucky ones, however, who were from the immediate area were fortunate enough to have arrived on foot, and thus, were not “trapped” by a parked car in the grove.
Nope. We were free to leave.
Well, free to escape, anway.
So, we ran as fast as we could across the prairie to get onto the other side of First Avenue, away from all the commotion.
There was a strip joint, called Michael’s Magic Touch, on the northwest corner of First and Ogden Avenues, back then, and we stood in the parking lot and watched the events unfold as dozens of squad cars from countless local towns showed up to lend a hand in the mass arrest operation .
Even a friend of ours, John, realized that he had inadvertently left his bag of weed on the picnic bench, when he ran in fear with the rest of the crowd that also dispersed in fear of the approaching convoy of cops.
He decided to take a chance and go back into the chaos to retrieve his stash.
He succeeded, yes, but he also claimed that he got hit in the head by a flying maglite that an officer tossed at his head as he was spotted retrieving his baggie from the table, then, sprinted when he realized he was being pursued.
Ah, the memories.
[vii] The First Avenue Quarry—Coke Bottles and Trespassing
Directly across the street from those very same woods, was a quarry.
Jimmy and I would, on occasion, walk along the quarry on First Avenue, and we’d find empty soda bottles that litterbugs zinged out their car windows while driving down First Avenue.
Since those were returnable bottles, we’d normally save them for turning in for the deposit money, but occasionally, out of idle curiosity, we’d toss them over the fence of the quarry just to see if they’d break once they hit the ground 600 feet below street level.
Amazingly, many of those Coke, Pepsi and RC Cola bottles did not break or shatter when they landed. You couldn’t hear them hit the ground, but you could see them bounce instead of breaking.
We also broke into the quarry one evening after sundown, just to see all the stuff going on inside.
Yes, we were tripping.
There was a point in the chain link fence alongside the Ogden avenue section, where the fence was not tied to the post with tie wire, and all you had to do to get in, was pull the fence away from the post and crawl under the fence—which we all did .
It was Jerry, Chris, Jimmy and I.
Once we were on the other side of the chain link fence, we had to find a starting point on how to get to the bottom of the quarry.
There was this gravel road that “S”-shaped it’s way to the floor of the quarry. We walked that road. It took us over an hour to walk the entire distance.
It was so cool down there, though.
It was deafeningly quiet down there. If there was an explosion at ground level, I’m not quite sure that we would hear it.
The environment was so unique to me, that I thought the quarry would be a great place to film an “other worldly”-like movie, such as a “Planet of the Apes” type of sci-fi flick.
III—The Post-Jimmy Years
Wow! The list of memories I could reminisce over in detail is seemingly infinite.
Every time we’d see each other, it was like a reunion of brothers.
What gets me about life is that there are no grand pronouncements of particular “milestone”, especially the “last-time-we-were-together” moments that we all would have treated differently had we been told that “this was the very last time that we’d all be together, so, make the very best of it, and let each one of them know what they all meant to you—because you’ll never have a chance like this ever again. Mark it on your calendar for all future posterity : July 19th, or August 31st, or whatever that magic date is where the “last time” occurred.
On the lighter side of “last moments” would be the last Christmas visit you got from your parents before they both died on you in a year’s time, and they would never again be sitting in your living room, nor you in theirs.
On the darker side of that same “last time” theme, would be the drunk friend who left your party at 2:00 AM, and ended up getting killed in a car wreck on the way home.
In both cases, the people who were there and left, never again returned to visit again, and that last time was the very last time—only, you didn’t realize it at that time.
“Now you see them : now, you don’t—and you will never again.”
If only you could have announced your appreciation for their presence in your life, on that day. But you didn’t. You didn’t realize the significance of this very last visit.
From having our little fist fight at Ehlert Park to our first cigarette, beer, doobie and acid trip, to discussing which girls we had a crush on, and going from grade school to high school, I’d love to live all those moments over again, but the main difference this time is that I would pay special attention to our very last day together, and make sure I gave him the tightest handshake and bear hug, to convey just how important he was to me in my life growing up.
It was only four years, but we lived a lifetime in that span of time.
We even tried to pick up where we left off two times, but, in both cases, life somehow got in the way.
This is the house where my first and only “Best Friend” was formed.
Lots of positive memories associated with that house.
And it all started with Jim : James Robert Spolar, ( RIP , March 1963 – January 2018 ).
Without Jimmy to talk to, I might be able to take a ride past the house I grew up making friends in; but wait! Nah, that won’t work, that house was taken down in the early 1980’s—even the two Rank brothers who lived next door, are deceased.
Jim’s gone; my old house is gone. In fact, my roots are gone.
There’s nothing left, except my memories of both.
So, if you can hear me, Jimmy, this song is for you.
.