Season's Bleatings - 2023

As most of you know, Sue passed away on October 31. I thought it might be fitting this year if I simply share some Sue passages from Bleatings Past as well as excerpts from my remarks at Sue's memorial celebration at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Traverse City on December 16. 

2011 -This is brutal business, this ovarian cancer, this chemotherapy, this exhaustion, this diminishment of form. After the shock and gut ache from The News, a stranger intrudes and enters your lives, and while at first the stranger intimidates, you begin to step around, learn to step over, and finally, to step through the fears that once ruled the day. Sue is doing great. After five months of “phase one” of her clinical trial chemo, she is now working through “phase two” which is more of a maintenance regimen, and not nearly as debilitating. Her strength is returning and her hair has come back silky soft and gray as granite. All markers say positive things, but while we are never out of the woods, this is a pleasant forest we live in. The foundation of Sue’s recovery was built by the tremendous love and support of family and friends. And I could resound with a chorus of Sue superlatives, describing her heroic fight and so on. But she reads this too, and she wouldn’t like it, all this attention. So I will say this: her hair is very cute.

2013 - It's been a banner year, this two thousand thirteen. There was a wedding, world travel, a master's degree, new jobs, a reunion with long-lost cousins, good health, and tomatoes from the garden. Although Sue, I'm afraid, lapsed further into social deviance and depraved behavior:  She is addicted to on-line fabric shopping, creates quilts and purses, has joined a book club, and, I'm sad to report, now subscribes to HGTV magazine. Yes, I know... worrisome. 

2016 -This whole election thing has been hard on Sue. Our local prosecutor, who lost her election, refused to press charges against Sue for toilet papering a nearby yard. Our Trumpian neighbors had failed to remove their yard sign after their victory, and well, a certain someone in her own way tried to persuade them that maybe they should. After the election, she went upstairs to her non-stop quilting with MSNBC blaring at full volume. She has been camped up there ever since. Life might be getting back to "normal", although random and shrill cuss words still resound from above. 

2017 - Thus en-flossed, I glanced across the room at Sue and saw that she, too, was sawing through her molars in her own flossing frenzy. We have become an inadvertent flossing duo, performing with our strings like two aligned violinists with their bows. This image, I proclaim, is what 40 years of marriage does to you. I do the yin, she does the yang. I floss with you, you floss with me. Yes, it was 40 years ago in October that Sue and I began our journey on the same dental plan. It’s the little things, like unplanned, synchronized flossing, that make marriage so darn sweet.

2018 - Every June, Sue holes up with beloved high school girlfriends at an undisclosed location. And every August, she holes up with beloved college roommates somewhere, I suppose, in the western hemisphere. She talks about how they laugh and go to garage sales and dress up in funny hats. There may be a sip of wine. But she always comes home happy and exhausted but with pupils dilated. I ask but I get no answers.

2020 - In June, Sue finished her participation in a year-long clinical trial that tested a new Alzheimer's drug. We don't know if she received the real thing or placebo but, no matter, it's good to contribute a sliver of data to research. You can never be ready when a cloaked stranger such as this invades your lives. But you adapt each and every day. There are times out of the blue when I take her hand and we dance that simple two-step, though no microwave hums nor music plays. Our simple, silent song in these moments is one of devotion, a universe apart from fading memory and confusion.

2021 - A few months ago, I attended an Alzheimer's workshop entitled, "Creating Confident Caregivers." At one point, as I was whining about having to hide the pie in the car and chain the refrigerator shut, the instructor butted in. “Hold it right there,” she said, a tad aggressively. "You have to have a sense of humor!" Okay, point taken. You have to laugh. As you discover that hats and gloves seem to have crept to very odd locations, you have to laugh. As you discover that the blueberry pie has seemed to walk off on its own, you have to laugh. Days are laced with dozens of tiny tempests in tiny teapots. They used to feel like thunderstorms - now they ping like inconsequential blips on the radar. No matter the bumps and slides of our outrageous fortune, Sue’s kindness will not be pried away.

2022 - Sue has not suffered at all since she lost awareness about two years ago that her mind was disappearing. She is comfortable and wonderfully cared for. Her Alzheimer's only afflicts those who love her. If this damn storm relents by Sunday, Sue will join Elizabeth and Andrew, Brendan, Jodi and Oliver for Christmas dinner and presents at my place. In Sue's heart of hearts, well beneath the hazards of mind, I know this is her only Christmas wish.

Excerpts from my memorial service tribute... 

In 1976, a large group of us gathered at the Sleeping Bear Lounge in Honor. I made a glimpse at Sue and she eyed me back, with, you know, that lingering eye. That’s all it took, one thing led to another, and within a month I moved in with her at her parents’ cottage on the north shore of Crystal Lake.

We soon drove down to East Lansing so my parents and Sue could meet each other. As we were getting up from the dinner table, my father quickly took me aside, and with a kind of bug-eyed look whispered, “She’s steady, man!” We got married on October 8, 1977, in Beulah and had the absolute best reception I’ve ever attended at Crystal Mountain. Julie led the conga line and I even sang some rock n roll.

As I look back to those years of the late 70s and early 80s, I am struck at how extraordinary it was. Sue and I were immersed in a social world with a spectacular cast of characters: Paul, Shelly, Ruth, Jeff, Tad, Margie, Craig, Carol, Mary, Gary, Bill, Linda, Fred, Cleone, Dick, Jan, Nancy, John, Joni! Oh, how we would par-tay! One time, square dancing spontaneously broke out in our living room. We enriched the taverns in Beulah, Honor, and Frankfort. We loved each other and still love each other.

But then something cataclysmic started happening. Babies. People started having babies. Babies always ruin everything. Come to think of it, Sue and I picked up a couple of those pesky babies ourselves. People say their moms are the best moms. Well, I’m here to report, based on objective and researched analysis, that Brendan and Elizabeth had one of the two very best moms ever, ranking right up there with my own mom. Okay, our children weren’t perfect. It’s not Sue’s fault that Brendan, Elizabeth and their cousins would sneak out of our house in the wee hours of morning and walk over to the Crystal Lake golf course... to go golf cart joyriding! Down the midnight fairways they would race, over hill, over dale, until one fateful night they nosedived their carts into a darkened ditch.

I remember a July night in 1980 during our belated honeymoon to Forillon National Park in Quebec at the outer tip of the Gaspe Peninsula. As we sat atop a picnic table next to our pup tent, campfire fading, the sky gradually came under assault by a flashing, psychedelic light performance that still gives me flashbacks. The aurora borealis reached full, silent crescendo that night. There we were, Sue and I, holding hands as one, awestruck witnesses as one, to gaze stunned and drool-drenched at this celebratory gift from the universe. "This here's for the two of you," said the Universe.

In my hand I hold a simple key chain that she sewed together, probably one of a hundred that she gave away. I’m sure many of you own a quilt or a table runner or a key chain or a different piece of fabric art that Sue gave you. Her quilts blanket the world. Before and especially after she retired, Sue spent hundreds of hours upstairs in her sewing studio, laboring at her sewing machine and piecing fabrics together. Hundreds of hours. Behind that energy - that steady, calculated, highly disciplined, creative energy - was but one driving goal: to give with love. I once half-jokingly said to her, “My God, woman, you could make thousands of dollars!” Her sweetly dismissive look said it all, a look that said, “Don’t you have something else you need to be doing.” Her greatest joy in life was giving to others.

Sue is well known for her love of whales and, I'm here to tell you, there ARE spirit animals. I leave you with one last image. During a July week in the early 1980s, Sue and I vacationed with my sister Terry and her family at a cottage on Cape Cod. We embarked on a whale watching excursion out of Provincetown with 25 others and sailed miles out into Cape Cod Bay. Suddenly, we struck it rich. We closely encountered a pod of humpbacks, about 10 of them, and the captain called them all by name. One whale enjoyed cruising back and forth under the boat, and we could see that he had O-shaped scars on his tail. The captain announced that’s how he came to be called Othello. We lingered among the humpbacks for a long time before the captain said it was getting late, that we needed to head back to port. We motored back eastward and we all returned to the front to take our seats. But where was Sue?  I turned around and saw that she stayed behind and stood alone at the stern railing facing back. The sun was getting low and a pink glow began to signal dusk. There she stood, alone, silhouetted against sky and sea. And far off over her shoulder, I saw it:  a whale tail rose, it could have been Othello’s, and slowly descended again, a sweet farewell to its biggest fan. Sue lingered many seconds longer, then turned and floated like a cloud back to me.

Farewell, sweet and gentle spirit. I love you.

 

Season's Bleatings - 2022

I'm sitting here in Grand Traverse County as "the worst winter storm in a generation" blasts through. The outside air is white and barreling sideways. I remember the Blizzard of '78 when Sue and I were stranded at home for days. We got down to candied watermelon rinds and the beer had given out days before. For me, the latter doubled the crisis. So far, this seems a mere dusting compared to that onslaught when snowdrifts buried houses. We'll see. Fortunately, I lost my beer tether years ago. I'm not dreaming of a white Christmas anymore... I'm dreaming of an exit strategy.

Maybe you've seen the nativity scene on Facebook where Yoda is worshipping inconspicuously among the shepherds. Yoda might be singing, "Oh come, adore him let us." I wonder if Jesus was ever sarcastic? How else could he have amassed such a huge following? Turning water into wine? Come on, man! The New Testament failed to mention that Jesus at his rallies had excellent timing. 

I read somewhere that there are cultures in the world that have no grasp of sarcasm. Wow, that sounds like fun! What would they laugh at? Burps and farts? That other cultures might be incapable of mocking the idiots among them? They may be clueless, but at least they're sincere.

American chromosomes are rife with the sarcasm gene. Some of us are famous for dishing it out. Others are famous for being the brunt. Take, for example, our former Fearless Leader. Can a person take the Oath of Office from a prison cell? There would be an awkward moment when the person pledges to defend and protect the Constitution of the United States. Sorry, there I go, being sarcastic again. Then again, maybe not.

For Christmas, Elizabeth wants a publisher for her astonishing poems. Brendan wants a spit valve inserted into his new tuba. Three year-old Oliver wants to drive a massive dump truck.

Sue moved into a memory care home in July. It was time, maybe past time. She shares The Nest, as it's called, with five other female housemates. I've struck up a friendship with 105 year-old Ruth, who doesn't need "memory care", per se, as she remembers just fine. One thing Ruth advised me: "Whatever you do, don't say that I'm amazing." Super longevity IS amazing in itself, but the person harnessed to it requires further interrogation. And now I know all about her. (Spoiler alert: Ruth IS amazing.) 

I visited Sue at The Nest the other day. She sits in a semi-circle of recliners surrounding a TV that often has a Hallmark movie showing or reruns of the Dick Van Dyke Show. Hers is a power recliner so she enjoys moving by buttons to the full recline position, up to the contorted expel position, then back down again to full recline. With her constant companion, a stuffed lap dog that Elizabeth gave her, it's an amusement ride that can go on for hours. I unplugged her chair and sat in a recliner next to hers, holding her hand as I customarily do. After about ten minutes she poked my knee with her finger. I turned from my phone and gazed at her. Her eyes met mine and she whispered, "Who are you?"

Sue has not suffered at all since she lost awareness about two years ago that her mind was disappearing. She is comfortable and wonderfully cared for. Her Alzheimer's only afflicts those who love her. If this damn storm relents by Sunday, Sue will join Elizabeth and Andrew, Brendan, Jodi and Oliver for Christmas dinner and presents at my place. In Sue's heart of hearts, well beneath the hazards of mind, I know this is her only Christmas wish.  

The wind just blew a screen from a window. Hope I can find it in the spring. And without even a hint of sarcasm, from my family to yours, Merry Christmas.

 

Season's Bleatings - 2021

Friends, countrymen, poodles and mongrels! Lend me your ears! Do you hear what I hear? Why, 'tis the waning whimper of 2021. Behold the arthritic, gasping geezer as he pokes his stuffy nose out the back door. Behold as he takes a step closer into the dark. You’re done here! Begone with thee! Good riddance!

But no! Harken to the noise on the front stoop. A new year stomps its baby feet and readies to crash through the front door. It readies to infiltrate the foyer like an insurrectionist. Plead with it. "Please, young delinquent… Put down the gun. Put on a mask. And for god’s sake, change your diaper." But there’s so much momentum: What's old in 2021 will be new again in 2022. 

This morning I was so distracted by inner slings and arrows that I started to make the bed with Sue still in it. I caught myself mid-sheet and laughed like a lunatic. Is there a caregiver worth his salt who mindlessly buries his beloved under blankets? A few months ago, I attended an Alzheimer's workshop entitled, "Creating Confident Caregivers." At one point, as I was whining about having to hide the pie in the car and chain the refrigerator shut, the instructor butted in. “Hold it right there,” she said, a tad aggressively. "You have to have a sense of humor!" Okay, point taken. You have to laugh. As you discover that hats and gloves seem to have crept to very odd locations, you have to laugh. As you discover that the blueberry pie has seemed to walk off on its own, you have to laugh. Days are laced with dozens of tiny tempests in tiny teapots. They used to feel like thunderstorms - now they ping like inconsequential blips on the radar. No matter the bumps and slides of our outrageous fortune, Sue’s kindness will not be pried away. 

Here's the rundown: Sue is good. Brendan is good. Elizabeth is good. For Christmas, Elizabeth wants one-way tickets with her betrothed, Andrew, to Hawaii. Brendan wants with his wife, Jodi, an annual pass to Nonna's restaurant. Sue wants another blueberry pie. I want a washing machine. When the present beast hits the rinse cycle, it morphs into a rhythmically banging monster that sounds like a back bedroom at a brothel. The neighbors have grown uneasy.

I turn 70 today. (Cue bottle rockets and kazoos.) Seven freaking zero! So, on this day of days, please indulge me as I reflect on a life of accomplishments: 1. Ran away from school in second grade. 2. Repeated ninth grade. 3. 1970 - Deported from Turkey. 4. 1973 -  Spent a night in a Turkish jail and got beat up by a guard. 5. Got my hair yanked by an enormous State trooper while trying to take over the MSU Administration Building. 6. Got me a wife. 7. Got Kid Number One. 8. Got butt-searched on the Canada border. 9. Got Kid Number Two. 10. Had my last drink on September 10, 1989, before heaving the empty Pabst can across the back yard. Given the milestone, I thought the can would soar in slow motion as emotional music swelled. It got stuck on a branch. 11. Got three holes in one. 12. Snapped a sand wedge across my knee. 13. Got me a fishing boat. 14. Passed a kidney stone. 15. Got me a grandson. 16. Got nominated Employee of the Week (came in third). 17. Got 161 Facebook friends of whom nine I actually know. 18. Trying to land a northern pike, a fish hook stabbed clean through the fatty part of my palm. It was manly.

Geez, when you consider the whole glob of it, quite impressive.  (Cue puffed up chest.) I feel your admiration. Thank you very much. 

Grandson Oliver, who turns three in March, has joined the Paw Patrol. Along with his little furry cohort, he rescues good citizens from certain disaster. And atop a warm, cushy lap, he loves to inhabit the pages of his many books. He calls me "Pops", and when he does, Oliver doesn't realize how it melts my heart.

Come to think of it, we could use the Paw Patrol in 2022 to stand guard by the front stoop. Sprinkle in some Superman dust and we should be just fine. Remember? “Truth, justice, and the American way” with emphasis on the “truth”. Happy New Year!

Season's Bleatings - 2020

Greetings from somewhere in the herd! Whether we're swarmed at the front, middle, or back, it's impossible to say. All I know is we're hot on the hooves of fellow wildebeests ever pushing towards wherever herds tend to go. Some say that on November 3 we changed course and now gallop to the glorious grazing grounds of the Great Normality and Immunity. Before then, they say, we had been driven, like lemmings, towards a Great Leap from the Cliff of Doom. What a relief! And when we get there, to the Great Normality and Immunity, I shall settle on a grassy knoll, far upwind from the rest of the beasts. To graze in a place downwind would be most unappetizing.

Life between these walls hasn't been that bad. As a fellow introvert once remarked, "I was quarantined before the quarantine was cool." I stay alert and on the lookout with constant infusions of caffeine and nicotine lozenges. Sue and I do get some exercise: every evening while leftover spaghetti reheats in the microwave, we dance a simple two-step in the kitchen. To while away the time, I often check the mousetraps downstairs, scrape away the carcasses, and rebait with peanut butter. I blast my gums with a WaterPic and marvel at the gobs of grist and gristle that puddle in the bottom of the sink. And we're now on a first-name basis with all the MSNBC people who constantly fill our house with the political yakkity yak that keeps us attuned to the herd's wacky and heartbreaking news. 

Our grandson, Oliver, was voted Most Spectacular Toddler by members of his family. Oliver squeals with awe at the trucks in traffic he beholds from his car seat. As such, we bought him a Christmas book entitled, "Good Night, Good Night, Construction Site." As the sun sets, all the hardworking trucks - Crane Truck, Dump Truck, Bulldozer, Excavator - finish their work and lie down to rest. Good night, Moon. Good night, Cement Mixer. Oliver's dreams in 2021 will be filled with earth-moving heroics.

Brendan in the fall returned by Zoom to Grand Valley State University and is finishing up his bachelor's degree in music. He continues to play tuba for the Holland Symphony Orchestra among other ensembles and built a practice room in their house in Ada. Plus, he just started a job at Prudential. Jodi continues her important work at Spectrum Health and has been instrumental in setting up communication links between COVID patients and their families. Most of all, Oliver has terrific parents.

Elizabeth became a fiancee! Andrew a few months ago got down on a knee and proposed a question with a black diamond ring... to which she responded, "10-4, good buddy." Who knew there were black diamonds? Gatherings for weddings and receptions aren't exactly in vogue these days... they'll tie the knot after the herd is safely corralled. Elizabeth plans in the fall to pursue a master's degree in social work. It must run in our blood, that social work thing.

I achieved a great work honor in April, perhaps the greatest of my career. I was named... EMPLOYEE OF THE WEEK! I had never been so elected in my 27 years at the agency. I became suspicious and, while there was no so-called "evidence", I knew the elections were rigged. I howled with outrage! I took my case to the pope! I called for protests! My boss claimed that no one had voted that week (fake news!), but after a heated exchange in the bathroom, my moment of triumph came when he turned back to me and muttered, "Whatever." I can text you a picture of my button if you'd like. 

In June, Sue finished her participation in a year-long clinical trial that tested a new Alzheimer's drug. We don't know if she received the real thing or placebo but, no matter, it's good to contribute a sliver of data to research. You can never be ready when a cloaked stranger such as this invades your lives. But you adapt each and every day. There are times out of the blue when I take her hand and we dance that simple two-step, though no microwave hums nor music plays. Our simple, silent song in these moments is one of devotion, a universe apart from fading memory and confusion.

Hark! Behold the Great Dust as it rises, the snorts and grunts of the herd as we stay on course. Normality! Immunity! I can feel your presences in this massive throng, some near and some far off. Happy New Year, my fellow wildebeests! We're getting there. 

Writers Group Misfit

Belonging to a writers group can bring many surprises. I'll never forget the day, for example, that I brought in a story about my debauched college years. Once I finished reading it aloud, one of the members  passed around a bottle of Tums from which the other members dug in for multiple helpings. Why, I could induce massive indigestion. I wasn't expecting that.

I've attended the Old Town Writers Group in Traverse City for quite a while now. About seven years ago I met these folks when I responded to a notice that the group was accepting newcomers and would be holding a "mixer" at a downtown bookstore. I was nervous and didn't know what to expect. I remembered that a mixer used to be a term for a high school dance, at least back in the 1960s when I lived in Indiana. I supposed that a throng of people would gather at the bookstore's multi-purpose room as popular oldies played while wannabe writers did the fox trot.

No throngs. No multi-purpose room. No oldies. Instead, a group of five pleasant women sat at a table and welcomed me and another gentleman to join them. They introduced us to their writers group approach, how often they met, and other guidelines they followed. It sounded promising. I had always fancied myself as an untapped font of creative writing juices and pledged to make an appearance at their next meeting. If I had a group to attend, I told myself, it would force me to produce. What, exactly, I might produce I wasn't sure about.

The other gentleman seemed to have a more specific agenda. He wanted to know if he could use profanity in his writing - most notably the word "fuck". The others were a bit taken aback by the question, but in true diplomatic form, responded that if the language helped advance the story, then by all means.

I wasn't able to attend the first meeting, but the other gentleman did. I heard all about it. Apparently, he had been referred by his sex therapist who felt the gentleman needed an "outlet" to  express his feelings. Problem was, the gentleman struggled with compulsive masturbation. He wrote all about it and shared the hyper-graphic details in his reading. I don't know how "therapeutic" the experience was for him (poor guy), but the ladies in the writers group either felt ill or ill-equipped to make their organization an extension of sex therapy. They told him so and I guess he accepted that.

But I have lingered in their midst for these long years. There are six of us. I mainly have steered away from writing about my own humiliations, although in one essay I did admit that I have developed minor relationships with two skin tags in my left armpit, relationships to the extent that I went ahead and gave them names: Pierre and Fatso. I say hello whenever I shower. I also wrote a story about a sweet-natured grandfather who chases his toddler grandson around the house to capture the child in order to change his stinky diaper. It was meant to be funny, but truth be told, it was the first time I noticed a roll of antacids make an appearance at the table.

Armpit skin tags and stinky diapers are my ways to illustrate that this writers group is willing to put up with a lot, compulsive masturbation notwithstanding. These people, good writers all with their own projects, want to help each other maximize their best work. But sometimes my heart goes out to them. I have made them listen to dozens and dozens of strange essays and memoirs that depict the madcap foibles of a lost soul. More often than not, right after reading my final sentences, their initial reactions have been, well... awkward smiles with pregnant seconds of stone, cold silence. But who can blame them, bless their hearts.

However, one member may have turned on me. About a year ago, I shared a harrowing and true tale about getting thrown into a Turkish jail when I was a young man. The tension rises as my fellow inmates suffered horrible beatings from the jail guards. When it came time for me to receive the same beating, the guards seized up - they would not brutalize this young American - and I escaped the torture unscathed. It was then in my reading that I glanced over at the member in question. There was no mistaking the look on her face: disappointment. 

Some of the other members have gone on to publish books and articles, have held signings, and labor away regularly at their work. I envy them. Oh, I have sent my work around only to be rejected or to be dealt the familiar stone, cold non-reply. Sometimes, I guess, a rejection letter simply isn't worth the effort. However, I did get an article published in an obscure magazine called, All About Labs. My piece was a eulogy to Darla, our beloved labrador retriever. How dog lovers resist a eulogy to a lab? When I read the story to the group, some eyes moistened. I was able to bring Darla back to life for them.

Another surprise came when I received sharp criticism for my political essay, "The ABCs of a Disemboweled Liberal." The members didn't shoot down my writing, per se, but some took sharp exception to my political views therein. This hurt my feelings. I had misjudged them. Surely, these creative types, like all properly minded people, must share my radical leftist views. Not so. 

Our group exists to help writers become better writers, not to unkink the knots of those with emotional malfunctions. The need for approval, that yearning for acceptance, the siren call of an unrequited ego -- if these struggles raise their ugly little heads, they're best dealt with on the long ride home. It is then that you counsel yourself: separate the work from the self, separate the work from the self. After all, they're just words. There's no blood in them.

I've churned out dozens of essays and memoirs. I even wrote some fiction. Most pieces are peculiar and silly; two or three longer ones might have merit. And thanks to my fellows at the Old Town Writers Group, I've learned a lot. The most important lesson is this: the crucial thing all writers do... wait for it... they write.

This is where I flounder. I don't write much. A day or two before a scheduled group meeting, I get my ass in gear and vomit forth words and sentences that just might form mental bubbles based usually on a funny idea. Funny, at least, to me. It's all last minute. And that's what this is, this series of paragraphs right here. I got a text message yesterday that our group was meeting today. Oops. I completely forgot. I scrambled to come up with something and... you're reading it. I confess: I don't really write. I cram for a final exam.

My fellow group members will be listening to this in a few hours. They will be kind. I expect, as usual, long seconds of silence right here and probably a few awkward smiles. And I wouldn't be surprised if there erupts a frenzy of Tums. 

Jimmy Did It

On a Saturday morning in the summer of 1966, I sat in the living room of Mr. and Mrs. William Bliss who lived in a grand old house on Kussuth Street in Lafayette, Indiana. I was alone with Mrs. and she wanted to know if I was the one who "did it." I told the truth. No, I had not done it. It was Jimmy who "did it." The gig was up. I was falling into deep shit. Jimmy Quick, no thanks to me, was to fall even deeper. There was no way out. The Blisses had the evidence.

I was fourteen. My parents, older brother, and younger sister lived at the end of a pleasant cul-de-sac on Mary Hill about a mile from the Blisses’ house. My dad worked across the Wabash River at Purdue in West Lafayette. That summer I was between the eighth and ninth grades at Tecumseh Junior High.

Mary Hill backed up to a working class neighborhood on 15th Street where the Selleck boys lived. From my house with a short jump over their fence, you were in their backyard. That's where we built a fort with cinder blocks, scrap plywood, and a tarp on the top. With an adjoining pup tent, there was plenty of room for six of us to sleep. But we didn't sleep much. Three or four nights a week we headquartered from there to prowl dark streets and alleys and perhaps toss metal garbage cans on the pavement. We ran like escape artists as house lights came on. We might tap on the bedroom windows of sleeping friends and invite them to join our midnight meanderings. But mainly we just walked around neighborhoods, owning the deserted hours under the starry Indiana sky.

A few times a friend would bring a beer or two swiped from a refrigerator, but there was never enough to feel it when split five or six ways. Back at the fort we chain-smoked Kools and I might read aloud a smutty novel as my pubescent peers stared enrapt through the thick, blue smoke. My friends called me "professor" because I was good at reading. Our conversations were peppered with cuss words and our topics ran from one cute girl to the next, girls none of us had any courage to call. 

Jimmy Quick brought his sleeping bag a few times. But he was an odd and mostly solitary boy. He was known for talking tough and once challenged the legendary Matt Farrell to a fight at the fairgrounds. At school two boys might get into a heated argument and word would spread like wildfire that a fight would be had at the fairgrounds adjacent to Tecumseh. School would let out and some one hundred junior high kids would encircle the two which often included the undefeated Matt Farrell. The boys would throw vicious punches for half a minute until at last the loser's face ran blood and short-lived reputations were made.

One afternoon as appointed, the short and wiry Jimmy and the short and muscular Matt came face to face. I witnessed as Jimmy lurched toward Matt with his fists and arms flailing like a drowning swimmer. Matt reached back and punched Jimmy in the mouth, sending him to the ground and a face coated with dirt and blood. Jimmy got up, tilted out of balance, and screamed, "You're a coward! You're a coward, Farrell!" Matt, whom I liked, looked saddened. That was it. Jimmy walked away claiming victory then and in the days that followed. Win or lose - he clearly lost - he loved the attention.

That summer, Jimmy and I were sitting on his patio when his sister happened to bring out a copy of Mad Magazine. "Oh cool, I love Mad Magazine," I said.

Jimmy howled, "Oh my God! You LOVE Mad Magazine! You just LOVE Mad Magazine! Bohnhorst LOVES Mad Magazine!" He lost control. He couldn't stop laughing at me. "LOVE Mad Magazine! Oh my God!"

That day he would tell Billy Bliss, "Get this. Bohnhorst just LOVES Mad Magazine!" While Jimmy withdrew into odd cackles, Billy just sat there, couldn't grasp the humor. Nor could I. I guess Jimmy felt the concept of love to be a ridiculous and foreign thing.

I don't remember why I hung around with Jimmy. He could be sullen and was always awkward in the presence of adults. From out of the blue, he would laugh at the ordinary. Maybe he was a budding sociopath. But then again, I do recall an easier, gentler side. I don't know. Maybe he liked me, or better, tolerated me, because I was willing to be his friend. We found common ground in the ways boys find adventure.

Jimmy and I shared many pursuits that summer. One was to get a mini-bike running. We succeeded in roaring around neighborhoods before the mini-bike died a week later. We jumped onto the side ladders of freight cars as they slow-moved through town, then jumped off like fugitives once the train sped up. We started to build a raft to embark like Huckleberry Finns for a runaway trip down the Wabash. That project failed in less than a day.

But we did devise and follow through with a brilliant and foolproof scheme: we would invade the Blisses. That summer they installed a raised swimming pool in their backyard, equipped with an encircling redwood deck and a diving board, the envy of the neighborhood. Trouble was, our friend, the arrogant Billy, never invited Jimmy or me over for a swim. For a reason I can’t recall, we were on the outs with him that summer. Other friends were invited. Others were prized. We had been scorned. Well, by God, we would swim in his goddamn pool, invited or not.

While the other boys on this Friday night were encamped and smoking cigarettes over at the Sellecks’ fort, Jimmy and I stayed back and pitched a tent in my backyard. My parents permitted all this "sleeping out", I suppose, as a normal inclination of their young teenager. But they never could have imagined what Jimmy and I had in mind that night.

The Blisses lived next door to Lafayette’s mayor, John Gettings, the Gettings’ house also a stately home on that block of Kussuth Street. Our reconnaissance indicated the Gettings were out of town, at least they had been for several days prior to our planned trespass. As luck would have it, the Gettings kids had set up a pup tent in their backyard. This would give us cover and headquarters while we prepped for our assault on the Bliss pool next door.

Here was our plan of attack:

1. Depart the tent in my backyard at 1:00 a.m. and walk to Kussuth Street.

2. Jump the Gettings’ back fence and enter the pup tent in their backyard at 1:15.

3. Strip down to our underpants and wait in the tent for 45 minutes to ensure the Blisses were asleep. 

4. At 2:00, jump the fence over to the Blisses’ backyard.

5. Swim for 15 minutes.

6. Return to the Gettings tent, dry off with the towels we brought, and get dressed.

7. Wait in the tent for 15 minutes to ensure the coast was clear.

8. Walk back to my house and arrive by 3:00 a.m. 

Things didn’t go quite as scheduled. Fourteen year-olds in general, and Jimmy Quick in particular, lack a penchant for patience. So instead of leaving my backyard at 1:00 a.m., we left at 11:30. Jimmy was in hyper-kinetic mode, as though we were about to commit the crime of the century. He jabbered and gyrated along the dark back streets en route even though I kept reminding him to whisper and keep his cool.

The Bliss and Gettings houses were both dark and quiet. It was clear the Gettings were still away as there were no cars in their driveway or garage. We scampered into the Gettings’ empty pup tent and removed our shorts, t-shirts, shoes and socks. We had brought a flashlight that lit up our tight, two-man space and a couple of boys naked down to their skivvies. It was another warm, still, humid Indiana night, but Jimmy seemed to shiver with adrenaline. We had scheduled a forty-five minute pause before our invasion but Jimmy would have none of it. “Come on! Fuck! Let’s go! Let’s go! Goddammit!” he demanded.

What was the point of waiting? The coast was clear. The neighborhood was asleep. A short wooden fence separated the properties and in a second we were in the Blisses’ backyard and up on the raised deck that surrounded the pool. We eased into the cool water and remained true to our vow of silence. I swam the length underwater and when I came up for air, I felt a winning satisfaction. Victory was ours. I noticed Jimmy holding onto the side across from me. He was not a good swimmer.

Again I swam and rode across the bottom before coming up on the deeper end. But when I emerged, Jimmy was dog paddling wildly towards me, cackling in his way, and choking on inhaled water. Our vow of silence was in supreme violation.

“I did it!” he laughed.

“Keep it down!” I pleaded. “What the fuck did you do?”

And in his commotion of splashing and gasping, Jimmy proclaimed, “I took a shit! I took a shit! I took a fucking shit!”

I shot out of the water like a rocket. Jimmy climbed out and stood next to me, his shaking body bent over, his face contorted in the moonlight into something like silent, triumphant hysteria. I scanned the Bliss house and all remained dark and quiet. It was time to get the hell out of there.

Jimmy and I dried off next door. Our plan hadn’t accounted for the wet underpants, so we tossed them into the corner of the tent. We got dressed and moved quietly back into the streets. We got back to my house before 1:00, crawled into our sleeping bags, and fell right asleep. I hadn’t been disgusted exactly by Jimmy doing what Jimmy did. It was kind of funny at the time. That’s who Jimmy was and that’s a thing Jimmy would do - like picking a fight with the toughest kid in school, receiving a bloody beatdown, and then declaring victory. Par for the weird course he was on.

So it was that our phone rang the next morning. My mother called me and said that Billy’s mother, Mrs. Bliss, wanted to talk to me. Without breath, I took the receiver. Mrs. Bliss said I should come right over if I knew what was good for me. I must have turned white. Biking over to Kussuth Street, my heart raced and bounced with cracks in the pavement. Mr. and Mrs. Bliss had always liked me, I thought, but now I would be reduced to a cockroach.

Mrs. Bliss sat me down in their ornate dining room and joined me after equipping herself with coffee, cigarettes, and ashtray. She was subdued, not outwardly angry, and started by saying how sad she was that Billy and I had drifted apart as friends. She said she had always liked me. The table was set and she delivered the goods: The family always slept with their windows wide open on those warm summer nights, she told me, and you can hear every crackle in that still, damp air. They first heard Jimmy and me when we were talking in the Gettings tent before the swim. She and Mr. Bliss kept the lights off, crept out to their second-floor screened-in porch overlooking the backyard, and heard every word we said, heard us splashing around, heard us as we dried off and dressed. Mrs. Bliss said she was disappointed in me, especially disappointed with my filthy language. “I’m sure your mother has never heard you use words like that,” she said. That was true - my mother hadn’t. So, she wanted to know, was I the one who had, well, you know, done it? She wasn’t surprised to hear my answer. Jimmy did it. She grew dark. She said she always wondered about that boy. 

Mrs. Bliss then made me an offer: if Jimmy and I came back later that day at five o’clock, Mr. Bliss would like to have a meeting with Jimmy and me. We would have to admit to trespassing, Jimmy would have to admit that he did it, and we would have to apologize to them. If we failed to comply, she would call our parents and relate the whole sordid story. Besides, Mrs. Bliss claimed, her husband had tape recorded the whole episode including every last cuss word.

I biked over to Jimmy’s who had gone home earlier that morning. He was outraged. He was incensed with me. How could I admit that it was us, he demanded. How could I be so fucking stupid! Dumb ass, he called me. He paced back and forth on his patio, shaking his head and penetrating me with the stare of a cornered rat. Back and forth he paced. But they had us and he knew it. It was the humiliation of facing Billy Bliss’s parents versus the consequences of his parents finding out. Jimmy finally relented. I called Mrs. Bliss and told her we would be there at five o’clock.

At the appointed time, I was surprised that it was Billy who opened the door for Jimmy and me. With his obvious smirk and overly polite greeting, I could tell he was savoring every moment. Billy was such a little saint in his parents’ eyes. They seemed to know nothing of his bullying and lying and manipulations. First you were his best friend and then you were an outcast.

Jimmy and I sat on the living room couch as directed, Mrs. Bliss took a chair to the side, and Billy stood away by a wall and watched. Mr. Bliss walked in, a short, stocky, and balding man. He stood before us and commanded the room. First, and not unkindly, he addressed me: “Tom, I’m disappointed in you. You had always been a good friend of Billy’s. What I want to know is, why? Why would you come onto our property in the middle of the night?”

I was prepared for the question. “I guess we were jealous of Billy having a new pool, Mr. Bliss,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“Jealous? All you had to do was ask, and you’d be welcome to come over,” he said. I looked over at Billy and that smirk still glued on his face. Mr. Bliss said these words so matter-of-factly and so warmly, I felt this meeting would end up just fine. And that was all the man had to say to me.

But when he turned his gaze upon Jimmy, a storm came roaring. “And you, Jimmy! What do you have to say?” he implored. Jimmy had been slumped there on the couch, chin on chest. Now he turned his head to the side and closed his eyes.

“Sit up! Look at me!” he thundered. Jimmy shifted his weight and barely looked up.

“SIT UP!” Jimmy sat up.

“I have a really nice swimming pool, here, Jimmy. Brand new! Crystal clear! Do you know why it’s clean now, Jimmy? Do you? LOOK AT ME!” Jimmy trembled and barely offered a glance. He shook his head no.

“Okay, I’ll tell you why I have a clean swimming pool! After your little visit last night, with THE FILTHIEST LANGUAGE I’VE EVER HEARD IN MY LIFE...Where did you ever learn to talk like that? Did you grow up in a sewer? LOOK AT ME!” Jimmy glanced up at him again. “After your little visit, we inspected the swimming pool this morning for damage. And do you know what we saw lying on the bottom? DO YOU? Of course you do! ONE ENORMOUS TURD floating at the bottom of my pool. Billy volunteered to fish it out with a net. DISGUSTING! How big was it, Billy?”

We all looked over at Billy who held his forefingers about ten inches apart.

“SEE?” roared Mr. Bliss. “Enormous! You should have been the one to clean that up, Jimmy! Because I know it was you! Admit you did it, Jimmy!”

Jimmy sank lower into his slump and stared down with half-open eyes. Seconds passed.

“ADMIT IT!” shouted Mr. Bliss. Jimmy allowed a slight and stark nod.

“Well, we couldn’t just wait around for you to come back and clean up your mess, now could we. So poor Billy volunteered to fetch it out. Do you think he enjoyed that? DISGUSTING! Do you have anything to say to Billy for cleaning up after you?”

Jimmy closed his downcast eyes. He whispered something unheard.

“WHAT!!!” demanded Mr. Bliss.

“Sorry,” whispered Jimmy. 

“All right, young man, you should be. Now, I have just one more question,” Mr. Bliss said. His volume dropped and a kind of plea was heard. He took a few steps toward Jimmy and looked down at him. “Why, Jimmy? Why would you ever do something like that? Help me understand. Why would you want to foul our property with your filth? That’s what I really want to know.”

It’s hard to say, but I suppose at this point most children would have started to cry. But I had never seen Jimmy cry before and he didn’t cry then. Jimmy in silence sat for several long moments. What could he say? He shrugged his shoulders. Mr. Bliss could have stood over Jimmy all night pelting him with abuse and impossible questions, but it was no use. Jimmy could feel no shame.

“All right,” Mr. Bliss said. “Go home. And, Jimmy, if you ever come back to my property, not only will I call your parents about what you did, I will call the police.” 

We had met our obligations, Jimmy and I. We had arrived at the scheduled time and given our required admissions and apologies. Once outside and walking our bikes down the sidewalk, Jimmy’s cockiness snapped back fast. “What a bunch of assholes,” Jimmy laughed, unfazed. He hopped on his bike and pedaled homeward as though in his mind he had just defeated Matt Farrell.

On my ride home, I felt tremendous relief, of course. There would be the continued tension with Billy Bliss and the short-term damage his gossip would cause. His gossip always caused me short-term damage. I mostly was in the clear. And for now, I was on time for our six o’clock dinner, my parents none the wiser. But when I walked in the front door, my father greeted me with these words: “Son, I just got a phone call from Mayor Gettings. He’s coming over this evening to talk to us. What’s this all about?”

Just when you think you’re out of the woods. I told him the tale without a crucial detail. The matter of a certain bowel movement was left in the vault. My father wasn’t a strict disciplinarian or an intimidating presence. He listened like a juror to his son, the defendant, and said simply, “We’ll see what the man has to say.”

The mayor arrived at seven o’clock and was invited to join Dad and me on the back patio. Mr. Gettings was a friendly sort, graciously accepted a glass of iced tea, and got right to the point. He shared that he and his family had returned from a vacation that afternoon after which his ten year-old son had discovered two pairs of wet underpants in his pup tent. This mystified the mayor but noticed the Blisses out back adding chemicals to their swimming pool. He asked them if they had any idea how the wet underwear had come to reside in the pup tent. It was then that the mayor got the detailed description of events the previous night. The Blisses had told the mayor that if Jimmy and I fessed up and apologized, they would not inform our families.

The mayor, I suppose, was a conscientious sort who felt that, in spite of side agreements, it was proper for parents to learn if their children trespassed into other people’s yards at all hours of the night. It was thus that Mayor Gettings was motivated to sit down with my father and me. “And not only that,” the mayor added, “either Tom or the other boy defecated in the pool.”

Dad’s eyebrows shot up. “I beg your pardon,” he said.

Yes, yes, that was the case, explained the mayor, and he went on to sermonize about the value of selecting the right friends and the need to respect other people’s property and he didn’t think it was his place to talk about how un-Christian vulgar language was… he would leave that to family. As I said, the mayor was a friendly and diplomatic sort, and before he departed twenty after he arrived, we shook hands. He said he was glad to see that I appeared to learn important lessons from my poor choices. 

Dad and I went back to the patio and sat down. For a long while he looked off into the distance shaking his head. But then, he ruptured. My father blew a gasket. He howled and howled and sobbed with laughs. He grabbed his handkerchief to dry his eyes. “He crapped in the pool!” he cried. “Great God Almighty, the boy crapped in the goddamn pool! Oh, my soul… oh, my soul.” I had never seen such a thing, my howling father, his red face, and his handkerchief. And with this, his treasured tale, Dad would regale others for years to come.

I continued that summer to sleep out with the Sellecks and other neighborhood boys. We roamed Lafayette’s dark streets in the wee hours and smoked Kools. To my surprise, the trespassing story and Jimmy’s infamous turd never came back to haunt us. I guess if others found out, they didn’t much care. I never again became good friends with Billy and never again swam in his pool. After a while, Jimmy and I went our separate ways. His family moved away from Lafayette about a year later and I never heard from him again.

Mr. Gettings never did make a call on Jimmy’s parents. Perhaps the crude nature of Jimmy’s delinquency was more than the mayor could handle.