I Knew Santa Claus

No one ever told me to never talk about it and they didn't have to because I never did. People would have smiled that smile they smile, patted me on the head, said something along the lines of, "Sure you do son, so do I" and sent me on my way. Had they only known they were right; just like me they did know Santa even though most of them didn't know they knew.

Just like all the rest of the kids back in those days Santa Claus was about as real as you or me and may there be a curse placed upon anyone who ever said anything differently, especially to a child of five or six. For me Santa had even come to my house one year just to check up on how I was doing with that "naughty or nice" thing I started recalling somewhere around the first week or so of December. I was never sure where I stood on the chart I knew he had posted somewhere back at the North Pole but the one thing I knew I wanted more than anything else for a couple weeks in December was to keep it above that 50% line. See, I figured he had some sort of scale or gauge or the like that swung back and forth, up and down over the year and in the end my hope was that it averaged everything out for the whole year and I'd end up at least at 51% to the good side come Christmas Eve. And that evening, standing right there in that little house on Pearl Street behind Pete's tavern Santa had come to visit and see how I was doing.

It would be a few years until I learned that the visit from Santa hadn't been the main man at all but one of his helpers, a guy everyone knew as Sully. To this day I'll sometimes think about that moment, how suddenly there he was in our living room in that really red and white Santa outfit and struggle with thinking maybe, just maybe, it really was Santa.

I don't remember Christmas Day so much but I do recall Christmas Eve when we would go to church and there'd be some little play and all but most of all there'd be a brown paper bag handed out to each and every kid in church filled with amazing and wondrous nuts and candies and an orange. I think the orange was always the biggest mystery of all in those days, even topping the Big Man himself, because I knew there were no oranges to be found in Billy Rabuck's store so where did they come from? Now that I think about it I wasn't allowed to cross 12 & 16 on my own in those days so how was I to know what Kimball's or White's might have had on their shelves?

The wonders of that bag were a joy to this kid. If I was lucky I'd get a piece of candy while we sat there in those pews, not the candy cane for sure but maybe one of those green and red and white squiggly ribbon sort of things to pop in my mouth and suck on. The real fun came when my sister's and my bags were poured out into a big glass bowl, mom would bring out the nut cracker and the set of little picks to dig out every little piece of stubborn nut that refused to let go of the side of that big old Brazil Nut, a nut I'd not learn the proper name of for some years but somehow always knew that it wasn't what my folks called it. Oh what *fun it was to sit there trying to crack those shells just right so the whole nut would still be there. After a try or two the excitement seemed to dissipate and I'd no longer care that much so I'd grip the cracker with both hands, press it against the table top and put all my weight behind it if need be to crush that shell beyond recognition.

I don't remember just when it was that much of what had made the days just before Christmas magical and mysterious began to slip away but I do remember finding Santa's hiding place one year which started bringing up questions I hadn't thought about asking in prior years. The problem was that I hadn't gone looking but rather quite by accident stumbled upon the secret stash hidden in the basement of Rabuck's store. To this day I couldn't tell you why I even opened that door and walked down there that day but I did and what I saw was like pulling back the curtain surrounding the great Wizard of Oz himself. There before me were boxes of this and that and something else but right in the middle of it all was a gleaming red bike which I could only stand and stare at all the while afraid to place even a finger on it for fear of it vanishing into the shadows of that basement.

A few days later on Christmas Eve I'd walk in the front door of our house with my brown bag of candy, nuts and an orange to find that very same shiny red bike in the living room squarely in front of the tree. But how it had gotten there was a bit of a mystery because I thought I had a pretty good eye on all of the suspected Santa's and they'd been in church with me. I was to find out that some Santa's are a bit sneakier than others.

Dad would never talk much about much of anything; not around me or the rest of the family anyways. So I never knew much about him until one evening when he and I sat and talked for a moment. I initiated the conversation with a question I'd been asking the rest of the guys driving truck for Glendenning. I was working as a dispatcher that summer after high school and we'd moved to La Crosse where the station had been moved to from New Lisbon a year earlier. With no clue as to what I was going to do with the rest of my life let alone what direction to look at moving in I was asking the men there one by one if they were doing what they really wanted to do with their lives. Almost all of them were telling me they'd choose something else. Most that was but not all.

When I finally got the chance to ask dad my question he answered by telling me a short story about when he'd been young and on the farm. He told me that one morning he saw a cloud of dust in the distance on the gravel road that ran past his grandma's farm. As he watched he saw something that he'd never seen before getting bigger and bigger the closer it got to where he was standing in the front yard. It was the first eighteen wheeler he could remember ever seeing and he said in that moment he told himself that one day he'd drive one of those big trucks. When we talked that evening he was closing in on twenty years of driving those big rigs over the highways of Wisconsin and into Illinois between New Lisbon and Chicago. He told me that night that it was all he'd ever wanted to do and he wouldn't know what else he might ever want to do.

Several years prior to that conversation there had been a whole bunch of kids and a few parents as well in a small town along the route he most often drove that thought he had another job.

The way I remember the story dad was hauling a load to Chicago in early to mid-December. It was the middle of the 50's and in those days not all railroad crossings had signals. Dad said he didn't see the train coming until the last moment. He said he jumped out of the cab as the engine smashed into the right side of the truck and he watched as the hood of the cab passed under him. Years later when thinking about that moment in my father's life I'd realize that somehow the scenario just didn't seem to add up without either divine intervention or just a small amount of magic. But on that day there must have been a bit of spare magic floating around because when that train hit that truck the next thing anyone knew it looked like Santa's sleigh had exploded and toys of all sorts and kinds were scattered everywhere. Dad said kids appeared out of nowhere and before anyone knew what had happened toys were disappearing in every direction.

Dad was a proud man, proud of his driving record with the company and the fact that he had years and years of accident free driving after that day. The one time I do recall him mentioning anything about that day was when he was talking with a friend in the bar one day. He told him that for several years after the accident whenever he would drive through that little town and the kids would see him they'd wave and shout, "Hi Santa!"

Knowing my dad I have to believe that he would have smiled, winked, maybe blown those air horns and waved back. We all know that's what Santa would do.

A Blonde, A Bike and Blood

How does one forget how it came to be that one of the prettiest girls he’s ever known ended up as his girlfriend? You’d think that something like that would be etched in his memory like a lighthouse telling him that in spite of himself he was on the right trail.

For the life of me I don’t remember how we met though living in such a small town the truth is we all had to bump into each other sooner or later. And for me it wasn’t a bump as much as a head first, full on crash, literally; finding myself holding hands with one of the most beautiful girls in all of the county and absolutely believing that she was all I ever wanted or needed in life.

Of course I was all of fourteen or so and how could I possibly know?

She was Beauty and I was Beast. That was how I saw it and so for me that was how it was. And because of that I had to try to prove to her, in my totally adolescent ways, that she hadn’t made a mistake when she let me hold her hand. I wanted her to know that she hadn’t made a mistake when she let me kiss her. But more than all of that I wanted, no needed, for her to know she hadn’t made a mistake when she’d kissed me back.

New Lisbon, for the most part, is a town built on level ground although there are one or two “hills” to be found. At the intersection of County Road A and Division Street if you’re headed north on Division you’re going to find a place to sled in the winter and in the summer to take your hands off the handlebars, raise your feet off the peddles and close your eyes. At best it’s a slope but when you’re looking for a helping hand from gravity you take what you can get.

The launch point was right there alongside the Methodist church and when you were sledding you’d pretty much run out of steam at the parsonage. To this day I’m not sure whether God is a Methodist or not but the one thing I can say is that no one ever got hurt when we were sledding down that slope. Well, not hurt in an ambulance calling, emergency room sort of way. There were the moments when if you didn’t get out of the way you were going to end up a sort of hood ornament on the next Flexible Flyer. But usually that was more of an intersection of time and lack of coordination and not much of anything else.

When the snow was gone the bikes came out.

I still remember that bike and all it meant to me. I don’t remember how many years it and I rode together but I do remember that Santa Clause brought it. It was red and white and gloriously beautiful with a frame large enough for a full grown man. The philosophy was that “he’ll grow into it” and it mattered little whether it was a pair of pants, a winter coat or a two wheeled red stead just waiting to carry you away to places you never before dared to venture to. In the end that would be true, he would grow into it, but for the moment the sheer size of his stead was something of a problem for that kid of eight or so.

My best friend taught me how to ride a bicycle by holding on to me from the landing of to his house as I tried to find some sort of center. He’d shove me and holler that I could do it and in the end he was right, I could do it.

In the years to come after Denny gave me a shove, yelled at me that I could do it and then picked me up when I’d fallen for the third time, that bike became my means of escaping almost everything but my imagination. It became Trigger or Champion or the best cow pony out of the remuda for doing the days’ work of rounding up cattle and running off the bad guys. As the years past it would become the machine that I hoped would carry me to another place and another time as I pumped harder and harder on those rubber peddles. If only I could go a little faster, if only I could turn down this road, if only…


In a little town you don’t always have to ride your bike here or there or somewhere else, you can walk and everything is fine, besides if you don’t use your bike you don’t have to try to figure out where to put it when you aren’t riding it. Of course that was all very true until you got to the age where you weren’t a kid anymore but you weren’t driving either. You found yourself in that twilight time where and when you knew the difference between being a kid and, well, thinking you weren’t a kid anymore. So, the only way around it was going to be that trusty old friend of yours with two wheels and a brand new set of high rise handlebars. It was a cool as you could get without a license and a car. And that was still a lifetime away.

She lived in the white two story house at the southeast corner of Main and Pearl. And though it wasn’t the most significant thing about that street there was just a slight slope to Pearl as it ran east toward the river. I valued any slant of the road simply because though I didn’t know anymore about gravity than anyone else I did know that it worked and it worked one hundred percent of the time which ultimately meant if you were headed down that slope you were going to pick up a bit of extra speed in the process. Of course as with most of my theories in life this one had at least one flaw. There was a stop sign at the end of the block which meant that about the time I’d built up a good bit of velocity it was also time to see whether or not the brakes still worked. Also there was the fact that if she was outside with me then what was the point in trying to ride as fast as I could away from her? The point was to keep her attention and validate her giving me her attention.

You’d think that young love would be simple, uncomplicated and something that moved along in starts and stops but without much in the way of conflict. How could I ever, even in those early days, keep something so easy and innocent?

And of course that was exactly why on this particular summer day I was doing my best to try and impress her and win her attention all over again for the umpteenth time. It was the dance we danced and for some time it would work well for us, that pushing away and then drawing back together that couples do when they haven’t learned how to simply let go and let their feelings for each other be what they are.

The object was to pull as hard as you could on the handlebars and at the same moment throw your weight back toward the rear wheel of the bike thereby performing the near death defying “wheelie” that all young guys knew full well could bring instant fame or at the very least something of a smile from the girl you were trying to impress. And no I wasn’t the world’s greatest at it. Ed Sullivan’s people weren’t going to be calling any time soon to have me perform on his show but there were moments when I could, well, sort of do it fairly well.

There are certain laws of nature that just can’t be gotten around no matter how hard you try. And when you start off not even thinking about what the eventual consequences could be there’s a good chance you’re headed toward a problem or two and from everything I’ve learned over the years since that day gravity is not to be toyed with and even more so not to be ignored.

She was standing there, gloriously, with golden hair brushing across her shoulders and a face to make the angels jealous and all the while watching me as I rode back and forth, here and there in front of her. Of course I should have gotten off that stupid bike, sat down in the grass beside her and just talked about whatever it was we talked about and pressed our shoulders against each other only because that was as much as we were going to be able to do sitting out there in front of God, all the town and most of all her mother. But no, that would be the sensible thing to do and certainly not the way I would do it. After all there were amends to be made to that beauty standing there and the only way I knew to do that was to try and impress her with manly death defying feats of strength and agility.

If your bike is on level ground a wheelie makes sense mostly because there aren’t many variables to have to deal with. A bit of an incline makes getting the front wheel off the ground a lot easier but there’s always a risk of too much incline and too much wheel off the ground which leads to you on the ground and the bike on top of you. Trying such a stunt on a decline is, well, just plain dumb.

Not only was I pointed downhill but the bike likely weighted close to a ton and a half, or so it felt when I went to pull the front wheel off the ground. Oh I got it up a ways just as I pushed down on the peddles and shot forward faster than I’d figured on. And about as quick as I pulled that front wheel up it was falling back down only to land on top of a broken tree branch. It’s amazing how laws of nature, when they meet head on right there on Pearl Street one sunny day in summer can cause such amazing results. In that moment gravity and friction met square on which meant that suddenly my bike wasn’t going anywhere and the problem for me was that I was - going somewhere that is. Over those handlebars and face first on to the asphalt and then into her mothers’ kitchen to sit at her table while blood did its’ best to get out of me and on to the floor.

Her mom patched me up as best she could but there was nothing that anyone could do for the two broken teeth I now had. I don’t remember much about all of that other medical emergency moment than that she seemed to be more concerned about me and how I was than anyone I’d ever known. When she was sure I was patched up about as good as could be she sent me on my way and I think that somehow she knew the sort of reception I’d get when I got home.
For years after that day whenever I laughed I would consciously put my hand over my mouth to hide those chipped teeth. It would be a decade and more before the results of that day would be dealt with. But in all the time to come I would forever remember a woman caring for me in a way I’d never before experienced and a beautiful girl who sat beside me not quite sure what to do but sitting beside me none the less.


In time she would find herself once more in that very same place - beside me and not knowing what to do.

A Story Unfinished

It was cold and wet that day in March, cold for the area around Phoenix anyways and wet for most any time in the Sonoran Desert. The dark, almost black, clouds trimmed with white, loosely bunched and racing east across the sky seemed hell-bent on being somewhere else and the sooner the better. Still they came from the west that morning as I drove north out of Phoenix and headed to New River, my mood sharing the emotions of the sky, dark with only a bit of something less so around the edge.

The invitation had been made, the kind that says if you’re around sometime stop in, and so that day I’d decided I’d “be around” and see if he was there. I wanted to talk, I wanted someone to listen and I wanted him to talk so that I might listen and learn. He knew things, I was comfortable around him and I knew that he would listen.

On that day the clouds never stopped their race across the sky, the rain would start, then stop then sometimes simply drip and drizzle enough to watch big drops fall from the roof and splat on the ground with a steady rhythmic beat. He was busy getting ready for more of what he did so well, telling his stories and singing his songs, but he took the time, made some coffee, talked and most of all for me on that day he shared a kindness of one man in the company of another who simply sat and listened.

I left that cozy little house with a horse out back that day better than the weather around me. I drove away from that place that had become a shelter from my storms if only for a couple hours feeling that though I hadn’t found all my answers I’d been heard and maybe, just maybe, there was hope in tomorrow after all.

We’d never been close and we would never be close but it was a relationship where if he’d have ever picked up the phone I’d have been there. The man I knew was a good man and a man worth the helping if or when he needed it, no questions asked. That’s what you do when you call someone friend. But, like so many he kept much close in and so there never was a call and I never got to return the favor he’d shown me so many years before.


We’d just reconnected; he’d written me a couple emails that had shared a bit of his journey over the past years and in his last note he’d mentioned about a trail he’d like to go “poking his nose into” as he put it and thought maybe we could try it out. Of course there were perfectly fine reasons why I couldn’t make it just then but I’d kept thinking about it and thinking of what a great adventure it might be just spending a day, two maturing men hiking a trail out Perryville Mesa way and just seeing what he meant when he talked about “poking his nose” into a place. I knew I’d learn some things and I knew there’d be new stories but like I said, there were other things that really needed being done, or so I thought.

And now I find myself wondering if perhaps that was the phone call I’d been waiting for.


A voice has gone silent; a voice that once sang and laughed and told stories to countless children and adults. And God the songs that voice would sing and the stories that voice would tell. I want to believe there should have been more for the telling.

I will miss you Dennis Richard Freeman.

The Talk

I never was a hunter, not in the sense that I understood a hunter to be, but even now the days just before Thanksgiving find me thinking back to those few days when maybe, just maybe, I'd get to spend some time with my dad out deer hunting. While I was in school Dad wasn't high enough up the seniority ladder with Glendenning to be able to take his vacation during deer season but I'm pretty sure that if he could have he would have. It really was the only time that dad and I were ever alone together for any amount of time, a day or two, maybe three, the last part of November during deer season.

For years and years I kept the sweater and socks my mom had knit me to wear for those few hours on a couple or three days of the year when I'd find myself in the middle of the woods before sunrise watching my breath and trying to be as quiet as possible. Why the socks were red I was never sure but that sweater was red enough to be seen across most any clearing and through some fairly thick undergrowth as well if need be. And on those predawn mornings in late November that heavy wool sweater wasn't always enough to keep me from wishing I was still home in bed and warm. Then one year the folks figured they could afford it and I got a set of olive green insulated underwear that when I put them on I thought I looked like a North Korean soldier.

As I remember it my dad shot the largest deer in Juneau County one year, a buck that field dressed at 220 pounds, but that could be the memory of a kid who wanted something he would never get.

 

I'd first seen her when I was standing on the basketball court and she was on the risers during some combined school choir program I remember nothing about today. I still remember looking up there and seeing an auburn haired vision of beauty. Our eyes met from across the auditorium and there was no question but what I had to, that's the really had to kind of had to, meet her. I've always remembered those eyes and how something inside me suddenly came alive in a new and wondrous way. She was special.

Oh and how she was special though I remember almost nothing that went on around us when we were together. I do remembered her, just her, holding her hand, having her next to me, kissing her and getting my ass knocked across the car when I went to put my hand where it didn't belong.

In my humble opinion she was without a doubt one of the most beautiful girls I had ever seen, certainly of any I'd seen in real flesh and blood life, and she'd decided it would be alright if she were seen with me. I was in heaven and the only thing I could think about was her and the coming weekend when I'd get to see her and be with her again if only for a few hours. Oh yeah, it was love or something really, really close to it.

Those weekends were spent going to Hillsboro and the dance in the high school gym every Saturday night. For all I know some of the greatest up and coming bands in the Midwest played there but it mattered not at all to me. I couldn't have told you the names of those groups even as I was holding Monica close to me through a slow song that was never slow enough nor long enough. And in the end she was probably more girl/woman than I was ready for but oh how I loved being with her. That was what I would tell myself later but the fact of the matter may well have been that I wasn't man enough for either of us.

When I wasn't with her I would write. I don't remember how much or how often but I would write and she would write back and of course I never thought her words said as much as I thought I wanted to hear but they said enough to keep me driving back to that farmhouse outside Kendall where this vision of beauty remained through the week that led up to yet another Saturday night and another dance in Hillsboro.

Those letters that meant so much to me all the while unknown to me also meant a great deal to my mother. Oh, she'd let me read them first and then she would find them, read them and create her own scenario of what really went on. I never did figure out how or from whom my mother heard whatever it was she heard about Monica but I do know for a fact that someone lied to her and lied big time. You see, mom heard and believed that her precious, innocent and naïve (that's the only part that was ever true about him) son was being dragged into a pit of sexual perversion by some cheap little hussy. Where she ever came up with those ideas I will never know but she believed them the way she believed the story she told herself that her boy was one day going to be the next Lawrence Welk. The problem for me was that she believed what she believed about a floozy from another town that her son was dating and damn the truth of it all!

Mom and I argued often and we argued with the vigor and passion that might have been considered something more than a parent and child disagreeing. When we argued it was mostly toe to toe, face to face and at a level of intensity that made dogs run and hide. I never won but I never backed down either and when it came to the love of my life and the truth I knew about her there was no giving in. In the end however there was the reality that I was still dependent on that house and so ultimately there came a moment in time when Monica and I understood that the only peace we would have would be in saying good bye to each other.

 

That moment would come but this day was not the day…

"I hear you've been seeing some girl," my dad said to me as we stood in front of the car out there on Germantown Road, dad smoking a Camel, drinking coffee and looking straight ahead while I held my Remington semi-automatic 30-06 like I might actually do something with it.

Father-son talks were unheard of in my world. But here was my father on the verge of holding a conversation with me; this was something I was not prepared for. Never before had he ever mentioned anything about the sports or music I was involved in, two things that were focal points of my life. Now he was suddenly talking with me about the girl I was in love with. And the trouble was I was pretty sure he knew almost nothing about her unless mom had filled him with the lies she believed to be the truth.

"Yeah," was all that could find its' way out of my mouth.

"Well," he took a drag off his cigarette then held it at his side between two gloved fingers, "keep your pecker in your pants."

The cigarette dropped from his hand as he reached for his rifle. The Remington 30-06 roared once and then there was silence. In the ditch not thirty yards in front of us lay an eight point buck.

The Answer Is Out There

I’ve never looked at my birthday as anything special, not for me at least. Other people came before me and played the parts that two people have played through all time to ultimately create a third person. I had nothing to do with my being here. And yet as with so many others I was always the one given the gifts, cards, cake and party when in my humble opinion my dad should have gotten at the least a cupcake each year and my mother a fair bit more. Heck, if we’re being completely honest about all of this they were the ones who created my birth day.

Still, no matter how much I try not to I’ve found myself thinking about the fact that can’t be ignored– that day is coming closer and closer. No, there’ll be no party, presents or frivolity from others for me so once again I find it necessary to take matters into my own hands and create as much excitement as such a moment might demand, from my perspective at least.

When I got to thinking about this upcoming birthday back a bit ago my first thought, and about the only one that kept bouncing around “upstairs”, was a trip to Nevada and “The Bunny Ranch.” It seemed to make sense, no lady in my life, none in sight and all of that so what the hell, why not? Still, as I rolled it around in my head the ultimate cost/benefit relationship just didn’t seem to make sense when I really got to seriously considering the entire experience. And let’s be honest, there’s not going to be much of anything I’m going to be able to talk about if I were to follow through on the idea. So the more I turned it over in my mind the less the adventure seemed to fit with what I was looking for in the way of something that would truly mean anything for more than a moment or two and leave a lasting impression.

No, what I’ve been trying to come up with, in regards to this coming on to sixty thing of mine, is anything that will actually touch my heart and soul. And that’s when I began to realize what a major undertaking I was laying out for myself. I’m the guy who doesn’t have a problem not being noticed. In fact over the past several years I’ve become something not that different from, for lack of a better definition, what I’d term an urban hermit; forced to live among others but remaining distant and hidden from all but a necessary few. For reasons perhaps less than valid to most others, but logical to me, my relationship with the vast majority of humanity has become something comparable to the distance I now have with the entity some call God – not all that great as in, “You don’t bother me and I won’t bother you.” Bothering others isn’t what I’m about but maybe this time I’ll have to, like it or not.

So giving myself the task of doing something that actually means something deep within the very core of my soul is no small task mostly because nothing much seems to move me these days. Virtually all of my life has reached the level of “so what?” Passion and/or desire have become words and nothing more.

Until this morning as I was driving to work and watching the sky beyond the McDowell Mountains as it turned from black to grey and on to sunrise. It was then it hit me, the answer to what I want more than anything for this upcoming step into my next decade on planet earth; I want to know the answer to a question that’s remained with me for some forty years now. I want an end to something that has been in my thoughts daily in one form or another for all these years. Oh sure, it’s gone from the front to the back to the middle and then all over the place though mostly it stays hidden just outside the dark until the moments when I least expect it. Suddenly there it is and I can’t ignore it no matter how hard I try. Oh, I have tried to walk away from it over the years, to bury it in some unmarked grave somewhere along the trail of memories that makes up my past. And of course I have failed miserably.

So it was that driving through the darkness and into the light of a new dawn I realized that now is the time to put it to rest. To somehow answer the question I’ve wanted answered through some forty years of trying to forget and never being able to really, totally and completely let go. At the very least what I seek is a chance to stop wondering about it and never finding an answer. More than once over the years I’d tried in various ways and always with the same result, the silence of nothingness.

Though it is in my nature to be somewhat concerned about what a select few might think the truth is that this morning it suddenly struck me that in this matter I finally only care about me and how I feel about all it. The time has come and I want to know; even more than that I need to silence that voice living inside me all this time. Beyond that it really comes down to, “Hey, it’s my birthday! What the hell should I care what you think about my present to myself?”

Some forty years ago, on a cold fall night in rural Wisconsin, a beautiful auburn haired girl served me my very first cup of Cowboy Coffee in the kitchen of her parents’ home. And with what began as merely a cup of coffee my world turned upside down and inside out. Over the years I vainly tried to find some sort of equilibrium with varying degrees of success. I never quiet forgot all that happened and unfortunately for others I never seemed able to completely accept it either. Thus the chain created from all that would happen has been drug through the years with only a link or two wearing off or slipping away. The time has come to let go and so this is the start and hopefully the end.

There’s no need for me to meet or communicate in any way with that girl who made me coffee that night and went on to live her life beyond any horizon that I ever traveled toward. No, the thought that came to me this morning as I headed east on Bell Road in Scottsdale, Arizona toward another day of what might be was that I no longer want to wonder, beginning in this moment I want to know. And what is it I want to know? A simple thing, that she is well somewhere out beyond that horizon I never managed to get to. It’s as simple as that. No rekindling of anything. No nothing, just to know.

The Bunny Ranch will have to wait, perhaps for the start of another decade. And as for the day when I stumble into my sixties? I’ll likely be doing what I do most days, strumming a guitar, picking a banjo, writing a story, sharing my thoughts on Face Book and of course drinking more beer than I need to. Maybe just for something different on that day I’ll pour way too much brandy in a very strong cup of Arbuckle’s finest.

Hell, how often does a guy get to soothe his soul and touch his heart?

Whispers

There were whispers in the hallways that someone walking among us had one. There were even a couple guys who claimed they’d seen it.

“Yeah, he went to Chicago last summer and that’s where he got it.”

But I never saw it and no one I knew and really trusted ever said they saw it. The others claimed to have seen it and even held it but they were the sort of guys, underclassmen at that, you were never sure you could believe because we all knew they mostly talked to hear themselves.

I have to believe that it was as much from being raised in that Midwestern culture as the built in from birth fear of being found out that comes from living in a small town that fights in our high school were few and far between. Most every problem I ever knew about was taken care of to one degree or another with a lot of yelling, a couple choice swear words and only on rare occasion shoving, a bear hug and two guys falling to the ground and wrestling around in the dirt. And that only lasted as long as it took for a teacher or two to come running out to break it up.

In those days teachers didn’t have to worry about “takin’ on” the kids because everyone knew who was going to win – the teachers. In those days, in that little high school the fact was that if the teachers didn’t prevail then the principal would and he was someone you didn’t want to have to deal with. The truth of it really was that there was nothing for teachers to worry about when it came to reprisal unless there was a sale on toilet paper and then someone might get their front yard decorated in streams of Nekoosa’s finest white paper product.

There was nothing that today would be called a gang walking through that hallway; cliques yes but the concept of a gang, their colors (other than our school colors) and the like was unthought-of. In the end we were one if and when it had to come to it. When push came to shove we wore the blue and white of New Lisbon and we were one.

Not that a thing or two that we sometimes take as common place today didn’t go on back then in that little town. It certainly wasn’t known as “tagging” but on occasion spare paint was put to unintended use. Typically the prime recipient of a bit of “extra” paint was the towns’ water tower. The signage was always different but the theme was always the same, either “Class of (fill in the blank)" or simply the graduating class year.

Though I had no way of knowing for certain I always thought there was a mix of something akin to frustration and admiration for the desecration of town property. Everyone knew it was coming just as sure as the first snow fall and no one ever seemed to catch the perpetrators in the act. The town would go to sleep one evening only to wake up in the morning with huge blue letters painted on the side of that water tower for everyone to see.

There were those like me who simply marveled at the bravery it must have taken not only to do the deed but to simply climb to the top of that tower. The thought of getting up there carrying enough paint to create those huge letters baffled me. And there was no question but what the act had to have been committed by more than one because the only way to get letters that big was to put someone on your shoulders. I was certain that no single soul could be so stealthy as to climb that tower carrying both a gallon of paint and a ladder. For crying out loud the police station was right there! Then there was the coming down and getting away unnoticed and more importantly unseen. And it was thus that overnight an unknown defacer of public property became something of a mythical legend.

Oh, there were whispers and a bunch of guessing about who might have done it but I never knew for certain. In the middle of football practice no one every boldly proclaimed that he had done it. Secrecy surrounded the event better than whatever went on inside the Baptist Church on Sunday evening. Still, as in any small town someone knew and finally somehow those that needed to know knew. And within a day or so the tower had been repainted just as covertly as it had been defaced. My theory always was that the perpetrators had been found out and the punishment had been handed out.

One year there was a huge “sign” on one of the roads outside town. On that black asphalt for all to read the white paint letters proudly proclaimed “Class of ‘68”. It didn’t have the same effect as those signs of years gone by high above the town for everyone to see but then again trying to figure out how to get the ladder to the top of that tower never became an issue and no one ever had to paint it over.

Being “bad” in those days didn’t mean what it means today. Being bad wasn’t about intimidation or threats or even bullying. Being “bad” was about maybe stepping ever so slightly outside the lines that we all had been raised with.

It wouldn’t be until years later, in Barcelona, Spain that I would see my first switch blade knife and then it would be resting against my Achilles tendon. Whether those whispers were true or not I never knew.

Findings

I'd be willing to bet that you know 'bout feelin' alone somewhere along the trail. Doesn't seem that anything is gonna fill that emptiness 'cept new ranges and different trails. Just about that time most anything can get to lookin' good and like as not you're makin' plans to throw away everything you've come to know and trust. That's when one of the boys comes ridin' up to you sayin' he's feelin' sorry for hisself and like as not I'll share this here story and maybe he'll think on things for just a little while...

Findings

His hat's beat down

Ragged and well worn.

But it suits his faded jeans

All stained with sweat and torn.

There's some says his work's way more

Than any pay he's gettin'.

'Cause he's up before the mornin' light

And works well past its' settin'.

No, he don't listen to that talk

He only smiles and nods polite

'Cause he knows down deep inside

What he's doin's simply right.

Yes, he thought it different once,

Went and lived with city folk.

But what he found was mostly fuss

And air that made him choke.

So soon enough he rode back home

Away from all those lights.

And now his thoughts stay closer in

When he's on his own at night.

Now with nighttime full around

He thinks back on his day;

Of earth and trees and sky

And chasing down that stray.

With hat in hand there comes a simple prayer,

"Lord, I thank you for this day.

For riding by my side

And for showing me my way."

W Bornmann, Jr

Two Boys In A Photo

If I went to go looking around this place of mine hard enough I’d re-find a small commemorative magazine from the mid 1950’s that is all about the Centennial of New Lisbon, Wisconsin. And when I turn to the back page of that magazine I’ll find a picture, a black and white picture, of a group of New Lisbon’s finest men of that era, virtually all of them with beards at varying degrees of growth and fullness, standing in front of one of the towns’ finer drinking establishments. Men of all ages are standing there but two men in particular might catch your eye, not because of them but because of something they did for that once in a lifetime photograph, they made sure their sons were standing beside them when it came time to take that picture.


Wallace Bornmann and Gordon Washburn drove trucks for Glendenning Motorways which was headquartered in St. Paul, Minnesota but had a station in New Lisbon. More significantly than that the two men were best friends and of that I am certain. Why they were the only men to have their sons standing next to them for that photograph I will never know but for them it was important and so however such thing work they made it happen that day when the men of New Lisbon gathered together on the steps of that saloon and posed for a photograph. For all eternity there would be a photograph of these two small boys surrounded by the rest of the men in that small town on the celebration of the towns’ Centennial.


I collected baseball cards as a kid. It was a passion of mine and I’d find any way possible to get a nickel and run to the Five & Dime to buy another pack of cards with that slab of bubblegum inside. How was I to know that I should have treated each and every one of those cards as pieces of future gold? No, for me they were not to be hidden away somewhere only to sell one day on eBay for small fortunes but rather to be viewed, fussed with and sometimes clipped to the forks of my bike to make that sound that only baseball cards in bicycle spokes can make. And sometimes I’d play baseball games with them.

“I’m going to Mike’s house.” And with that I was off with my shoebox full of baseball cards for the block and a half walk to Mike’s house which was right next door to one of those meeting halls like the Masonic Lodge or something. In all my years in that town I never ventured inside that building and honestly never had much interest in it since it seemed as if it was never used. If it was I never seemed to be aware of it. But Mike lived next door to it and that was my destination.

Mike was a year or two younger than me but we spent a lot of time together in my early years. Later, for whatever reason, we’d drift apart and for me it would be as if we became strangers to one another but when I had my baseball cards tucked securely under my arm and headed to his house there were games to be played and fun to be had.

The two of us had some sort of baseball card baseball game that we came up with. We’d take our favorite players cards and put them in their positions on the floor of Mike’s living room. Then once we’d gotten our players all in position we’d start the game. Now this is the point in time when recalling such moments makes me cringe because the way the game was played you’d use your baseball card as a bat. Cards that one day would be worth way more than the nickel we’d paid for them were being cupped in our hands and used to hit the wadded up piece of paper we tossed each other’s way. I’m not sure of the rest of how we got hits and outs but I’m pretty sure if you hit that paper wad over the back of the couch it was a homerun.

For me in those days most of my favorite players came from the Milwaukee Braves and the National League. It made sense to me to love the Braves because they were in Milwaukee and all of that. The trouble for me was that Mike didn’t care one lick for the Braves; he loved those damn New York Yankees! For the life of me I couldn’t understand it but Mike once said something in his defense that I still remember today; he said he liked the Yankees because they were winners.



It just so happens that the Yankee’s have just won their 27th World Series. I don’t know if Mike still pulls for the Yankees because as I understand it he had a son who one day became a professional baseball pitcher but hasn’t yet pitched for the Yankees yet. When the Yankees won the other day I thought of Mike and his love for the Yankees and I remembered those baseball games in his living room. Our teams were All Stars of our choosing but I can’t tell you today who won or who lost. All I can tell you is I remember those times with a smile.





I doubt that those two little boys standing with their fathers in that old picture will be back for the next centennial photograph of all the men in New Lisbon, Wisconsin. They were not men, only boys, but they stood there next to good men, men who thought enough of their sons to include them in that historical moment.

Being Cold For Betsy Palmer

It's cold here in Phoenix today. October's not the time to turn the furnace on so while the outside temperature tells me it's 54 the inside holds at 60 and I must admit to adding layers rather than paying the power company extra for warmth. And yet there's something somewhere in my memories that reminds me no matter what the weatherman here in Phoenix claims this isn't really cold the way I once knew cold...




A friend of mine once told me about spending a Wisconsin winter sleeping on his front porch in hopes of one day getting on the game show "I've Got A Secret". I suspect his real motive was to meet Betsy Palmer but we all had dreams of meeting our Goddess of movies and/or television in those days of raging hormones and that journey from pre to post puberty. For me it mattered little whether Annette Funicello was wearing mouseketeer ears or a bikini as long as she and I were together, gazing into each other's eyes and singing. I had no clue as to what might come after that but then again it didn't matter as long as she was there beside me. But that wasn't New York, "I've Got A Secret" and Betsy Palmer.


The day came when for reasons that were never explained I was given my own bedroom. No longer would my sister and I share the same room, the room where one night I lay awake listening as my mother yelled at my father and finally asked, "Do you want a divorce? Is that what you want?", and perhaps for the first time in my life wondered what the morning would bring.


A bed was fit into what could only be described as an over-sized closet. The thing I remember most about that bed was the worn out mattress, the kind that no matter where I placed myself I inevitably ended up in the middle, caught within a gravity well that drew me in like a black hole which would form every evening in my bed and hold me prisoner until sometime just after sunrise when I would somehow find the strength to break free from its' powerful cosmic grip once more only because it was demanded of me by a mother yelling that breakfast was ready. And so I would once again climb out of the comfort and security of a place that I came to realize later in life to be a second womb.

The room had no heat and air conditioning was unknown in the 50's in that little town in Wisconsin and so during the summer a fan was placed in the window, cardboard sealed the sides, and air was drawn through to facilitate some sort of airflow. In later years one would likely call it "white noise" but for me the sound of that fan running through the night was as much a constant as the sound of crickets and bullfrogs and as comforting. And though it was a valiant attempt to ward off the effects of a Wisconsin summer of high temperatures and even higher humidity I remember waking up in a bed soaked through from a night of sweating. I also want to remember that every new night there were freshly washed and line dried sheets on my bed.


And then there was winter in that unheated room of mine. To this day I have no remembrance of where mom might have kept all those blankets during the summer but come winter they would be found on my bed with me stuffed somewhere far beneath in a cave that created its' heat from what my body generated. The weight of those blankets once I'd wrestled with and overcome the layers upon layers would hold me in place through the night. I was pinned to the mattress by shear mass of material. In a very real sense I was the meat in the middle of a sandwich comprised on either side by mattress and blankets.

There would be frost on the inside of the window and once I'd stick my head out from under those blankets I could see my breath. On those mornings only an act of God or my mother could get me out from inside my self-made cocoon warmed to something just below one hundred degrees thanks solely to my body heat. And on those mornings when first toes would peak out from beneath the covers and then finally in a burst of adolescent energy, with a dash of survival instinct thrown in, an entire body was propelled on a dash for the warmth on the other side of that pseudo bedroom door and there truly was nothing else in the world that mattered in that moment.


It's likely that folks here in Phoenix wore parkas and gloves to work this morning thinking it was cold. When you're climbing out of your bed, barefooted and losing feeling in your toes you might say you know cold. When you're sleeping on your front porch through the whole of a winter in Wisconsin thinking of little more than being on "I've Got A Secret" and a chance to meet Betsy Palmer you might be said to know something more - a dream and a will to see it come true.

What Is It?

It had to have been my freshman or sophomore year in high school, any later and I want to believe I would have been much to "cool" to have participated. The one thing I'm certain of is that it was a high school fund raiser and I want to think that it was most likely for new band uniforms. That's one of the multitude of ways I would have found me there in the high school gym that evening and thinking I had to be right in the middle of everything. No matter, it would become one of those moments that would leave a scar on my psyche to this day.

I don't recall all the ways the students and faculty came up with to raise money but there are two I'll always remember. Oh, I'm sure there was a bake sale, even during the Clinton era bake sales were an important source of revenue for everything from band uniforms to lowering the National Deficit, and this was long before the Clinton era, but I do remember there was an old automobile in the center of the gym floor sitting on top of a really big tarp. And there was an auction that night.

That car sitting there was an unbelievable hit, literally. I suspect that folks likely paid ten cents for a swing at that old junker. You paid your money and for it you got a five pound sledge hammer and one swing. In those days ten cents bought a sixteen ounce draft beer in the bars for the guys who would swing that hammer that evening. Those dimes were treasured by the men I knew. On the other hand for me that dime would have procured two packs of baseball cards complete with slabs of bubblegum as big as the cards themselves. But on this evening those dimes weren't going for either glasses of beer or baseball cards, they were going for a swing with a hammer at an old car.

It was a sight I'd never have imagined, full grown men swinging that sledge with an ferocity that was never witnessed and seldom heard of in our little town. Men showing emotion was something left for closed doors and family if it was ever shown at all. And here it was at ten cents a swing , that emotion and that unbridled intensity so seldom seen by anyone, in full view of not only family and friends but the entire town. All of it directed at an old junk car that had likely never done anything but it's constructed job to anyone during its' existence. And for reasons not yet understood by me men young and old spent their dimes to pick up that hammer and swing, some with muttered epithets, at whatever part of the once proud product of Detroit that was potentially the most vulnerable to utter destruction. And damage was the only objective in their endeavor.

The evisceration of that hunk of glass and steel continued through the evening with whoops, hollers, screams of joy from bystanders watching as the roof finally caved in or there was no longer anything recognizable of the grill, and all the while the grunts of men throwing all they had of themselves and their emotions into humiliating an inanimate object that brought out so much in them. Those men who farmed the land, who constructed stainless steel tanks for hauling milk, who worked the railroad or shifted gears in eighteen wheelers across miles and miles of highway, those men from the shops and the stores and yes, even the schools, all took their turns with that hammer and a hunk of metal that symbolized so many dreams.

It would later be reported that the car smashing event was a complete and total success.

As for the auction I recall nothing of what was sold there that evening other than the item that I found myself involved with. And to be totally honest, to this day I can't tell you whether or not there was a sale. But I can tell you there was a question.

You'd think that one of the last things to be put up at any auction is a kitten. Oh sure, you're in some fancy place with a bunch of folks looking for only the finest in felines then I get it but this wasn't the case. In fact I'm pretty sure that even the richest of the folks living in my little town had more or less the same opinion of cats and kittens, they were a dime a dozen and why would anyone want to buy one? And yet here I was with kitten in my hands holding it up before a crowd of folks.

Now the truth is I'd never even thought about cats while I was growing up. I didn't even think about dogs well, other than Lassie that is. I didn't have any pets, except the goldfish that I managed to suffocate when I was about four, and none of my friends had pets. Oh sure, Billy Rabuck had a couple coon dogs we'd go out hunting with but nobody I knew had dogs or cats running around in their homes. Farmers had dogs and cats but I didn't have them, I wasn't around them and I sure didn't know much of anything about them. And therein lay my ultimate humiliation.

So I'm standing there on the stage with this kitten that really doesn't want to be there and for sure doesn't want to be held up in front of a noisy auditorium with a bunch of folks looking up at it. I'm doing my best to try and keep this poor critter under control while being fully aware of the fact that I don't have a clue as to what I'm doing. And for the inexperienced holding an unwilling kitten is something that at the least can be a challenge and at the most an experience with perpetual motion complete with razor sharp claws. I was inexperienced and can attest to bleeding red.

If you've never experienced a thing before, or something somewhat similar, you more than likely don't have any way of being prepared when it comes your way. If you're a young and naive teenage boy you almost certainly don't have a chance. Had I known what I know now the odds would have been at least fifty/fifty that things would have turned out alright. On this night I had walked into a situation that would haunt me for ever. Not because I did or didn't do something but because I didn't know. For me on this night it was a single question and a question that in that little more or less rural town should not have been a problem for most anyone, but it was for me.

I didn't know who he was, never would come to find out who he was, and yet he forever left his mark when he yelled out his question. In the end the not knowing was bad enough but the laughter was worse. All these years later I still can hear the laughter.

He asked a simple question and I suppose I should have had the answer but as I stood there trying to figure out the answer for him the smile started on his face and then the chuckle and finally the laugh that said it was alright for others to join in and so they did. They laughed while I stood there holding a kitten in my hands and completely unable to answer his question. Unable to the point of being paralyzed.

It's maybe hard to understand today but in that world and in those years some of us really didn't know anything about sex. All I really knew was that girls were somehow different from me and yet I wasn't exactly sure how. After all, the best player on our Little League team had been a girl and she was just like us only different somehow I guess. Well, I did know they were different enough that I was strongly, and I mean strongly, attracted to them but beyond that I can honestly say on that night in that high school gym I still wasn't really clear on what some of the details were on the differences in sexes.

"Is it a male or female?" That was the question he asked. An honest question to a young man without a clue. Well, I sort of had something of an idea but it wasn't based on fact, more dumb luck guesswork than anything else, so I started to try to figure out the answer. In my memory I must have looked the ultimate fourteen year old boy without a clue as I tipped the poor cat this way and that trying to come up with an answer. As I recall I never did, someone else tried to rescue me, and in the end I never would have a cat as a pet.

It wasn't the cats' fault, it was just an unwilling particiapant in the whole event. But to this day I remember that moment standing on that stage in front of all those people and feeling those feelings because I didn't know and they laughed.

For whatever reason and however things work in life today I remember standing in front of people and having them smile and laugh too. The difference comes in the fact that today I sort of know what I'm doing when I stand there. And I always make sure no kittens are part of the act.

Some Dogs Don’t Swim

The last time I was back there was a chain across the walkway of the dam over the Lemonweir River in the little town I spent my first eighteen years in. That would have been along about the summer of 1988 if I recall. Twenty years since I’d stood there in that high school gym and was told that the life I’d always known was over and good luck in the future.

That day in ’88 I stood there in front of a chain across the walkway of that dam that once was the pathway to a day of yelling, hollering, splashing, daring and in later years girls in two piece bathing suits. On the far side of that dam was the old swimming hole, the place where who knows how many generations of local kids had gone to learn to swim. That place where someone, I was never really sure who, once the ice had cleared would drag that old diving platform out into the middle of the river and anchor it there for the summer.

There were two ways of measuring who you were at that swimming hole and one of them was to be big enough and good enough to swim out to that raft. The other was to jump off the diving board just beside the spillway.

I’d never wondered about that dam, it had always been there and the why of it for me was obvious, so that on those hot and sticky days of summer I could go swimming all day long. There likely had to be another reason for it being there but in my case over the years it would serve a threefold purpose and that was more than enough work for any one dam as far as I was concerned. One of those purposes was to take away a fear.

The diving board attached to the side of the dam was long gone the day I stood on the other side of the river and looked across to that old memory. I’m sure someone had decided that there was something in the river and so for the safety of all swimming was no longer allowed. Kids would no longer get the chance to run out into that little shallow part, feel the sediment ooze up between their toes and always make sure they stayed away from the bloodsuckers waiting for them in the cattails. That was of course unless someone dared you to walk over there. No more would a kid stand there in water just over their mouth and nose, bouncing up and down while the river waters ran by them, one minute warm and the next mysteriously cool. Whoever makes those decisions had decided that what that town needed was chemically treated and government approved swimming pool and so no longer did that river and that old dam get to teach the little ones how to swim, the older ones how to not be afraid and the oldest to sit there on the grass listening to the shouts of joy and excitement of kids being kids.

But kids will be kids and back in the days when there was no chain across that dam, when the diving board was still securely attached to that wall, when the raft still floated in the middle of the river there came a moment when two boys, a dog, that diving board and the river would meet, or so the story goes.

Sometimes the best intentions of young boys go terribly askew mostly because they just don’t know any better. I don’t doubt they thought they were doing nothing wrong and everything right the day they walked their English bulldog down to the dam to see if he could swim. If you’ve ever seen an English bulldog you’ll know that they have rather stout bodies and not a whole lot for legs. Though I’ve never followed up on it I’m told that some of the breed does swim but others simply can’t.

They led their friend and companion out to the end of that diving board rising some eight or more feet over the river and not more than thirty feet from the closest spillway. I’m sure they were certain that everything would be fine when they picked him up and released him to gravity and his fate. I suspect they ran down to the edge of the water anticipating their trusting friends’ swift emergence from below the water and they would yell and holler for him to swim back to them.

Like I’ve already said, I’m told some English bulldogs can swim and others don't.

I miss you Nat King Cole

Trying to figure out why is probably impossible but I just heard Nat King Cole singing "Unforgettable" in my head. I haven't thought of Mr. Cole in a long time but right there, in the dark, as I'm heading to the bathroom, I hear his unforgettable voice singing to me. It made me happy and sad all at once because that's when the floodgates of memory suddenly kicked in. And so there I was, in the bathroom in the middle of the night with a montage of sounds and sights charging one after another toward the front of my mind, each yearning, no demanding, my private attention.

"Unforgettable" by Nat King Cole may have been the very first song that triggered something akin to passion inside me.

Mr. Dalke ran the shoe shop and in the summer the radio in his workshop could be heard a half a block away. I use to love to go into his shop and look at all his tools and the machinery for polishing and shining shoes of all shapes and sizes. It didn't hurt that he sold minnows for fishing either along with red wigglers and night-crawlers. Those were the sorts of things an eight year old boy could literally get his hands into.

But it was the music that day coming from his shop as I was walking across the dusty, empty except for the propane tanks, lot. And to recall it today I was walking toward the music and nothing else. That voice and those instruments that suddenly filled my head with something new, exciting and for an eight year old boy life changing were sounds that got me to feel something I wouldn't understand for years to come.

Today it seems we're constantly being assaulted with sounds and images but in those days, in that little Wisconsin town, sounds consisted pretty much of semi-trucks shifting gears through town, the occasional distant sound of the train whistle as it approached another crossing and in the summer robins singing. Mr. Dalke's radio always broke that rhythm but not with loud and raucous "look at me!" lyrics and sounds; rather something that was far less intrusive and much more an addition to the world around me rather than a subtraction. There was no yelling and screaming, cussing and cursing, not from Mr. Dalke's radio at least.

So, as I sit here tonight I remember a world and a time that maybe all these years later I'm finally realizing was a world that wasn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination but was a world where an eight year old boy could feel something inside coming to life while trucks shifted gears out on US 12 & 16, when the wind was just right the "thump, thump" of a farmers' tractor out plowing fields, where robins searched for worms on greener than green lawns and Mr. Nat King Cole sang "Unforgettable."

Yes, I miss you Nat King Cole.

Passion

Who are you? No really, I mean it - who are you? Dancer, construction worker, teacher, singer, mother, father or who? Who are you?

You know don't you? Yeah, somewhere down deep inside you when you're all alone you hear it, you feel it, you know it - you know who you really are. Do you laugh it off? Do you just try your best to ignore it? Do you cringe? Do you wish you didn't know?

What is it that fills you up to where you can't believe it's real? What makes you think that everything else is nothing compared to what you see, what you hear and what you feel? What do you care about? What do you long for? What do you love?

What is your passion?