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.