Memoria #1 -- Rick

This is what I'd say to Rick's siblings, if they asked for my memories.
I got a call this past weekend that my inseparable teenage friend, Rick, had died. For 3 years from 1968 to 1971, we were constant companions, working at the same diner, usually the same shifts. With 5 sisters, I always wanted a brother and Rick was my surrogate brother. I went away to college but we would pick right back up when I came home. Eventually, Rick started letting the dark side come to the fore, was tossed out of your house and moved around quite a bit for a few years. He would appear every so often and then disappear into the void until his next surfacing.
We shared an apartment for a year in '75-'76, but we were not friends any more. The day I moved out of the apartment was the last time I spoke to him until your Mom's funeral. I got information about him a couple of times over the years from Meg, who had stayed in touch with Sue.
When your Mom died this past winter, Meg and I hemmed and hawed about going to the funeral, but we decided we would go together. Your Mom had always treated us very kindly, in spite of the pure chaos that was your household in those years (no offense intended). We wanted to pay our respects.
As Meg and I walked down the aisle of the church to view your Mom, Sue was sitting in the front row. She looked around and Meg waved and Sue acknowledged her and then I waved real casually, like I had seen her last week. Sue's jaw dropped. She was sitting next to Rick, told him to turn around, and when he realized who it was, his mouth formed the word "Wow", and a big smile came across his face. We chatted briefly before the service and Rick was really moved that I came. I was also moved by his response.
It was good to see all you "kids". I hadn't seen any of you since the early 70's, except maybe if Sue was over our house. As you "little" ones were around all the time when Rick and I hung out together, I grew fond of you and I think the feeling was reciprocated. Your Mom's funeral was a sad occasion, but it was really nice to see all of you after all these years.
Allow me to digress for a paragraph and share my feelings about your Mom. Once your Mom got a chance to breathe, i.e., you kids got out of her hair, she took hold of life and lived it fully -- travelling and painting and grandmothering. She remarried to a man who was a gem, according to all accounts. I was so happy to hear that she blossomed because in my days associated with your family, she worked a 40 hour a week job, did the "woman's" work, helped the kids with their homework, and had a difficult husband, in my opinion. I never saw her not frazzled, but I was always welcome in your house and she treated me very nicely and always treated me as an adult. I also think she was grateful that Rick was hanging out with someone more level-headed, or maybe someone just more scared about getting into trouble. (Not that I was any candidate for sainthood).
I've been thinking a lot about Rick in the last couple of days, even though I had only talked to him once in the last 30 years. I don't think anyone knew what made him tick. He certainly had the gift of gab -- as my Mom said, "You couldn't help but like Rick." Even with his "Roman" nose -- Crazy Joe at the Diner told the joke a 100 times -- "Rick, you have a Roman nose. It's roamin' all over your face" -- Rick had no problems finding girl friends. He was glib, tall and handsome even with that nose and had that air of danger that girls so liked. The Rick I got to know at 15 or 16, was a big hearted, funny, smart, nice individual. The summer of '68 he devoted to memorizing all the words of all the Simon and Garfunkel songs. I couldn't help but learn the words myself. We would sing those songs all summer. I don't know if the 1975 version of Rick would even listen to them. I don't remember hearing him play them on the stereo in our apartment.
During the second half of our 3 year inseparability, hints of a darker Rick started surfacing. Rick was always super desirous of money, even more than me. Your Mom and his and Eric's father divorced when he was little and his dad died before I even knew Rick. I'm sure money was very, very tight. Rick told me he started working at 10 in a corner store in the city before he moved out to the 'burbs and was working at the diner at 14. He may have had a gambling addiction -- he could never do anything just for the pleasure of it. We liked to shoot pool; I wasn't very good but Rick was passable by suburban pool hall standards. I loved the challenge of me vs. the table and I loved the geometry of the angles. Rick loved the betting. He would spot me x balls to 100 or some crazy 9 ball bet. We lived about 1.5 miles from the pool hall and for the longest while neither of us had a car, so we walked. Well, at some point, Rick could no longer just walk and talk like we used to, we had to race. Now Rick ran track in a pretty good program in high school; by contrast, I'm a thick legged slug. I HATE to run and always have. Didn't matter to Rick, we had to race. He'd spot me half the distance and more often than not, beat me. Racing was where I drew the line on betting. Now, I was better at basketball, ping pong and wiffle ball; we didn't bet on them because they were my things and I played them for fun.
I think that Rick had no stomach for delayed gratification. He wanted it and he wanted it NOW. He went to Community College for maybe a 1/2 year; he certainly could have gotten into a 4 year college such as Temple or Penn State if he had wanted to. But college wasn't going to happen quickly enough for him. This being 1970/1, the use of drugs was getting wide-spread and he started dabbling in dealing. He did get busted, spent some time in county jail. He pretty much went low visibility by '72 and I saw him rarely; in fact he never had a phone # that he divulged.
Well I went back to college in '72 after dropping out for a year and was away except for the summer. By March of '75, I graduated but couldn't find a job. By summer's end, I ended up working at the Sheraton where Rick was working. He had a bedroom open in his apartment; desperate to get out of the house, I took it.
This Rick was hardened; the Simon and Garfunkel Rick was long suppressed. He was a banquet manager; he worked very hard, to his credit, but was also scamming extra servings, wine bottles and champagne bottles for bigger tips. Working there, I did not want to know this stuff but could not bring myself to turn him in. He scoffed at my disapproval. He was also stringing along a couple of women, who honestly should have known better. He wasn't going out of his way to hurt them exactly but he was very callous and sometimes flaunted his "success" to them. More than once I had to tell a tearful voice on the other end of the phone that Rick "wasn't available". It was all about Rick's pleasure; 100% ego gratification, 24/7, consequences be damned.
A few months after moving in, I got a job as a computer operator on the night shift. Rick mainly worked the breakfast and lunch banquets so we hardly saw each other and we were happier for it. I moved out in Oct. '76 and didn't talk to him again until your Mom's funeral.
In '83, Sandie and I were making plans to get married. We were checking another hotel in the area and had an appointment with the guy who had been the Director of Banquets at the Sheraton, i.e., Rick's boss back then. We exchanged pleasantries and he brought in his 2 right hand men, who both had worked in Banquets with Rick. We started talking and Hans told me that he had fired Rick for stealing. All I could say was 1) I hadn't seen Rick since I had moved out 2) I wasn't shocked.
After your Mom's service, Rick told me his condensed life history in the 15 minutes that we had to talk before you took off to the grave site. He had high-tailed it to Florida in the late 70s and worked for a while dealing cards in Florida and Louisiana. He moved to New Orleans in the 80s, settling there for good. He had been working as a cook on oil rigs in the Gulf for a number of years. No marriage, no kids. He thought he knew my college friend Rollin but Rollin didn't recognize the name. Rollin manages a rig; it's quite possible Rick knew who Rollin was without Rollin really knowing Rick.
So here I sit; still sad, still grieving, and yes, a bit weepy. Rick is gone; the Rick I had loved had been devoured by the hardened Rick 35 years ago. Why did that side disappear? I don't know; Rick became more and more circumspect as time went on. I don't think your Mom or you guys had any clue what drove him. He did not keep in contact for the longest time, even with your mother. I never walked in his shoes; my folks never divorced; my dad didn't die; my mom didn't have 4 kids by another man with whom I could not get along. I'm from a family of 6 kids too; I know how attention starved we can become when our parents have so many other responsibilities. The amateur psychologist in me wonders if Rick felt abandoned in his early life, built up a wall that no one was going to penetrate to insure that no one was going to abandon him again.
Enough of the pseudo-psychology; I'll try always to remember the Simon and Garfunkel Rick. That's a nice memory. And I can always hope that that side of Rick might have resurfaced some day.

ADDENDUM: 27-Feb-2008
I just found out today that the coroner ruled accidental heroin overdose. Cripes, Rick, 55 years old ODing on heroin. At least your inner turmoil is over. So sad, so sad.

Extra Early Breakfast

The scene was the TV room in Ewing Hall. Rol, Gary, perhaps Rich and I were playing cards. Our resident ex-Marine Viet Nam vet was watching the truly bad Green Berets, shushing us whenever we got too loud.

I started to pack it in around 12:30, slightly on the early side for me, because I needed to study in the morning. Gary announced that he was going to get up early to go to breakfast and study, too. I asked Gary to wake me when he got up and I'd go to breakfast with him. With that, I bade them all adieu and went to bed.

The next thing I knew, I heard Gary telling me that it was time to get up. I remarked that I felt like I had only slept an hour. At that point I heard Rol, my roommate, rooting around in his closet. I usually wake up pretty quickly but I was having real problems this particular morning. I stumbled down to the bathroom, splashed some water on my face and stumbled back to the room, still trying to shake the cobwebs out of my head. I couldn't put it together but something just wasn't right. What was Rol doing up? He never got up early. And what was he doing in that closet for so long? Why was Gary smoking? He made a point of never smoking first thing in the morning.

We start walking down the hall and then down the stairs. Gary and Rol wanted me to take the underground route to the dining hall on our side but I knew that the dining room on the opposite side of the little quad was the only one open for breakfast. They tried to convince me otherwise but I was sharp witted on this one. I pushed open the outside door and it hit me -- it was pitch black outside. Those SOBs got me up in the middle of the night. I cursed them obligatorily and then burst out laughing.

It was really about 1:30 in the morning. Gary had seen me turn over in bed and softly said "time to get up". When I actually responded, he just went with it. Nothing was planned. Rol couldn't contain himself when I said that I felt like I had slept for only an hour. He buried his head in his closet and bit on a towel to keep from laughing aloud. And Gary having a cigarette at 1:30 AM was no big deal but I couldn't pick up that clue. But somehow, in my daze, I knew which cafeteria was supposed to be open.

Rich and the Earthquake

Rich was part of the gang from my days at University Park and a founding (and finding!) member of the Brotherhood of the Stake. Someday I'll write a prologue on Rich, because his personality was so distinctive.

On this eve of the 100th anniversary of the San Francisco earthquake, I had to write this remembrance down.

One night we ended up playing a game in the TV room on our floor and someone had put the movie San Francisco on. It's quite a good movie, but almost all of the story concerns Clark Gable trying to seduce Jeanette MacDonald with Spencer Tracy as his boyhood chum priest trying to stop any shenanigans. This is all prelude to the earthquake. The promotions during the commercial breaks showed scenes from the earthquake and that's what we were all itching for. At one break, Rich announced that he needed to go to the bathroom and shuffled down the hall at absolute minimal speed, as only he could. As soon as he was out of earshot, the movie returned and voila, the earthquake. I remember the earthquake scene as being pretty quick.
As soon as the next commercial break came on, we heard the telltale shuffling coming back down the hall towards us. We burst out laughing before he ever re-entered the room. We gleefully announced that Rich had missed the only part of the movie that he was interested in. He accused us of conspiring to trick him into leaving and missing the still pending earthquake. Only after the movie returned to the air and he looked at the images of rubble on the screen, did he start to believe us. And he went ballistic, cursing fate for yet again conspiring against him. And he was plenty mad at us for having such a good time at his expense.

By the next day, we were all friends again. After a night's sleep, even he could laugh at his own misfortune. The quick rebound was what made Rich so endearing.

The Spoiler

In May of the fourth grade we moved about 4 or 5 blocks to the other side of school. We moved next door to the Reuhlmanns. Margie was in my class, Peter was in Mary's so we already knew the family a bit. After we moved to Philly, Mr. Reuhlmann was elected mayor of Cincinnati, back when it was an position of honor in the pre-Springer days. Peter was a year ahead of me in school and we played together that summer a lot.
It was my first year of Little League and because I was pretty big and had a decent if not awesome arm, my coach taught me how to pitch. I was pretty decent as I had some modicum of control and I could drop down and throw sidearm to give a different look to the batter.
We started out the season pretty badly at 1-4 before we started to gel. We had gotten our record up to 4-5 and had the last game of the season against Peter's team. They were in first place and would clinch the title if they won. They beat us pretty soundly the first time we played. Normally we played on Sunday morning but this game was in the evening during the week for some reason. School was out by then and I thought about the game all day long. Peter and I did some trash talking but I felt like he had upper hand in that department since they were such a good team. I was quite edgy but come game time, I had just the right mix of adrenalin and composure. Once I got out of the first inning without much damage, I was really confident that I could beat them. We ended up winning 3-2, which was a low score for that level of play. I pitched the absolute best that I could and have never experienced such a high athletically since (not that I had any sort of athletic career).
Peter's family hosted a cookout for his team that night that they had figured was going to be their pennant celebration. Peter came over and invited me to join but I refused to go. I felt like I would have shown disloyalty to my team if I attended another team's party. (Go figure) I also felt very sad for their team, and felt kind of guilty for ruining their fun. I remember laying on my bed listening to the fun outside with all sorts of mixed feelings.
But boy, I was proud of how I pitched.

Sometimes it's just nothing at all

My folks were very strict with my sisters and me. Even though all my grandparents and some of my great grandparents were US born, the German strictness was reinforced by generations of living in pure or mostly pure German environments. And we were Catholic to boot. We kids didn't want to get into trouble at school because we would get hit at home*** for getting hit at school.
By third grade I had the elementary school ropes down pretty well. I was a precocious learner and had a good memory. It didn't take me long to absorb my lessons in class -- when you have class sizes well into the 30s, you don't move along at a very fast pace. I started to goof off in class once in a while and got yelled at in class for the first time in my short life.
At some point well into the school year, there was a teacher-parent conference day on what I remember as a Sunday afternoon. Both my parents went and I was sweating that Mrs. Krieger (sp?) would recite all my transgressions and then I would catch hell when they came back.
When they returned, I avoided them for as long as I could. Finally, I got up the nerve and went in to face my punishment. Putting on my most innocent act, I asked what Mrs. Krieger had said. Their response was "Nothing much, you are doing very well in your school work." Relief! But I already had done appropriate penance for my misbehavior by sweating it out for an hour or two.
Epilogue: Years later, when I was relating my story to my Mom, she told me that Mrs. Krieger said I was bored in class and that she would try to give me some extra work on the side.

*** In fairness to my parents, getting hit meant several smacks with a yardstick across the bottom, pants up.

Snippets of Early Memories

Staying out of the sun from noon to 3. This was an anti-polio strategy of my parents even though we had gotten the recently discovered polio vaccine.

Lucky for us, Topper was on during that time and I watched it with my older sisters every afternoon.

Playing house with my older sisters and always being sent out to work.

Playing Mass with Necco Wafers as Communion. Since I was the only boy, I assumed the priestly duties most of the time.

Running around giggling as we shouted "They're attacking from the rear" after hearing that phrase from a Zorro episode.

Our skinny, 3 level back yard. It was level at the back of the house, then there was a steep rock garden area, followed by another flat area with a giant cottonwood tree, followed by a steep hill of maybe 4-5' and another flat area with wild berries and honeysuckle growing along the fence.

My American Flyer train set, with its beautiful smoking engine and in true Cold War fashion, a rocket launching car. As C. K. Dexter Haven would say, "It was yar."

Being surprised when my Dad painted a box the size of a strike zone on the cinder block basement wall so I could practice pitching all winter long. This violated the "No ball playing in the house rule".

The one and only baseball game that my Dad took me to. It was a night game and I thought it was cool that the "Sun Deck" that I saw during the Sunday day games on TV became the "Moon Deck" at night. I remember nothing other than Roy McMillan hitting a fly to medium center field that I thought was way out of the ballpark.

About that same time, my Dad got me a crystal radio tuned to the Reds station. I would lie in bed listening to Waite Hoyt announce the games.

Hearing Waite Hoyt recreate West Coast games from the telegraph ticker. I was turning 6 the year that the Dodgers and Giants went West and I recall that the radio broadcasts for the first couple of years were re-creations. I've done a quick scan of the 'net and the bits of information that I found say that re-creations disappeared by 1950. But these first couple of years might have been exceptional cases.

It's not what you say

Back in the mid-60s, when I was in my early teens and my sister Paula was approaching her adolescence, we would spent idle hours in the summer playing our own "home version" of the many game shows that were on TV. Our mutual favorite at the time was You Don't Say with Tom Kennedy. I can still hear the tag line "It's not what you say, it's what you don't say".
I can picture the summer morning that Paula and I were out on the front porch playing You Don't Say. She stumped me one round and declared the answer to be Rita Shaw. Well, I had never heard of Ms. Shaw and Paula, who hated to lose worse than any of her uber-competitive siblings, got all indignant that she was indeed real and that Paula had seen her name in some TV show credits. Well, that was not good enough for me, and I took great pleasure in mocking my poor sister over a made-up name. I got tremendous mileage out of that error of my sister's. I used "Oh yeah, just like Rita Shaw" as a winning counter-argument against her for a number of years.
Well, sometime in the last 10 years, I was watching a Dick Van Dyke show, and lo and behold, there in the credits was Reta Shaw! 30 years later, my sister was vindicated.
I called Paula that weekend and she was quite magnanimous. As hard as I had tried, I left no permanent scars on her psyche.

Lame to try even on an 8 year old

46 years ago this very early morning, my 3 sisters and I (age 8) were awakened and herded downstairs, while my Mom was giving birth to a baby. The baby was delivered by my Dad as my oldest sister (12) listened on phone to the doctor and relayed the instructions to Dad. Keep in mind that this was 1959 -- we had the typical 1 wall phone mounted on the kitchen wall with maybe a 3 foot cord, so my sister had to run up the stairs with the instructions. Now I don't remember her doing that and I only heard the phone bit a few years ago from my Dad.
I had no idea what was going on as it was 12:30 in the morning and Dad didn't really have much time to let us know what was happening. At some point, my Dad came down the steps with a shoe box and inside was a baby sister, all 3lb 2oz of her.
Sometime in the madness, my Dad's sister, who was a nurse, came over and the ambulance came too. At that point, we found out that there was another baby inside Mom and she and Dad were off to the hospital. My 3 sisters and I were transported over to my aunt's house. We had some milk and graham crackers and were fitted up with some sleeping arrangements. My aunt and uncle had 3 of their own kids at that time but they found spots for all of us to sleep. I ended up in the attic with an uncovered window to stare out. I laid awake for a very long time and saw the most wondrous show of shooting stars.
I was desperate for a brother, with 3 sisters already plus a new sister. Growing up Catholic in an area with a lot of Catholics, many of the families had a lot of kids. Dickie F's older brother was a batboy for the Reds and had a basement full of bats from the Reds and other major leaguers. There were Bobby, Davy and Stevy G. 3 houses up, one year apart from each other. Billy and Bobby L. were up the street, 1 year apart. And me, I had 3, now 4 sisters.
In the morning at breakfast, my aunt announced that there was another baby. I asked if it was a boy, and she said that it was another girl. 5 sisters! She then said that one of them was going to be called Jo, so that's almost like another boy. This was the only time that I didn't like this very sweet aunt.

Can a 6 year old be too literal?

I have been accused of taking things too literally. The first time that I can remember was the first day of first grade.
I had gone to kindergarten, so I had a year of school under my belt. That was public school and now I was going to St. Teresa of Avila for grade school. This particular school had first grade in a separate facility from grades 2-8. It was about 3 blocks from home -- down our street for two blocks, make a left for a block and there the school was, across Glenway Ave., a busy city street.
My Mom and my little sister had walked me down in the morning with no trouble.
As I left school and came up to Glenway with the other kids, I was faced with a dilemma. I was not allowed to cross a street without Mom or Dad looking. So I stopped even though all the other kids were crossing with the crossing guard. I refused to cross, even when the guard called over one of the nuns, I still refused. Finally, they had to call my mom and she and my sister came down to get me. Mom was mad but laughed after I explained that I followed the rules. The "no crossing the street rules" were then modified to include people in authority.
Looking back, I was as worried about Mom figuring out that I had crossed without her or Dad as I was about being disobedient.

Rama is (no) punk rocker

In honor of the man who inspired me to give this a try, my first story will be about Rama. Rama is Indian (duh), who has a PhD in chemistry. He is married, with 2 boys and his parents recently came over from India to live with them in their townhouse. Rama has been in this country for a number of years. He seldom talks about himself since he always prods me to talk. He's a heck of a good listener. I should prod him more for his stories.
I listen to a lot of music at work. Recently Rama came over with a CD of Carnatic music. This is music that he had heard in his childhood at his grandfather's house. Live. He says that he can go into a trance listening to the improvised bits. As I was putting the CD in my computer, Rama kept telling me that I would hate it, that my Western ears wouldn't like it. It caught me off guard, because Rama and I are both very inquisitive and open-minded. He has wanted for so long to find someone to share this music that I think he was trying to minimize his anticipated disappointment. I have never been drawn to Indian music, although I am not afraid of non-Western music. I have bought a Tibetan chant CD and had a Gamelan LP way back when. (Oh my, how brave of me! Two whole non-Western albums.)
The singing parts were dense; Rama referenced the Mozart "too many notes" story. There was a singer, sometimes two, a violin-like string instrument and percussion. The singer was singing only the note names, similar to do-re-mi, and kind of gutteral . There were prescribed singing sections and improvised sections. The singing didn't draw me in that much but the strings and percussion were riveting. Rama came over every 5 minutes astonished that I was still listening.
Meanwhile, I had lent the great Rhino punk box set to our local Scotsman, Steve. Steve was handing it back to me as Rama passed by. Rama started asking about the music, and we threw out adjectives like loud, fast, angry, rebellious. We knew Rama would not like it and we were joking about the over/under on how many songs he would last. I thought that a nice mathematical progression would be 4 songs on disc 1, 3 on disc 2, etc. It turns out that our man listened to one whole side. He commented that he thought he was connecting to the music on one or two songs but then the connection faded very quickly.
I had a visual image of Rama driving down the road listening to "California Uber Alles" and doing the chicken thing with his head a la Wayne's World. Steve gave him Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" and by the end of the day, Rama was on his third listen.
East is East and West is West and the twain shall meet sometimes.