May. 04, 2005 - 20:43 MDT

STILL WONDERING

In a time near 1935 I was 14 years old, living in a two room house with Mom and Dad. The Great Depression was on and a diet of pinto beans and weiners was a common, distasteful thing at our house, but things were better for us than many other folks experienced. At least Mom and Dad were both working and we eked things out.

In our neighborhood there were several of us boys in the same grade in school and had been friends since first grade. There was an older boy we called Bud, due to graduate the next June who had been a friend and mentor to us for ages. He lived in a one room house with his Grandmother. History made its way unobtrusively until one day he told us his Grandmother had died and his older brother was coming up from Southern Colorado for the funeral.

I do remember seeing from a distance my Dad and Buds brother talking to each other. After the funeral Dad told me that Bud would be coming to live with us. Somehow I got the idea that Bud's older brother was having a heck of a time surviving as it was and had no means to take care of Bud down there.

So the studio couch I used was split into two pieces (as it was made to do) and voila, there was room. As well the small amount of closet space accomodated his few clothes, he and I shared drawer space too.

Before Bud moved in the house work was all mine. I would also start dinner which Mom would finalize when she and Dad got home. Suddenly I had a companion in labor, we shared tasks, he would wash dishes and I'd dry them, next time I'd wash and he'd dry. I remember very little friction between us. There was a difference though, he on the edge of manhood was dating and working a job as an usher in a downtown theater, and I muttering in my beard and spewing obscenities because I wasn't yet grown up as he was.

I guess the highlight of his stay with us was The Great Bedbug Event. Somehow bedbugs made their appearance in our home. Mom though that probably Bud had picked them up from theater seats where he worked. Who knows ? Often we'd get up in the middle of the night and tear bedding apart, upend the beds, spray everything in sight and eventually put things back together and resume sleeping. On weekends bedding would be hung out to air, mattresses and furniture put out in the sun after being copiously sprayed first. Finally the de-infestation was complete and our sleep once again uninterrupted and we led our normal lives, side stepping each other around the house. But off on a date in the evenings when he wasn't working.

He was about as close to a real brother as I ever had and due to that was precious to me.

End of semester came, Bud graduated high-school about the time that Dad was able to wangle a job for Bud working on a line crew for the summer. He was working in state but not near our town. He would be by to visit as often as he could.

Line work was about done for the summer and Bud found a job in another town.

Occasionally he would be in town and drop by, but those times became fewer.

We moved across town to a house with much more room and I tried to adapt to a new school and become acquainted with total strangers. Wasn't all that easy as the new school had the snooty, well to do types there, many of the boys had been kicked out of private schools to where their only option was public school. They made life a bit miserable for this kid of working class parents. Those types had been everywhere, seen everything, and tried everything. If they got a bit short on cash, no sweat -- it was supplied to them by parental units, maids or butlers. Most of the boys had their own cars, so a plebian who had to ride the street cars was below their notice.

Thoughts of Bud gradually faded from my mind. The closest I came to contact was when Heather, daughter and I were coming back from New Mexico once and we stopped in the town where Bud's older brother lived. We visited with the older brother, found out that Bud was working back east somewhere and was married with kids of his own. Older brother informed us that he seldom had contact with Bud, an occasional letter from him was about all and the older brother did not have Bud's mailing address.

He might still be alive, if he is he'd be eighty-eight or better. It would be interesting to find out how he did, how his kids turned out and all those things, it would be nice to sit down with my Dad and go back in history and find out from him how he had the fortitude to take on another kid in their household, it must have taken optomism and fortitude on his part. There are many things lost in the mists of the past that it would be nice to recover the facts thereof . . . . I am STILL WONDERING . . . . . . . . . . .

Blog