2001-07-22 - 18:56 MDT

THE WONDERING JEW

Stronger Than Steel

As boys, most of us were immersed in the stories we read. Later on came the radio's Little Orphan Annie, Jack Armstrong, etc. but not for us, that was in the future.

So we each lived in our minds as one of the heros in books. We were stirred by the Three Musketeers slogan,"One for all, all for one" It fit in with our boyish need to hang tight with our special friends, with a daredevil spirit. So in our group there were more of us, but were loyal Musketeers as were Athos, Porthos, Aramis and D'Artagnan. Not all kids then were pleasure readers, but more probably were readers than today.

Our imagination was as a whirling dervish and aimed at the sky. In several of the stories we read there was the ceremonious bonding of "Blood Brothers." For us that was a secret ceremony planned in our back yards. To participate one would have to show some real guts.

The crowd I hung with had their imagination fired up reading in several stories about that Blood Brother thing and the subject was discussed at length. We formed our little bands SOP and wrote our oath of brotherhood and fealty and signed it, no one thought of signing the oath in blood at the time, otherwise probably that would have been done too.

We planned to wait until first aid material was going to be accessable at the home of one of us whose parents would be away from home at the time of our ceremony. One day we met in a small circle of dense bushes, quite out of sight in order to have privacy to conduct our very serious ritual. We each swore our oath again. We steeled ourselves and then each with our own single edged Gem razor blade cut our own palm deep enough to bleed well. Everybody shook hands with each other thus mingling our blood with the blood of the others and becoming Blood Brothers. It was really messy at the end of it but we were satisfied that the sacred rite just accomplished made us true blood brothers.

We each left the bushes by a diffent route hiding our palms and met around the block to go to my house. We used alcohol, hydrogen peroxide and then Mercurichrome, pieces of cotton torn from a roll of first aid stuff and bound it with that perniciously sticky almost impossible to remove adhesive tape. Care was taken by us that our bandages were not noticed or were explained as a hurt that happened on the playground. Until our palms healed none of us visited another Brother's house to avoid the discovery that strangely two pals got hurt in the palm of their hand. That would have instigated communication amongst the Mothers which had to be prevented at all costs. Nobody got an infection and being young, our wounds healed rapidly.

Our Brotherhood stood the acid test several times and held. We hung together through school, pretty well through Junior High School. It was depression time and periodically a family would have to move back on the family farm or where ever they could live rent free and work at the family business. We lost a couple of brothers that way.

We had similar tastes and dislikes that drew us together in the first place and kept us together through school. We moved across town and I then went to another high school. But with the old candlestick telephone and the Denver Tramway system, I was still a part of the brotherhood.

When high school was over it seemed as if each of us went a different direction, some to college, some to another town to work, some got married early. But still occasionally those of us who could would get togther for some fun activity or another.

War came upon the world which took us in different directions. I think that I was the only one of the bunch that was working on a deferred job at the railroad.

I saw none of our group in the ensuing years the rest were either killed in the war or didn't return to town, I would check every new phone book looking for the name of a brother without success. Still do on each new book.

Finally, in recent times at a clinic where I went to see a psychiatric therapist after coming off alcohol, at the counter to make my next appointment the clerk said, "Alright Mr. XXXXXX I have you down for this date at this time." A man at the counter caught up with me as I was leaving that day and asked if I was Doug XXXXXX. He was old and bent and did not tower over me, his features did not resemble any one I could think of, so I asked him, "Yes I am, do I know you ?" He was one of my school mates who had been half head taller than I in our youth, but not one of the Blood Brothers , we found that each of us had become addicted to alcohol, we made arrangements to go have coffee the next week but he didn't show.

I tried the phone number he gave me which was answered by his roommate who said that he would leave a message for him, the next time I tried that phone number it was no longer in service. Nada, zilch. Reading the obits every day since I was sixtyfive I never saw his name there. The only thing I can think of is that he "went out" and began drinking again -- there but for the grace of God go I.

But when our group were Blood Brothers way back when, there was a glorious feeling of being part of something grand, zestful and unbreakable which still fired our imagination through most of school.

Oh that I could go back to that time and those friends and live that part over again to feel the faith in others that we had in each other when we became welded into a group with bonds Stronger Than Steel . . . . . . . .

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