a long tale about the return of a prodigal son named John:
BY THE AGE 20, HE LIKE SO MANY OTHER CHARACTERS...
BY THE AGE 20, HE LIKE SO MANY OTHER CHARACTERS...
IN HIS SQUALID WORLD, HE WAS INTO THE ART OF weight lifting and he had begun taking karate lessons from a Memphis cop named Theo McCorkel. His name was John. He had spent the majority of his youth beating up people for 50 or 100 bucks, by the time he had reached the age of 20, his yellow sheet was lengthening: three arrests for aggravated assault, one for resisting arrest, two for assault and battery, another for buying and possessing stolen property. All charges were dismissed and he wasn't nailed by the police until he took part in a drug rip-off and was caught attempting to sell drugs to an undercover cop. Even this didn't convince him to go get himself a different style of life. When she thought he might get in trouble again, his mother Lulu and his father, who he had never known, sent him off to the Navy.
In short, that changed his life for the better.
And would change mine, as well.
It was almost noon on a summer's day in 1948, when it all began. I was sitting on the front porch of my Denver home, when I saw a cab pull up to the curb. The man who exited the cab wore a blue sailor suit with a Dixie-cup white hat, had a long-lean body, a shock of black hair, and was well over 6ft tall. My Dad came through the screen door smiling. The two of them shook hands and gave one another a somewhat tentative hug. My Dad looked down at me, then said: Dick. This is your brother, John. Which came as a bit of a surprise. Since I had always thought that I was an only child. At the ripe old age of 12, I was more than somewhat confused. In those days, you didn't see many guys my age finding out that they had a brother at about the same time they were heading out of their childhood into what the adults had called maturity.
Then the door opened again, my Mom stepped out on the porch, and my Dad said, Bertha, this is John. John, this is my wife, Bertha. My Mother smiled. They shook hands. And she said, It is good to finally meet you, John. I've heard so much about you. And I was sitting there looking up at all three of them, thinking:What the fuck is going on here? I did not understand a single thing that was happening. The confusion continued to come in leaps-and-bounds when Dad asked John: When did you actually find out that I was still alive? And John replied: When Mom was hunted down by the detective you'd hired to find us. And you came bounding through the front door of our house after the drug bust. Then Dad asked: How is Lulu these days? John gave a smile: She's been doing OK. And my Dad said: She tells me you're about to get married. Then John said: Her name is Ramona. I want you to come to the wedding. He Paused: May I ask you a question? Is it true that you were hoboing around the country when I was born? It sure is, Dad replied, That's when I met Bertha...
By then, I felt as if I were watching a ping-pong game with the ball rapidly moving back-and-forth. And I was thinking: Detective? Lulu? Hoboing? Drug bust? Ramona? When my Dad popped through what front door into whose house and where exactly was the house that he had popped into? And most important of all: Where'd I been when all of this stuff had been going on?
It had become obvious to me that there was a great deal about my father that I was unaware of, and I felt as if I had been in some kind of a time-warp. My Dad then informed me that we were going to drive in our old tan 1936 Chevrolet down to the Dolly Madison Ice Cream Shop on East Colfax Avenue, where he would explain everything to me. When I left for school on Monday morning I couldn't focus because there was so much new information I had to digest. My friend Bobby Dixon was waiting on the corner and he asked, How was your weekend? OK, I guess, I replied, Except for the fact that I found out I have a brother. Bobby hesitated, You mean your Dad knocked somebody up before he married your Mom? I didn't know what to say or exactly where to begin.
My Dad had told me the story in a detailed way. In the summer of 1924, he had met a young woman by the name of Lulu who was a sharecropper from Oklahoma and working the Iowa corn fields for money. One Sunday afternoon my Dad met her after coming out of St. Paul's Lutheran church in Monona, Iowa with his sisters Theodora and Gertrude and brother Frederick. It was the church were my grandfather Albert was the pastor, and they decided to go on a picnic before the sun set, where they sat and laughed on blankets until Lulu took my Dad into a stand of trees and pulled down her dress. Theodora and Gertrude tattled on Dad, and grandfather Albert informed him the next morning that he was no longer welcome in the parsonage, nor would his planned college education be paid-for. My Dad immediately hopped aboard a train, became a Hobo, landed in Crook, Colorado in December of 1924, went to work in a pharmacy where he met my Mother, Bertha Winkle who was a school teacher, and they were married on the 25th day of October in 1925.
Lulu had all but disappeared by that time. John had been born on the 28th day of January in 1924. It was at the tail-end of 1926 when my Father had told my Mother all about Lulu and that he assumed he was the father of child he neither knew nor did know how to go about finding out if the child was still alive. It was my Mom who insisted that he hire a detective agency. It would take a number of years until the Pinkerton's eventually hunted them down and the answers would come. Lulu was living in Memphis and his son John, who had just turned 20. Dad immediately flew to Memphis. Did not like what he saw, insisted that his son join the Navy and the next thing I knew he was standing on my front porch. He stayed with us for a week. I got to know him. I liked him. He reminded me of my Dad. And then he went away....
...By the summer of 1950, the Sunday newspapers were telling the story of the invasion in a sketchy way. President Truman had flown back to Washington from vacation in Independence, Missouri, while the secretary of state had called an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council. It was the first Sunday of the Korean War. By the Fourth of July, the mood of the neighborhood had changed. It was clear now: the older guys were going off to war in Korea. Truman was calling it a police action, but everybody else was calling it a war. That fall, the oldest son of our next door neighbor died in Korea. When I went back to school in the fall, my mind was scrambled. I remember the evening when I was laying on my bed reading a book called The Disenchanted by Bud Schulberg when I heard the telephone ring. A few minutes after that, my Dad came into my bedroom and told me that John was going to Korea. In December the telephone rang again. John was Missing in Action and presumed dead; and my Dad was crying.
When I went to school the following morning, a fat guy by the name of Billy Rezaab gave me his usual smirk and said: The word has it that your bastard brother's dead. Without another word, I hit him hard in the face and his eyes got wide, and then I hit him again and again, blind with rage. He fell and I kicked him and grabbed his hair and punched him in the neck, and then started to scream at him: He's my brother period! And I love him you fat fuck, don't you dare ever say that again! Then I walked away. All the kids standing in the hallway were clapping. That night, I was sure that my Father would be mad, and all he did was give me a hug and say: I'm proud of you, Son. I tossed and turned, alternately worried about John, but was most worried about my Dad, who I knew was telephoning Lulu almost every night to give her comfort, and I could hear him talking to my Mom after he had hung-up the phone, then listened to him cry until he eventually fell asleep in her arms.
That winter on Christmas Day, the news came that John was alive. He had been captured and escaped enemy hand's by slowly inching his way through the hills and forests and feeding himself with whatever food he could forage or find until he had, once again, found himself safe behind the American lines. He was now being transported to a hospital in San Diego, California in order to restore both stamina and health, and my Dad immediately flew-off to San Diego, where he was planning to meet John's wife Ramona for the very first time. The two of them returned to Denver on New Year's Day. Romona turned out to be one of the most enchanting woman of my young life: She was dark-haired, sloe-eyed, with a body that was certainly one which could keep any fighting man happy. And above all else, she was really truly pleasant with a good laugh and extraordinarily nice to me.
On our Dad's seventieth birthday on February 18th of 1973, John and I threw a surprise party for him in Monona, Iowa in his brother Palmer's house. There were hams and pasta a chicken; cases of beer, bottles of whiskey and bowls of ice. With all the kids and cousins and his brothers and sisters singing songs, we were back in the dense sweet closed grip of family. The music rolled on, there was laughing and singing and hugs and kisses, making plump sandwiches and eating ham and chicken, and my Dad was beaming and happy and gave a toast to John and I: I am so happy to be with my sons, he said. May they be as blessed in life as I have been are in having children as wonderful as they are ...
It would be the final time that the three of us would be together.
My Dad passed-away on the 20th Day of October in 1975.
My Brother did the same on the 14th Day of February in 2005.
Over the years that had come prior to their final Earthly days, the two-of-them had become close like a father-and-son ought to be; catching up on lost years, enjoying one an other's company, treasuring the time that they now could spend together. And it was then that I happened to recall the words of my Dad...
...I was equally as blessed to have shared a life with a Father and a Brother...
...Two men who I had the privilage to forever get to know and love and adore...
In short, that changed his life for the better.
And would change mine, as well.
It was almost noon on a summer's day in 1948, when it all began. I was sitting on the front porch of my Denver home, when I saw a cab pull up to the curb. The man who exited the cab wore a blue sailor suit with a Dixie-cup white hat, had a long-lean body, a shock of black hair, and was well over 6ft tall. My Dad came through the screen door smiling. The two of them shook hands and gave one another a somewhat tentative hug. My Dad looked down at me, then said: Dick. This is your brother, John. Which came as a bit of a surprise. Since I had always thought that I was an only child. At the ripe old age of 12, I was more than somewhat confused. In those days, you didn't see many guys my age finding out that they had a brother at about the same time they were heading out of their childhood into what the adults had called maturity.
Then the door opened again, my Mom stepped out on the porch, and my Dad said, Bertha, this is John. John, this is my wife, Bertha. My Mother smiled. They shook hands. And she said, It is good to finally meet you, John. I've heard so much about you. And I was sitting there looking up at all three of them, thinking:What the fuck is going on here? I did not understand a single thing that was happening. The confusion continued to come in leaps-and-bounds when Dad asked John: When did you actually find out that I was still alive? And John replied: When Mom was hunted down by the detective you'd hired to find us. And you came bounding through the front door of our house after the drug bust. Then Dad asked: How is Lulu these days? John gave a smile: She's been doing OK. And my Dad said: She tells me you're about to get married. Then John said: Her name is Ramona. I want you to come to the wedding. He Paused: May I ask you a question? Is it true that you were hoboing around the country when I was born? It sure is, Dad replied, That's when I met Bertha...
By then, I felt as if I were watching a ping-pong game with the ball rapidly moving back-and-forth. And I was thinking: Detective? Lulu? Hoboing? Drug bust? Ramona? When my Dad popped through what front door into whose house and where exactly was the house that he had popped into? And most important of all: Where'd I been when all of this stuff had been going on?
It had become obvious to me that there was a great deal about my father that I was unaware of, and I felt as if I had been in some kind of a time-warp. My Dad then informed me that we were going to drive in our old tan 1936 Chevrolet down to the Dolly Madison Ice Cream Shop on East Colfax Avenue, where he would explain everything to me. When I left for school on Monday morning I couldn't focus because there was so much new information I had to digest. My friend Bobby Dixon was waiting on the corner and he asked, How was your weekend? OK, I guess, I replied, Except for the fact that I found out I have a brother. Bobby hesitated, You mean your Dad knocked somebody up before he married your Mom? I didn't know what to say or exactly where to begin.
My Dad had told me the story in a detailed way. In the summer of 1924, he had met a young woman by the name of Lulu who was a sharecropper from Oklahoma and working the Iowa corn fields for money. One Sunday afternoon my Dad met her after coming out of St. Paul's Lutheran church in Monona, Iowa with his sisters Theodora and Gertrude and brother Frederick. It was the church were my grandfather Albert was the pastor, and they decided to go on a picnic before the sun set, where they sat and laughed on blankets until Lulu took my Dad into a stand of trees and pulled down her dress. Theodora and Gertrude tattled on Dad, and grandfather Albert informed him the next morning that he was no longer welcome in the parsonage, nor would his planned college education be paid-for. My Dad immediately hopped aboard a train, became a Hobo, landed in Crook, Colorado in December of 1924, went to work in a pharmacy where he met my Mother, Bertha Winkle who was a school teacher, and they were married on the 25th day of October in 1925.
Lulu had all but disappeared by that time. John had been born on the 28th day of January in 1924. It was at the tail-end of 1926 when my Father had told my Mother all about Lulu and that he assumed he was the father of child he neither knew nor did know how to go about finding out if the child was still alive. It was my Mom who insisted that he hire a detective agency. It would take a number of years until the Pinkerton's eventually hunted them down and the answers would come. Lulu was living in Memphis and his son John, who had just turned 20. Dad immediately flew to Memphis. Did not like what he saw, insisted that his son join the Navy and the next thing I knew he was standing on my front porch. He stayed with us for a week. I got to know him. I liked him. He reminded me of my Dad. And then he went away....
...By the summer of 1950, the Sunday newspapers were telling the story of the invasion in a sketchy way. President Truman had flown back to Washington from vacation in Independence, Missouri, while the secretary of state had called an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council. It was the first Sunday of the Korean War. By the Fourth of July, the mood of the neighborhood had changed. It was clear now: the older guys were going off to war in Korea. Truman was calling it a police action, but everybody else was calling it a war. That fall, the oldest son of our next door neighbor died in Korea. When I went back to school in the fall, my mind was scrambled. I remember the evening when I was laying on my bed reading a book called The Disenchanted by Bud Schulberg when I heard the telephone ring. A few minutes after that, my Dad came into my bedroom and told me that John was going to Korea. In December the telephone rang again. John was Missing in Action and presumed dead; and my Dad was crying.
When I went to school the following morning, a fat guy by the name of Billy Rezaab gave me his usual smirk and said: The word has it that your bastard brother's dead. Without another word, I hit him hard in the face and his eyes got wide, and then I hit him again and again, blind with rage. He fell and I kicked him and grabbed his hair and punched him in the neck, and then started to scream at him: He's my brother period! And I love him you fat fuck, don't you dare ever say that again! Then I walked away. All the kids standing in the hallway were clapping. That night, I was sure that my Father would be mad, and all he did was give me a hug and say: I'm proud of you, Son. I tossed and turned, alternately worried about John, but was most worried about my Dad, who I knew was telephoning Lulu almost every night to give her comfort, and I could hear him talking to my Mom after he had hung-up the phone, then listened to him cry until he eventually fell asleep in her arms.
That winter on Christmas Day, the news came that John was alive. He had been captured and escaped enemy hand's by slowly inching his way through the hills and forests and feeding himself with whatever food he could forage or find until he had, once again, found himself safe behind the American lines. He was now being transported to a hospital in San Diego, California in order to restore both stamina and health, and my Dad immediately flew-off to San Diego, where he was planning to meet John's wife Ramona for the very first time. The two of them returned to Denver on New Year's Day. Romona turned out to be one of the most enchanting woman of my young life: She was dark-haired, sloe-eyed, with a body that was certainly one which could keep any fighting man happy. And above all else, she was really truly pleasant with a good laugh and extraordinarily nice to me.
On our Dad's seventieth birthday on February 18th of 1973, John and I threw a surprise party for him in Monona, Iowa in his brother Palmer's house. There were hams and pasta a chicken; cases of beer, bottles of whiskey and bowls of ice. With all the kids and cousins and his brothers and sisters singing songs, we were back in the dense sweet closed grip of family. The music rolled on, there was laughing and singing and hugs and kisses, making plump sandwiches and eating ham and chicken, and my Dad was beaming and happy and gave a toast to John and I: I am so happy to be with my sons, he said. May they be as blessed in life as I have been are in having children as wonderful as they are ...
It would be the final time that the three of us would be together.
My Dad passed-away on the 20th Day of October in 1975.
My Brother did the same on the 14th Day of February in 2005.
Over the years that had come prior to their final Earthly days, the two-of-them had become close like a father-and-son ought to be; catching up on lost years, enjoying one an other's company, treasuring the time that they now could spend together. And it was then that I happened to recall the words of my Dad...
...I was equally as blessed to have shared a life with a Father and a Brother...
...Two men who I had the privilage to forever get to know and love and adore...
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