Linwood Cemetery, Pop and Marilyn
The
school year of 1961-1962 was a great year. I set a couple records in track in
the sprints. I spent almost every evening talking, listening, and sometimes
just breathing on the phone with my friend, Veronica. When I wasn’t on the
phone with her, I was in the comfort and safety at Tom’s house. It was there I
could be me. I knew I would not be punched, kicked, or whipped from my old man.
I
wrestled at the seventy-pound weight class and was elected to the student council.
I was active with vocal music and was still ringing doorbells, stealing
cigarettes, and throwing missiles at the railroad workers. Christmas of 1961 I
stole a bracelet for my Mary Lou, from Roshek’s Department Store. I had no
money and was bound and determined to make her mine forever. After giving it to
her, I just knew she would let me touch her boobs. But three days after we
returned to school from the holiday, she broke up with me. What a creep. If I’d
been caught stealing that bracelet, I could have been carded for the third time
at the police station. Veronica had warned me earlier that Mary Lou was no good
for me because she had a new boyfriend every month.
That
next summer Tom and a Catholic friend of ours named Hank and I hung out quite a
bit. Hank went to a different school. It was a hot August night in 1962 when we
camped out in Hank’s backyard lying on top of sleeping bags. My two friends
pointed to the North Star, to Orion, and to the Big Dipper. I could never see
what others saw in the night skies so I just pretended to enjoy the evening
show. We lay awake for hours waiting for all the adults to go to sleep so we
could begin our night prowling. All that separated us from freedom was the
seven-foot high fence lining the Audubon boundary. When we saw the last of the
house lights go out we knew Hank’s mom had gone to sleep. Just to be certain,
we lay there for another 30 minutes sharing stories about The Lone Ranger, Superman and shooting bums over on
Garfield Avenue with our BB guns.
It
must have been past midnight when we scaled the fence like a bunch of Marines
from WW II. We each picked our climbing spots and crept to the top of the fence
with ease like a black bear climbing trees. This maneuver had been done a
thousand times in our youth. Tom took the exact spot where earlier he plopped a
peanut butter sandwich on the nose of Hansel, the wiener dog. We jumped from
the top of the fence and landed in the rain ditch on the other side. Feeling
exuberant, we whispered in excitement and celebrated our freedom.
“Let’s
go around the corner and head down Kniest Street and ring some doorbells,” Hank
suggested.
“Oh
sure, get my butt in trouble,” Tom
responded. “What if the old man is still awake?”
“OK,
how about we head up Windsor Avenue and see what we can get into? We haven’t
been up there in a long time,” I suggested.
Hank
spoke up. “Hey, let’s go to Linwood Cemetery. It’s a full moon and we could
scare the crap out of each other. Maybe we could play hide and seek.”
“Oh,
God that will be great,” Tom said, pushing his glasses up on his nose, as we
all started to sing.
“Born on a mountaintop in Tennessee, killed a bear
when he was just three, hung his Ma from a Christmas tree, and now he’s in the
penitentiary. Davy, Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier.”
Some
thirty minutes later we climbed the limestone wall and fell into one of the
oldest Protestant cemeteries in Dubuque County. There was a slight wind and a
full moon that night casting long shadows across short headstones placed over 150
years ago near the front gate. We walked up the roadway toward the crest of the
hill and saw seven-foot high marble monuments pointed on the top that signified
someone with lots of money from long ago had once been alive in our town. But
now they were all equal, from the once high and mighty rich people to the poor
German immigrants rotted down below. The winds blew the evergreen treetops,
while off in the distant we heard a dog howling and a train heading north along
the Mississippi toward Minnesota. The singing quieted down and we walked at a
slower pace.
“OK,
who’s going to be ‘it’?” I asked.
Tom
was glad to be the first and told us that we had one minute to go hide. He
turned, leaned against a monument, closed his eyes, and started to count.
Screeching and yelling at first to see if we could wake the dead, Hank and I
raced off in different directions. I hurdled headstones off to the left while Hank
ran right towards the fence line. Some fifty-yards ahead of me I saw it, the
greatest hiding place of all. It was a recently dug grave with a tarp over the
top.
“Holy
crap”. I thought as I pulled back the black plastic tarp covering the hole. They’ll never find me here. The sides of the
earth were soft and easy to kick holes into the walls for foot placement. Tomorrow
there would be a casket but tonight this resting place was mine. I clung to the
side of the pit and waited. I heard Tom off in the distance yelling for us
after he stopped counting. I imagined shapes from the dead floating near me,
and the sound of falling dirt into the pit made me breathe harder and faster. I
clung to the grass roots at the top and felt the plastic crinkle of the tarp
covering my head. I looked left and right trying to spot Hank and Tom. I imagined
they could hear me breathing, as each breath seemed to move the plastic even
more. I refused to be frightened or at least that’s what I said from my perch
hoping not to fall six feet below. I smiled to myself thinking how funny it
would be if the grave diggers found me in the morning down in the hole. Or even
better, crawl up and out and simply say “howdy” to the grieving family sitting
next to the grave.
“Where
do you suppose that nimrod went?” Tom
asked as he and Hank came walking up the pathway.
“I
don’t know. And I can’t believe you found me so quick,” Hank complained.
“Let’s
be real quiet in case he hears us coming,” Tom whispered.
“Shit.
Look over there. It’s a new grave for tomorrow.”
Pretty
scary.” Hank said as he pointed directly at me hiding under the tarp in the
moonlight. Neither of them saw me.
I
smiled to myself as they planned a strategy to locate and then scare the crap
out of me. I could wait no longer. From
the grave below, I gave out with a shriek that caused both of them to yell in
fright and run in different directions. I crawled out of the hole and lay on my
back laughing at my two wimpy friends. After a bit I was cussed out but
declared the winner for the night.
We
shoved, poked and laughed at one another as we walked the path back to the
front entrance of Linwood. The noises of boyhood echoed off the granite
reflectors. Little did I know, that some 25 years later I would return to this
spot to bury my Dad followed a few years later with the death of Ma. And then my younger brother, Charles would
also be put to rest not far from this very site.
It
was nearing three or four in the morning when we jumped the rock wall and
crossed the street by Christensen’s Greenhouse heading back to our own familiar
turf down on East 22nd Street.
“Look,”
Tom yelled. “Do you guys see what I see? Look at that bakery truck down by The
Milk House.”
“Are
you thinking what I’m thinking?” I asked.
“Let’s
wait till he leaves and make a dash for it in case there are any workers there,”
Hank said.
What
we had witnessed was the delivery of three commercial sized boxes of donuts
from the Sunbeam Bakery located in the south end of town by the East Dubuque,
Illinois Bridge. The driver dropped them off by the back doors of every
business that had accounts with the bakery, in the middle of the night. There
must have been five or six-dozen donuts of all flavors and shapes in the three
boxes that measured three-foot wide and four-foot long. There were bear claws,
raspberry-filled, plain, sugar coated, cream filled, donut holes, long johns
covered with chocolate and my favorite - dark chocolate covered with sprinkles
on top.
“Let’s
wait to see if anybody comes out,” Tom said.
“I see a light there by the back.”
“Bullcrap,
I’m going for it. Let’s go.” I yelled as
I sprinted across the street at least 20 yards ahead of the other two.
We
pulled open the top of the nearest box and six little hands grabbed everything
we could find. The style or flavor didn’t matter, not one little bit. One would
have thought we hadn’t eaten in days. As a matter of fact, I probably had not
eaten, as I always seemed to go to bed hungry. There was laughter, there was
shoving, and there was pure adrenaline. We must have just stolen at least two-dozen
donuts and ran down East 24th
Street towards Sacred Heart and
Comisky Park. We sat leaning against a huge oak tree on the corner of Prince
Street and East 24th, gobbling our goodies to our heart’s content.
Tom
had chocolate, banana cream and sprinkles all over his face. Hank’s face was
plastered with both regular and powdered sugar. Me, I couldn’t tell what my
face was like, but I shoved that long john down my throat where only the
rounded end stuck out.
I
had a sudden idea. “Hey, do you guys want to go back up the hill and steal some
milk if they delivered it yet?”
“No,
but I have a better idea. Let’s go to the laundromat and steal a pop.” Hank
said.
“Well
now how the heck are we gunna do that? We don’t have a church key and a straw,”
Tom said.
“Oh
yeah,” Hank said as he reached into his back pocket. “Look at this.” He pulled
a bottle opener and a flattened, bent-in-half straw from the back of his left
shorts pocket.
“What
in the Sam Hell are you doing carrying that stuff with you?” I asked.
Wiping
the sugar from his mouth he responded, ”You just never know when these things
will come in handy.”
A
“church key” back in the 50s and 60s was a bottle opener on one end and a can
opener on the other. Pop (soda or Coke - depending where you grew up in
America), was dispensed in coolers that sat upright. There was a metal maze
that the purchaser had to maneuver the bottle through after inserting the
nickel. At the end, a flap opened and the bottle was lifted up and out.
We
ran with a sugar high the entire one-mile distance to the laundromat on
Rhomberg Avenue. As usual I set the pace for the other two slow pokes behind. I
pretended running before a crowd of thousands and every so often I slowed down
as I crossed the imaginary finish line and raised my arms to the roar of the
crowd. Then it was off to another event in track & field. This time it was
the 220-yard dash. My mind was perfect that night. My dad couldn’t hurt me and
nobody would beat me in the races. I was in control and I was at peace in my
heart.
“Oh,
no. I get to go first because I was the first to get here,” I insisted as we
argued who would be hoisted up by the other two and held on top of the pop
dispenser.
Hank
looked pissed. “Bull Crap. I got the church key and the straw. Youse two have
to hold me cause I’m going first.”
Reason
gave way to ego and Tom held Hank’s left foot while I cupped his right one with
my interlaced fingers. We hoisted him to the top and he immediately grabbed the
side of the cooler with his left hand. Bending over into the machine we heard
the fizzle of spilling pop from the bottle when he removed the cap. He sucked
its contents dry in no time, gave out a belch and hopped down from his perch.
One by one we emptied bottles of pop, one after the other in great gulps.
That
type of pop dispenser was not around long. It was replaced by the upright
bottle dispenser, which prevented theft. I would like to think that in some
small way we had a part in changing America’s refreshment industry. For at
least two years we never paid for any drinks.
“We’d
better get going home and hop the fence or we’ll get caught by your ma,” Tom
said.
We
all agreed and this time walked back up Lincoln Avenue from one streetlight to
another eventually turning into Audubon and climbing the fence. There was not
much to be said, as we were tired and ready to hit the hay. That was August 5,
1962.
“Hey
boys. Hey boys. Wake up. I just heard something awful on the radio.” Jim’s mom
said, standing over us in the backyard at about 9A.M.
“Marilyn
Monroe died last night. Isn’t that awful?”
And
indeed it was awful to us 13 year-old kids. Who would we think of in that
special way, now that she was
gone? I imagine every boy our age thought of her at least twice a day when we
were not playing baseball, shooting hoops or in our cases stealing something.
Naturally we thought of her every night as well before drifting off to sleep. Life
after Marilyn died seemed like it was never the same. Nothing again was the
same. That was the last time I ever played with Hank. He continued going to the
Catholic school and things just changed. Life moved on for all of us.
Supposedly,
this is the origin of the term “graveyard shift”. Apparently, in the 19th Century
some folks were buried while still alive.
A device was placed inside the casket that
would allow the person to ring a bell if he woke while buried. Workers sat at
the grave during the night to listen for
the bell. I wonder how they even realized
a living person
was buried in the first place? Imagine the physician waking up in the middle of
the night with an idea and he runs to he grave with a shovel. I like folklore.
It legalizes lying.
