Mike
Reassert and I, were both full of trust and confidence with one another. It was
remarkable, we were like Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, in now what I call those
far-off youthful days, along the Mississippi cliffs, just below the city proper
of St. Paul, Minnesota.
We climbed those bluffs in the
mid-1950s, a considerable distance up and down the Mississippi River Front to
visit the caves; not miles in extent, but rather blocks. Some of those upper
cleft caves were dug out during the Civil War times, they had iron doors on
them yet; it was where they kept the munitions, so I heard. They were long and
narrow and lofty caves in the upper strata of the clefts, with long passages.
The cliffs were of sandstone, and easy
to make reaching holes for ones hands and then to be used for the feet,
stretching from one to the other, and many were already made in the bluffs for
us.
The larger caves were river level, one
being so huge, a boy of our age, such as we were in those years (8 to 12-years
of age), could get lost in them; dodging the half starved to death bates flying
low and high and roughly overhead, as if local. We found on many occasion, city
drunkards sleeping off a hangover inside those lower caves. I swear—fingers and
toes not crossed—the mouth of this one cave was as big as Moby Dick’s yawn,
stretched as far as it could go.
I knew Mike, for years I knew his every
thought, before he acted on them, “Let’s kick the bums in the feet,” he’d say,
just to attract their attention. And we’d both do it, wake one up, startle him
some, or kick sand in his nose that would attract him right quick. The caves
were an uncanny place to contain a sport such as this, but we did our best.
We
often found cylinder like, writings, as if they were drafts from the newspaper,
the St. Paul, Pioneer Press.
We never stayed too along, eventually
loafers and rowdies would appear, dragging one another along, with a bottle of
whiskey in hand. Matter of fact one day,
Mike had an irreverence thought: he found a brown half-pint whiskey bottle, it
was empty, and he peed in it filled it nearly all the way up, and wanted me to
do the same, and I had but a drop to offer, he gave it to a poor dried out
looking drunk, and right after he took a gulp of it, figuring out what it
really was he hollered to the high heavens at Mike and me, swearing and cussing
and jumping up and down and then he and his fellow comrades started to chase
us, and like the Lone Ranger and his sidekick, Tonto, we jumped on our bikes
and hightailed it out of there, to beyond the sunset (figuratively speaking),
and all the shadows that ran after us, trying to find us, we were hidden in the
dim lighted path of nowhere! Of course once within the downtown part of the
city again, we were walled in on all sides, like a forest, but it wasn’t hard
to escape, we were seasoned in escaping, plus, the bums never mingled among the
more sane inhabitants of the city, and we knew this.
It seemed to us, along the Mississippi
the air was always crisp, with freshness, especially in the mornings, while the
dew lifted from the river. When the day became more heated and more sticky
like, it became also more dangerous, the cat size, fat rats, came out of the
lower ways of the clefts, to breath the fresher air, and it got to over 105, in
the heart of the Minnesota summertime, to where one could cook an egg on the
sidewalk, and they even showed that on television, so I recall.
I had no ill luck with the monster rats,
although one time, three reddish haired rats tried to corner me, but I escaped
backwards towards the river, throwing stones that only seemed to bounce off
their backs. As I mentioned, there were three of them, this one time, I was eats
for them, and cowering at their approaching. It was as if they intended an
entire family to feast on me. And I bet I would have tasted good!
Then off, Mike and I went to find
someone’s garden that had rhubarb in it, I loved rhubarb, and especially
rhubarb pie, and then next someone’s green apple tree, we were like raiders,
some days.
Mike lived in the inner circle of the
city, I some three miles or so, away; as years passed, by and by we’d meet,
until about twelve, thereafter once at fifteen, and that would be the last I’d
see of him. We had attended St. Louis School, on 10th and Cedar
Streets, in downtown St. Paul, in those early years, 1954 to 1957. They tore
the school down in 1960. He was a good lad to have as a friend, and always
meant well. He was also precarious, taking risks, uncertain, and poor. This is
just a reflective pause, to think out the facts, should he ever read this
story.
This is all part of my education, I look
back on with the most satisfaction.
During those years with Mike I learned
to smoke fairly well, a bad habit I’d keep for twenty-years. We’d put our
change together, buy cigarette packs, of Lucky Strike, or Camels, or Pall Mall,
in the Walgreens stores, or Woolworths, or Grants. Run in and out before the
manager caught us, and run over to the Emporium, and Mike would press all the
buttons in the elevator, and when someone would get on, they’d see all the
floor lights, lit up on the side wall of the elevator, and look at me and Mike,
and I wanted to say, it was Mike’s doings, but I had to hold back my laughing,
and once he or she got off, we bust out with amusement.
I suppose you could say I was a little
more characterless than Mike, he was always more daring. Perchance I was more
like Huck Finn, and Mike more like Tom Sawyer.
Neither one of us noticed, or if we did, didn’t say, that we didn’t have
much charity for one another’s defects. Our life and adventures together
were—which I led with Mike, and there are many more—were full of charm and so
are the memories of them yet.
No: 1031/2-18-2014
