Big Bopper and Reno
of Donkeyland
…
It was a
weekend, midafternoon in the very middle of summer. Big Bopper, whom was also
called Ace whose real name was Jerry S., six-foot six, 200-pounds, dumber than
a blind-duck, who could be made to
follow, but never made to fully understand, never worked a day in his
life—although goodhearted—or if he did
work, it was on special occasions, a young man of twenty-five he was sitting on
the wooden steps head-to-head with the wooden porch, in front of Roger and
Ronny’s house, parallel Cayuga Street, and right across the street from my
home, at 186 Cayuga, he lived several blocks away on Sims; I’m Chick Evens,
fifteen years old, and the story begins as follows: Roger two to three years my
senior, and the neighborhood charmer with his good looks, and smooth talking
especially with the gals, and Ronny his brother my age, and a closer buddy than
Roger was to me, was thinking, contemplating on how to get drinking money for
the gang, we all wanted to party. That this is true, fair readers, I intend to
show you by its contrary, if there is a will, there is a way. Especially in the
cunning of a man, in this case, a neighborhood, dying for a drink. We were a
group of impulsive, tricky, simple-minded, but capable of breaking the law to
get—not recognition, but rather, a long drunken weekend.
Roger’s house was a four apartment complex, kind of ramshackle. Stretching
outward in the back was the railroad yard, and Structural Steel Company. With the trees and lighter foliage, it was
scarcely distinguishable from each other except in height and coloring, the
steel company was more noticeable.
Roger had just sold me his WWII, Army Jacket, that had on the back of it
“I’m Just a Lonely Boy,” signifying the popular song of the day by a young
national musician, a Rock and Roll singer called Paul Anka (whom I’d
see in person, in a nightclub casino, while in Las Vegas, in the 1980s,
vacationing with my mother; he actually bump into me. I tried to get his
autograph, but he paid me no attention and now baldheaded and a little on the
rough side, was still thinking he was the young peacock he used to be and gave
all the giggle girls preference… oh well!)
As I was about to say, I traded my bronze plated battle-axe for
that jacket.
Roger put the battle-axe into his house and when he came back out, he
put his elbows propped on his knees like the Big Bopper, sat alongside him
thinking, as Ronnie, Doug, and the rest us guys and gals stayed standing, here
and there and pacing, myself leaning on one of the porch 4 x 4 rafters that
held a little roof over the open porch.
Roger’s age, was a year older than my brother’s, whom was called Gunner,
he and Mouse both reckless with their roadsters, were also the biggest
neighborhood car thieves. They carried a chain of keys that must have weighed
five pounds, I would imagine they had some sore thighs at night.
Larry L., the boxer, was there, who
was called Lou, Steve L., who was called Reno, he was the fat man of the
neighborhood and he was there (incidentally, the neighborhood had a nickname coined by the
police: Donkeyland) and a few of the neighborhood girls were there, like: Nancy M,
Jackie S., and Jennie S., Nancy was going out with Dave, whom was my brother’s
age, two years older than I, but he was at home working on his 1940 Fort, so he
wasn’t there, and Jackie, had dated me a
year prior, now a free agent Jennie’s sister, and Jennie was dating Lou, who
was twenty at the time. All us gazing
out at the street, and at Lorimar’s and Mrs. Stanley’s house, side by side (Mrs.
Stanley an old lady at that time, perhaps in her 70s, would live to be over 90), right
across the street, and Lorimar came out, gazing at us gazing, and wondering
what was on in our minds, and joined us; his father was a renowned chef, and in
years yet to come he’d be a top chef like his father for the railroad and get a
Presidential Citation for his cuisine. So here we all were gazing at the
asphalt street, and the houses on the embankment across the street, three
houses, and we are all trying to figure
out, how we were going to get drunk that night, and nobody had a dime, it was
1962.
Sam L., and his girlfriend Nancy, a different Nancy, Don Brandt and his
sister Gloria, whom dated a few different neighborhood fellows off and on, they
all came by, and said their hello, chi chattered a tinge, and went about their ways.
Cayuga Street was two blocks long, at one end was Mississippi Street
that went from the neighborhood all the way down to the downtown area of St.
Paul that bordered the Mississippi River.
On the other side of Cayuga Street, was Oakland Cemetery, the oldest
cemetery in St. Paul, and Minneapolis, that ran a good length of Jackson Street
where we drank at night if we couldn’t find another location, although we used
the Church steps off Jackson Street, by Sycamore, across the street from the
Jew’s Store, — there we also drank quite a lot in those days. Other than
that—Bill K., and I— found garages to drink in, that’s of course when I wasn’t
with the gang, and more often than not I wasn’t, contrary to Gunner my brother.
Or for that matter we all drank in someone’s car in what was called the ‘Turnaround’
or ‘Turnabout,’ an empty lot next to my grandfather’s garage, the garage was on
a plateau, next to an empty lot, the house on an embankment next to it. Old
grandpa never said much about the noise, and he slept those summers on the
porch, and surely he heard a lot, but he could swear better than a mule
driver. It was I believe that he could
not speak English well, having emigrated from Russia to America in 1916, and
had fought in WWI, for the Americans in France, thus acquiring his citizenship.
So here we were without a dime, and Roger was thinking.
And Gunner (his real name being Mike), he had run away from home that summer,
kind of… it was more like a two week runaway-vacation, he was seventeen and was
fighting for the rights to stay out until Midnight instead of ten-o’clock. He’d
sneak back home when mother was working, she worked at Swift’s Meatpacking, as
a meatpacker, and he’d steal grandpa’s beer, give it to the boys in the
neighborhood, and grandpa, who had kind of a stale taste for me, blamed me for
the missing beer. Not sure why Mike fought for the late hours, he snuck out the
attic window any night, and anytime of the night he wanted to. Anyhow he stayed
out till God only knows when, and he’d creep back in through that same window
which he had—believe it or not—grandpa’s ladder set aside for such
occasions—then he’d tell me to hush up, and not tell ma, and I never did. Of
course, we all lived with my grandfather, and he worked up until his 80th
–year, so he was gone all the time too.
Anyhow, Gunner would come home, take can-goods and then rush off and
sleep in the vacant cars at night, after the neighborhood guys got in trouble
with supplying him with a bed at their homes for a week. Oh, and he did get his
late hours, after starving a few days, and losing a few pounds.
As I was saying, or about to say, Roger was thinking on how to get the
booze. And Jerry, or Ace, was the only one old enough to buy. So we had to
butter him up some, and he could be a hard sell now and then. I mean he was
wise to us, and flourished in his free drinking sprees those many years by going
to the Liquor Store for us, and when he bought for us, believe it or not he got
the lion share of the product: wine, beer or whatever. As years passed of
course, that went downhill when a few of the other boys could buy, like Jack
T., and Tom T., brothers, they were part of the gang too, but not part of this
escapade. Actually there were some twenty-two in all that I can recall
belonging one-way or another to the Neighborhood gang. And Big Bopper always
complained on his increasingly many visits to the Liquor Store, that he was
being questioned by the owner if he was selling to minors. But we didn’t care,
we wanted our booze. By his own account, this was his only permanent job in
those early years of my youth. He had shelter and food from his mother, and his
father had a good paying job as the Chief of the Fire Station in St. Paul, and
as I’ve said, he got his booze from us tax free.
Well, as Roger was thinking, the Big Bopper said he was hungry, so for a
half hour he resigned himself to becoming a permanent pest, and was going to go
home and eat. What could one do with such a person? Roger knew should he go
home, we lost our booze-ticket, and we all knew after he ate obviously would
run off to some bar and mooch drinks off someone else. And to get him out of
that bar would take a lot more inducement. You couldn’t be sorry for him, just
alert to his cleverness. So Doug advised Roger to go with him, and get his false
teeth that he left at home, and bring them back here, and Roger would get him a
few sandwiches out of his house, when no one was looking. Oh yes, I should
mention, the sandwiches were mentioned first, and then came the false teeth,
simply a smokescreen to evade us, his gums were so hard he actually didn’t need
them teeth.
So Roger drove him home, he got his teeth, and transplanted them in his
mouth, thus, his cheeks were no longer sunken in. And he came back to take up
his old friendships with the boys, and once again we in general could rely on
the help of our bosom buddy.
But the booze, how were we going to find some way to get the beer or
whatever: wine, whiskey, any kind of alcohol would do, although I preferred
beer. And all Roger’s ideas, efforts hitherto had miscarried. We had nothing to
sell, not even copper to sell, sometimes in the night we’d jump over the
junkyard fence, feed the police dog who watched the yard a steak bone, a bribe
to be quiet, and he obeyed, and we’d take some copper, and the next day we’d sell
it back to them, and hence, we had our money for drinking that night, but we
had no copper, or car batteries or hubcaps to sell this late afternoon.
Everyone gaped at everyone else, as if we were all prodigal, reckless and
careless for not having an idea. And Ace was just a big child who stood waiting
to be fed his bottle of booze, and in the back of his mind, he knew, and we
knew what he was thinking: escape! Yes, escape from us because he was feeling
the pain of sobriety, and we were sure he didn’t care if he had to, he would, inflict
his pain onto us, and find his own waterhole. For such reasons we kept an eye
on him, as if he was our golden goose. He was just not laying any golden eggs,
he seldom had money, and if he did, he’d never tell, his money was for his
personal booze, and ours was for his collective booze drinking. In that sense,
he was the cleverest of all small business-men.
Then Roger came up with a plan. This is what he said, although it was a
microscope chance, we’d take it, it was: do or die:
“At nine o’clock, there’s a train coming,” he said, as I shrank a bit
when I heard it, feeling I had an idea what was to come next, or what he was
about to say: so, he assured one and all, this business transaction, would be a
success, and everyone seemed to know about this escapade he was about to mention,
once he mentioned it, in that it wasn’t new, it was just he knew the timing for
some reason or another, more so than anyone else: “those who do not want to be
in on this, just say no and go!” he commented. And Lorimar and Ronnie and I
were now retrospectively uncertain, everyone thought us peculiar, and I
confined myself to giving in, Lorimar and Ronnie left, but it would be the
first time and the last for me, —as I look back it was random and half hazard
‘okay,’ I said, as my memory brings back that split second decision, not
wanting to be sent to Redwing’s Boys Reformatory, or Boys Town, for delinquents,
where half the neighborhood had at one time or another ended up. It was a
Federal Offence.
“We can break the seals off one of the boxcars of the train, it will
have a stopover right in back of our house here at nine o’clock, and we have
only about twenty-minutes to do the job because it will leave and be headed for
Chicago, and usually one of the cars will be filled up with cases of beer, but
I can’t promise you that!” Said Roger.
I was breathing quickly under those thoughts.
“Those who do not carry any cases of beer, don’t drink,” he ventured to
say. All the same I felt upset. With that
thought in hand of having no other way to get any beer, I agreed. It was no big thing to the guys if I stepped
out, and went home, they’d just have more to drink, for Roger or the boys
barely acknowledged me one way or the other, and would simply give me an absent
smile, greet me goodbye with a wave from the street, as often I would not
participate with their shenanigans; treat me as if I was a passing
acquaintance, but Gunner was different, they kind of expected him to go along.
At last the train came, someone pulled out
a wire cutter’s from his pocket, and jumped up on a edge of the boxcar, and cut
the Federal Seal off, that was attached to the door, opened up the door—matter
of fact, there was no need for anyone to enter the boxcar since the cases of
beer were so tightly packed an inch away from the door—all one needed to do was reach and pull, we took
twenty-five cases of beer, it was so dark an evening so hot a summer, not a watchman cared to check a thing, so it
was overshadowed so much as that the high wall of cases behind the cases we
took, we could have emptied them out too, but no one wanted to press their luck,
and time was valued.
Well, we didn’t need Ace that night of course, and he was the laziest of
all of us, and he only took two cases of beer, and was too scared to make a
double trip to the boxcar, yet out of consideration we let him drink all he
wanted to which perhaps was three cases himself. We stockpiled the cases of
beer in two locations. We were all good friends, and never stole from one
another, but when it came to drinking, it wasn’t stealing, and we all had
enormous drinking habits, so we all kept an eye on the two garages we kept the
beer in for our night drinking spree, which for a few of us was 72-hours
straight. Although no one wanted to stir up matters, and no matters got stirred
up over the drinking of the twenty-five cases that I know of, and some of that
beer got drank in the cemetery, and the girls had their share, and it didn’t
last but the long weekend, and after the last bottle was drank, which was a
trivial affair, and it’s hardly worth mentioning, we sold the twenty-five cases
of empty bottles on the following Monday, and bought two cases of can beer. The
Big Bopper was a tinge embarrassed to bring in so many cases, but we did odder
things for a drink. And that my friends was one hell of a weekend.
In Memory of the following neighborhood fellows who have
passed on: Jerry Spiegelberg (Big Bopper), Kathy Spiegelberg, Steve Ludberg, Sid
Moeller, Bill K., David, Roger L., Lorimar and Brian Yankcavick, Jerry and Jim
Hino, and Allen Juneau, Don G. and Mike M.
