Dave Olson and I
were pretty good friends for a long while during our youthful teenage years; we
both lived in the same neighborhood, me on Cayuga Street, him a few blocks away
by Buffalo and Acker, but he never hung around with the Donkeyland gang, to the
contrary, he avoided them, and then one day, out of the blue, his parents,
perhaps his parents—who else—feeling I was a ruffian, and I was I suppose, or
linked to them, that being the second year of High School at Washington High,
he seated himself down on one of his
concrete steps in front of his house, alongside me, and said in the best way he
could, or knew how, and completely, that
it was impossible for him to hang out with me anymore, his parents were against
it to my understanding, they were afraid I believe, his earnestness would fade,
I was a bad influence on him—it was a forecast I believe, a seer’s
prediction—or something on that order, although I don’t remember trying to tug
him along and have him initiated into the gang’s ideology. I understood the full meaning of his note,
quite laconic, and thereafter, I gave him a smile for safekeeping and for me
the issue was resolved, a pansy for a friend was not really my cup of tea, or
effeminate men or boys, not saying he was gay or homosexual, we didn’t even
consider that back then, or think in such terms, but rather a pussy, an
offensive slang for weak minded, or with effeminate expressions; had he joined
the gang he simply would have been laughed out of it, but I liked him, but
evidently he had become more on that side of the fence than on the side I
presupposed he was, had he never joined the gang all the better, but this hurt,
and this was pansy, and I must be forward on this, no lies, no forked-tongue
here, just straight facts, thinking, how it was, right or wrong, that’s how it
was.
At school he would lose sight of me, walking with his friends in the
hallways, as if losing opportunity of some kind that might not be afforded him
should he stop and talk about old times; that prestige he was so excessively
anxious to possess, might get tarnished. I don’t mean to be negative, down
casting my old friend, I liked him, still like the guy, but he had turned into
a different person, a copycat, a pretense, almost a mole? I asked myself, ‘was
this the real him?’ Perhaps his family felt I was an unscrupulous thing, I
didn’t think I was, a bad boy? No worse than the lot of our times, and in many
ways, perhaps less smug; I was who I was, no more no less, I was the same guy
he liked one day, and evidently not the next. I actually looked with an air
in which curiosity mingled inside my head. Well, be that as it may, you cannot
deprive the humblest peasant of his opinion, and my opinion being then and now
remain the same that he did right, although on the other hand, the wisdom
contained in the life I’ve led, is a worthy treasure to keep to its fullest extent—he
had taught me an early on lesson, we are not always like we pretend to be, and
the best of friends one day can be the next day on the tail end of that
phrase—; in that I’ve lived a full life,
I hope he has, and hope this has not offended him, and hope he has not lost
other friends because of that way of thinking! The Dhammapada, would say:
“Unawareness is the path of death” and Confucius once wrote, in his Analects
“The flowery branch of the wild cherry, how swiftly it flies back!” I think
Confucius is trying to say, or at least be saying to me: with whom one cannot
collaborate, don’t waste your time. My goal then was, and my goal still is the
same as my goal has always been: to try and to attain some kind of goodness,
not because goodness is far away, but most men do not care for it sufficiently,
I feel I do, and I’m not trying to portray someone I am not, I like me, as
Elvis would say. Another Confucius idiom
in a paraphrase: When one pulls to pluck the blossom, the image is torn apart.
At ten years old I was selling St. Paul
Pioneer Press newspapers downtown, St. Paul, to get money for whatever. At
twelve I was in bars shoe shinning, at fourteen I was at the World Theater, as
an usher, and candy man, at sixteen I was working on construction inside
houses, painting and plastering the summers away. In-between I was snow
shoveling people’s garage ways to make a buck in Highland Park, and cutting
grass for neighbors to earn money wherever possible. So my youth
wasn’t spent entirely in the empty lot getting drunk on my ass. My mother told
me and my brother— “You want a buck, go work for it, we don’t have any trees
here growing them.” I kind of got the feeling David had a father who owned a
dollar three in his backyard, I never knew him to do a day’s work back
then. Sid, another good old friend, who
was killed by a car accident at the age of nineteen or twenty, respectfully,
was of the same status too, I suppose as David felt he was, in that Sid’s
father gave him everything, car, money, whatever he needed, but he never
surrendered his self-respect, or integrity. Sid’s father worked for Univac, an
up and coming new enterprise, and was a big shot there, and he never liked me
because of my opposing lifestyle, but he never demanded, or could he because
Sid would not tolerate it, to be frocked as a walnut to appease his parents.
I have really given this too much time and thought. For Mr. Olson, has
seldom come to mind to be honest, except during this review of my past, and
putting together the book: ‘Donkeyland, Neighborhood Escapades,’ and David and
I have no escapades to put together, worth putting together except this
somewhat interlude amongst this episodic novel of sorts; other than that his
appearance in the book has little value if any, except for forbearance, plus it
was part of the circle of life, my life, and the neighborhood’s saga, even if
the Donkeyland Gang, didn’t even know of his existence, which was his family’s
ulterior motive I presuppose. Should he
read this, take no offence, old chap, I would never refuse you as a guest in my
home, I would be delighted. But readily I must as a poet, and author, speak
without a split-tongue! Or not at all!
July 3,
2015/No: 1092
