I had been sixteen for three months that Christmas of 1957. I don’t remember what I knew or didn’t know. Not too much of what is bad had happened to me yet, but of course, it would. I suppose I was somewhat perplexed to be where I was, partly adult, but also childlike and confused in some of my thinking. In fact, remembering back now to that time, it doesn’t seem like I did much thinking, but only let time and events flow past me like the currents of the rivers that I loved, while I waited to see what my life would become, or where I would be taken.
Along with our extended family, we were having dinner at the home of my Uncle Dave and Aunt Pauline like we always did at Christmas. They had a big dining room table that had room for all of us, and there was turkey and ham, potica, Italian cookies, hard ribbon candy and pop. My cousins, LeeAnn and Wilbur were there with their parents. Their mother and my father were first cousins. All of the older relatives had died a long time ago. Wilbur was almost exactly my age. We had spent time with each other, usually at holidays, but we had also fished and hunted together with our fathers. He and I had been in the car more than two years earlier, returning from a fishing trip with my dad, when the drunk had crossed the center line and slammed into us. My father was unconscious, Wilbur was in shock, and it was up to me that day, not quite fourteen, to take charge and make decisions, even though I was bloody and hurt, and it was then that I knew that the same would be expected of me in the future, as I became a man. I didn’t like that idea very much.
Wilbur’s parents had bought him an old car. I don’t remember what it was, but it belonged to him, he could drive it whenever he wanted, and I was envious. We went out in it that day, after dinner, just the two of us. I think we went to his home to pick something up. It was cold, and there was no sun to brighten or warm. The car heater didn’t work. Wilbur turned the radio on and Christmas music was playing on all the stations, and we heard Jingle Bell Rock. It was just out that year. It was one of Bobby Helms’ two hits. I don’t remember what we talked about. Maybe it was about his girlfriend. I didn’t have one.
I was at Central and Wilbur went to Centennial and we didn’t see each other often. We had our own friends. I did some dumb things back then. With some of my buddies I shoplifted from stores, stealing things I didn’t even want, just for the thrill of it. Twice, Perko and I stole hubcaps when we were out in his dad’s yellow pickup at night. The second time the spinners made a loud noise when we pried them off, dogs barked, a light went on, and we had to run for it. I didn’t do it again after that. I don’t know if Perko did.
About a year later we read in the paper that Wilbur and two of his friends had held up a gas station in Colorado Springs with shotguns and had been caught. I don’t know if they were in the same car he and I had ridden in that Christmas. I can remember my parents and I sitting in my Uncle Dave’s kitchen after that, and him saying that if the crime had been committed in Pueblo he might have been able to help Wilbur. Uncle Dave had connections and knew who would take a bribe for probation or a reduced sentence. But he had no influence outside the city. Wilbur was sent to the reformatory at Buena Vista. He served a few years. I don’t remember how many. Wilbur loved to fish as much as I did, so it must have been hard on him to know that the Arkansas River was flowing right behind the prison but it might as well have been a hundred miles.
We hardly saw each other after that. I went to college, and after he served his time, Wilbur was lucky enough to get a job at Triplex. He got married and had some kids even before I graduated. Our lives diverged, and I moved away from Pueblo for almost thirty years before returning. He called me once after I came back. He had become a good fly fisherman and said he would take me out in his boat, but he never called back. I saw him a couple of times after, at his mother’s funeral, and then at his sister’s. Six years ago, Wilbur got cancer and died too.
Now I wish that I had called him, arranged a fishing trip together. Maybe when we were alone in the dark car, before the sun came up as we drove to the lake and we couldn’t see each other’s faces, or even out in the boat, in the calm water reflecting the green mountains I would have asked him why he and his friends decided to hold up that gas station. Why had he done that thing that changed his whole life, that made him a felon when he wasn’t even eighteen. I don’t know. He probably couldn’t have told me, any more than I could have explained to my parents why I stole those ten dollar hubcaps.
More than fifty years have passed since that Christmas day in 1957. They still play Jingle Bell Rock on the radio. It has become a classic. When I hear it, I still think of Wilbur.
Jerry Miller
December 10, 2011 at 5:01 pm |
Jerry,
I am not a Christian but I treasure this season for traditional carols and Winter Solstice, which will be on December 22 this year. Many different peoples were careful naked eye astronomers and celebrated the shortest day of the year.Peruians in the times of the Incas, had a festival in which they symbolically lassoed the sun to keep it from drifting entirely out or the world. Druids celebrated Winter Solstice.
The bible suggests that Jesus was born when ” (there were) shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night, (Luke 2, 8) This was probably just after harvest, when the animals were eating the stubble left in the field., probably late October.
When the Romans conquered Britain, they found a thriving religion, celebrating Winter Solstice. Roman missionaries thought it would be easier to change the date of Christ’s birth to a time near this Solstice. That’s probably why Christmas isn’t in October.
I hope that you enjoy the days getting longer. Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men.
Jeff Arnold
December 14, 2011 at 8:17 pm |
Jerry,
One of my sociology professors at Boulder did a massive study of self reported delinquent acts by over five thousand boys in California high schools back in the sixties. Over ninety percent of them reported acts that would have resulted in more than six months incarceration if prosecuted. Wilbur’s armed robbery would certainly be on the extreme end of things but the petty theft, drug and alcohol experimentation, fighting, hot wiring cars, and other youthful transgressions we engaged in certainly could have sent us ‘up the river’ as well. And, today many youth are incarcerated for longer times for even lesser offenses. You have stimulated me to share a story of one of my friends who could as easily have been me.
When I was away at college in Greeley, one of my good friends from Catholic High was working as a holiday temp at the Pueblo Post Office. An inspector caught him stealing some parking ticket envelopes with the fine payments in them. He reacted by slugging the inspector and bolting. He later turned himself in. Unfortunately the inspector died of complications a few days later. My friend had also been working at the State Hospital and he was remanded there to the ward for the criminally insane with an indeterminate sentence after a plea of temporary insanity due to the pressure of a heavy course load and working two jobs during finals week.
My wife and I took him some cookies on the ward on our trip to Pueblo for Christmas the following year. He seemed in good spirits in a very depressing place but he was embarrassed for us to see him there and said he would just as soon not get any visitors. He was working out and staying very fit. His wife visited him every day and bought him some goodies and that was enough to keep him going he said. Later on I heard he was released only to find his wife was having an affair. He beat her and the guy up and fled from Pueblo. I visited his Dad the following year and was told he had no idea where his son had gone but if I ever heard from him to let him know there were no charges from the incident and he was free to return to Pueblo. His family wanted to know he was alright.
A couple of years later I was sent from Boulder to do some research on a volunteer probation officer experiment in Elkhart, Indiana. On my way I stopped in Chicago to see Art Greco who lived in the suburb of Hinsdale with his family. He had been the field goal kicker for PJC when I was there and he had wound up living with my parents when I went to Greeley and then he went on to the University of Illinois. Anyway, when I caught up to and stayed overnight with him in Hinsdale, he insisted he had seen my other friend down on the Loop in Chicago, had followed him to a sleazy hotel where he seemed to be straying and tried to talk with him but was rebuffed and told it was a case of mistaken identity. He was sure it was not.
So, we went down to see my friend. It was a very creepy hotel that has since been replaced by a new high rise apartment building. It had an open freight type elevator and he was on the fifth floor in a corner room that was triangle shaped. It had a sink on one wall, a single bed, and a closet with no doors. There was one change of clothes and a coat hanging there. He had most of the space in the room piled with several months’ worth of sports pages from the Chicago Tribune. He was an avid football fan. He talked to us for some time and asked what I knew about his family which was pretty slim but something. He wasn’t sure he trusted the claim that no charges were pending but indicated he might call his Dad and discuss it more. He extracted a pledge that we would not tell anyone where he was.
On a subsequent visit to Pueblo I learned he had gotten married and moved to DeMoines, Iowa. I got the address and sent him a Christmas card. A few years later Jeanne and I were heading to Colorado from Michigan where I was teaching for several years. I called him from the highway and asked if we could stay overnight. He said sure. It was a cold miserable day and his house was in the middle of a rundown industrial area where most of the houses had been bull dozed and his was one of the few remaining for blocks around and it faced an abandoned factory of some kind. But, it was a nice old two story brick house. Someplace I have an old photo of him with me in front of their outhouse toasting each other with cans of beer. His wife was very welcoming and they were the proud parents of several little girls by then. He was driving a beer delivery truck for a good income but dreamed of finishing his degree and getting his teaching and coaching credentials. Another year we stopped in for coffee once and wrote each other a few times after that and he talked of coming to see us on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation where we had moved but never did.
Then, we lost touch. I heard from someone that he had moved back to Pueblo a few years ago. I have never tried to find him when I was there though. Now, after reading your story about Wilbur I wish I had. I will try to find him for sure if I ever get back that way again. Thanks for sharing your Jingle Bell Rock story and for jogging my memories of missing holiday friends.
January 13, 2012 at 6:43 am |
Thank you for your ‘Jingle Bell Rock’ story, Jerry. As usual your story telling is concise and humanistic. I don’t know why our human natures often predicate that we ignore instincts such as contacting old friends that we haven’t thought about frequently. Your story reminds me about a personal obsession with which I am cursed that resides on the opposite end of the coin.
A short time after our marriage in 1961 Mike took a job in Brighton, Colorado and we moved there. I missed connections to Pueblo. I wrote many letters each week, sometimes as many as two dozen, to former classmates at Central. It was rare that I received even one response. I reverted to calling friends. More often than not I was sheepishly told that whomever, “…just didn’t like to write letters…”, or – at least to me – some such similar nonsense. In any case it made for a very lonely existence for myself as I came to the realization that I was ultimately alone and that I may have made an error by entering into such a young marriage.
Within a year we moved back to Pueblo, and in an effort to reconnect with those same class members whom I was convinced would be pleased to get together on a regular basis, I started a ’tea club’ whose membership was made up of several young married women who either had graduated with us or who were married to young men who had attended Central with us. We took turns acting as hostesses and enjoyed a longevity of three years before we stopped meeting. My attempts to resurrect membership of the ’tea club’ failed. However, I was too stubborn – or more likely too needy -to give up on my endeavors.
Sometime around 1965 I started a new group — a bunco club consisting of several class members. This time the combination worked. The Bunco Club still meets once a month, with some members who have been attending consistantly throughout the 46 ensuing years. I, on the other hand, began a 35 year history of bopping around the Western US and long since fell out of regular connection with the members. Although I have attended the club on several occasions when I was visiting in Pueblo, it is during 2012 that I will again attend meetings on a regular basis. I’ve come full circle.
It does my heart good to realize that some long-standing relationships have developed and have remained steadfast due to my insatiable need to reach out to old friends in order to maintain my individuality, and then to let go. In the end, I responsibly recognize that I am very good at starting things…….and not so good at sticking to them.