Going to Chicago (19 page)

I met Will within a week of our moving from Columbus to the Stony Hill Road farm. My mother inherited the place from her uncle, a wifeless loner. The farm looked it. The barn was in better shape than the house. My father wasn't keen about moving there, but it was a free farm and his low-paying race-car job didn't give him much leverage with my mother. So on a Monday in June 1928, six days after I turned twelve, we moved up to the Stony Hill Road farm. On his first day looking for work Dad came home with the foreman's job at B. F. Goodrich. The stock market crash was still more than a year away and jobs were easy—especially for someone who'd flown and raced with the Wild Teuton. Dad was as conversant in tires as anybody.

My first two days on the farm were fun enough. Exploring the barn. Chasing the chickens and hogs we'd inherited. Hiking the fields and woods. But after a couple days I started missing Columbus and my Columbus friends. I was happy as Christmas when Dad woke me up Saturday morning and said we were driving up to Bennett's Corners for groceries and gas.

It was my first trip to the Corners. I wasn't expecting Columbus but I was expecting a real town. “Isn't much, is it?” I said. Dad agreed. But mother said it was all we needed. We dropped her off in front of Ruby & Rudy's and then pulled down to Randall's garage. Will's father came out and pumped gas into our brand-new Plymouth. He was friendly and talkative. He sent me inside for a free bottle of Coca-Cola. There was Will, sitting on the floor in the corner, reading some tiny brown book.

I fished a bottle from the cooler. Will's blinky eyes were watching over the top of his book. “The man out front said I could have a free bottle,” I said. I didn't want him to think I was stealing.

Will slid his back up the wall and walked over. “You a Boy Scout?”

Now was that an insult? On the hard streets of Columbus, Ohio, being called a Boy Scout was the same as being called a goody-goody. I was something of a goody-goody—a boy with a mother like mine couldn't help but be a little spongy—but I didn't want to be called one. Didn't want to be called a Boy Scout either. “Not especially,” I answered.

“I am,” Will said. “Troop 203.”

I fished another Coca-Cola from the cooler and offered it to him. “No thanks,” he said. “Only customers get free Cokes.” I felt guilty now. So I took a nickel from my pants and bought him one. After a few sips he started laughing. “This is dumb, ain't it?” he said. “The son of a total stranger drinking a free Coke while the son of the owner drinks a paid-for Coke—paid for by the son of the stranger.” Nothing made Will laugh harder than the ironic twists of everyday life.

Those Cokes cemented our friendship. By the middle of July, I was spending nights at the Randalls' and Will was spending nights with us. We spent most of our time hanging around the Corners. I fell in love with the place. We played catch on the ballfield and volunteered as bat boys when the Bennett's Corners' team played some other corner's team. We mowed the church lawn and played in the cemetery. We sat in front of the garage and counted passing cars. In August I joined Troop 203. In September we went off to seventh grade together, taking the school bus all the way to Brunswick, five and one-third miles away.

Until I moved to Bennett's Corners, Will's best friend had been Lindsay Blum. He was a heavyset kid with bugged eyes. Thyroid I think. For a while that first summer Lindsay hung around with us. He was nice enough, except he knew a lot less than he thought he did and he let off a lot of gas. I started calling him Ass Eyes. By the time school started Lindsay saw the handwriting on the wall and drifted off to find other friends.

Now it was just Will and me. He kept me from flunking too many tests, and I kept him from being roughed up by the eighth grade boys. Not that I ever had to fight any of them. Just knowing I was from Columbus kept them in line. Little did they know I was a goody-goody. I moved up quickly in Troop 203, within three months becoming a First Class scout just like Will. Will's father was scoutmaster. He took us on great hikes. Took us canoeing at Hinckley Lake. One summer he took us to a big three-state roundup at Niagara Falls.

Will's caution and my reckless adventure made for an exciting but safe friendship. After our scouting trip to Niagara Falls, Will's caution kept me from going over the Hinckley Lake dam in a leaky barrel. My knack for adventure saw to it we were the only Bennett's Corners boys who ever saw a circus midget take a leak in a camel's water pail.

Boy, we were friends!

Will took it upon himself to educate me long before he got the World's Fair bug. We'd sit at night on the gravestones at the cemetery or under the bridge over Healy Creek and he'd pontificate for hours. Pontificate on everything. For example, he'd pontificate on religion: “The Bible is half bunk and half true,” he'd say. “The hard part is figuring out which half is which and then living your life accordingly.”

He'd pontificate on the mysteries of becoming an adult: “Don't spend a second worrying about what kind of adult you're going to wind up, Ace. There's no such thing as adults. No such thing as kids either. There's just people with different age bodies. The reason so-called adults are in charge of everything is because they've lived long enough to figure this out, and they keep it a secret from those who haven't yet, so they can rule the roost.”

He'd pontificate on politics: “People say they hate politics, just like they say they hate fighting and killing. In reality people love all three. They love to see somebody weak get the snot kicked out of them, whether it's with a gun or a fist or a ballot. Makes them feel good to know they're not the only losers on the planet. And they're all for a winner, until the winner actually wins. Then they turn on him like a mouse on cheese. Franklin Roosevelt's a one-termer, you just watch.”

He'd pontificate on death: “Reverend Sprung's assurances about eternal life aside, I try not to think about dying. You've seen dead cats rot away to nothing on the road? I'm afraid that's exactly what God's got in store for us. Just be content with the one life you know you've got—make all you can out of it—and let the Almighty worry about what does or doesn't come next.”

He'd pontificate on money: “I think a fella ought to have as much as he can legally get. But you shouldn't try too hard to get it. Look at my parents, Ace. My mother is always mad at the big money she hasn't got her hands on yet while my father is happy as a clam with the little money he has. When my body's older I'm going to take money more seriously than my father does, but not much.”

Most of all he'd pontificate on the future: “If you're not prepared, the future will eat you alive. That's why we're going to the Chicago World's Fair. So we don't get eaten alive by the future.”

I did my share of pontificating, too, usually about sex: “No, Will, I can't imagine what it feels like, or exactly how you get the deed done. And I don't want to know either. I plan to go into it green and savor it as I learn.”

Will was smart beyond his years and had every right in the world to pontificate on religion, adulthood, politics, death, money, the future, or anything else. I was the last person on earth to pontificate on sex. I didn't get close to poking a willing city girl during our pilgrimage to the Chicago World's Fair—wouldn't have come close even if Gus Gillis hadn't hijacked the Gilbert SXIII or Pruitt hadn't done what he did. In fact I didn't poke anybody until 1941, when I was learning how to cook at Ft. Benjamin Harrison. It was a mulatto girl from Chicago, who had traveled across Indiana. She cost me five dollars. No doubt it was the quickest five she ever made. I'm sure she forgot about me the second I stepped out her door and the next future Army Air Force cook stepped in. Still my memory of that first sexual experience has lasted me a lifetime. The clap I caught lasted me five months. I had sex six times in England, four in London and twice in Manchester. The first time I made love to a woman, that is, lingered before and after, talking and laughing, and not having to pay for it, was in 1948 with Lois Cobb, the woman I was about to marry.

Lois Cobb and I were married for eleven years. Never had children. A couple years into our marriage the R&R Luncheonette was doing well enough that we began talking about having children. I told her if we had a boy, his name would be Will. “It's bad enough I have to live with Will Randall's ghost,” she said. “I'll be damned if I'm going to give birth to it, too.”

Little by little my chance of ever becoming a father dwindled as our marriage bed turned into an ice cube tray.

Our accumulating debts didn't help matters. Despite my triple-deckers and secret sauce, people kept flocking to the new Big Boy restaurant on U.S. 42. Lois divorced me six weeks after I sold the R&R to that dreamer home from Korea. Lois married an Irish autoworker from the west side of Cleveland and had three quick sons. She died of lung cancer in 1977. She wasn't a smoker, but her Irish husband was a goddamn chimney, the sonofabitch. I had nothing against Lois Cobb. Even after she divorced me I thought she was one hell of a fine woman. Will Randall and the new Big Boy on U.S. 42 just got in our way I guess.

“
Do women on the air give you the screaming meemies? Do you feel jittery when you hear the sweetness and light heroine of the ‘He, She, and It' dramas, who talk as no regular girl ever spoke on land or sea. In such a propah, propah mannah, my deah, that you long to kick her in the nether part of her lingerie and say, ‘Be yourself, dearie
.'”

R
ADIO
N
EWS MAGAZINE

Twenty/Digging All Night

Gus killed more than the ceiling, he killed any hope of getting Clyde and his ear to a doctor. Seven o'clock came around much too quickly. We were on the air.

Lloyd read the introduction he and Gus had worked on most of the afternoon: “WEEB proudly presents
The Gladys Bartholomew Theater
, starring the beautiful and talented Gladys Bartholomew. Tonight's broadcast is brought to you by the notorious Gus ‘The Gun' Gillis, still terrorizing the goodly people of Weebawauwau County because Sheriff Orville Barnes is too much of a checkered-shirt cowboy to come after him, lead a'flying. Gus will be along a little later to egg the sheriff on, but now what do you say we settle back with a refreshing glass of Canada Dry ginger ale and enjoy the program. In our first episode, entitled ‘The Handsome Hobo,' Gladys portrays Gladys White, sweet Georgia peach whose life is changed forever by a knock on the door.”

The next thing the goodly people of Weebawauwau County heard was me asking, “Now?” Then after Gladys rolled her eyes and nodded they heard me rap three times on a block of wood,
knock knock knock
. “The Handsome Hobo” was underway.

“The Handsome Hobo” was nearly identical to “The Dashing Stranger.” Instead of a country girl and her blind father needing someone to fix the levee before the rains started, it was about a southern girl and her grandfather needing someone to find a hoard of Confederate gold before the Yankee tax collectors arrived to confiscate their farm. Luckily a good-looking tramp, played of course by Will, showed up.

WILL

(as the Handsome Hobo)

You bet your curly brown hair I'll find that gold for you and your granddaddy. If I have to dig all night.

GLADYS

(as the Georgia Peach)

You will? Here's a shovel and a lantern. I'll be out directly with some lemonade. Do you like it with lots of sugar?

That's the way it went. Hard to say what the people of Weebawauwau County thought of the story or the acting—both were pitiful—but I do know everybody was listening. Maybe today people wouldn't give a second thought to a carload of criminals taking over a radio station and then haranguing the sheriff all night on the air, but in 1934 in the middle of Indiana, it was a big thing. Eight years later when I looked up Lloyd he was still strutting with pride about our huge success.

Sheriff Barnes was listening at Millie's, with her girls gathered around the radio, since the broadcast had interrupted all local desire for illicit sex. Pruitt was alone in his room at the Weebawauwau Inn. Others were listening, too: Albert Finley from the nearly empty Weebawauwau Palace; all five Harmony Heavers from an empty roadhouse on the highway; Bud Hemphill from the barn where his one-winged Jenny was drying out; Will's Uncle Fritz in Valparaiso.

Lloyd introduced Gus at the end of Act One.

Gus slid back his fedora and leaned into the microphone. “Thank you, Lloyd. I hope everyone is enjoying tonight's broadcast—and I hope everyone enjoys having a checkered-shirt cowboy for a sheriff. That's right! That's exactly what I said! Checkered-shirt cowboy!”

Gus recounted all our crimes; the delivery men we stuck up, the riverful of Baptists, even the ballgame; he told them about kidnapping Will, Clyde, and me, how he was keeping us from our pilgrimage to the Chicago World's Fair; told them how Sheriff Barnes's refusal to enforce the law was preventing Clyde from getting the ear drops he needed to dissolve his painful wax. Gus went on for ten minutes, his hillbilly voice getting higher and higher. “Come on, Mr. Sheriff Orville Barnes. Come and free these poor Ohio boys. Come and free ol' Gus Gillis from his despicable fleshy host. Send my worthless soul to roast in hell alongside Clyde Barrow's. Come riddle me full of little holes, sheriff, riddle me full of little diddly damn holes.”

Lloyd thanked him, recapping much of what he said. Will and Gladys launched enthusiastically into Act Two.

Gladys's acting was as overdone as her makeup. Will on the other hand was brilliant. He's been reading aloud to me for six years. Now he was reading those terrible phony lines just as natural as could be. Just an hour earlier he was ready to die to unwax Clyde's ear. Now he was lost in the radio play. He was somewhere in Georgia, digging in a dark swamp for Confederate gold, helping a beautiful Georgia peach save her granddaddy's
fahm
from heartless Yankees.