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Lester Runge says he doesn't know what brought his forbearers to farm these lush, black Iowa soils. He knows the year and some of the events. He'll talk with pride about beginnings.
“My grampa came here from Germany in 1848…I guess he was looking for a better life. I called him grampa, he was my mother’s grampa, name of Rohr. He worked a year then the farmer who hired him sold him the farm and went to Minnesota.”
The exiled German had nothing to lose but chains. That's the beginning of a 161 year relationship for Lester Runge’s clan, the start of a stewardship to a little farm that gave an immigrant his freedom and generations of family a livelihood.
“It’s all I know...”
Lester’s an old man now. He bends at the waist like a ladder, bent from a full height to a shortened stature, now closer to earth, feet equidistant from a center. He often walks with his hands folded behind him, eyes to the dirt. He’s been toddling these fields for ninety years.

“I’ve got some numbers. I’m going to replace the sign up front at the road. It says this has been in the family for one hundred and fifty years. That was in 1999. We’ve had it in the same family for one hundred and sixty one years, now.”
The old man laughs with a furrow between his eyes. His face is patched with dark creases and the aging of the sun. His yellow cap tilts on his head,  white hair falls on his forehead, his blue chambray shirt stained, his old hands gnarled as the roots of a nearby oak.
“Grampa, do you want some potato salad?”
“Yeah, sure. I guess I’d have some of that.”
He sits on an upturned five gallon bucket. Daughter, grandchildren and great grandchildren set around him along the walls of his garage.
It's the first weekend of September. The old man’s family is siding his home. His three grandchildren and their spouses, and their children nail the pink accordion foam and fit siding.

In the garage it's time for a break. A spread of salads, beans, rolls, brats ands hot dogs decorate the aged, wood table.
“Kim, your potato salad is really good.”
“Can I have another brat?” The old man plied a virtuous manner to conversation. Smells of barbecue smoke drifted around the space.
“Has everyone had at least one brat…”
The great grandchildren are hurrying with the food, slopping beans and salad, pushing at the hot dogs.  The old man smiles as he watches.
“We’ve got the west wall insulated.”
“When the insulation is done, then we’ll move on the siding, grampa.”
“It looks good…” He says, rubbing his hands.
“We’re gonna take the deck off the back wall, then grampa wants us to set it nearby so he can dismantle it.”
On the long rail of the eight foot by eight foot deck that sets off the dining room six red tomatoes await the old man's gentle touch.  Green moss grows on the rail and at the floor joists. A sawzall rests on the ground.
“Just put the deck over near the trees there. I can take it apart later.”
The old two story home next door is the original homestead. The back porch door swings open and a grandson lifts a length of siding. A doorway that was measured more than 150 years ago.
“Oh, the barn’s older. It was here a while before grampa built the house in 1849.”

Lester sat and ate his beans and salad.
“Garden was okay this year.”
He's a part of this place. He knows the seed, the wind, the rain, the tracks of animals and the bird songs. He's collected arrow heads and tomahawks, watched birth and death. He can tell what the weather was for almost any year.
“This garage was built in 1978-79. That year we had a big storm. I walked the lane to the road for two weeks till the snow cleared. Finally after about two weeks the weather kind of settled down. I called a neighbor up and he got the snow blower out, helped to clear it up."

The old barn leans in its last stages, giant timbers with knots and grooves, cracks and blue veins like a man’s veins , perhaps assembled two hundred years ago...
“I don’t know when the barn was first raised but it was sometime before my grampa bought the farm.”
Today the fresh, glossy siding begins to cover the house. A modern sheath of plastic and capped nails.
“She looks pretty,” Lester says, “That old siding from some years back was what I call paper pressed wood. Not worth a thing.”
Two in-laws,  middle aged men, stand on ladders and tack siding.
“If I live long enough we’ll redo the siding on the garage, too.”
An ancient grape arbor runs a straight path from the west side of the house. The vines and branches twist and curl like scuplture and their brown, rugged bark hangs and spins around the arbor, some falling to the grass.
“That wind is twenty five miles per hour today. It’s gonna get warm when the clouds go.”
The mystery of the wind stills the conversation. The old man smiles and stares at his family as they work then lays down in the grass. He closes his eyes and rests, the steady wind accompanyimg the rhythtm of his heart.

It was 26 degrees with a clear sky, 504 miles to Nashville from Dubuque, December 28, 2009. The destination, 2572 Music Valley Drive. It was three PM. The steering column was repaired, leaks noted, sounds considered, tie downs observed and belongings, with children, dutifully packed. A vow made and a journey readied.
The old Frito truck , white and yellow, a broad stripe running down its middle, wide and flat bottomed as ever a river boat was, had been refurbished with cots, a cabinet, a table, music system and a portable heater. Cabinets filled with bread, oranges, canned vegetables, boxes of pancakes and rolls. Under cots the coolers held cheese, meat, oranges, bread, apples, soda and juice.. Snacks of chips, crackers, cookies and candies completed the grocery list.
As the brontosauras set in the parking lot by the stop sign near Happy's Place, the children, nestled in blankets and sitting on the cots, whispered and chattered like squirrels. Paul peered into the engine compartment under the prop of the hood. His bald pate shone in the reflected sunlight burning off the drive. Diesel smells and exhaust smoke hung in the calm. Stern as a badger , his breath billowing in the cold wind, he said the radiator seemed okay. He noted that other engine components would have to abide. God’s will be done.
"Mom, can I have an orange?" The eldest child Tommy was hungry.
The frigid air stung faces and hands, humidity was dropping, little noses dried like dates in a freeze drier; the rapping chill hit all hands like a hard edged ruler. The cold  tapped with intermittent wipes across bare knuckles.
Paul rubbed his hands together. He added oil to the crankcase then announced the ark ready to enter the water.
“Everybody here?”
“Yes Paul. Everyone’s here.”
“Okay. Let's go.”
The engine smells poured inside, bit nostrils then moved away through the door shim. Breathing was visible everywhere. A north pole caravan. The kids had games, dolls, music, little computer puzzles and snacks. The gauntlet began.
The eight children, Paul's wife Renee and two companions took their seats on the space craft's various platforms. The Dubuque to Nashville run, dead winter, Christian zeal.
"Faith will see us through."

The space by the door extended three feet from the driver. Wind whipped into the space through a long, thin crack line where the door refused its lock. The cold moved like a meat locker chill, swept into the silver lined door and rose at the step. It was everpresent, smelling of fuel, oil, smoke and soot and humorless intent. Behind driver and arm chair pulled from a garage sale to make a co-pilots loft,  passengers armed themselves for the long, laborious, artic journey to the southland.
"Everybody okay?"
The message behind the message being: "Anyone in danger of freezing?"
Each child and adult behind the arm chair and the driver, the two women and eight children, held a small place like a carrot seed holds a tiny dot of earth, like swallow tails at tree tops in a south American forest. A constant fog of breath rose to the ceiling where wires hung in a scattered mix to maintain lights and music. Heat was planned. It would grow from a propane tank and a wick mesh. Safety was based in faith.
The children were dressed in a colorful array of neon, blue, yellow, green and orange; caps, jackets, boots and gloves. The rainbow army of Paul and Renee. Dubuque Christians driving to the mecca where the Overland Mission Company would pitch African missions.
Cots stood to the ceiling and leveled under each other like bunks in a barracks. A swath of mesh screen and mattress had been built with drill and screw, sleeping quarters for the unbridled disciples of Christ.
“Everyone okay?” Paul shouted as the beast lurched upward and onward to the Dubuque airport just four miles from the liftoff.
Yards from the airport entrance a thwack a thwack a thwacka rumbled into the cabin. Jules Verne would have been pleased.
“Let’s get on with this adventure gentlemen... where's the sea creatures, the space monsters, the squid, whale, dragon?”
Paul pulled over  to the shoulder with stone spitting up into the step at the door’s crack. Once he shut off the engine he opened the inside hatch as if the old submarine were taking on water. Peering inside for the the source of the racket like a midwife veering into birth Paul announced a possible change of direction.
"I don't know..."
Compression had died. The uphill rise was impossible.
"I think if we screw this piece on tighter it'll hold...I don't know"
The source of trouble, manuevered out of place like a gasket, hung against a tube. It allowed the drive necessary to plow up the hills. If the beast had broken its leg the Nashville skyline and the entreaties of Christ would never be gained.
After the tight, tight, tight, ratcheting of the brown and rusty boot part, Paul restarted the gutsy old ark.
"Here we go!"
Within a nautical mile of the pit stop the tratt tratt tratt and grunk grunk grunk revisited.
"What do you think?"
The word and promise for this voyage lay in spirit. The destination: Nashville. The mystery, Overland Missions. A covenant as true as a rainbow.
The culprit of clanging fates was a red boot attached to a port by the manifold.
"What do you think?"
"I think we could try the hardward store."
Co-pilot companion a friend and consultant. Neither he nor Paul knew.
Paul drove back to Dubuque to the True Value Hardware in Key West where he bought three clamps. The two men stood in the parking lot with the hood again raised. Surgery seemed necessary.
"Get a screwdriver!"
"You're good at orders, try some patience."
Nerves tightened at the start like red eared Indy drivers before igniting the monsters of the tarmac.
Burnt smells entered the cabin of the vessel. Worry piled as high as a snow drift.
"I think this will work."
As the sun set the chill began to seep into everyone's bones. Tempers were melting like the wax hands of prayer on a Christmas stand.
The boot worked with an extra turn. Step by step success. It didn't bulge nor break. Paul cranked the engine. GGGRRRRR. The great beast, the whale to their episode of Jonah, spit and sputtered and returned their faith in providence. The caravan regrouped and began again. On the road again. White dust swept up from the road and the shoulders of the road. Curries of snow blew across the windshield. A light scent of salt filtered into their wind swept cabin. The blue sky faded into orange and then dark .
"Can't hear much up here!" Paul yelled. The engine rattled and spurt noise. Paul pullled the rod at the dash. The headlights flared up and the road began to turn as if Newton's theory about constant motion had been given proof on Highway 61. 
"Next time you see me you better run, God said to Abraham...out on Highway 61..." Dylan followed the ark.
"Tommy, fix the GPS." Paul yelled to his son. The GPS, a new toy, set on the dash.
"Tommy, put in WalMart." His mother wanted a stop.
A rhythm soon grew and a confidence.
Eight children. Harmony and Tommy sat together by Renee's companion. Bonnie sat by Paul's companion. The little boy Willie sat in a yellow hoodie by himself. The little girl Gracie spun like a top every few minutes gathering attention like a prairie dog gathers burrs, hair winding and flashing in the other's faces, then Gracie laughing and jumping away into the back of the truck. Joy was with Faith. The baby Andrew sat on his mother's lap.

Once at the conference center, a wealthy church where the missionaries told their stories, the stage took precedence to thought, to deed, to each other. The pamphlet handout read, "In these last days..."  and  "Living in the last stretch..."
The audience wore money. Women coiffed in expensive wigs and hair cuts, streaked hair like country music celebs; goateed men in shirts that wrougth expense without thought, satin,designer jeans, gold and silver. Frankenscence seemed a nearby scent. No manger here...
"What a place!"
"Glad we made it!"
Behind the crowd near the stage the graphics lit every eye. An old man knelt, his dark black face, the face of the wandering horde of biblical psalm. 'One Tribe' a mantra that repeated in hypnotic percussions of song and speech was written above the old black , weathered man.
"Did you see the pamphlet?" Paul's wife asked.
A nod.
Message simple, clear. Humanity now shrunk, all of history shrunk,  into the words of a handful of old men who spoke in tongues and reveled in their vision of the holy life. In their humility they intoned scripture as their own, speech was God inspired as sure as the video graphics behind the charcoal face was a photo of an African.
Awesome a word like none other, showcase and pedestal, each speaker more humble, more possessed than the next. Each wore designer jeans, open necks, gold. Each pounded the podium, paced and cried.
"I remember when it was so bad..."
Stories of modern miracle, of modern possession, of yesterday's walks on water.
"And we don't want anyone who's less than the best to accompany us, no sir..."
Thirty minutes without breathing, thirty minutes without a blink, thirty minutes without a tear duct wetting, thirty minutes without thought. One consciousness. The constant, one constant:
"The name of Jesus....the name..."
"We just worship God. Give him praise. Can I hear you say amen?" Testimony, sure, quick, relevatory.
The man on stage carries a big bible in hand.
"The lord walked into the room and his eyes were ablaze..."
"If you're not engaged in building his church you're opposing it."
"Jesus is your elder brother and his DNA is your DNA."
After the digressions and testimonies, the prayers and platitudes, the hopes and claims, the deeds and stories; Paul and the three other adults and eight children tiredly walked to the truck.  10:10 PM Tuesday. Nashville's weather was frigid. Sleep had been postponed for tonight. Sleepy eyed children, tugging at parents. Parents wandering, ambling, unsure. In the lot. Strap in. Sit down.
"It won't turn over..."
Nashville, the temperature is forty degrees and cooling. Paul and his companion walk back to the church to place their hats in hand. Faces, down trodden into the line of fire of pastor, disciple and stage manager.
Noah and trouble with an unsteady wind, an errant direction, a lost gull and a misspent wood dowel somewhere aboard. Jonah would not complain. The ministers saw.
"You were staying in the truck. You're planning to sleep in the truck this week?"
"Alright," said one minister to the other, "The first step is to get their truck started. Then we put them in a motel. They can stay where I'm staying."
"Oh, no! No! No!"
Paul wouldn't have charity. Dubuque's Christians would manage.
"All we really need is to get the truck going."
"No! You're going to stay in a warm motel. You have a baby. How old? Twelve months? No! In the motel. We'll find you a place while you're here in Nashville."
"What do you think?" Paul asked his friend, both still shivering.
"I think you need to accept this as a gift from God and keep your family safe and warm."  The image of Jellystone Park in twenty degrees, Nashville in a sleeping bag, cold truck , raw wind...not a Night Before Christmas poem.
The rest of their stay included close contact with missionaries. Kindness drove a message. Paul would say he'd been humbled.
"I think it was alright..."
On the way back to Dubuque a flat tire persuaded a slower pace. Paul pulled over each hour on the ride home. The diesel fuel was slushing.
"I think we can make if we pour this additive in every hour or so."
Once, the propane tank used as a heat source catapulted across the truck interior. It could have become a bomb.
The propane hose almost burned through once.
Yet the twelve rode their mule, rode it with wind chills at forty below zero slapping the inside of their little caboose, the windshield so cold inside, the driver wiped it to maintain visibility.
"Everyone's okay? Right?"
Each child was wrapped inside a cocoon of rags and clothes and blankets. Adults wrapped in blankets and scarves, huddled inside deep parkas and hoodies. Red noses and parched throats, numb hands and ears, they persevered while the Frito truck crawled up hills and plowed through the dusting snows, riveted to the purpose; chugged and rocked and rode each wave, each current of dangerous cold and wind till at last, having heard the word and the promise, they had kept their oath. The ark and the covenant. Word of God, word of man. Dubuque to Nashville and back. In the first week of the year of our lord, 2010.
'This is the thing which the lord hath commanded. If a man vow a vow unto the lord, or swear an oath to bind his soul with a bond; he shall not break his word, he shall do according to all that proceedeth out of his mouth.' Numbers 30:1

Friday night poker drew us students of  Plato together like scribes  at his Academy in Athens. We studied the cards as if they were planets aligned with creation when  the forces of nature were developed.  We understood the working class dead end street Plato envisioned.  We were a fellowship.
“Who’s having the card game this week?”
“It’s at T’s.”
“Who’s buying?”
“I’ll drive Milch to the liquor store…”
I had the car, a wonder of mechanical design,  epitome of modern engineering, pinnacle of technology, the great 1963 Plymouth. This  flesh toned Earl Sheib ox with sputtering cylinder, coughing crank,  crying radiator and burned alternator  had carried mail in The Union Stock Yards, picking up  clods, a blemish of manure here a scruff of hide there, wheezing its way from tin shed to cattle pen to office alcove . Lacking horns over the hood  the vessel of  my youth alternated as car , torpedo, pony express and beer wagon. It had a lever to the left of the steering wheel that allowed gear shift from park and neutral. On the far left dash under the window were buttons labeled drive and low and reverse.  Push a button and the beast roared into forward. The Plymouth was a space station on wheels.
If  Plato and his protégés  considered a death penalty for beer tainting we  didn’t know.  It was a death penalty in Mesopotamia  to tamper with a man’s beer. The penalty worked for us. Beer was magic.  We embraced  the St Louis Busch brand  and the Budweiser lapel. We wore the colors like Vikings, Goths, Gladiators and what we were, Chicago youth.
The shores of rebellion complelled us to the games. The house of cards moved often. We were a step ahead of trouble.
One Friday night at Terry’s house  the trouble was called in.
“How many gonna be there Friday?”
“I don’t know. A lot.” T worried but knew our record, unblemished as a Pabst Blue Ribbon.
Terry’s  grandfather and dad were working men who taught us about cold beer, women and responsibility. Terry was Johnny or Paco or T, each assumed a natural order in  our universe.  Paco because he was thin and resembled  Richie Valens. Johnny because his imitation of Brando was hysterical.
Terry's house set us onto the rivers of Europe at the time of the Vikings raids. It’s where we tossed the cards and poured the beer. We left the skulls in the basement.
“Milch, I’ll stop at your place Friday at 6:30. “
Milch’s real name was Bill. His nickname grew from an alliteration of sound that Nick had ordained. He ansewred to Grief and Golly. Bill matured in grade school and his early height earned him the MVP of our grade school football team in seventh grade. He was smoking Marlboro in eighth.
“What’s up Doc?”
“Get smokes, too, while you’re in there, will ya?”
“Sure, Doctor, I’ll do that.”
The lights of the liquor store shone into the car and the shine covered its interior. I squirmed while I waited for Milch. I turned to watch the street.  The view of the parking lot from the street was clear. A squad that might be sharking along the highway, prowling for youthful impishness would have been wise to peer into the lot we frequented.
“Say my Policeman, my man. You knew us a few year ago, all altar boys, church goers, favorites of the nuns and the teachers. Honor roll candidates, you’ll recall. We’re really not here at the liquor store. If we were, and you can see we're not, we'd be going to a friend’s house, a warm, cottage, a domicile of honor and integrity, much like our youthful embodiments of purity. Have a nice night..”
The building where T lived was squashed under a giant pin acrorn with its knarled branches hung ever outward  as if a Scotland Yard  lookout for Dr Jeckyl.
“Boys you know those spirits you drink will turn you hairy and bloodthirsty.”
“Yep, yes sir. But what if that’s what we want?”
. The building was divided into two apartments. Terry’s dad bought the rock faced, brick seamed, pillared old building as  investment and housing for family. We assumed space as heirs to Eric the Red, brother Genghis, Cousin Attila, in-laws to Jack the Ripper and the Marquis deSade
“Anybody get the hard stuff? At least a couple of us want some good old hard tastin’ whiskey!”
Those were the conversations of our youth, the subject matter of Chicago – Hannibal Huck and Tom.
Beheadings were done quickly. We chugged. At fifteen to seventeen our role models were Kirk Douglass and Ernest Borgnine.
“What about that scene with Borgnine after his son dies and he screams.?”
“Odin!!!!!!”

“Yeah. Yeah. He’s standin on a ledge at the sky and shaking his fist.”
We entered through the back door of Terry’s place where the axe handle leaned, the old chain wrapped  into a nest of rusty links and the wrenches and leather boots  waited under a small window at the bottom of the back stairs. Terry’s dad owned the body shop and there was always chains  for the wreckers.  Always boots.
The stairs offered a living version of the poem... ‘two roads diverged in a yellow wood…we took the one less traveled by...'  One way to the basement where Dean lived after his mother left for Arizona and the other upstairs into the kitchen. We tossed the cards and drank the hops in the basement when Terry’s parents were still together and home. We made ourselves kings when they were gone, frittering away our good sense and  Terry’s  good will by placing the residence in jeopardy with recklessness, we scattered the beer and ashtrays wherever we went..
“Everybody’s bringing their own, huh?”
“No, Milch man. We’re getting most of the hooch.”
“T’s telling everybody they don’t have to bring any stuff. Bring money, that’s all.”
“Okay,” Bring along a good luck charm. You’ll need it.”
“Right,” T said, “You need a little luck…”
An understatement.
“A friend gave me the rules and some tips so I don’t screw up the flush, straight stuff. Know what I mean?”
I told Milch about the weakness. I didn’t know how to play poker after more than a year of Friday night smokey lights, after football game revelries and parties.
“You’ll get it Doc.”
“Thanks ”
Once,  a night still alive in the mists of time, back when the caves and tents of us beduoin herdsman reeked of stale beer, while we rode our ponies into the Little Big Horn and watched Custer lose his bluff, we all lost ours.
“It’s gonna be a big game.”
“Who’s gonna be there?”
Fleej, Bruce, Quist, Nick, Loony, Kiki. I think the Brandts might be there so probably Birdlegs, T of course…..and Bulldog.”
“That dam cakeface wins too often.”.


We called our friend  Cakeface or Bulldog. It didn’t matter. Tom’s face flattened from temple to temple like a sliced piece of angel food but it was the bullet sized nose that added the Bulldog monicker. Cakeface was a chubby child, a husky youth and a fat young man. Sometimes we called him fat or fat boy just for a change of pace. He took it in stride.
“I brought a bottle of Corby’s. Anyone have any MD20/20? Want to light a match?”
“Where’s Owski? He likes that Corby’s.”
“I don’t know how you guys can drink that stuff.!”
Where’s the cards.? Let’s get started.”
A brown glass ashtray stood by T at one end of the deep brown dining table. It might have been mahogany but who paid attention? The table was an heirloom. A spiraled chandelier hung overhead. A warm, gold easy chair set in a corner. The window at one end was draped in yellow lace. The area rug an antique.  Black plastic ashtrays set all around.  The brown beer bottles set by each young hand. An end table held cases of beer. A small pint bottle of Corby’s whiskey set on the end table. Packs of Marlboros by each young wrist. Bulldog often had a pack of Kools to complement the Marlboro. He liked to smoke one after the other in alternating scripts. Paper money and coins stacked in piles and scattered round our Camelot table. We covered it with an old yellow sheet and table cloth.
“Everything’s gonna be okay, T. Don’t worry.” Dean quieted Terry’s nerves.
“Your parents won’t be home till Sunday. No sweat.”
“Yeah, no sweat,”
After the chit chat the nerves spliced and loosed with a few slugs of whiskey, a couple of beers and the taking of seats. The early rituals were complete and the cards rolled out.
“Fleej brought a case so you guys get thirsty, drink  up.” T hosted and none better. Our  laid back ensemble began to find its rhythm. We were willing to jump the Hoover Dam.
“Doc, you thirsty? Help yourself.”
Later, another case and another .
“Somebody turn on some music, will ya?”
Cakeface set next to me. He was laughing his fat head off, as usual. He was winning. I don’t remember being mad but it was a madness. It felt right. Bulldog had a hard head, good for a few laufghs, a change of pace in the luck.
" Break things up a bit," I thought.

“One thing about bottles, you know it? You can’t beat em!”
Bottled beer is the answer, no way around it.” Bruce studied his hand.
“Where are we?” Nick asked.
The pace seemed contrived. It fit Cake’s rhythm. The table felt like we had a window on the OK corral. Though all friends, we worked for each dollar.
When the bottle broke, the cymbal sounds, the splattering shards, the tiny splices of tear shaped glass nodes filled the table and the dining room rug.
“What was that?” surprised, bewildered, Cakeface turned to me. I smiled. Eyebrows raised and he squinted with a wrinkle between his eyes.
“Doc…”
The table went dead. Silence. The smell of beer, ashtrays and sweat filled the dining room.
“Dammit doc! Clean that up, will you?”
After a ten second lull the Bulldog smiled.
“He didn’t feel it! Didn’t touch him!”
“You’re alright….right. You’re alright?”
I looked into his eyes. He laughed and picked out tiny pieces of glass from his curly hair.
“Fats has a head of brillo anyway.”

I had rocked a bottle on the fat boy’s head. He seemed oblivious. He looked like the Frankenstein monster.
“Doc! Why did you do that?”
“I wanted to see your reaction.”
“You could have wrecked my hand. I could have lost track of my cards.”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean any harm.”
“For chrissakes doc. Man…” Fleej said and laughed.
“Where are we?”
“It’s up to you fat boy. Call it, what?”
“I’ll raise that hand. You boys don’t know who you’re dealing with.”
He was irritated he had to pick out the glass from his brillo pad hair.
“Shoot doc. Don’t do that again.”
The game went on. The Cake scored several pots and the other guys kept drinking.

“T, what do you have do eat?” Bulldog and obnoxious were on the same page of the dictionary.
“Cake, man, check the cabinets to your left after you walk into the kitchen, I think there’s some Chips AHoy.”
I followed the fat boy into the kitchen .
“Give me some of those cookies fat boy…”
While he was stuffing his hand into the cookie bag we heard a siren from the street.
“Doc, what’s that?”
“Who knows Cake? If you’re gonnna eat all those cookies I’m gonna hit you with another bottle.”
“Here,” he said.
Fellas!”
T had whipped around the corner and his face was flushed.
“There’s squad cars across the street. More are coming. Hurry! We’ve got to dump the booze and get out of here!”
Cakeface held the cookies and we dashed into the dining room. Sure enough, police everywhere.
“Someone called the cops.”
T and I and Milch and Quist each took a corner of the table cloth. The other guys dashed round the house picking up bottles and tossing them into a pile in the middle of the table.
“That’s about it.” Quist yelled.
“Okay. Pick it up and we carry it to the basement, hide it under  the stairs. Then we vamonos out of here.”
The bottles and debris were scattered but most was removed and hidden. We dashed out of the house.
Some of us dove toward Fleej’s GTO.  Fleej escaped as we fell out. He tore off the driver’s door of the goat on his way out the driveway,  stones ripping into the night air.
At the police station we were separated. Birdlegs and I were told to wait until an officer came to get us. We sat in the lobby of the LaGrange Park, Illinois, police station. After a few minutes Bird and I looked at the yellow window of the door that separated us from the others. The front door stood ten feet from our positions. We stared at each other, smiled, and walked out. When we hit the street Johnny B flashed by.  We screamed, he skidded. We drove away,  not a ticket, a warning , a court date, a scratch or a chastising; neither a rebuke or a word to parents, school or other authority. Bird and I were safe.
The group was born with a baptism,  born as if event, characteristic and aptitude;  interests and alchemies, all...brought us to naming. It made sense and fitted us outside of the circle of society. We were kids and we were learning. For us now, the circle was sacred and ours.
After that night of larceny and cards we found a name for our fellowship: the Deviats. We purposefully misspelled the name.
We stood in the middle of the world and raised our hands and fists like Vikings at the cliff. We never looked back.

A maple tree grew in the yard and deciduous bushes made a curtain in the front near the electric light post that stood by the street. The tree bent and its shape was like a vase. In the dark the light beamed on the tree and changed its shape. The moon light changed its shape too but that wasn't the same.
A bird's nest hid among the leaves in the small branches of the maple tree. The tree shaded the drive and its shadow moved with the sunrise and sunset. The lot was a place where time showed itself and left an imprint upon the memory. The house was red brick with a drive that swept around to the back where the garage backed into the lot line. The home's picture window smiled out to the street and the expanse of elm trees made a canopy in the street.
When we were young the changes grew from sunrise to sunset.
At first, we didn't taste the change in suburban America. Burning leaves in fall, swiming pools in summer. Frosty the Snowman in the winter. Baseball for summer.
The red brick home was a warm place where my friend Tom lived. I had moved a few blocks from him after prosperity nipped the old and brought in the new, for me a lake - stone face, prestige laden house that set by the eighth hole of the oak lined fairways of Timber Trails Golf Course.
After we had wheels, old wheels that squeeked and croaked, engines that hummed, buzzed, cranked, croaked and rocked,  the world fell upside down and we drove into the outer fringe of what was true and what was false. White suburb, new houses, high antenna, color TV, scouts, church, quiet, Kodak and smile.
At twelve, thirteen, fourteen it stopped making sense. Maybe it was the Friday through Sunday cocktails my parents poured; maybe their denial about themselves, the golf course, the purpose of life being fashion; maybe the billboards, the prescriptions, the newspaper, the larger involvement in the war in southeast Asia; maybe it was that Mickey Mantle smoked. Whatever the Newtonian physics that worked geometry into astronomy, the country took on a hue that children had never seen. Adults hadn't seen it either and maybe it was their denial that anything had changed that turned the crank at the edge of the earth. Riding a ferris wheel and hanging from our heels.
Some of us grew up fast. We had fun, too.
We met a decision, Tom and I, a gray, ancient decision that spoke of possibility and wonder, wisdom and sights never before imagined. It was on the rutted path of right and wrong.

Once, when we were young, Tom and I found the tree of good and no evil. It wasn't tough to sell, as if we needed to pitch to our friends after we cut off a few branches, put in the miracle grow and dried it. After the process, we hung it upside down so we could see it clearly, what with our already upside down reality, we just put on the 3-D glasses.
"You think if I can get some then?"
"No doubt about it. See how much it is. I'll pay, too. Ask the guy!"
"....run across the valley beneath the sacred mountain...and if you think I'm ready, you may lead me to the chasm where the rivers of our vision flow into one another..." The Byrds, 'I wasn't Born To Follow'. Easy Rider Soundtrack.

The neighbor to the left was a corner house and its kitchen backed into Tom's drive. Flowers set in the kitchen window of the neighbor's home. I remember looking at the yellow flowers in a vase before I got out of the car to get Tom.
The rivers of our vision.
A cement pad planed a small porch at the front door. His mom answered and asked me to step inside. She always asked me to come in and I always thanked her. She was a sweet woman and had she known what we were up to she'd have peered into the hourglass of tomorrow and shown us.
"Now you boys can see the whole wide world is standing in a thimble, the sun is melting the maple tree and you've lost your minds, Please do not smoke that stuff!"
"Okay, yeah, mom," Tom would have said, "Sure, you make good sense. Now we're going to try these leafy, green seeded, hay scented clippings."
"Yes, maam," I would have said, "It's the right thing to do. What can we lose? I'll watch out for Tom. You know I almost made it to Eagle Scout..."
"Yes, dear, that's true. You're a good young man, Timothy. It must have been a short circuit in that time machine..."
I remember listening to George Harrison while sitting in that driveway. "Here comes the sun..." It seemed like he was standing nearby, waiting for the sun, waiting for a glimpse of Mrs. A's time machine. "Now you boys should listen. You know what we've been saying about thimbles..."
"This stuff smells like, what? You can practically taste it. It's old barn grass. You think anything's gonna happen?"
"What could happen?" I said, "Worst, we get dizzy and chalk it up to experience."
"Let's not tell anyone till we figure it out."
Are you kidding? I think this stuff is against the law!"

The first week we thought we'd found the greatest secret ever. The first week? The first night.
"Here, try it again."
"You know, I think maybe this stuff is bull. We're not getting anything out of this. Lets forget it..."
"Let's try it till we're done with this one. If it doesn't do anything, no harm...don't tell anyone we did this."
"I won't say a word. Hey, " I said, "Do you feel a little light headed? I don't know. It's not light headed, it's sort of like your skin is stretched out. Silly putty, something."
"You're a riot..."
While we drove along the suburban street that night the five senses changed into a mystic other space.
I don't remember who said "WowZ" first. The sound of a word seemed to be the funniest thing we ever heard.
"This stuff is great!"
"WowZ"
In the 1960's in our small town no one knew what it was. None of us knew anyone who'd tried it. We heard about it in the songs and in the rumors around town. Tom and I decided we should become worldly.

It's been many years. Last week I called an old friend, we called him Paco. He was among the crew and one of the pilots in our forays into trouble and nonsense.
"Yeah, you and Kiki lured the rest of us in. You sob's!"
The group Paco referred to numbered thirteen at its peak.  A couple are gone, one dead, one failing to check in.Those of us left still communicate, as if the trails we found were the original patterns of the Jews in the desert. We were bound to find our way home, to each other.
Paco laughed as we reminisced. He laughed and the laughter turned like those old ferris wheels, like the old smoke rings, like George Harrison was standing by the car and we were all in Tom's driveway, looking at the turned upside down world.
I wish I could tell about the changes in the world. If you're young, you wouldn't believe anymore than we did.

"I pulled into Nazareth, was feeling about half past dead; I just need some place where I can lay my head ...I went lookin for a place to hide; When I saw Carmen and the devil walkin side by side...said "Hey Carmen, let's go downtown. She said, "I gotta go but m'friend can stick around..."  (Robbie Robertson) Easy Rider Soundtrack.

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After Ragbrai the guilt about missing the seven miler in Davenport crept in on cat's paws, as the poet says. The long miles on nearby streets could not have been done for the bike challenge alone. I'd been running and riding like a maniac.I'd planned to do both Ragbrai and the Bix. Brother found a way to stiff arm that. He found a ride to Sioux City that left at eight am. Saturday. Bix started at eight.
Ragbrai felt good. The 442 miles were a challlenge that invigorated. I climbed the Potter Hill without a stop. I slept under a tree, on an open field and under a truck. I sweated out one hundred degree heat and the whipping winds that seeemd to freeze my hands to the handle bars. Brother quit after the third day. He told me he'd riden Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. Three  weeks later he told the truth.
"I came in early two days on those pick up buses."
He'd left me on Wednesday morning.
"This is crazy. This is nuts. I quit."
A small pond had formed in the tent from the downpour in Clear Lake. We woke to soaked sleeping bags, soaked feet and a calamitous drip drip drip onto our duffel bags.
"What's a little spill?" I thought.
"Take the tent, the sleeping bag and the stuff there by the tree," I said. "I'm going on."
My brother shrugged his shoulders. He flagged a rental car and drove to Dubuque.
"That's the story of our lives," I thought, "Me going onward and through the gale and him, quitting, shrugging, paying a butler to carry him, looking at me like I'm nuts."

Maybe the idea of physical fitness is nuts. Running at least one race is nuts. Maybe running two or three is too.
Saturday, August 28 I sat in the car and waited. The green shirted organizers passed out the packets. The sun hammered onto the parking lot. Bottles of water set on a table. Police waited by Pennsylvania Avenue on the west side of Dubuque and the little orange cones stood like miniature sentries along the route. I was ready.
That morning I did a few hundred push ups and a few hundred situps. I paced. I did countless calf drops and stretched and twisted my back till I could have been mistaken for a length of twine.
"Look at the old guy. He's all twisted up and shriveled and bent in places. What's with that?"
I was ready.
This was a 5K race to benefit United Therapy Services and Albrecht Acres. I wore the yellow t-shirt with the Albrect Acres name painted all over it. I would run for them. Dick McGrane and I promoted this on his morning radio show. We hoped someone, a group, an investor, might take the dare and offer something on the old man. I should have advertised the heart attack and the steel rods in my left leg. No one bit. Didn't matter.
"All the competitive runners line up first. Then runners and walkers last."
The woman announced the spread and drill and I debated. Up front there, old fella.
Pop. The gun smoked and we were off. Up the incline, out into the street and pace left into the subdivision before the gas station. I punched on the MP3 and the music softened the hard street. Dylan screamed about the Graveyard and the Tombstone Blues. I was happy.
We ran up Saratoga and around the Casey's in Asbury then into the back of the Roosevelt School. I kept track of being passed and passing others. It was a good run. I passed more than had juked by. And, adding to my confidence, I had overcome other, younger runners and kept them at bay.
Don't believe runners who say it's just for fun. It's never just for fun.
My wife, sweet spirit and angel of my old age, stood by the ramp at the lot. I saw her waving. As I gained and closed in on the last one hundred yards she screamed, "Go! Go! Go Tim, go!"
I turned in right to the incline and dashed to the finish. The darn old clock, a breath ago, showed twenty nine minutes and....
My goal. Precious, dear, exquisite goal. And the time is: thirty and eleven seconds. Kick, Kick, Burn, Frown. Dangngngngngng.
"Hurry up. The funeral 's at eleven."
We had an hour drive to the Davenport area. It was 9:45 or so.
All I could think, "...late for the funeral. Good. I'll be late for the funeral."
My own seemed closer. Being late for it, it seemed like a great idea.

The black asphalt bubbled from a recent painting of tar. The bucket leaned against the garage, the broom stuck to the garbage can. The heat lay on the grass like a wet rug and the grass, spotted by black droplets supported twisted weed, seed, yellow fox tail and big headed dandelion. The 1955 Chevy waited. Joy was a living word.
I turned toward the sixteenth year as if a gazelle, seeing a lion fifty yards behind in a rear view mirror, took a jolt of adrenaline and headed for the bush, knowing the exuberance of the chase, never dreaming about the function of opposing the elder generation.
It helped that they didn’t know I’d seen them.
The Chevy was a gift. The adrenaline, the chase, the joy, those were the elements of the time space continuum. Performance art had engulfed us. Marshall McCluhan sighted the media as the message. Andy Warhol showed us the Campbell Soup can as a subliminal. The media was obvious. Distrust didn’t begin recently. Mets and Jets would confirm the underdog manifesto. Eldrige Cleaver the range of intellect and anger.
In 1967 my brother left the states for Europe to monitor communications for the Army. Human interaction was changing, seventy million people were growing up. The corporate world and the military world were trying to understand what to do with so much youth.
So many of us tried to understand what the meaning of life was and why so many were watching.

My brother left me the keys of freedom. Never again did I see the world through the same eyes; abide parents, teachers, priests, law enforcement or the barrage of media that fired up with onslaughts of story that image could not contain and words not express. Defining moments were mushroom clouds. They were everywhere. Jim Morrison of The Doors brought Freud into our music, relevance to our anger and laughter - belly laughing, stoned laughter at this pompous group of veterans from WWII: that the nineteen sixties were psychedelic is putting a horseshoe on a frog and painting the frog with day glo. Nothing fit except the unlikely, the surprising and the alien.
In 1967 the 55 Chevy helped me fit and make sense of the chase. The old car helped me to touch my grandfather, the last sane man I knew. It promoted choice. It gave solitude. We could put that beast into ramming speed and none dare oppose.
Sometime that year I decided that I lacked friends. Sure, I’d known dozens and dozens of people throughout the grade school years. I’d fashioned a popular place for myself as a social child of these volatile times. Now was the time to make use of friendship, to discover me and the world. The first discoveries amazed and confounded.
With the advent of the wheel I was allowed to go to school on my own, pick up friends, head out to play pool and, find as much trouble and joy as a young man might, given the circumstance.
The next step, precarious and wise, foolish and exhilarating, meant meeting with a childhood friend, an eccentric, who was cooking his own vodka at fifteen.
Mike Heineman, a friend to the end, as Morrison so deeply garbled it in The Doors ‘The End’, had far ranging interest and aptitude. In 1966 he began the quest to make vodka, using potatoes and whatever ingredients he found necessary, from library books and his own muse. He whispered to me this astounding fact one day between classes while he and I were roving the school halls.
“You haven’t!”
“You bet I have!”
“You are too much. How did you do it?”
“Potatoes.”
“There’s more to it than that?!”
“Potatoes and fermentation my foolish child.”
“Mike! When’s the stuff ready. I can sell it and you can make money.”   
“Done. Stop over Friday night and we can make a deal.”
From my homespun book of making friends I reckoned the guys I’d known since kindergarten and after would be interested.
“Time to grow up boys! Wait till you see what I’ve got! Me and Mike, that old friend, eccentric I’ve never lost contact with – he’s got some real hooch. Made it himself. We can buy it and try it!”
So what? You have a car, access to alcohol and all the rowdy friends you can find. Hank Williams Jr couldn’t have serenaded with a better delivery system for trouble.
“Trenkle, where did you get this stuff?”
Tom A or Kiki  had the wisest touch of anyone I 'd known. A sixth sense for that illicit fun that the elder claimed didn’t matter.
“Doc, what the heck. I can’t believe it. This is great. This has potential!”
“Why boys, make better use of your time than chasing after foolishness.” The nun had said before we left eighth grade. She had said that God, sparing the pain that you couldn’t take, was wise in his discretion about how much that pain could do. Each of us understood we’d never be given more than we could handle. As if a choice interrupted the torturous times of dead ends and tornados in the hallway, police chases, adolescent flurries of riotous mayhem, a hundred fists flying in the halls of our insouciance..
Nicked by the pseudonym, Looney, staring with black eyes as if a wolf had dropped in to pay his psyche a visit, Tom L sometimes seemed to froth at the mouth. I called him the dude, the loon, crazy and other similar epithets. He was crazy. And, I was careful with respecting him. That was the ingredient to joining. We each were raising a crooked bar, inflating a fool’s whim, gratifying a freedom lost and found.
Looking in the rear view mirror then seeing who you had been yesterday didn’t matter. It’s what the English teacher said.  Emerson was expressing it. It worked.
“Heineman. He makes it. Try it. It’s a little bitter. Smells a little like potatoes. Here…”
When the dares were done we had a group. A ritual Joseph Campbell would have understood. We were raising ourselves to be men. Potato wine, vodka, it didn’t matter. It showed us the way and the truth. The life was what we made it. A few of the dozen or so of us that took those early initiations never recovered. It’s that thing O’Brien says over and over about war in VietNam, that Plato says about the cave: would you prefer shadows or the real thing?
The fifty five, the potato and all its warts, and the dare, these reached into and retrieved the spirit of spontaneous combustion we had as children.  It was the beginnings of understanding.

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Wouldn’t it be something if a moral revival began in our  lifetimes? Important books would emerge, leaders would speak sense,  marches and crusades would empower the downtrodden. Music would sing the praises of virtue, equity would grow, people would trust more, smile more, engage more and love deeper.  Families would empower society, the enemy would be recognized as being the man in the mirror, generations would talk, share and pass along those best parts of all of us. Good news, true news, worthwhile news would enliven conversation and show us the folly of so many dum ideas. A bomb to end all life doesn’t really make sense.
Scientists would stop counting the number of times a hummuingbird’s wings flap. The intelligent among us would invent upbeat strategies that bring people together like a new and improved marshmellow or a triangluar waffle.
Each day we would think of three good things and find our dreams were better. Your neighbor would tell you something good each day. You would remind yourself about something good about you. Each of us would savor the simple things in life. Each would remember what is precious.
Those crazy, random acts of kindness would be practiced.
One camera would be shut off. One cuss word left unsaid. One sneer abated. An unkind word would be stifled.
A laugh would be shared. A view of the sky given to a child unable to see above the tall shoulders.
Sure, it’s not our job to make each other happy. But can’t we improve our own joy and share it?
Happiness is contagious. Wouldn’t it be neat if you could find more upbeat people and you were one of them?
Of course, it’s not our fault when someone is unhappy but you won’t get hurt by doing a good deed. Don’t they return?
And, guessing it’s true that unhappy people look for a reason to be grim, still, you don’t have to be a target. Why  not shoot a few laughs in that direction, why not listen for a minute longer, why not share your happiness?
Isn’t their negativity often innocent, a sort of sublime ignorance?  Being negative is, after all, a weight of depression not easily shaken. Steer someone in the other direction.
Success is a companion of your own self worth. Choice concerns attitude. Choose your attitude. No one can make it for you.
Often doesn’t it make sense to see your true self as being upbeat? Adapt to change. Seasons change. You can too.
Wouldn’t it be neat if cooperation grew, if interconnectedness mattered…we’re all interdependent.
Live life now. Live as if this moment is all you have. Live it as if it’s eternal.

Verse 1

Old man now

Weathered walnut                                                    

Show your wisdom.

Can see the twinkle in old women's eyes

In memory of your lives.

Under gullied, weathered flesh

Lies the eye of your heart, fresh.                             

Teach this young man

The ways of old,

Fashion me from the land                                      

So I may understand nature,

And the spirit of the soul.

 

Verse 2                                                          

The Lakota say

Power is lost

In a city's noise and grind

 

Where solitude is weighed

And bears a cross upon the mind.

 

Those that know him well

And them that think they do

Take away the solitude of a man

...Who owns his truth.

NAHON (And)

When the shadows fall

The ground upturned,

Remember we will of the man

Who spurned

The tides of power

In cities' grinds and grades

 

Death itself that he bade

To humble itself

To the choice he made.

 

Oonsredonhon iyokola eyohe

For each old friend