The Cool Kid November 30, 1985
Greg was cool, a lean, tough kid from grammar school I have
seen only once since around 1972 when I came back from out west.
By then, he was married with two kids, laboring in some
working class job I figured he would eventually overcome.
He was a smooth kind of clever as a kid that had girls at
school whispering their admiration behind his back. He was lean, slightly
taller and thinner than I was, with narrow lips and an intense stare. He always
dressed in a button-down shirt (often patterned), slacks and black shoes.
Mary Ann said she once went to his house on the corner of
Gordon and Crooks at some point in the 7 th or 8 th grade and quickly
discovered his wandering hands.
Gordon is located two blocks down Crooks Avenue from where I
lived on Lakeview and Crooks, and so he had only a two block walk up hill to
school each day.
I visited his house a few times, as he visited mine to play
with me in my uncle’s boat yard.
He always struck me as somewhat isolated, living in a yellow
stucco house with one of those black jockeys holding a lamp along the walk to
his front door. His father made them as a hobby. His lawn was so perfectly manicured,
it could have been cut with a knife, blade by blade.
I could never overcome the feeling of sadness that seemed to
hover over his world. His bedroom was off limits when I visited him, as was the
rest of the second floor. I saw only brief glimpses of thick carpet and
complete order – nothing was ever out of place there, not even a dishtowel.
This is perhaps what fascinated me about him and his world,
since my world was utter chaos.
We generally played in his basement, a wood-floored
room where his father had built a bar. Greg
kept all his toys stored in a box in the corner.
Sometimes, we wandered out into his back yard, somewhat
lower than Crooks Avenue running along one side of it, protected by a
decorative wall. It had patches of flowers and a slate walk down its middle
upon which Greg had no doubt been instructed to walk – although Greg seemed to
take special pleasure of walking on the grass instead – just as he took special
pleasure in rolling down the dusty embankment in front of my house up the
street.
There was an old fashioned charcoal grill in the corner
of his yard, reserved for holiday events
such as on the Fourth of July.
The garage – which was made of the same yellow stucco – was
also off limits, although Greg sometimes stared longingly inside as the work
bench his father had built in there and the plaster casts from which his father
made the little black men hanging on the wall, waiting for his father’s hand
create new ones.
All in all, Greg seemed much happier when he came up to see
me at my house, wandering around between the boats in the vast boatyard. He
liked to climb in the boats and tell me, “Let’s go for a ride.”
He would sometimes hide behind the mounds of boat motor
parts. We played shoot outs using cut out pieces of wood from one of my uncles’
carpentry business. Out of pity, Greg once traded me a pearl handled plastic
cowboy revolver with which I could play. I don’t remember what I gave him, but
I loved that pistol and played with it until the plastic gave out and it fell to
pieces.
Our friendship was not long – even though we went through
all the grades of grammar school together.
I think his parents disapproved of me of the disorder that
dominated my life.
But he was one of the few kids from school who knew me by my
middle name which my family used, and was someone who shared almost all my
adventures around the house, such as climbing up into the cherry tree to pick
the fruit or pretending my front porch was a space ship, or my cellar some kind
of ancient cavern.
At some point in the mid-1970s, I heard he had gotten
divorced, and for some reason, this struck me as extremely sad, as if I could
feel his pain and his loneliness.
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