The Stage
(Part Nine) (concerning the boys on the Church steps, 1965))
The Church steps at Jackson and Sycamore, within what was called Donkeyland, three blocks away from Cayuga Street, is where Chick Evens and the boys hung out during many an evenings. It was a huge stone structure, on a limestone set foundation, with solid cement steps, perhaps fifteen steps to its backdoor, that led into the back of the church, funny, but the front was really in the back. And the church itself was a huge red brick building, with a steeple covered with black tiles, ones you'd use for a house. Across the street was the Jew Store, so it was called, two old fat Jews owned it, they looked older than Moses, the boys would warm up in the winter months, used it for when they catch a bus a few years back-if the old lady didn't chase you out that is: heading onto Como Jr. High School, out near Como Park, now the Kapaun's had bought it. The Church seemed to overshadow it from across the street. Up a block were the two local bars, where the guys from Donkeyland, were weaned from the cradle to the crypt.
Cars coming north and south, to downtown, and away from town, passed this way, and you couldn't avoid seeing the gang of ten or twenty, or even more kids gawking at the drivers, meeting one another, thinking, planning, as Gunner, and Mouse and a few of the other boys, rode by in their stolen Dodges, and Chevy Impalas, Ford Thunderbirds, and so on, and so forth. The Chattering band, told their rude jokes, and cried their wolf calls at lone women driving by, Jackie now was Doug's girl, and she was often there, as was Sam's and his future wife, Nancy, and Jennie with Larry, and Mike with Carol, it was the summer of 1965, and Chick with Barb. There they all sat-Ace doing his dance of the twenty-four blackbirds-now having a bigger audience-no one, and I mean no one at all, regretting a thing, half drunk, boisterously laughing at nothing, meaningless shouting, and endless streams of four-lettered words. In a way, these were not the dark days for the cops of Donkeyland, they knew were the boys were, and that was goodness. And unless someone made a complaint, they just rode by, some with shaded glasses on, as if not to be recognized in future times, some even waving their hands and Howe, usually stopped and would say a word or two.
It seemed as if Doug was dating everyone in the neighborhood at one time or another during this time, Larry had stuck with Jennie St. John, and John St. John had come to age, and joined the boys on the church steps, he was the youngest of the gang. And Mike, after a number of years of marriage, would find Jessie St. John, as his mate for a fling, giving up his marriage for a toss in the hay; Jessie had earned that reputation, the same one Jill Manning had earned-was earning, and Vicky Schultz was earning, and Pizza Face had earned. But for Mike, that was still years in the making.
In the relationship between the boys and the steps, there was a quality that even seemed to-almost seemed to-produce a healthy respect for the public, they didn't want to lose their new found meeting place, the turnaround by Evens' house was dark and dead and lost whatever quality it had, now this was alive, it was like they were on stage, unhealthy for the environment perhaps and the tax payers, but steadily they looked into the eyes of the roaming public, drowning their puzzled look into their eyes. But in a matter of two years, with a combination of leaving whiskey and wine and beer bottles on the steps, and sing as loud as one could the latest tunes by Roger Miller-such as "King of the Road," and giving the finger to the passing by cars, and a few police raids the church itself took the steps out, and made the back, which was the front, the back, and the front became the front without steps, and that was that for the new, and now old meeting place. Sometimes we become our worse enemies, we work against ourselves. But the boys were growing up now, and they preferred houses to steps, and Chick Evens got to know Jerry Hino, and started his drinking over there with his wife Betty, and Ace would show up, and Doug now and then, and now Roger was working for the Horseshoe Bar on Rice Street so he didn't have time for the boys, and Doug was getting in to new adventures, and a many of the boys were going into the Army, and things were changing in 1966 to 1968, matter of fact, the whole world of those days of no regrets were ending fast.
No: 577 (1-19-2010)
Epilogue
The Hours
There is little life in that neighborhood now, it has all crept out of our bones, and out of the neighborhood it self: the houses are all torn down, and the steel factory is gone, and the park is a parking lot, and the trains have halted, and the two grocery stores, once owned by two Jews and then bought by two non Jews they also are gone, made into apartments. Yet the darkness of those years still stirs and reverberates in the night-in my dreams. Strange years they were, in what was called Donkeyland, Minnesota. The ground under my feet seems to crack when I think back on them-perhaps its me cracking with age-and my hands when I move them, I feel like a decaying trunk of a tree, left on the wayside, they are stiff and sore: its now been forty-four years that have passed. In a few more most of us who lived this time, will have passed on, our hours will be up on earth, as surely as the branches of those shimmering green trees have long since fallen-once and for all, -and they have because I've been there. Actually, they were pulled out by their roots, like we all were, slowly. And that dusty old empty lot, that surrounded us overshadowing our ever move, encircling our daily paths through our growing years, that may be the only thing left, a path in back of Rice School, that lead down to the empty lot, across from the Evens, that is the only thing left, and after I'm gone, perhaps will be the only thing, one will find to prove this story once was.
No: 578 (1-20-2010)
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