Best friends come and go

“Chapter 17 Move to the City and Meeting My Best Friend

I believe it was March when we moved from Mt. Gilead to Columbus, Ohio. That meant saying goodbye to my best friends. Mrs. Burgraff’s class gave a party in my honor, and I think they gave to me a book about rocks which I liked very much. I cried on the way out, and some of my friends did also.

This concluded the first major period in my life. I was leaving Mt. Gilead, the home of my father and my father’s fathers. I was moving to Columbus, Ohio. One redeeming thing about this is it is home of The Ohio State University and Ohio State Buckeyes.

We used to listen to basketball games in those days, and we were glued to radio broadcasts by announcer Jimmy Crum who declared, “That was a real barn burner of game, wasn’t it?”

We moved into the new house and I had to register at North Linden Elementary School, Columbus Public Schools on Cook Road. I would be starting school at year’s end and this would set up special circumstance as I would enter class in the middle of a curriculum that was different from that in Mt. Gilead.

To summarize my state of being at that time, I was by most standards, exceptionally well-behaved in public, while mischievous at home. I was a good boy as was my brother. While our folks packed up our belongings, we listened to the radio, WJR from Detroit. We could get Detroit stations easier than those from Columbus, Ohio even though Columbus was closer. I liked the music from Detroit as it was jazzier.

Within a couple of days, we would meet our neighbors next door, Mr. and Mrs. Bell. They were to the left of us. Judge Weimer lived on the corner next to the Bells. The neighbors to the right were too far away to meet. An empty lot lay behind our backyard and it was thick with trees, brush, and an abandoned house.

Way back on that street were two boys that we met soon after moving in. They were Mike and Doug. This was perfect because they were about the same age as Tim and me. Mike was a school grade less than mine, though we were the same age. He was taller and stronger in appearance than me.

Mike had a flat top hair style, and I had long hair with a part. I would have to get my hair cut in a more stylish manner, I thought. His brother, Doug, had dark hair and dark skin. I learned that they had a sister who suffered a mental disability and a baby sister as well. Their father worked as railroad engineer. Their Mother, a wonderfully kind person also worked, with aunts from the neighborhood looking after the children at times.

There were some peculiarities about this neighborhood that my Dad did not discover while house hunting. It was on the fringe between a new area and a depreciating community. It was between poverty and a little more plenty, and between white Anglo-Saxon Protestants and Italian Catholics. It could go either way, positive or negative.

Now, I know my parents liked this little three bedroom house at 2223 Radnor Avenue in what is called North Linden adjacent to Clintonville. They kept black and white photos of it as it was painted a tan color and featured a white rail fence along the sidewalk from the drive to the front door. The yard had a few apple trees, Jonathon and Maiden Blush varieties. We were able to plant a full garden in the back yard. The street was lined with mature maple trees.

When I visited Columbus a few years ago to see the old homestead on Radnor Avenue, it was demolished and replaced with a warehouse. I guess the neighborhood turned industrial.

I remember Mrs. Bell complaining about why she had to move from old Linden to this northern suburb. She said it was because of the encroaching city and blacks moving in. She said crime was on the rise. Now, she was able to plant a yard full of flowers and a garden with vegetables, though she warned my parents about some bad boys in the neighborhood and that included Mike, at least. Doug’s reputation faired a little better with her.

My Mother listened though would make her own judgments.

Mike drove his bike in front of our house when I was in the yard. I walked out to meet him. I told him my name and he told me his and he offered to shake hands. He couldn’t be less than a gentleman in doing this, I thought. He asked me if I wanted a tour of the neighborhood, and I wanted to do this. I asked him to come inside to meet my mother.

I introduced him, and he demonstrated the best manners. He was a cheerful boy and assured Mother that he would be a good friend because no one else lived in the neighborhood his age. With that, I sought silent permission to go on a bike ride, and Mom gave me a nudge and we were off.

We first went to the basketball court next to a baseball diamond both of which were bounded by a railroad track. A firehouse was on the other side of the ball field. How great can that be?

Next, we biked from the playground to his house on the street parallel with ours. He wanted to show to me his back yard that had a small ball diamond. If you hit a home run, it would land in Mrs. Bell’s garden which explained part of the reason for her complaining.

Adjacent Mike’s house was an alleyway that went all the way through to my street. Mike’s neighbors included the Mayes family. Jack Mayes owned the carryout that was collocated with their house. A couple of years later and Mike and I would pay attention to the Mayes’ family because they had several daughters. To make a long story short, by the time that there may be mutual interest we had already soiled our reputation as being the neighborhood rowdies.

For a moment in spring 1959, I had to complete the school year with a teacher named Mrs. Cresap. Now, she was most familiar with Mike because he had her the year before, and that may have cost him to be set back a year. She saw me with Mike in the hallway and probably formed an immediate idea that I could be trouble. As it were, I came to class being very intimidated by new surroundings and new people.

I walked to school now, and my breakfast wasn’t fully digested because I had to leave so early.

I was quiet and put my head down. “Let’s see who you are,” asked Mrs. Cresap? “Stand up and tell us your name.”

“Jimmy George,” I responded as I stood by my seat.

“A boy with two first names; that will be easy to remember,” she said.

That’s all I needed, the boy with two first names. I usually encountered a problem on the first day of school when teachers would hand out a form with instruction, “last name first.”

She asked from where I came, and I explained from Mt. Gilead, Ohio.

“That sounds biblical,” she said.

I had never thought about that before.

She said that I would have to do a lot of reading to catch up with them. As it turned out, I was well past where this class was. In fact, I had accomplished in Mt. Gilead already as much as she would get done the balance of the year.

One thing Mrs. Cresap did in her class that Mrs. Burgraff did not do, and that was to conduct a music session. Mrs. Cresap played the piano that was in the room. The first song that I learned from her was The Erie Canal. This was in conjunction with a course in Ohio History.

The Erie Canal

I've got a mule, her name is Sal,
15 miles on the Erie Canal
She's a good old worker and a good old pal,
15 miles on the Erie Canal

We've hauled some barges in our day
filled with lumber, coal and hay
And we know every inch of the way from
Albany to Buffalo.

Chorus:
Low bridge, everybody down
Low bridge for we're coming to a town
And you'll always know your neighbor, you'll always know your pal
If you've ever navigated on the Erie Canal.

We better get along on our way ol' gal,
15 miles on the Erie Canal

'Cause you bet your life I'd never part with Sal,
15 miles on the Erie Canal.
Git up there mule, here comes a lock,
We'll make Rome about 6 o'clock
One more trip and back we'll go, right back home to Buffalo.

We sang this song at least once a week for the remaining three months of my class with her. To this day, I cannot erase the tune from my memory, and the ‘ol’ gal who taught it to me.

I completed the school year fine with her, though I did not have the positive feeling that I had developed in Mt. Gilead.

Now, summer came and we learned that there was a swimming pool nearby to which we could become members. Mother got us a family membership at Linden Beach. Linden Beach was located behind the McKendree Methodist Church that we chose as our new place of worship. When I attended, this was a thriving church with over 500 in attendance every Sunday. Today, there are only 100 parishioners remaining as the neighborhood moved northward. The train didn’t leave the station, the station left the train.

Funny thing about Linden Beach is that it was a concrete mass surrounded by some lawn with no “beach” in sight. The nearest beach was 150 miles due North.

I had learned to swim before moving to Columbus beginning with splashing in the water in an inner tube at Lake Erie. I first learned to swim under water and then moved to free style on the surface. I developed more proficient skills at the public pool in Mt. Gilead the summer before.

Mike and I went to the pool on bicycles by ourselves. There, we played ball tag and I learned that Mike was an exceptional athlete. For all of my effort, expending the same energy and doing the same things, I would never accomplish what Mike could do. He could swim faster, further, deeper, and longer than I.

At the pool, we engaged with other boys and girls, most of whom Mike knew, and that would be new friends to me. We got into trouble with the life guards immediately by running, swimming during rest periods, throwing the ball and hitting people who were not playing with us, etc. I was deviating from my normal status of not breaking the rules.

Sometimes, Mike and I had to take our brothers along. Doug was a year younger than Tim, but he was nearly as good a swimmer as Mike. Tim did not swim. He did not want to get into the water, and once in the shallows, he did not want to put his head under the water. That was his prerogative as far as I was concerned, though Mike became obsessed with wanting to teach him how to swim.

I am certain that Mike truly wanted to teach him how to survive in the water. Tim didn’t see it that way as Mike tried and succeeded at throwing him in. From there, he would attempt to teach him to swim, though Tim believed Mike was trying to drown him. Thank heaven Doug was there to intervene and to take Tim to the safe end of the pool.

Mike introduced me to bean shooting that is putting a handful of dried navy beans into your mouth and blowing them out a large straw. The introduction to this began when he unloaded a stream of beans that ricocheted from my chest. I had to get a straw and some beans to defend myself. Funny thing is that days after shooting beans at one another, bean plants began sprouting throughout the neighborhood.

Next, we graduated to sling shots that we made from inner tube rubber and a sturdy forked stick. With practice, our accuracy with a sling shot was pretty good, and it was threatening enough to keep our enemies at bay.

Our weaponry advanced as we learned to make bows and arrows. Ultimately, we would each buy our weapon choice, BB guns. I had a rifle and Mike had a pistol. We did some bad things with those guns, mostly by accident, and sometimes on purpose. I regret shooting birds in Judge Weimer’s yard. He actually gave us the idea because he shot starlings that roosted in his pine trees. So we joined him.

We mostly set up tin cans and bottles and shot at them. Sometimes, BBs would ricochet or go stray and hit neighbors’ windows. There were enough complaints to bring the Sheriff around to tour the neighborhood. He stopped us with our weapons and asked where we shoot them. We told that we only shot in the field beyond the railroad track. While that was a lie, it became truth in the future as we did not want to have trouble with the law.

When we did not ride our bikes, we walked. When we did this, Mike introduced me to a game called Lucky Strike. That was played by being the first to spot a Lucky Strike cigarette pack lying along Cleveland Avenue. The first to yell I spy a Lucky would get to strike a blow to the losers shoulder. While I got in some good blows, Mike’s rate was two to one against me.

The cigarette days were surely terrible so far as littering goes. I often thought and still think today, that fines should be levied against any manufacturer whose brand is found on roadside debris, charged by the pound.

Back in the neighborhood, a couple of miles from the pool, there was an A&W root beer stand. Mother would give to me a little money so that I could get a root beer and a sandwich there with Mike.

Mike did odd jobs to make money, mowing lawns and such. I needed something like that. We got our hair cut at Rudy’s barber shop. Rudy had a sign saying he needed a helper to clean the shop. I signed on for this and was paid handsomely, I think, a dollar a day plus a tip.

Then, I offered to mow the lawn as his shop was next to Jack’s Carryout. Then Jack asked to mow his lawn, even though he had daughter who could do this. I was rolling in cash now.

During the summer in 1959, our family adjusted to the move. We were away from handy grandparents and aunts and uncles. We were on our own. Mother had no job and no local friends. One friendly guy that came everyday was Bill Kish, the mailman.

Mr. Kish became a friend of Mother and Dad and he invited us to his home for dinner. This was a special treat because Bill and his wife were Jewish. Their European style cooking was different and we enjoyed their company. Concurrent with this new friendship, the Methodist Church conducted a field trip for children to visit a synagogue in Bexley.

From the combination of our postman friend and the visit, I began studying the Old Testament and Jewish Religion out of shear fascination. This would extend further a few years later when I would take the bus to temple on Friday nights for the experience. My parents had no objection since any attention to the Bible for them would be a good thing.

I still attended Methodist church services on Sundays, where we had lessons and accountability for assignments like attending school. Calvin Roadaheffer was the minister and he showed solid interest and making us good people. This was good discipline, I guess, and an opportunity to meet children whom I would see again in the Sixth Grade.

That summer, Mike, Doug, Tim, and I would play baseball together. When it was just the four of us, we would play in Mike’s back yard. When we wanted a pick up game, we would go to the playground where other guys hung out waiting for something to happen. Usually, these guys were older and the four of us would divide to make two separate teams. We played hard, and during this time, we learned our strengths. I was good at pitching with my left hand. Mike was good at hitting the best stuff that I could throw at him.

Sometimes, a couple of local bruisers would take our ball away to tease us. We toyed along with this for a few weeks, and then we had a meeting to discuss it. Mike and I believed that we were big enough to take any one of the bruisers if we worked together.

We decided that the next time we got one of them alone; we would challenge him and work him over. We executed the plan, and that changed a fellow’s mind about teasing us. The word was out that Mike and Jim had a gang (our brothers included) and we were tough.

Now, in my stories, I have been careful to name real people only when I have their permission and when I haven’t anything derogatory to say. Well, in this section of the book, I must add that some of the players have been convicted of capital crimes and I have no desire to name names, so to speak. So, I will use some fictitious names that provide the same look and feel without hurting anyone’s’ family ties, if you know what I mean.

Without belaboring the point, one of the neighbors was known to be active in the numbers racket in Ohio. We were sitting in our living room when a bomb exploded at the subject neighbor’s house and shook our picture window. That was a wakeup call.

At the start of the sixth grade, the local neighbor who had been expelled from Catholic school along with his friends attended my class. A group of them met me after school, and one guy with a threatening name like Soldato told me that I would have to give up some lunch money to prevent being beaten up after school.

I asked him, “So how much do you want?”

The guy said, “35 cents a day.”

I said, “No problem. I’ll pay by the week, $1.75.”

After the first week I thought about this. I talked it over with Mike. We agreed that my going along set bad precedence. I would knock it off, though I would have Mike, Tim, and Doug with me.

I met them the next Monday with my boys with me on the sidelines. Capo di Tutti Capi was the neighbor boy whose house had been bombed. He was a small guy who wore shoes called Spades that gave him an extra lift, and would be no trouble without the “hoods” around him.

I said to the Soldato, “Hey, you know our deal? I am calling it off.” You must put this in context. A year or so ago, I am living in rural Ohio, now I am in mini gangland.

“You can’t do that Jimmy boy,” he said.

“What are you going to do about it,” I asked?

“We’re going to kick your ass,” they said in some sort of mangled unison.

They rushed me. My boys jumped in, four against their five with the little man.

We punched and shoved to a stalemate before the teachers arrived to break it up. I explained to the principal what had happened and he said that he would talk with their parents and tell them to leave us alone.

Standing our ground earned some respect, and since we really weren’t competing for the same turf, the war was over. In fact, in the back of our minds, I believe that both groups knew that we would aid one another against any rival enemies that might come along.

The threat from our potential alliance was considered by hoods from adjacent neighborhoods, I think. How communications in the hoods works seems mysterious, but it is really based on word-of-mouth storytelling and urban myth, I guess. Mike and I did much to fuel the myth as that was part of our means of self-preservation.

It may sound like we were adults at this stage, though in truth we were just a couple of gangly youngsters thrust into an environment in which we had to cope.

This is the most inglorious part of my life.”