Ed - The Perfect Party Favor

Ed lost whatever inhibitions he was genetically predisposed to during the 1920's.   His dad, a captain of the Sioux Falls' Fire Engine company, died in the 1918 flu epidemic leaving two sons and a daughter.  His mother moved back to her hometown and it soon became apparent that the boys were too much to handle.  So on a dry, dusty summer day, the battered black Ford drew up to the Odd Fellow's Home in Dell Rapids and two little boys were given into the care of the retirees and staff of the rest home.  The adventure of Ed's life began there and it ended 80 years later around the same time he stopped buying green bananas. 

This one's for Ed.

"Where are you from and what do you do?" said the man crossing my front yard.  An old curmudgeon smoking unfiltered cigarettes lived in the pink house next door to mine.  Who lives in pink houses anyway?  This coarse, surly, old man did.  "It's my wife's favorite color and her only request after following me around the world was for a house she could call our own and to paint it pink."  "My name's Ed."

Ed's stories played out like a technicolor movie.  Where scrappy boys of 8 and 10 would hustle the staff, terrorize the nursing aides and listen intently to the stories of the WWI veterans who were living out their last days entertaining the kids with tales of the Great War.  Where the protagonist starts chain smoking at 14 and is reunited with his mother only to find out that it was because a young man's strength is an asset, not a liability, to making money on the surrounding farms.  Where that move sets the stage for the hero to meet the love of his life - Mo.

Before enlisting in the Navy in the late 1930's, Ed and his brother did a stint in the CCC building Iron Mountain Road out in the Hills.  He rode the rails across South Dakota in empty train cars on the weekends or when he was needed back on the farm.  "Gettyburg's sheriff was the best.  He'd figure when we'd be on the cars, take us off and give us something to eat.  You'd get a hell of a lecture but the food was worth it."

He went to the South Pacific looking for Amelia Earhart, was in Pearl Harbor years before its destruction and had a chance to join the crew who would support one of Admiral Byrd's expeditions to Antarctica.   He came home ready to settle down, married his high school sweetheart and then the "Japs bombed Pearl Harbor" - that's how he talked.  He and his brother were sent back to the Pacific.  

It took forever to get home after the peace treaty had been signed.  There were only so many ships, and it took days, sometimes weeks to get from point A to point B and he'd pass from one ship to the next in his haphazard logistical voyage heading east.  "Whenever you could catch a ship headed to the east you did.  No one knew when you'd return home."  It turned out to be a great surprise for Mo when he appeared at the bottom of the apartment building steps.  Cue the background music.

Coming home, he missed the service and found it difficult to make ends meet.  So he enlisted again, only this time in the army.  Now based in Japan, he was providing support for the police action in Korea.  Calling Korea a police action pissed Ed off, I only did it once.  War is war and he saw action at Inchon, Iwon, Ulsan, Hungnam and the second landing at Inchon.     

After Korea, they were off to France.  He didn't have much nice to say about the French.  Rebuilding efforts were in earnest and Berlin was the epicenter for the Cold War.  He passed through what would be known as Checkpoint Charlie a few months before the wall was completed.  He also provided coordination services for the crew filming "The Longest Day".  I loved those stories best.  "That Zanuck fella would prance into the officer's club all gussied up, you'd never see him without some fancy scarf tied up around his neck." Or another favorite, "Eddie Albert was a really nice fella when he wasn't drinking but he was pretty much drinking all the time." 

A forty year old he said had no place trying to keep up with the 18 year old enlisted men so he passed on an opportunity to go back to Asia as an advisor.  "My time was over and it was probably a good thing."  He was one of the very few service men to ever reach the highest enlisted rank in two branches of service.   I don't believe that is possible now. 

So they came home. Bought a house. Painted it pink.  Mo died the year I moved in next door.  She had severe dementia and he placed her up to the Odd Fellows Home in Dell Rapids for her final days.  He'd come home and report back to me on all the comings and goings and when she was gone he was deeply saddened by her passing.

During the week he would drive his Chrysler down to the VFW for breakfast and lunch, smoking, talking politics and swapping stories.  During the day he would put on his uniform and conduct flag ceremonies on behalf of the VFW.  He never, ever passed up a chance to talk to the kids at the Children's Home Society.  His story, he felt, was one they could connect with. 

Toward evening he'd watch for me to come home and if I wasn't outside within thirty minutes he'd be at my door, saying "Coming out?".  Unless it was Wednesday.  On Wednesday he'd go over to the Center for Active Generations, he called it degenerates, to dance.  He'd come home exhausted having danced into the night with a whole bevy of ladies - some he said danced better than others.  There he met a North Dakotan with a deep German brogue.  The two of them became inseparable.  She'd take the bus to the pink house and he'd take her home in the Chrysler.

He'd interrogate all of the bums he proclaimed I dated and he'd come to every family gathering I hosted.  He didn't need an invitation, he would just walk over when he saw the guests gathering.  Someone would always give him his classic opening line by asking him his age. "Well, you know I don't buy green bananas anymore" and he would close at the end of a night's stories with "I was so poor the only thing a thief would get from robbing me is experience".  Pocketbook poor but rich in life.

He was demanding and intrusive.  He wouldn't take no for an answer.  And underneath it all, was that six year old boy on an adventure.  He golfed, attended Mardi Gras, and as a retired prison guard, signed up to watch hospitalized prisoners after 9/11 way into his eighties. 

He hadn't been feeling well through December of '03 and in January I got a call.  "I got some bad news today - small cell lung carcinoma.  The doctor says I got maybe six weeks.  Said the smoking didn't cause it.  I'd sure like to make it to Valentine's Day though.  Mo died on February 14.  I'd sure like to see her again then."

He planned his own funeral. Asked his own pallbearers to carry him. Picked out his uniform, had it laundered and mended.  Then his son, son-in-law and grandson moved in to the pink house.  They played cards, chain smoked Camels, and told the funniest stories.  I would sit by Ed's side each night and take in what I later called a sacred journey - life to death.

When he left the pink house by wheelchair for inpatient hospice care, it was spring - Easter to be exact.  He had called the week before and let me know that he wouldn't be around to ride with me in the convertible one last time.  I told him not to worry, as his presence would always be felt.  And on a Saturday I went to say good bye.  I was off to meet a bum.  He had me bend down - "no more jewelry" he said.  I laughed.  My closest family and friends will know what that means.  A last little piece of advice, not nearly as colorful as "got a middle finger, then use it." but his message was conveyed.

The formal send off was sad, but the impromptu party that night with his family was ridiculously fun.  There was drinking, karaoke, gambling, and chain smoking.  And then there were stories of Ed, the perfect party favor.

The Finale

Tonight is the American Idol Finale.  I don't usually pay much attention to the show.  Until something happened two years ago to change that.   

Several friends came to gather at the funeral of a colleague who drank himself to death on a sad May day.  It's a blunt statement but factual.  I gave his family credit for not hiding the pain he, and they, went through as they reflected on his life at the service.  He was a great guy who had a serious disease.  He also had this terrific voice and they played a recording of him doing "Tomorrow's a Brand New Day" for the recessional.  There wasn't a dry eye in the house.  I called alot of friends I hadn't talked to in awhile on the way home that morning.  One of those phone calls went something like this...

"Hi Tim.  We haven't talked in awhile, what are you up to?" 
"Hi. Hey, I'm glad you called. I have a favor to ask of you." 
       Since favors are Tim's specialty, this is no surprise.
"I'm helping out with a daschund rescue charity auction." 
       This is a new twist to favors.
"And you are the only person I know who could buy two tickets, backstage passes and wrap party tickets to the American Idol Finale next week. They really aren't that much." 
       American Idol?  That's still on huh? This can't be for real. 
"Well Tim I can't go because I have a board meeting." 
"Oh."
       Disappointment seeped through the line. 
"Well I just wanted to help out the daschunds and my friend who is organizing the auction."
"So how did these tickets get into your friend's hands?"
"Someone connected to the show has daschunds."
       OK, that makes sense.
"Well then, given the morning, happy birthday."
"SERIOUSLY?"
"Sure, consider it a thank you for all the design work you've done around the house at no comp."
"COOL!  But I don't have anyone to go with."
      And I thought this would be easy. 
"I'll find you someone to go with."

The first person I called - who knows and likes Tim. 
"I have Season Finale tickets to AI, want to go?" 
"No, I wouldn't know anyone." 

Next text message. 

"Do you watch AI?" 
"Yes, why?"
"I have Finale tickets for next week." 
"Really?" 
"Yes."
"Can you take time off work?"
"Yes"
"Happy Birthday and btw you're going with Tim."
"Nice!"

I sent them on their way the day of the show.  I got a text picture of them holding their tickets in a cab they'd taken to collect them.  Two rows back from where Seacrest did his audience shots.  Nice. 

Let's see, Black Eyed Peas, Steve Martin, Lionel Ritchie, Rod Stewart, KISS, Queen Latifah, Keith Urban, Cyndi Lauper, Queen rocked the house.  Nice.  Better than nice actually. 

Sometimes good things come during sad times.  Sometimes good things originate with daschunds.  They had an awesome time and I was just a touch envious of their ability to go at the drop of a hat and experience the moment.  I had my own moments though on that drive home, reconnecting, and the AI story was only one of the many I gathered on that day.   Perhaps tomorrow is a brand new day, but so too is today.

Holiday meals are synonymous with family stories.  Mostly recycled ones.  Some holiday meals become family stories - I have at least one of those that involves exploding pipes.  Last winter, as my sisters and I gathered with the next generation of family, we shared a story that both fascinated and intrigued the thirty and twenty something year old's present.  It happened in the 1940's - way before my time but we can thank mom for keeping the story alive over the years.  That's where this story begins.

It's summer on the high plains.  Hot and sticky.   My sister and I were on our way to Sioux Falls with mom, a field trip of sorts.  We were probably twelve and sixteen respectively at the time and headed to the Argus Leader microfiche room.    Mom told us a story on the way in.

Farm families were close back in the day.  You knew a stranger from the rooster tail their car dust kicked up as it appeared a half mile down the gravel road.  When your dad and I were first married, we had a hired man who lived with us on the farm.  Not for long, just through the harvest.  Didn't know really much about him.  Well that man eventually married my cousin and they had a little girl.  The man wasn't right and he killed both his wife and himself back in the forties - leaving the girl without her parents.  Today, we're going to look up the newspapers from that time.   It was a very big story and I want you kids to read about it.  There is a girl, now a woman, who doesn't know her mom's family.   She was raised by her father's side and none of us know whatever happened to her.  Perhaps someday she'll return looking for answers and it will fall upon you to fill in the pieces.

Mom was not kidding when she said the story made the headlines.  Taking the reels of microfiche out of storage container after storage container, it took us about an hour to pin down the exact timeframe.  The case was worthy of a week's worth of front page stories.  First there was the disappearance.  Young mother didn't come in to work.  Next there was the investigation into the disappearance followed by news of finding the bodies in a car parked along a gravel road the next day just outside the city limits.  The conclusions were quickly drawn and the police were asked whether they had done everything they could in a case that started with domestic violence.  It was a different time then, the case was closed and the reporters moved on.  Yet there was a child.  For reasons that will forever be lost to time, the child was released to the paternal grandparent's care.  The maternal grandmother spent her life savings hiring lawyers and investigators to find and return the child but it was money spent that would never deliver any return.  She died in the 70's never seeing her grandchild grow from a toddler to a woman.

It's now 1993, some fifty years since the disappearance and nearly twenty since our field trip to the over heated newsroom.  It is spring, June to be precise, and two strangers entered town.  They had started their day in the same microfiche room at the Argus looking only to find a woman's obituary.  By the end of their reading they came to know the circumstances of her death and it pointed them to a small town fifteen miles to the north.

Starting with a phone call to the church the woman's family was associated with according to the news accounts they had read, the strangers asked the pastor if he knew of the family.  The name wasn't familar and generations had passed, he was moving his family that day to Michigan or he would take the strangers out to the township cemetary where the woman was buried.  Instead they made their way to down to Main Street. 

They stopped at the weekly newspaper office, it was noon and closed for the lunch hour.  So they walked down the block that made up the whole of downtown and stopped at the local cafe.  They hold the door for an elderly gentleman to pass through.  His walk was slow, his balance assisted by two canes. 

Making their way to the counter, they asked the woman behind the cashier's till if she had heard of the family name or knew where the township cemetary was located.  "No, but I'll bet the man who you held the door open for might know."   They came out of the storefront looked to the east and saw the old man just now approaching his car.  "Excuse us sir but we are looking for the resting place of a family member."  They relayed the details of what they had learned that morning and he said, "I know who you are.  While I am old and in no shape to take you there, there is a woman who lives close by to where you will find what you're after. Here's how you find her."

And on a June afternoon, with her dog Cindy by her side, mom opened the porch door cautiously to the strangers who had arrived bearing out-of-state license plates.  The woman in her early fifties said, "My name is Shirley".  Mom replied simply, "We've been looking for you".