Chapter 6 - Boys and Men

In nineteen eighteen the participation by most citizens, to assist in the war in Europe, seemed to have removed half of the men in Salina. In less than eighteen months the size of the U.S. armed forces grew from one hundred thousand men, to almost one million stationed in Europe alone. The news reports were vague descriptions that came over the wire and reprinted in the local papers days after the fact. Every couple of weeks a native son’s body would arrive at the train depot, its identity unknown until the station master read the side of the box. The sheriff’s deputies would load the coffin onto a flat bed truck, and the truck would circle downtown Salina on a slow six block journey before arriving back to Iron Street and the funeral home. The coffin would be draped with a flag and neighbors began the ritual of lining the sidewalks in front of their homes, with their hats in hands and some of them holding small American flags, and their heads held low in quiet homage. The children of Salina had learned to follow this ritual and they would stop playing and run to the sidewalks to stand with their mothers and some with their fathers, where they would hold vigil during the minute or so it took for the truck to pass.

Sheriff Winston Malloy had enlisted more than a year before President Wilson had declared war and was quickly promoted to Lieutenant under General John J. Pershing. His body was never found after the battle of Marne, believed to have been destroyed near the Chemin des Dames Ridge. Despite the absence of his body, a coffin weighted with bricks, was brought through town in his honor. In the summer of nineteen seventeen Ernest Bleckley was paroled from the Kansas State Prison and conscripted directly into the Army on condition that he fight. On the freezing winter night, of the early morning hours following the end of the Christmas truce of nineteen eighteen, he crawled more than forty yards on his belly, he stabbed and shot six Germans who were manning a machine gun that had terrorized his platoon for days. Two months afterward, Bleckley’s body was brought back to Salina, dead from complications of Mustard Gas inhalation. He was interned in reverence at the City common, under electric lights, for three days. Where the townspeople had gathered for a ceremony in which a Colonel with the Kansas National Guard posthumously presented Ernest Bleckley’s father with the Distinguished Service Cross. John felt it necessary to attend the service of the man who had tried to kill him. He had stood with the boys next to Mr. and Mrs. Bleckley who were seen proud yet solemn, as much as any two parents could be following the death of their only son, a son who had been a convict, who was now a dead hero. In this circumstance John found strong meaning about the nature of men. In his thoughts he forgave Ernest Bleckley while he stood at the ceremony. That a man could want to kill his neighbor, and later want to kill for his nation and his comrades in arms, made perfect sense to John. He saw no conflict, only differences in situations and differences in mind that might occur naturally to a man. He was glad for the memory of Ernest Bleckley and glad for this ceremonial act for the town and his surviving family.

The boys were growing incredibly well in Salina and John could not be more satisfied seeing their happiness. They were getting everything he did not in his childhood, including a lot of play with emphasis on baseball, bicycles, marbles and army men. The orderly sound of hide-and-seek counting could be heard all around the outside of the house and throughout the neighborhood surrounding Santa Fe Street. Kick-the-Can clanging and chasing, yelling and delightful screaming of girls and boys echoed down the tree lined street. John never once complained about the noise. How dare he stop this precious time for his peace and quiet? Nine and ten year old boys should be left alone to grow on their own terms during their off time. There was enough homework, enough chores and enough baths to keep them learning and disciplined, clean and healthy.

By the age of ten years, most of Orenthal’s friends were calling him “O.W.,” like his grandfather that he had never known had been called all of his life. For over ten years John had been calling his fathers name, in for dinner, up to bed, resurrecting his own memories of his father from his guilty conscience, then burying them again if only for a few hours at a time. John was half sure his father was dead by this time. It had been over twenty-five years since he jumped that train and last saw filthy Chicago. He had felt some guilt for not finding him and inviting him to Flora’s and his wedding. He could have sent him a picture post card, a telegraph, or an apology for not staying and attending the Chicago Business School, as his father had demanded he would. But that was all years ago and now his fathers namesake is in the world and perhaps it was time to make contact.

A revelation that paternity is or was of great importance in his life comes to a man through his own comparisons. When a man enters the world of other men and he sees the monsters among society and he sees the criminals, he passes by the hobos and the thousands of men unable to earn enough to raise a family. He finds himself speaking with people lacking schooling and he realizes who he might have been and who his own sons may become. When a man sees the middle of his life approaching, a calmness sets-in and creates a book-mark of the time that is the end of the years of post-teenage life and young adult hood. He marks the beginning of the years beyond ignorance where wisdom of knowledge must now be put into practice. The memories of the boy-hood years, as early as when he could first walk, begin to rise up in the mind of the man. The memories form brief sentences of factual statements and paragraphs and chapters to be categorized by feeling, then stored in the mind’s file cabinet to be labeled by the names of the emotions they had invoked, for easy later recall. Early in the morning, before the birds, before the light, before the rooster, before rising for the day, his mind leans on the emotional file cabinet, reading, studying, and trying to make reason of the events of his past: The dirty streets of Chicago, the nearly militaristic control of him by his father; learning at five years old that his mother was gone since the time he had seen her in the morning of that day, and that she would never return; the cruelty of the school masters and the grueling hours of hard labor at the stockyards, hours when he would rather be playing. All these hardships shaped the boy who became the man who is now John Irwin. It is understood by the man now. It is time to contact the father and mend the broken line between them. It was time to stop the blame and to let his father know that his method of child rearing was right, or at least, as right as he could have made it.

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In the middle of Kansas summers, a battle within nature, took place in every farmer’s wheat field as dry hot winds would dive from high in the sky at steep angles upon the golden fields. The wheat defended itself by using its large numbers to lean upon each other to keep from bending and breaking. In this way the field resists laying down to the strong wind, with groups of fifty thousand strands, taking their turns forming waves that moved across the fields, over a gentle sloping knoll, or into the trees lining the edge of the field. Each cluster of tens of thousands of strands, in front of the next cluster, took their turn in the fight for life, while they screamed their whispering screams of dry bristles rubbing and clinging upon the stalks of their comrades, before the resistance movement began again at other side of the field, below the relentless winds.

With the winds follow the thresher crews spreading across the plains in groups of five or ten people with horses and equipment. Their goal is to harvest the stalks of wheat before they become too dry and the winds of late summer rip their grain from their tops, and throw their seed into the wind onto other lands, out of the farmers control. Nomadically the thresher crews travel, camping on the outsides of towns and cities, filling up the train’s box cars as they move their crews from one town to the next. In-hand with the thresher crews comes income for all in town. It begins at the bank as they cash their promissory notes from the local farmers, it starts flowing noticeably at the bars and saloons, the mercantile exchange and the drug stores, the livery and the telegraph office. They awake in very early morning hours, when stars are large and bright and dazzling. They leave their campgrounds before any creature is awake and foraging. They arrive at the farmer’s field at sun-up, ready for a full days work.

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With one hand John firmly held his straw hat to his head and leaned into the summer wind as if to keep himself from being blown over as he walked along the sidewalk on Iron Street. Although the wind was not nearly that strong, it seemed the proper way to walk, dramatically, like everyone else out and about that day, in this way if the wind did something to you, your emphasis of the fury of the wind, prior to your mishap, is excused as an act of nature and not of clumsiness. He entered the small street-front office of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, where all the elevated wires in town seemed to lead to, or were originating from, most folks could not understand which if any. A small and thin man with an elaborate waxed mustache that resembled an airplane’s wings, wearing bi-focal spectacles and a visor cap over his forehead, greeted him very business like.

“Good day sir how may I help you?”

“Hello there, I want to send a telegraph to Chicago, how much is that?”

John did not care how much the telegraph would cost. He made more money than most people in town and after years of this level of income he was still not used to spending in a care-free manner, he tries to spend liberally, but he feels guilt for not looking for fair prices, or bargains, and getting estimates, when thousands of men are without work and without homes.

“One cent per word to Chicago, but after four-o-clock, it’s fifteen words for ten cents. That’s when activity is lower from the news and the exchange markets.”

The clerk pulled down his visor and wet the end of his pen with his tongue:

“So what would you like it say? I can shorten it afterwards if you like to save the cost of transmission.”

John pulled out of his vest pocket a folded note and handed it to the clerk.

“That will not be necessary I have a prepared letter and I want it sent verbatim.”

“All right then, but I still have to put it into print form on this paper, it’s the rules.” The clerk transcribed John’s handwriting to print on the AT&T letterhead:

[start] To Mr OW Irwin [stop]

Employed at the Chicago Cattle Exchange Co [stop]

Union Stockyards [stop] Chicago Illinois [stop]

Office of Accounting [stop]

Father I am well and have a home in Salina Kansas [stop] I have two sons and my youngest has your name [stop] I yearn to reunite and for you to know my family and share in my household [stop] I am sorry for prolonging our division [stop] Please respond [stop]

Your Son John H Irwin [stop]

[end]

John removed his billfold to pay the clerk.

“So I was wondering, when are we getting the Bell Telephones in town here?” He inquired with a smile.

“Oh word is within six months most of the center of town will be done. But that’s the same thing my boss told me three months ago, so. It will come around soon enough. You have a nice day now Mr. Irwin, and watch your hat the wind is tricky today.” The clerk smiled and pointed to his own head.

After paying for the transmission John walked out of the telegraph office a different person. His relief was like a weight removed from his shoulders, bricks carried far too long. But uncertainty remains now more present than before. “Is he dead?” John would repeat in his mind through the following days.

Standing on the sidewalk and pulling on his mustache with one hand, his other hand in his front pants pocket, a gust of wind blew his straw hat off and threw it down the street.

“Damn it hell!” John cursed aloud, then looked to see if he was overheard.

He turned to start his chase after this light as a feather fashion nightmare so popular at this time. Before he could start running; ‘THWACKK.’ He was hit in the back of head by something not heavy nor painful. He quickly turned to see that it was another man’s straw hat and the man was running towards him, he bent down to retrieve it for him. In the moments he waited for the man to take back his hat, he glanced across the street and witnessed another man losing his straw hat to the wind. He smiled and belted-out a laugh at the absurdity of it. Two years before, Sears and Roebuck had begun selling the hats with cloth strings to tie under the chin and secure the hat, but most men removed the strings thinking them too feminine. Now they pay.

John had expected a fast reply from his father, if he was alive, but he waited two weeks for word of his existence. The neatly uniformed boy from the telegraph office rode his bicycle up and onto the Irwin’s walkway and rang his bicycle bell as if to invoke an audience through the front door. He removed his uniform cap and he waited a moment and no one came out, he would have to get off of his bicycle. At the front door he pulled the door bell handle and Thelma answered, smiling she took the telegram and handed the boy a nickel.

“O.W.!, O.W., come here son and bring this telegram to your father’s office.”

“You betcha Thel, coming in to pick up air mail, vvvvooooommmmmm!”

His boy’s arms extended, O.W. flew through the kitchen, up the hallway towards Thelma at the front door, and with the precision of an ace fighter pilot, he tilted his wings, snatched the telegram and burst through the screen door. Jumping off the front porch, wings still extended, he banked-right thirty-degrees towards Iron Street.

“Curse you Red Barron!” Thelma yelled toward the brave ace as he lifted off towards the sun.

“I’m not the Red Barron, I’m Captain Eddie Rickenbacker of the ninety-fourth!” He corrected Thelma as his voice grew faint on the southern horizon.

“I stand corrected.” Thelma replied to herself and smiled.

O.W. was waved up the stairs by the security guard in the bank lobby, on the office floor six people greeted him as fast as anyone could greet a ten year old ace on a priority mission to the front.

“Hey there young man!”

“O.W., good to see you.”

“Whoa there Red Barron! Where’s the fire?”

“I’m Captain Eddie Rickenbacker of the mighty ninety-fourth!” O.W. had to correct another traitorous pawn of the Kaiser’s propaganda.

“Go on in O.W., he’ll be glad to see you!” The secretary said.

O.W. dipped his right wing to open his father’s office door and flew through tipping closed the door behind him with the heel of his foot.

“Ahhh Captain Rickenbacker of the mighty ninety-fourth! What brings you here Captain!” John rose from his seat and saluted young O.W..

“Urgent priority code red message for the front sir, from HQ sir!” O.W. stood at attention and saluted his father.

John knew each of the boy’s games and imaginary heroes, toys, names of toy cars, who was in this week, who was out. O.W. especially appreciated this and did not pause to acknowledge real-life when ever his dad was clearly playing along. It made playing all the more better when an adult was playing along.

John sat to open the letter, breaking the seal on the top where the telegram was folded, the familiar and unsettling words “Chicago” and “Cattle Exchange,” jumped off the top of the page at him, his breath paused in excitement, his wait was over, he would now find out what has become of the father he had abandoned.

05 17 1919 via Chicago Cattle Exchange [stop]

Chicago Illinois [stop]
To John Irwin [stop]

Salina Kansas [stop]

Dearest John it is my sad duty to inform you that your father passed away one year and two months ago due to complications of fever and pneumonia [stop]. His illness last three weeks [stop]. Attempt to contact you failed [stop]. Have forwarded your location to your father’s estate attorney [stop]. My sincere condolences [stop]. I was pleased to have read your telegram and am happy for your family [stop].

Mrs. Sally J ForSmith [stop].

John dropped the letter on his desk and looked at O.W. standing beside him, waiting for word of what the telegram contained. John could not conceal his sadness from O.W., his own face was too well known to his son. John’s disappointment and surprise spelled out all but the details to young O.W.. He reached for his mouth and covered his lips and jaw as if aghast at the news. His eyes began to tear.

“My father died over a year ago.” John said solemnly as he watched O.W. for reaction.

“I’m sorry dad.” O.W. did not hesitate to offer apology.

“I’m sorry dad, exactly.” John thought to himself of the irony of that statement of sympathy coming from O.W. at this very moment. He was relieved to see the news had no effect on O.W. at all. John was reminded what it was like to be ten years old and care nothing about that which you do not know of intimately. He took comfort knowing his sons will not have to carry the burden of emotion from this event. It is an advantage of egocentrism, a childlike and pure trait which gradually disappears as a child grows and learns of the complexities of the world. There would be no fatherly talk about death to the boys, the war had taken care of that by presenting the boys with constant death and funerals in town. He was relieved as he looked at O.W.’s face, oblivious to loss, to the stabbing, and to the emptiness that he had to feel. He realized looking into O.W.’s eyes that he had another chance to make it right, both to correct the mistakes of his father and of himself in abandoning him. John smiled as he reached out for O.W.’s sandy blonde head and cuffed it under his hand, feeling the small skull that measured his son’s growth so far.

“It’s all right O.W., I had not seen him in a long time anyway, besides, I’ve got you and Sydney now.” John said forcing a reassuring smile towards O.W..

“And you’ve got Thelma too dad!” O.W. added.

“Yes and Thelma too. Can’t forget Thelma can we?”

Now John would have to retreat to the time in his mind when his father was a point of anger, of love lost and of hope vanished for never reconciling with him, or wanting to. In his thoughts he retreated to the time before he considered naming his second born after his father. To the time in-between running away from Chicago and his father, and settling down with Flora and having children, in this small city of wheat and railroad. This was a defendable place in John’s mind, where justifying his absence from his father was easy to do, he was successful here. For the interim that is where he would stay. Stay and file the memories of his father under the emotion “irretrievable losses.” This file would have frayed edges and dog-eared corners from constantly being referred to by the unpreventable speaking aloud and calling out of the name of his second born. As a result, his father’s presence could never be successfully escaped from, becoming as much a part of John’s personality and being, as any well organized drawer of files, cataloging his life experiences could be.

In the ninety degree heat and with two neighborhood friends, O.W. was laying on his belly in the grass, feeling the cool of the Earth beneath him, facing a large round patch of dirt. Sydney was beside him propping his head up with his hands, with his elbows planted in the grass, and with his eyes focused on the marbles game that both the boys hoped to win. The Salina mail truck pulled up to the front of the house and that meant a package was being delivered and not the regular mail. O.W. and Sydney jumped up with excitement.

“If just one of Sydney and mine marbles are missing, we’ll know it!”

O.W. warned the other two boys before he and Sydney ran for the mail truck. The mail-man had gone around to the back of the truck and had removed two big and flat boxes from the back and stood them upright against the side of the truck.

“Is that for the Irwin’s Mr. Stevens?” Sydney asked.

“Well let me see here, it says on this one, “To Mr. Orenthal Wilfred Irwin.” And it says on this other one here, “To Mr. Sydney Jeremiah Irwin.” Now I know of a Sydney Irwin, but I never heard of a fellow named Orenthal Wilfred Irwin. So I guess I’ll have to just take these back to the post office, yep, that’s the rules!”

The teasing Mr. Stevens watched the boy’s expressions enjoying what he could of this rare part of his work day. O.W. frowned with worry.

“No! No Mr. Stevens, I’m Orenthal, that is my real name, Orenthal Wilfred Irwin, folks just call me O.W. cause it’s easier! That package is for me, both of us get one!” O.W. urgently corrected him.

“Ohhh! My mistake Irwins, I guess this one is for you O.W., and I guess this one is for your Mr. Sydney Irwin. You need to be careful with that name, you’re liable to lose more packages that way. Sign here.”

O.W. signed for both packages and he and Sydney ran to the front porch to open them quickly. Forgetting completely to even say “good day,” to Mr. Stevens.

“Thelma, we got packages from Sears and Roebucks!”

Sydney yelled out for Thelma, as if she would drop in from the sky above them, to answer their beckon call. When the thin-shaved pine wood on both packages was peeled and broken away, the smooth red metal shone brightly from behind tissue paper that packed the Radio Flyer Scooters for Sydney and O.W.. The smell of new rubber and freshly painted logos rose fast to the boy’s senses as they grabbed the main board sections and let the packing fall back into the boxes. Eyes wide and mouths gaping the boys held upwards the main sections for all to see. The marbles in the front yard were abandoned as an audience of five girls and boys now formed below the steps of the front porch in awe.

“Gee Wilickers!” O.W. exclaimed.

“Geeezo Man o Man!” Said Sydney.

Thelma arrived through the screen door.

“Whats all this now boys? Oh my, your father has got you something special didn’t he?”

Thelma’s head shook in the negative at the lavishness of the gifts, yet admiring and smiling for the boys for the instant gratification the new gifts bring. It took no more than a half an hour for Sydney and O.W. to assemble the two scooters, with wooden handlebars, streamers in the handle grips and twin metal rods that twisted the front axle for steering. Many boys had home made wooden scooters but now Sydney and O.W. were the only boys with Radio Flyers of red steel. Now they were kings among boys, and they could be flying aces, or race car drivers, a pair of hellions of the sidewalks, terrors to the girls on foot, envy of the other boys. They tied airplane models to the tops of each of the handlebars; O.W.’s, a Sopwith Camel bi-plane with Allied insignias, and Sydney’s a red Fokker Tri-wing with the German crosses. Three feet above the ground of Santa Fe avenue the dog-fights would last hours, hide and seek games of deadly consequence would take place in and around shrubbery, trees and houses. Mouth made machine guns were spitting out saliva to the point of dehydration, the boys would return to “HQ,” only for food and water, or milk and an occasional medals ceremony conducted by General Thelma, which included cookies presented with fanfare. O.W. had attached a canvas bag to the inside of the steering bar for carrying goods and messages. The bicycle rack at the primary school now had several scooters and several bicycles, the vehicles of the young adults, the Fords of the imagination.

A summer pastime was fishing at Specks Pond about a mile from the house. On any warm day, when nothing had to be done at home or when there were chores but their doers were uncooperative, Sydney and O.W. would often spend all day at the pond. The kids of Salina would make the pond their day camp and their convention center, the conventions of childhood, of play. The seemingly towering trees above the dry and powdery well tread upon dirt edges of the pond would form the vaulted ceiling of their summer chapel. The cool water, would always be there for them, still and waiting and was the playing field of the games for which they come. The banks of the pond were the spectators seating and the place for stooping to wash off ones candy if it got dirty, or to catch frogs, or to squat just right to skip-toss the flat rocks, sometimes more than ten skips out to the middle of the water. Fishing was what kids would tell the adults they were going to Specks pond for, it legitimized the excursion. When fishing became boring for lack of anything biting, usually by ten in the morning, swimming could fill the time gap nicely, swinging from the rope to splash into the cool water, seeing who could get out further, who could let go and dive in, who could do a flip off the rope. When exhaustion and hunger set in, Thelma’s sandwiches and soda-pops would fill their stomachs.

There were no adults at the pond, possibly because they did not want to walk the long narrow wooded path to the pond, so kids could rule there and kids like Sydney and O.W. knew no bigotry, so black kids could join them there without fear of being shunned, girls too would show up, often just to tease boys who were there. Age was the only hierarchy of dominance but an older kid could be ganged-up on with name calling and condemnation if he behaved unfairly toward others.

There was law and order at the pond and it consisted of only a few rules, no splashing near fishing, no fishing near swimming, no pooping in the water, and no fake drowning. If a new rule was needed in the interim it could be made-up on the spot simply by calling out, “Hey, no (insert behavior here).” A new rule could be condoned and thereby made acceptable by the call of at least one other kid, “yeah, no (insert behavior here).”

The dirt accumulated on the boys, after a good day at the pond, was the stuff of legend, dusty dirt filled their scalps and hair, sweat rings made of dirt would stain their skin, worm guts and fish mucous under their finger nails, bare feet coated in dirt and browned by the mud from the edge of the pond. Snotty noses and filthy clothing, torn pants, cut fingers, and scraped knees. Nearly all of these were prerequisites for a boy to return home after a summer day at Specks Pond. It was truly a time to relish for any bacteria wishing to populate a boy in Salina, Kansas. It is a wonder to many mother and father of children who would acquire this type of fun filled dirt, why if germs are bad and must be washed off, are my boys so healthy, why so rarely do they get ill?

A child’s logic explains many things about the physical world and the answers are accommodating, satisfying to the curiosity of a child, who may lay on his back, watch a cloud and think about the order of things, while lacking the practice of complex hypotheses known to thinking adults. A boy might explain to the parent that getting dirt all over him is how he has fun, so logically his body can’t have fun if he doesn’t get dirty and so the body becomes immune to the potential harm of the dirt, to allow the boy to continue to have fun. Ask a boy why small animals die so young as compared to humans and he might explain that it is because they are small, time passes much faster for them, everything moves very fast for a small animal, like for a frog, a bug, a squirrel, a dog or a cat. It is for this same reason that small animals can not understand our language, it sounds like a very slow grunting, because they move very fast through time. That’s also why it’s easy to catch frogs and lighting bugs, they think we are harmless because we are just colored statues to them. Magnets deep under the ground make everything fall. When girls get older their penises will come out. Hair keeps growing, and has to be cut so often, because people keep combing it every day and tugging on it. That is why when older people lose their hair it is because they had been combing it all of their life. When you see a person with really gray hair it is because they got really scared once, like by a ghost or something. When old people get very old without dying it is because they never hurt anyone else. If you want to be a millionaire, it’s really easy, just save a penny in a jar, and then double the amount in the jar every day, the only problem with that is that no one can stop spending the pennies on candies. Electricity comes from a big factory where a lot of lighting strikes and they send it to us afterwards, through the wires. You do not have to learn math if you are just going to be a lumberjack, or a train engineer, or a fireman or something like that. Adults do not eat candy because you stop being able to taste it after you grow up, that’s why the candy factory is run entirely by kids, so they know what tastes good. That’s why it is important for kids to get as much candy as they can while they are still kids. Kids get money from the tooth fairy because he works for the piano companies, that is how they make the piano keys, out of kids teeth. If you keep stubbing your toes on rocks and things, your feet will stop growing and you’ll always have the same size shoes for the rest of your life and your mother won’t have to keep buying you new shoes, that’s why she lets us run around in our bare feet, so we will keep stubbing our toes. If you break the same bone twice, it rots and falls off, even if it’s your whole leg. Toes and fingers grow back, sometimes. When the preacher married your mom and dad it made your mother pregnant. Bad boys get new little sisters, bad girls get new little brothers. The doctor always puts a stick down your throat because your mother asked him to, because she wants to know if you are possessed by the devil, like she always says you are.