Saturdays with "The Jer"

Every day with “The Jer”, my best friend and the architect who would design my mind  during my young formative years, was an adventure, but Saturdays, now that day was special.


 Depending on the time of year and the weather we would have a half dozen choices of what we could get into  or out of for that matter. We always had to get started early because regardless of what we did bright and early on Saturday, we always had to get to the Ames Theater for kid’s Saturday movies that started around ten in the morning.

The Jer on the right with his dad and older brother, Denny

 March, in Dayton, Ohio, our hometown, still meant cold and blustery days but we would have an occasional warm day or two that allowed us to get outside and that meant exploring the neighborhood.


 Like many small towns across the country, you either had an alley behind your house or not. My street, Sandhurst Drive, ran from Main Street, east to Riverside Drive, but no alley. So it wasn’t uncommon whenever we were making our trek through the neighborhoods, we would walk thru the back yards of all of the houses to get to our destination. Something that today, would probably get you shot or at the least arrested for trespassing.


 We would pack up our supplies that “The Jer” and I kept in nifty leather pouches we found on another one of our scheduled adventure days, Trash Day. But, I’ll save our Trash Day exploits for another time.


 Our personal stash consisted of any cigs that we appropriated from our parents cigarette pack and an occasional butt we would sneak out of the ash traay. Dad smoked unfiltered Camels, and for a boy of about 8 or 9, you knew right then whether you really wanted to smoke or not…Sadly, I decided yes…one of the few regrets I have ever had in my life. Mom, on the other hand, smoked Salems, which tasted as bad as the Camels but from the other end of the spectrum.


 We also carried a handful of Pecan Sandies. These were kind of a short cake type cookie with pecan pieces in the dough. “The Jer” brought those. I brought Oreos. Sometimes when I would trade an Oreo for one of “The Jer’s cookies, I would scrape off the icing first with my front teeth with him not seeing me and try to pass the icing-less treat off to him. He always spotted it and threw it at me. Both of us laughing, but me still trying to sneak one by him each week.


 “The Jer” also had a red Swiss army knife with about a gazillion different attachments to pick from including a knife, fork, spoon and a leather punch, which I don’t think we ever used.


 The last item “The Jer” always carried with him were kitchen matches. They fascinated both him and me and I guess they still do kinda to this day. We made gun matches out of clothespins that would  light and shoot  the kitchen matches at each other. We would break off the tips of the matches and put them all in a pile and toss in a lighted match that would burst the pile into flames. And, of course, there was the time “The Jer” had two of them rub together and set fire inside his pocket. He screamed like hell and layed in a mud puddle to put the fire out.


 We would leave my house at daybreak, after he showed up at my window, and letting me know he had arrived, by making our secret hoot owl call of Hoo, Hoo, Hoo repeated three times. By the third Hoot, I was already out the door.


 We would start off by hiking over the 2 foot rock wall that separated our yard from our next door neighbors. Looking back. our next door neighbors, the Norrises, had to have been the most wonderful people in the world. Never once, at least that I am aware of,  did they ever complain about anything that happened in the Kender house. Or maybe they were just terrified. They weren’t like the people who lived behind us, who called the police one time because the lady of the house saw me running around naked after losing a hand of strip poker that we were playing in our tent in the backyard. Heck, I was only  a kid. I remember when the detectives came to the house   I could see them giggling while asking me why I was all nekked.


 We would wind our way through the yards. Knowing which ones had dogs and which ones had owners that would yell at us. About half way up towards Main Street was one yard that had an item that we always coveted. It was a piece of quartz molded into a small rock wall. We would always stop to look at it. We may have been a lot of things back in those days, but we were never thieves. We loved to look at the beautiful stone, but we would never take it.


 
By the time we got to the end of our outbound trek we knew we had to be heading home in order to get to the movies. We’d share one of the smokes we had. Of course, inhaling and then blowing smoke rings and then we would walk down the street looking in the gutters with the hopes of finding a good cigarette butt that we would add to our collection.

Yep, Exploring Day, was one of my favorites.

In search of “The Jer”

I needed to bring closure. I needed to bring all of the wondering and not knowing to an end.  But sadly, in my heart I already knew the answer; it was in my head where I feared the unknown.

 If he had already passed, maybe I could breathe life into my friend’s soul through my stories about growing up together and give him a new beginning.  I dreaded what I knew would be the outcome of my inquiries.

 My mind was a whirlwind of emotions as I prepared to find the fate of my childhood companion. My best friend I hadn’t seen in over 50 years.

“The Jer” taught me everything that a young boy needed to begin his life adventure.
He taught me to spit and cuss by the time I was eight. He taught me to smoke and drink by the age of twelve.

"The Jer"

 He taught me to be fearless as we began each summer, building a raft from fallen trees along the Stillwater River. Our destination was always the same. Navigate to the Miami River, find a way to cross the spillway at Helena Street. Connect to the Ohio River and then on to the ocean, any ocean. We never got further than 100 feet from shore before every raft sank.

 He was my Don Quixote, I was his Sancho Panza. 

 “The Jer” taught me to be an adventurer, to take risks when needed and maybe even sometimes just for the heck of it.

But “The Jer” wasn’t just showing off. He was proving to himself he could challenge any gauntlet thrown before him.
 I had pledged to some
 mutual friends that I would learn the fate of my best friend. I would ask the hard questions that needed to be asked. Was he dead? How did he die? Was he alone when he died?

 I was able to find his older brother, Denny, thru social media and asked if I could call him and talk about “The Jer”. He enthusiastically replied and shared hours of stories and information including the news that made me cry later.. He was gone forever.

I learned “The Jer” was a veteran of the Vietnam War and what he witnessed there as a machine-gunner risking his life each day caused him to become a troubled soul. Periods of off and on abuse brought his demise way too soon.

 He wasn’t alone when he died, he was with people who understood his pain, his fellow soldiers at the VA hospital.

 “My Jer” lives within me now. Our stories will be your stories.

  I’m thankful I made the search.