I met a kid early during my exile in
Indianapolis. He was two years older than me and, on the surface, not someone I
would have expected to hang around with as a seventh grader.
He was a freshman at the nearby Catholic high
school, a scrawny kid with long jet-black hair. From the moment I met him, I
thought he was kind of a jagoff. He was standoffish and reluctant to let me
join the neighborhood games.
As the years passed, I realized I had
misjudged him. He wasn’t unfriendly. He was simply quiet and introverted.
Our friendship probably worked because we
balanced each other out. He was low-key, and I was the loudmouth.
The more I got to know him, the more
similarities we discovered. We were both Illinois kids transplanted to
Indianapolis because that was where divorced families landed at the time.
We both worshipped the Chicago Bears, Dick
Butkus, and Walter Payton. He was a Cub fan who forgot more about the Northsiders
than I’ll ever know.
He had three older sisters. The youngest had
just had a baby out of wedlock when I moved into the neighborhood. She was
still very protective for her little brother.
His mum was the neighborhood nanny. She was
from England, a war bride who followed her GI husband across the Atlantic to
Freeport, Illinois. She spoke with a beautiful Manchester accent and made the
finest Sunday roast I have ever eaten.
She became my British mum almost
immediately.
She took a liking to her son’s loud,
extroverted new friend, and I adored her right back.
During my years in exile, our friendship
grew. My buddy was good at everything.
He was the best basketball player on the
block. He threw a wicked Wiffle ball curve and launched home runs over the
tennis court fence. Despite his size, he could tackle with the best of them.
We spent countless afternoons playing Smear
the Queer on a steep hill. You not only had to avoid getting your snot knocked
loose. You had to run uphill while everyone chasing you had the downhill
advantage.
In the summer, we would sweet-talk the
lifeguards into letting us “rock the pool.”
With the help of everyone in our gang, we would
leap in, jump out, and fire off cannonballs and belly flops until the little
neighborhood pool looked like Disneyland’s wave pool.
We also got drunk together for the first
time.
His older sister bought us a bottle of Jack
Daniel’s when I was a freshman and he was a junior.
He got absolutely ripped.
I walked him home, propped him against his
front door, knocked, and sprinted behind the bushes.
When his mum opened the door, he fell face first
into the house and landed in a puddle on the linoleum.
She looked straight toward my hiding
place.
“Sheppey! I see you, Sheppey! What have you
bloody done to my son?”
She was the only person who ever called me
“Sheppey.” Hearing it in her English accent always made me smile.
Well… maybe not that night.
We also
made out with a few girls together. Between his long black hair and my
beautiful baby blues, we did pretty well for ourselves. Mostly Broad
Ripple and Chatard girls, but the occasional North Central and Cathedral girl
joined the fun.
We
gained our carnal knowledge together while Bob Seger, Cheap Trick, and .38
Special jammed in the background. Those were the years when we thought life
would always be simple and free.
One memory stands above all the
others. Super Bowl XX.
His mum cooked us one of her magnificent
Sunday roasts. As the Bears finally won their first Super Bowl, we celebrated
over Yorkshire pudding, roast beef, and gravy.
To this day, I can’t think about that
championship without tasting Yorkshire pudding.
Eventually my exile ended, and I moved
back to Chicagoland.
For years afterward we wore out I-65 visiting
each other. We made the trip well into our twenties and early thirties.
When he married, I had the honor of
standing beside him as his best man.
After he got married, our visits gradually stopped. His wife didn't appreciated the kinds of things
we always did together. Sporting events, rock concerts, having fun and booze.
Life has a way of changing priorities, and ours slowly drifted in different
directions.
Still, whenever I drove to Indianapolis to
visit my mom, I made it a point to see him.
Today
is his birthday.
Even though our friendship probably reached
its peak forty years ago, he remains a huge part of who I became. Some people
help shape our lives without ever realizing it.
My old friend is one of those people. Happy
Birthday, Gallipoli.
August began with a soaking rain but today
looks like one of those lush summer Sundays. Get your gusto up, Chalkheads.
Astonishing things have a funny way of appearing when you decide to go looking
for them.
