"Sometimes I'm up
Sometimes I'm down
Oh, yes, Lord
Sometimes I'm almost to the ground
Oh, yes, Lord" - Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen - Louis Armstrong (Louis Armstrong)
I had Dean every weekend for a while. Sarah was a waitress and she got the best tips working Friday and Saturday nights. You know I didn't mind at all. I was pretty much just in awe of him and that he was mine.
That second weekend he was with us for the whole weekend, I woke on Saturday morning and went to look in on him. I'd watched enough of the other little ones in the family to know kids near his age were usually up pretty early. I looked in his room and he was awake. He was playing with the Legos we'd gotten him. Quiet as a mouse.
"Hey buddy," I said gently. I was gentle but he jumped anyway. "You alright?"
"I was trying to be quiet," he said.
"You were quiet," I assured him. "I'm usually up by now 'cause I like to watch the cartoons. If I get up now, I can watch some before I have to get ready for temple."
He looked unsure a little bit.
"So, want to come watch cartoons and eat the cereal that Joanie thinks will rot our teeth and our brains?"
Dean smiled and nodded and I got to bond with my boy over The Fantastic Four, Spider-Man and Coco Puffs before it was time to get ready for temple.
Remember I said once how it's the little moments? Yeah…that was one of them, that's for sure.
Things seemed to be going pretty well for us right then. Joanie was finding her place as a stepmom and Dean, little by little, was getting comfortable at our place. Lou was feeling pretty good with her pregnancy and even Kid was able to put some mental space between himself and Vietnam. I worried for him because I could still see the haunted look and I knew there were things that would keep him from truly being back with us until he talked them out but he was as good as could be expected. All the little ones was doing good too. You've never seen a more doting father than Al was with Joey. Even Sherry was settling into some kind of a routine with Bill gone. None of us, her especially, were going to completely relax until he was on U.S. soil again but we kind of got used to him visiting us during the dinner hour via our television screens.
Then right at the beginning of March, Joanie and me was watching TV and she went to use the bathroom on a commercial break. She was gone for a while and I almost went to check on her thinking something at dinner didn't agree with her or something. She came back and before I could ask if she was feeling alright, she spoke.
"There's no rush to paint the nursery."
I understood, of course. She'd lost the baby. There was nothing to be done right then. She'd go see her doctor the next day and make sure everything passed that was supposed to but the pregnancy was over. She'd just made it out of her first trimester–just like the others. That was a clue but we didn't know it then.
All I could really do was hold her tight to me and let her cry.
"I don't know why I'm crying," she said through her sobs. "I didn't even really think this one would make it. I thought if I expected this then it wouldn't hurt."
"I know," I told her as my tears joined hers. "I wasn't getting my hopes too high either but this doesn't hurt less."
A couple days later was Friday and I picked Dean up from school.
"Hey buddy," I greeted him.
He looked at me, cocking his head to one side.
"Did something bad happen?" he asked.
He was pretty perceptive for an 8 year-old boy.
"Yeah. Remember we told you Joanie was going to have a baby?"
He nodded.
"Well, she's not now," I said. "It's gone–-it died."
It was still fresh to me so I was choking up a bit and that dear boy just hugged me tight. I know part of that was that he was looking forward to having a little brother or sister but most of that hug was for me because he knew I was sad.
We got home and I got Dean settled at the kitchen table with a snack and his homework. Thankfully he didn't have much homework–he was only in the third grade after all.
There was a note from Joanie on the fridge asking if I'd pick up a few things from the store. I knew it wouldn't take me but a few minutes to run and get the things and Dean would probably just be finishing his homework when I got back. I kissed the top of his head, told him where I was going and that when he finished his schoolwork then he could watch some TV or play his Legos if he wanted. Just let Joanie rest unless there was an emergency.
It took longer at the store than I thought it would. I forgot that it was Friday and that's often a busy afternoon and evening in a grocery store. I still wasn't too worried. Dean was a good kid, after all.
So I got home maybe 45 minutes after I left and fully expected Dean to have found something on the tube but he wasn't in the living room. So I went upstairs and he wasn't in his room. That's when I heard voices down the hall. I went down to the doorway of Joanie's and my room. I paused outside the door and I thought to be mad for a moment because I told him to let her rest but they were singing and it sort of sounded happy. So I peeked in and Joanie was sitting up against the headboard with a cup of tea and Dean was right next to her brushing through her hair.
I knocked lightly on the door jamb and they looked at me like they were guilty of something. It was Dean who spoke first.
"I know you said she should rest, Dad," he began frantically as if I was going to be mad at him or something. "But I came up to play with my Legos and she was crying and I thought how crying isn't resting and so I got her some tea and came in to try to help her feel better so she could rest."
The words came so fast I wasn't sure at first I had caught them all.
"You made tea?" I asked.
"I make it for Mom all the time when she's sad."
"Huh," I said. "You're a pretty clever kid."
He gave me a smile and I think he finally figured out that I wasn't mad. He took care of my sweet Joanie for me and I was pretty grateful.
"I'm going to go get dinner started," I said. "You two going to be okay here?"
"Yes, my love," Joanie replied. "We'll be just fine."
That night was actually a pretty good one. We broke out the TV trays and ate in our bedroom and then got root beer floats for watching Star Trek. After that I had to tuck the boy in.
I know Joanie loved Dean from the moment she laid eyes on him but they bonded that day. From then on, he didn't call her Joanie anymore, he called her Mamaleh.
3
Well, we plodded on along through what was mostly a bleak and dreary March. Everyone was surprised that Joanie wasn't completely losing it. I knew she wasn't entirely okay but there was only so much she would let me do for her.
By the end of March we had temperatures in the 70s and spring was starting to make us optimistic. Baseball season was about to start again and we had one hell of a team coming north from training so we felt pretty good about that.
So we marched right into April feeling that eternal optimism of Spring. And I'm gonna toss a date at you. Maybe you'll know it off hand and maybe you won't. People my age usually do and fans of the band U2. April 4, 1968. It was a below the belt moment for sure.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was giving a speech on the balcony of his hotel room in Memphis. He'd gone to try to help the striking sanitation workers there. He was shot in the face while he stood on that balcony. They rushed him to the hospital but he never woke up. Doctors pronounced him dead an hour or so after he was shot. I actually saw Walter Cronkite stumble over words during his broadcast.
Once the news got out, riots erupted everywhere. New York, Baltimore, D.C., and Chicago were some of the worst. Bobby Kennedy was campaigning in Indianapolis and his staff didn't want him to speak where he was scheduled because it was a mostly black area but he went out there and shared the pain and I don't think the unrest got as bad there as it did some other places.
You'd think that after the previous summer that Detroit would be all rioted out but when folks is hurting like they was after that great man was killed, well, some of it's bound to boil over. Governor Romney called in the National Guard again and I think it was more pre-emptive. There wasn't too much of anything bad. I've seen worse when the Tigers win the World Series. There was one death and I wasn't very in the know so I don't know if letting our own boys in blue keep control would have prevented loss of life or if the military coming in saved us from greater losses. I know a lot of folks didn't have too high of confidence in our police right about then.
I guess we got through it. There's not much of a choice really. People die and others live and sometimes it stinks to be the one left mourning but eventually you have to realize that you're not dead and get back to living. I think a part of me was glad Noah wasn't alive to see this. It would have nearly destroyed him.
As for being destroyed by the events, Joanie didn't handle it well at all. I don't think that's all that surprising to anyone hearing this story. I did what I could to comfort her but I knew her fears. James Earl Ray–the man who eventually was convicted of killing Dr. King–killed him out of hate, pure and simple. Many people have tried to come up with convoluted conspiracy theories and I ain't going to sit here and tell you that he might not have acted alone. But the motive wasn't complicated to figure and where there's that hatred of black folks, there's hatred of Jews too.
It took a bit but we got back on with the business of living. Having kids helps with that. You can't quit being a parent because you're sad and there's no greater reminder of life triumphing than a child.
I was busy with taking Dean to some swim lessons I signed him up for at a local community center that had an indoor pool. I was fully planning on introducing that boy to the U.P. that summer and with the lake there I figured he should know how to swim.
Joanie pushed full on into work and spending time with Dean and volunteer work. I know you're thinking I was an idiot to not see what was in front of me. I did see it. I'm dumb but not that dumb. She simply would not talk to me. I tried everything I could think of. Judy tried too and I'll tell you I really missed Aaron at that time. I don't know if he could've gotten through to her either but I missed him being there to talk to all the same. Everyone tried to get through to Joanie. Emma, Sherry, Theresa, hell, even Lou. I knew that would come out bad eventually but I had no way of knowing how bad. I didn't have long to wait as it turned out.
Well, we muddled through April and then through May and the Tigers were in first place so that was something to be happy about.
But then comes another date that not too many people my age will forget. June 6, 1968. I should back up a little bit. I know I talked a little about Bobby Kennedy campaigning. Well, it was a presidential election year and RFK was running for president. Smart money was on him too. I know a few pretty staunch republicans who voted for his brother in 1960 and were set on voting for him too. I know Joanie and I were planning on voting for him.
We were well into primary season and he was in Los Angeles for the California primary. He had just given a victory speech there in the ballroom of a hotel and went to leave. He was supposed to go out through the ballroom but one of his security people–this was before presidential nominees had secret service so he had a retired FBI agent and Rosie Greer who was an NFL defensive tackle until he tore his achilles in 1967. Anyway, he had press surrounding him and someone said the plans had changed and he had to go toward the kitchen. He was being led out that way and was pausing to shake hands as he went along. Well, one of these pauses to shake hands, this young man, Sirhan Sirhan, jumped out and fired a bunch of shots.
Everyone there, security, kitchen workers and media jumped on this guy and detained him but Bobby Kennedy had been shot a bunch of times. He asked if everyone was okay and they told him everyone was and he said, "Everything's going to be OK."
This all happened just after he finished his speech a little after midnight June 5th, California time so a bit after 3 a.m. in Detroit. It was about 25 hours later, in the wee hours of June 6th that he was pronounced dead. I'll probably never stop wondering where we'd be as a nation and as a people if he hadn't been killed. He would have been one hell of a president, that's for sure.
He was buried in Arlington Cemetery and his brother, Ted, gave the eulogy. I think it's the goal of most people to have words like this said about them when they die.
"My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life; to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it."
Hello again dear constant reader. I do apologize for things taking a darker tone. I can do many things as a writer but changing history isn't one of them. Stephen King tried that with his book 11/22/63 and if you've read that then you know how that turns out (hint: the book is by Stephen King!). Anyway, this is where these sad things happened and I knew they would hit J&J hard. I'm glad Dean is there. I think he makes things better. Sooo...let's see about anything that needs explaining. Um...well, in 1968 there were 3 channels. ABC, NBC and CBS. There was no Nickelodeon or Disney Channel or Cartoon Network. Cartoons were on Saturday mornings and most kids would just get up, turn on the TV to their favorites and get themselves a bowl of cereal. And Jimmy's just a big ol' kid anyway. Oh Mamaleh is sort of a Yiddish term for mother. I knew Dean wouldn't feel right calling her mom but I think it was bothering him to call her Joanie too.
Walter Cronkite did, in fact stumble over his words in his broadcast announcing the death of MLK. It was pretty hard to watch but I did it for you all.
The facts I presented about RFK's assassination were correct. I cried as I read all of those things. That the first thing he said after being shot multiple times was to ask if everyone else was okay and then to try to reassure everyone that things were going to be okay...it says a lot about who he was as a person. I wonder as well what kind of country we'd be living in if Kennedy had been our president. 8 years of his compassion would have made this such a different place. No Nixon...no Watergate...maybe there could have been a little less hate and maybe that would even carry to now.
Anyway, this chapter was brought to you by the great Dion and this wonderful song. Kisses-J.
Abraham, Martin & John performed by Dion (Richard Louis Holler)
Anybody here seen my old friend Abraham?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
He freed lotta people but it seems the good they die young
You know I just looked around and he's gone
Anybody here seen my old friend John?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
He freed lotta people but it seems the good they die young
I just looked around and he's gone
Anybody here seen my old friend Martin?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
He freed lotta people but it seems the good they die young
I just looked around and he's gone
Didn't you love the things that they stood for?
Didn't they try to find some good for you and me?
And we'll be free
Someday soon, it's gonna be one day
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up over the hill
With Abraham, Martin, and John