Sputterpub's Blog

I dreamt of my neighbor Greg last week. Maybe it’s all the emails I’m getting about the fiftieth reunion. Not that I’m going. I attended two high schools. I started in a semi-settled community south of San Diego and then moved for my last two years to Marin County. So although I was active and even popular before the move, I missed all those junior/senior festivities. And I didn’t get to know enough Marin kids to make that time reunion-meaningful.

Greg’s family lived next door to us. We all moved into a tract development of “Princess” homes in 1958. Everyone’s house was new. There were four basic floor plans so all of the homes seemed familiar. Every yard was just-planted. The properties had adobe-like soil that required substantial amendment and regular irrigation. All of the households planted lawns in the front yards and ice plant in the back, where the ground beyond the patio sloped up to the redwood fence. Everyone paid to have six foot tall fences installed around their back yards.

The sidewalks had large squares. The parkway plantings were young pepper trees. I wasn’t proud of our streets. I remember wanting small squares and more concrete cracks, mature trees that dangled branches above us and canted the sidewalks below. There were groves of lemon trees nearby.

My family came from New York. We’d lived in a suburb on Long Island but we moved across country so Dad could work for Rohr Aircraft. Just about everyone else in our neighborhood was Navy. The houses around us would empty of residents when the families went with the father for a two year stint in Okinawa. We always got to know the tenants but never grew close to them. Then our neighbors would return, refreshing our memories about how to count and greet in Japanese. As the fathers of these families retired after a full Navy career, they tended to get jobs selling cars or in some ancillary automotive business.

So I first met Greg when we were eight and nine. Our mothers became best friends, and our younger brothers played together. Our dads were congenial too, so the families shared back yard meals and sprinkler parties. Greg and I were dissimilar but tolerated one another. He was into sports and I was a sedentary reader. He was rail-thin and rangy with hair so blond it was almost white. I was short and peasant-boned and tried to iron my dark frizzy hair into SoCal style.

His father Bill was a stocky man with good posture and light hair. His younger brother was also named Bill and had a sturdy shape too. The mother Ellie was a soft curvy nurturing woman, of Hungarian heritage. She was the only brunette in the family. But Greg was the one who stood out like a knife, tall, thin, and blond. I’m always reminded of him when I see those patriotic shots of amber waves of grain.

Greg’s family went to Okinawa when I was eleven. Most of my memories about him came after they returned and his dad retired, around 1964.

But one recollection stems from when they were overseas. They sent a snapshot of the family: a black-and-white Polaroid, with its back bulge. There was Big Bill and Ellie in the middle, with the boys in front and a bit to the sides of their parents. Greg was next to his dad and Billy was beside Ellie. My mother showed us the picture and wondered aloud if Ellie was pregnant. She was wearing a sack-like dress and you couldn’t tell if there was a bulge in front. My brother Bill, then age six or seven, immediately turned the picture sideways, as if expecting a baby bump to be obvious from that angle. Me and my parents laughed and our Bill didn’t seem to mind.

There were a lot of name repetitions around us. Both Greg and I had brothers named Bill, although his went by Billy. His dad was Big Bill. He even had an uncle Greg, except the man answered to Gergo. He was Ellie’s big brother, and his real (Hungarian) name was Gergely. That was Ellie’s father’s name too. Gergely, or Gergo for short, became Gregory/Greg in America.

Ellie said Greg took after his uncle but I couldn’t see it. Gergo had thinning dark hair. He was tall and broad. He was also diabetic. I knew nothing about the condition. Greg told me that Gergo had to analyze his pee every morning, and set his shot dosage accordingly. Just one injection a day, via a big old glass-cylindered syringe that he had to sterilize between uses.

Gergo came for a long visit shortly after Greg’s family returned from Japan. He was a peripheral presence for the hunting forays and the winter dance but he left before the Casino nights.

I wrote protest poetry about the hunting. There was undeveloped scrub land behind the high school at the end of our street: manzanita and tumbleweed, rattlesnakes and rabbits. Many nondescript birds. I liked to walk back there and pretend I was an adventurer. I and two girlfriends had found our own version of a cave in the area, and we met there sometimes to share a father’s issue of Playboy. Sometimes we climbed the “cliffs” left by the earthmoving machinery when the high school was built. I recall hanging from a crumbly wall twenty feet above a sand pile, knees shaking as I tried to choose between summoning the effort to continue climbing or the courage to just jump to the bottom. I was such a klutz that I’d usually knock my chin on my knees when I jumped.

Greg and Billy and Bill would hunt back there. They carried BB guns, which my father insisted on calling air or pellet rifles, but theirs used the same silver bullets as my brother’s gun, so I guess it was different names for one thing. I walked behind them often enough to be grossed out when they shot at birds and rabbits. They were conscientious about not abandoning a wounded critter, but still I grieved at the activity. When I was fifteen (old enough to know better), I penned a five-stanza ballad I named “Vanity.” I’ll lay down just the last eight lines here:

Then he scans the land for targets.
Soon he sees the bird above.
He is just a boy with rifle,
Still, he has to get that dove.

She is quite a moving target,
Quite a beauty, is she not?
So he killed to feed his ego,
And left an ugly corpse to rot.

Oy. That’s the stuff that got kept. Earlier pieces were truly dreadful. And completely ineffective. Nobody stopped hunting. But Greg didn’t mock me about them. Unlike our brothers Greg was a person I could talk to.

I don’t think any chemistry ever developed between us. I never felt any, never sensed any from him. Then again, I didn’t understand then how lovely every young woman is. And I didn’t grasp the fact that the boys, while not predatory, are extremely receptive.

We went to one dance together but that was because we didn’t have dates. It was the first social event of high school and we were pushed by our moms. There’s a photo of us standing together awkwardly, me in a turquoise velvet dress with dyed-to-match pumps (I had to do that once), and he in a wrist-exposing sport coat and the then-version of dockers. If anything that event drove us into a more trusting friendship. We chatted easily. By that summer we were in Greg’s room almost every night after dinner, playing Casino, talking about God and sex, and listening to his new transistor radio. We smiled when we got to hear “Satisfaction” or “Twist and Shout.”

My family moved away shortly after the beginning of our junior year. I visited a few times and our families stayed in touch, so I know Greg had to give up his baseball aspirations because of early-onset arthritis in his shoulder. I know he attended community college and then joined the Navy, married a girl he met when in the service, settled near her family in Tennessee, and went into construction. He fathered two sons.

His mother Ellie is still alive. She’s a widow like my mother, and they exchange holiday cards. This year’s included Greg and his wife, who were visiting. I was astounded at how much Greg resembles his uncle Gergo. How thick Greg has become. His hair is thinning and looks dark but the real surprise is the sturdy-looking portliness of my old pal. In my shock I almost turned the picture sideways. I thought of my brother Bill and laughed.