I met Steve when we were both in about the fourth grade at
Reinhardt Elementary School. Though we were not or maybe were never in the same
classes, we struck up a friendship. We played on football and baseball teams,
attended Sunday school at Lakeview Christian, joined in Scouts and campouts together,
took a summer camp adventure to Sky Ranch together, hiked the creeks (what
about the cliff house where the man shot boys with salt-shotgun shells), rode
bikes all night, walked endlessly to Casa Linda and Casa View, Lochwood and
beyond, and generally lived as the epitome of free rein boys in the suburbs. A
frequent destination on Saturdays was the Casa Linda Theatre, where we would
watch the latest horror or Elvis movie. On the 7th-grade Reinhardt
football team, Steve stood out. The school colors were royal blue and white. We
had to go out and scrounge up our own equipment. Steve showed up in a helmet
that had huge white ram’s horns painted on the sides, obviously a distinctive
painting by his dad Ken. As young adolescents, we also encouraged one another
in various bad judgments such as smoking Tarytons, or Viceroys I stole from my
parents. Our gateway was probably smoking grapevine on the Boy Scout campouts.
We also were somewhat bookworms in that a destination always was a newsstand to
flip through the latest Hot Rod, Car Craft, Mad magazine or Enquirer tabloid at
the CV Rexall, CL Skillerns, or Centerville mart. We grew up in a world where
there were no drugs, porn, criminal opportunities except shoplifting, no local
race problems, STDs or bad parents. Maybe some nighttime bike rides to steal
ripe peaches from fenced backyard peach trees.
(And then there was the time at about age 12, at midnight,
we were riding our 20-inchers down Cayuga Dr. in the dark in the country, and
two motorcycle riders came blasting toward us from the rear. Steve knew it was
time to dive into the ditch. I kept riding because my bike was very fast.
Circling around the 7-11 and behind as they pursued me with headlights blinding
me, I dived under a parked car, then ran like a rabbit to some old garage and
hid. Steve and I met back up soon—and shared our excitement about what
adrenaline can do to us 12-year-olds.)
I spent many days and nights at Steve's house. His mom was
always very kind and perky. She once confided to me her pleasure that Steve age
14 or so was reading big, thick library books back in his bedroom. When I had a
sleepover there, Joey would require Steve and me at bedtime to pray together
the Lord's Prayer, after we had cleaned in the Jack and Jill bathroom. She also
encouraged me to share my Latin translation notes to Susan to assist her in her
9th-grade Latin class at Gaston. My dad was an accountant and a
bowler, and it mystified me that Steve had a dad who was an artist, a tennis
player and also an accomplished sax jam musician. During one of those home
visits, Steve showed me this enormous poster on an easel that Ken had done of
the future LBJ freeway out in the north Dallas cornfields for his commercial
art firm. How mysterious also was that Ken was a member of the Dallas Bonehead
Club, very unusual for Millmar Cir surrounding conservative/John Birch
neighborhoods. How mysterious in the early 60s for Millmar Cir folks to invest
in land on Padre Island?
Ken was a wonderful dad. When Steve was about 15, Ken bought
him an old non-running Model A (or was it T) to encourage Steve's interest in
being a car mechanic (I had turned Steve on to the Henry Gregor Felson books Street Rod, Crash Club and Hot Rod, found in the Reinhardt library;
Steve told me he always remembered that passage where the protagonist, at high
speed on a highway, learned that applying more speed could save his life). But
more importantly, Ken taught Steve the importance of having an entrepreneurial
drive. At about age 12, we still on bicycles, Ken set Steve up to be in the
business of painting address numbers on curbs. Steve was outfitted with various
rubber stencil materials, cans of reflective green and white street paint and a
brush. Steve invited me on one of these bicycle trips into distant neighborhoods
to knock door-to-door to solicit buyers of his service--$2 a sign (Steve had
explained the economics to me that with two $4.00 buckets of paint, we only had
to paint four to start being in the black). Unfortunately on one trip many
miles away near Mesquite, Steve had the two gallon buckets precariously
balanced on his front basket. A nearly full gallon of green enamel busted and
poured out onto the street (remnants probably still there) and we kept riding.
I remember another instance when Ken drove Steve and me to a nursing home next
to Doctor's Hospital in Casa Linda. Again, we were door-to-door salesmen, but I
can't remember what we were selling--perhaps boy scout cookies. At any rate,
Ken parked near the end of the nursing home and we snuck in a side door. Sticking
our heads into each room, we solicited business. Finally an old women said to
us, "Please, can't you just leave us old folks alone.” We skedaddled back
to the car and reported to Ken that we had been evicted, and that we wanted to
leave anyway because we couldn't stand the "old folks” smell. Ken gave out
a big laugh--so much for that entrepreneurial misadventure.
I left Bryan Adams in the middle of my junior year and
didn't see Steve as much. We continued to share many delinquent wrongdoings
together I could tell stories about but also accomplished these with others,
too. I think he moved to Denton with family (is it Spencer Denton?) at about
age 20, leaving his Dallas printing job (eager to join his coz and BA-friend
hippies and in an early midlife crisis best regarded as related to the
extremely turbulent times of the late 60s), and I occasionally saw him at his
Fort Worth Drive home, but soon we went our own ways. Via email, we renewed
exchanges in the early 2000s, and about three years ago, Steve, driving a
rented convertible, accepted my invitation to visit my longtime hometown of
Denton. I believe he was in Texas visiting his sons and mother. We spent several
hours driving around Denton to all his old haunts. It was a more bitter than
sweet time for Steve. He shared stories of many bad times, painful losses and
many regrets—at my age don’t we all have them--that saddened me and enlightened
me to the source of his aversion to North Texas.
A continuous message was how much he loved his kids. He was
like his dad in that way. I gathered that Ken was always supportive of Steve,
except for a few times such as isolated mischiefs with Ken's Dodge Dart
convertible. How could Steve be otherwise than an always loving father? He was
also to me a close childhood friend and I know we all will continue to miss
him.
