Bryce Adventures Pt. 3: Down by the Lake

So Bryce moved out of town. Lake Bonham was miles away. As far as kids are concerned it may well have been another state. I was the "city kid" now and he was out in the sticks. For a kid, living by the lake was a paradise. Behind his house was a fairly dense wooded area. Down the road just a hundred yards or so was access to swimming at the lake.

As I mentioned in my post called Letters, Bryce had a neighbor named Andrea and we skinny dipped with her at the lake. Down the road a bit was a pond we called Mr. Romine's pond. I guess Mr. Romine owned it, I dunno. We had permission to fish out of it anytime we wanted. We did that on occasion. The primary perk about this was the dock at the nearby lake. It was a tall structure with a swing we could use to soar into the wavy brown waters. It never got old. It's odd how simple repeated actions can hold the attention of juveniles. Over and over we would swing off that thing. When Connie was present we had to wear life jackets. When not, hell no we didn't wear no stinkin life jackets! We held that dock in high esteem.

Not too terribly long after playing strip poker and skinny dipping, Andrea moved and a new family moved in. This family had a kid roughly our age named Heath. He didn't go to our school so I only saw him at his house. I think his dad was a deputy in the neighboring county. Heath was certainly down to earth but was also noticeably more tame than us feral rascals. One of the neatest things I ever witnessed was an interacrion between Heath and his dad. We were gathered around a campfire in Heath's backyard one night and his dad said, “Heath! Beer break!” Heath dropped what he was doing and immediately ran into the house to retrieve a cold can of Milwaukee's Best. I was like, “Whoa, this is the coolest thing I have ever seen.”

My dad would only ever say, “Jeremy, get me a beer why dontcha?” and I would do so begrudgingly.

One time Heath snuck a beer from his fridge and we opened it in the woods. We were so bad. The three of us taking turns drinking the beer pretending to actually like it. I had drunk plenty of beer in Germany in the presence of my Opa but never actually acquired a taste for it. Either Heath or Bryce got a hold of a genuine Playboy magazine. We looked at it together in those same woods and when finished, sealed it in a plastic bag and hid it in a tree stump. It needed to accessible but safe.

Those woods were nearly as awesome as having a lake practically in your backyard. Over the course of weeks we purged the entire neighborhood of any scrap wood that was lying around. Front yards, backyards, under porches. Anywhere we could see it. We even found a toilet seat. We stole nails and screws and rope. The three of us pieced together a fairly decent tree house. Even had a toilet seat to rest upon. It was maybe twelve feet up and made for an excellent view of the...woods. It had one flaw though. We didn't have a roof. So okay, maybe it was more of a fort or sentry tower. But it was ours and we constructed it out of materials we had gathered. No blue prints. Just our dreams and our hard work. Nobody could take that away from us.

We were budding engineers. You thought the tree fort was our only major undertaking in construction? Hell no. We also built a dam. There was a creek that fed into the lake in the woods. Most of the time it was dry, but after a good rain it ran pretty nice. The dam wasn't really functional, but we had never done this before. We knocked over small trees and stuffed them into the creek. Piles of junk, metal barrels, tree trunks from the bottom of the creek to the top. It worked fairly well as a bridge. Dams were more fun though, so we claimed it as a dam. We eventually got bored with it and let it be. Never even poured mud over the wood. I bet if we ever got a hold of bags of cement we certainly would have put that to good use.

When the fair came to town we'd stay at my place. Seeing as I was real close, this was logical. For whatever reason we decided we were masters of construction, as proven by our exploits in the woods. We were gonna now build a skeeball table. Now we never actually built it, but we decided that stage one of this enterprise would mean we'd have to steal skeeballs. And we did. We each stole a skeeball from a machine at the county fair. We kept them at Bryce's house because he was an only child and well, we'd build the table there. We ended up stealing a couple more balls from Pocket Change, the arcade at Midway Mall in Sherman. We stopped at four or five balls I guess. We got bored of this and the dream dried up. C'est la vie.

Bryce got a blow gun once. I'm not really sure why, maybe just for the hell of it? Well Heath and I were staying the night at Bryce's house and we decided that the first person to fall asleep would have pepper blown in his face. Heath passed out first but I felt pity on him and talked Bryce into leaving him be. I was tired and I felt bad for Heath. He was often our partner in crime, but he was a good kid. Well, showing pity did not pass along good karma. I guess I was the last one to wake up. Air blew into my face, up my nose and eyes really hard. It scared the shit out of me. Those fuckers blew pepper in my face! This is how Heath repays me!?!? I washed my face and blew my nose as best as I could. But to no avail. We went out on the lake. I was miserable. I spent the whole day sneezing runny snot with black dots littered in it. I learned a lesson. Mercy is for the weak. Never let anybody out of a bet. They will prey on you and take advantage of your kindness. That or this piece of wisdom: Those that cast a shadow of wholesome righteousness may be hiding underhanded tendencies.

The Fourth of July was certainly a holiday to be spent by the lake. Fireworks late at night are a no go in the city limits. As great as rockets are, firecrackers are where it's at. We tried filling glass bottles with small amounts of gasoline and slipping black cats in there. We never got those to explode. M-80s were our favorite firecracker. We had access to PVC pipe and throwing M-80s in those created awesome BOOM noises we couldn't get enough of. Almost like a bazooka. That same slingshot Bryce used to shoot me on the bike was put to good use. We'd load up an M-80, have the other light it and then see how long we could go before launching it. I guess it was like chicken or Russian roulette. We never got hurt. We probably should have for tempting fate.

That same Fourth of July we were outside watching fireworks up in the sky. It was late but the show was beautiful. I was barefoot but that was okay. We were just on the lawn. No twigs, rocks, or litter to worry about. Only I did have something to worry about. Ouch. I got bit. I slapped my foot and figured that would take care of it. It didn't. I got bit again. Again. I looked down. My right foot was covered in ants. Shit! Hundreds of them. I was standing in an ant pile. I was under attack by fire ants! I slapped at them some more and saw at Heath's house that he had a small kiddie wading pool in his yard. Thank God! I hauled ass over there and plunged my foot in the warm water. It relieved me. The next morning I counted the casualties. My foot was a little swollen. A little sore. There were a few dozen bites. I am sure it could have been much worse.

Besides Heath, Bryce had other young neighbors down the road. Like the obnoxious girls next to his East Bonham house, these boys were a few years younger than us. I believe there were three of them. They were down about five houses, maybe a quarter mile. They had a huge dog named Marmaduke that stayed in their front yard. You had to watch your step. They had a large Magnolia tree. Marmaduke would snack on the seed pods. Seems that magnolia tree seeds gave Marmaduke diarrhea. There was always dog shit everywhere in their yard filled with red seeds.

An example of a magnolia tree seed pod. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/26458716533829733/

Not a pleasant sight. Or smell. I only remember the name of one of the kids, Corey. He was like a mini Corey Haim. Super short, skinny, freckled red head. Super loud. We went inside his house once waiting to play. They were in the middle of lunch but we could come in and chat. I saw one of the funniest things in my life. They were eating macaroni and cheese and somebody said a joke or something. Corey couldn’t stop laughing. In fact he was in the middle of a bite of food and a noodle came out his nose. I'm sure you've heard this before, but it's totally true.

There was a house between Bryce's and Corey's. A single effeminate man lived there. This was before we knew better and we felt it okay to refer to him as a fag. We were young and dumb. We called dumb things “retarded” and bad things “gay”. That's just how kids spoke back then in Texas. Anyway, one night Bryce, these younger boys and I decided to ding dong ditch that guy. It was pitch black and we voted Corey to do it. He was the fastest kid, he'd get away by running around the house after ringing. We would watch from a group of pine trees. Corey rang the doorbell and wouldn't you know it? The neighbor was actually right by his door. Corey had nowhere to go. Wait, there was one place. There was this tiny porch by the front door. A little raised platform on a step really. It was maybe four feet by three feet and about two feet high. Core managed to get under there before the door opened. No way any of us would have fit under there. The neighbor opened the door to greet nobody. “Hello! Alright assholes! Knock this shit off! I hear you giggling in those bushes! Pull this shit again and I'm calling the sheriff.” He shut the door and Corey crawled out and hightailed it around back. No cops called. I did spend the rest of the night pulling pine needles out of my ass crack though.

In addition to fishing at the lake or Mr. Romine's Pond, there was plenty of crawdad fishing to be done. We would find a nice looking hole in the yard or by ditches and drop a piece of bacon or bologna down there on a string. We would wait a while and, tug or no tug, slowly pull the string up. Sometimes we'd catch one of those fresh water lobsters. One time for whatever reason I used a hook and dropped it down a hole. Something came up and I was summoned. I left the hook and took off. Later I found out that Heath's dad was pissed. His dog smelled bacon and pulled the bait out of the hole. The hook got stuck on his lips. I am so sorry that I injured that dog. I never thought about what could happen if I just left it behind. I guess I'm better at catching dogs than crawdads.

The summer following the sixth grade arrived and I got to go to Germany. The previous summer I got the privilege of joining Bryce for a week when he visited his grandparents in Oklahoma City, but he would not be joining us. I mean this was for almost three months! And it would have been cost prohibitive for him to join. I would send him a post card. On the card I told him I was having fun. I would see him soon and I asked if his mother was cranky yet. That's right, I asked if Connie was cranky. You see, a little while back Connie married a guy named Greg and now their family would grow even more, she was pregnant.

We got back from Germany and school started. Within the first few weeks of school his sister Kandice was born. She was nicknamed Candy Cane and it was cute. I could have cared less because, you know, twelve and thirteen year old boys don't give a damn about babies that aren't living in his house. But Bryce was no longer an only child. In the past three years his family doubled from just him and his mom to a family of four. His step dad worked at a hardware or lumber yard or something. While his mom was a nurse. My sister April babysat Kandice on occasion and was “in charge” of us too.

We still got our time on the lake though. His mom and Greg had a boat and we had incredible fun tubing. I tried water skiing once but mainly succeeded in nearly losing my shorts. Few things were more fun than holding onto an inner tube for dear life tied to a boat jumping waves.

I think Jerry moved next door to Bryce on the other side from Heath a while before my trip to Germany. He had gone to our school and was in our grade. Unlike Heath, he wasn't afraid to get in trouble. Like us, he wanted to have fun, if that fun was to be had by subverting limitations and crossing boundaries, so be it. My summer away allowed him to be real good friends with Bryce. Perhaps we were co-best friends at this point. I'm not sure.

Jerry joined us in hi-jinks in the woods. Sometimes on the lake. I think Jerry spent a lot of time at his mom's restaurant Los Amigos. Los Amigos was one of two Mexican joints in town. Being family, child labor laws didn't really apply to him. Due to his work he often missed out on our day to day exploits. One time when he got out of work he joined Bryce and me at the dock by Mr. Romine's pond. Bryce decided he'd try something out that would impress us. We were supposed to spot him, that is keep him from getting hurt. He grabbed onto the swing with his hands and took off. While he was out he flipped over and ended up upside down. His legs held onto the swing, behind his knees. He was going to drop into the lake upside down. Jerry and I were talking about something and were distracted. We weren't paying attention and when Bryce made his way back, THUNK! His head hit the wood beam on the dock. Somehow he was on the ball and didn't fall into the lake right away and waited until he cleared the structure to land into the lake. He was rightly pissed and crying. His head must have been throbbing. Jerry and I blamed each other. It was clearly the other guy's fault.

In the eighth grade I got a girlfriend. As a consequence, we hardly spent time hanging out anymore. All my free time was now occupied playing tonsil tennis. I didn't really realize it but Bryce and I saw less and less of each other. I became closer friends with Nick because of band and GT classes but it was nowhere near the same. I'd call and hang out with Bryce some of the time. By the time I broke up with Anna, Bryce was working at Los Amigos so now all his time was occupied. He remained loyal to me though. For whatever reason a classmate named Andy decided to tell people I was a Nazi because I'm half German. I let it go. Andy saw that I wasn't going to do anything about it and kept at it. I asked him if he really thought that and he said, “I know you aren't one. I've been to your house, I know your family.” I asked why he was saying that. He didn't have a good answer. Bryce told him to knock it off or he'd kick his ass. Andy knew he was dead serious, so he stopped.

To me an even bigger sign of loyalty was in Mrs. Crossland's social studies class. We had studied world cultures or something. We were to bring common dishes from different countries. I was excited because I thought I'd bring schnitzel. My mom nixed that though. It would be too expensive to feed schnitzel to 25 people. Instead, I brought leftover rouladen in an empty Country Crock bowl.

An example of rouladen.
http://wildflourskitchen.com/2014/10/20/olde-worlde-german-beef-rouladen-rolls-gravy-rindsrouladen/

While it is delicious, it would look gross to an average eighth grade American. Nobody ate it. Nobody except Bryce who had eaten my mom's cooking for years. I don't even know if he liked it, but he made it a point to say loudly, “This is really good!” That made me feel better. At least some of it would get eaten.

We had gone our entire Junior High career with not a single food fight. Aren't those things supposed to happen? Hollywood says so. Bryce was not going to let this stand. It was an injustice by golly. I wanted nothing to do with this nonsense. I was too mature or whatever. I didn't want to get in trouble. Bryce found one kid who agreed to start it with him. They picked a day and it was time. Bryce stood up in the cafeteria and yelled, “FOOD FIGHT!” And he threw food across the cafeteria. And then, nothing. There were no crickets but had they been there, they'd be chirping. It just didn't feel right. Seems like a food fight should be more organic. It should just happen. No planning. No conspiracy. Nobody joined and Bryce had to get a mop and clean up. He was in a tough spot. It was stupid but shame on me for allowing him to have his dream dashed and to have to go through that embarrassment alone. A real friend would have thrown a chunk of peach cobbler.

We made it to high school the next year. Freshmen! We had one class together, Theater Arts with Ms. Youree. Between his job and band taking up so much of my time, we only hung out sporadically (yes, the movie Clueless put that word in my vocabulary). In fact, he switched schools in the middle of the year. I never saw him, other than the rare phone call and even more rare request to hang out in person. There was no longer any more staying the night at each other's house. We were past that. We had outgrown it.

There was an incident that sticks out in my as a dagger that probably precipitated our loss of brotherhood even more. Bryce was at my house one day and had to get home before a certain time. My parents were supposed to give him a ride. My mom was at work so it was incumbent upon my dad to give him a ride. One problem though, my dad refused to. It was already dark and he had to be home in like half an hour. It would have taken two hours to walk home. But that's mostly along highway. That's not exactly safe. I know now that my dad was drunk and it would have been irresponsible to drive. But I was pissed. Bryce ended up having somebody pick him up though. So crisis averted. But they knew that my family could not be counted on.

Eventually I stopped getting calls from Bryce. And when I called I'd leave a message but got no call back. I'd try and call every once in a while until memories became our only shared experience. We each had things that occupied or daily lives. We both had new friends, though I have never gotten another best friend until I met my wife. The closest I ever came were John and Nick, but even they never inhabited that sacred space in my heart. Nobody but my my wife has had honor of being a family member I chose to have.

My sophomore or junior year it finally got to the point where it actually bugged me that my brother was absent from my life. At this point I was driving. I had forgotten their phone number so that wasn't even an option at this time. I was gonna drive out there unannounced. I went there but nobody was home. Jerry was there outside though and saw me. He said hi and asked what I was doing there. I told him I wanted to see Bryce. “Oh no man, they moved to another house on the other side of the lake a while ago.” I asked him if he knew why I never heard from Bryce the past year, year and a half. He said that his mom didn't feel I was a good influence on him. What?

I was a bad influence? I now realize that she probably meant that she didn't want her son around my dad. See, by then she was working at the VA where by dad worked. I'm sure my dad had a reputation. Combine that with how he refused to drive Bryce home and I'm sure she had a point. But my dad was my dad. My only dad. At that time though, I felt it was an indictment on me. It's true that we got in trouble sometimes, but nothing ever serious. Nothing that got us arrested. Nothing ever really bad happened. And truth be told, I actually WAS his sidekick. I was Beavis to his Butthead. We both were good kids and both had kind hearts. But circumstances like a parent's disapproval can be hard to overcome. I still love Connie like a family member, even if it's been 20 years since I've seen her. She took great care of me and was immensely responsible for me not having a boring childhood. I am grateful for her.

Losing Bryce as my best friend due to me not being more proactive is a regret I had. His companionship helped me capture an active and shenanigans filled youth that certainly supplied me with memories and experience you simply cannot manufacture. Every kid should be allowed to run amok at times. We certainly never lacked for excitement and blithe activity. We had lots of freedom but knew the line between playful disobedience and iniquitous diversion. Friendship, brotherhood, fellowship. Bryce will always be my brother. I miss our time together.

Back in theater class, we had to do monologues. Bryce had a monologue from Charlie Brown. I specifically requested a dramatic one. I was assigned a scene from The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams. I will end this entry with a quote from that:

I didn't go to the moon, I went much further - for time is the longest distance between places... I descended the step of this fire-escape for a last time and followed, from then on, in my father's footsteps, attempting to find in motion what was lost in space - I traveled around a great deal. The cities swept about me like dead leaves, leaves that were brightly colored but torn away from the branches.I would have stopped, but I was pursued by something.

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High School International Thespian Society pic of me (lower right). 1999

If I were to pick one song to be the soundtrack to this post it would be...