Gene, Gene made a machine

Gene, Gene made a machine.
Joe, Joe made it go..
Frank, Frank turned the crank.
Art, Art…
Childhood ditty

When I started in grade school my class had about 20 kids. There were probably at most 40 kids my age in the whole town and there was another 15 - 20 that lived out on farms and came to school in buses. There were 3 grade schools in town and I went to Johnson Grade School. It wasn’t named after LBJ so I am not sure who it was named after. My history tells me that the president Johnson who came after Lincoln was not a popular president but it had to be him or some State personality. The other schools were Morgan and Northside. Northside being the newest they must have chosen a less political name.

I was born in March of 1942 about 4 months after the start of World War II so it was before the big bulge of kids born during and after the war we now call the Baby Boomers. I think class sizes had remained steady during the depression and through the start of the war, but now the war was over and everything was on the march.

My class had twin boys Gene and Jimmy. Gene was about normal size but his brother Jimmy was small, very thin, and not very strong. They always said Jimmy was born two minutes after Gene. I lived about six blocks from school and Gene & Jimmy lived about 3 blocks away on the path I usually took on the way home. I remember they had a Houseboat their dad was working on that sat right outside their garage. It wasn’t finished yet but someday they would take that boat and go float it on a lake and spend whole summers.

Gene and Jimmy and I all became good friends. I used to stop and play at their house on the way home. I don’t recall what we played but I do recall their mother was very nice and they had a little sister maybe 3-4 years younger. Everyone had a little sister or brother in those days. They were the baby boomers.

Jimmy just never seemed to fill out his clothes. He was the smallest kid my age I had every met, but he and Gene were both smart and we competed for top grades in many subjects. When we reached the later half of the third grade they took Jimmy out of school and took him to Denver for an operation. This would have been 1950 or 1951. The teacher explained the process they were going to use. They would put him in a tub of ice and cool his body way down, which would slow his body functions. Then they would perform the surgery and repair his heart. Jimmy didn’t make it. Within a couple of days they told us that Jimmy had died during the operation.

There was a memorial service for Jimmy at the Methodist church. I don’t remember any of the words spoken that day all I remember is a 9x6 picture of Jimmy in a frame sitting up near the alter. It was the strangest feeling I had never known anyone who had died. I looked at the picture and tried to remember Jimmy and understand where he was and what had happened. I couldn't do it. Jimmy was gone and I couldn’t wrap my mind around the whole thing.

It had to be worse for Gene. His brother who had always been a part of him was gone. Gene is gone from my memories for a year or two. Maybe my inability to cope with Jimmy’s death affected my relationship with Gene. Maybe Genes coping affected his relationship with everyone. I don’t know. I do know, as Gene comes back into my memory over the next few years he is a different kid. I could almost say he was mean Gene. Maybe he had something to prove, maybe it was anger that he was there and Jimmy was gone. Gene didn’t turn bad. In those days there were few bad boys. He just lost some of his wholesome goodness. He got bigger and a little sadistic.

My next major interaction with Gene came a few years later. I got my first paper route in the fifth grade and by the sixth grade I had a fairly big route (around 50 customers) that meant $15-20 a month in my pocket if I managed it well. We used to get our papers from a warehouse dock down by the train station. About 8 of us would arrive early in the morning, fold, and rubber band our papers, load up our bikes and take off on our routes. During school I had arranged my route to end close to the school and I would arrive well before the final bell rang. During the summer occasionally I would arrive late after all the others had left and quickly fold my papers and go.

One day I was late and when I arrived to get my papers and Gene was there getting his papers. We sat and talked while we folded the papers. Gene had a water pistol with him. This was not unusual for boys our age. We went through weapon fads (Peashooters, water guns, match guns, bows& arrows, homemade swords & shields, etc.). For some reason I hated to be shot with a water gun. As we worked every once in a while Gene would shoot me with his gun. I kept getting madder and madder. I asked him to stop but that just seemed to make him enjoy it and do it more.

At this point Gene was bigger and stronger that me. I knew that he knew that. Finally I could take it no more I grabbed Gene’s gun threw it on the concrete dock and stomped on it till it broke. He wasn’t going to squirt me again. Gene grabbed me and wrestled me down to the dock and straddled me. There was no one else around. He pinned my arms under his legs. I was trapped. He began to torture me. That meant the Chinese water torture (a slow steady hard tap on the chest). He kept saying, "Give up". I kept twisting in agony but I wouldn’t give up. After about what seemed like 30 minutes a man came out of the warehouse looked at us and said to us, "You boys get out of here and get those papers delivered. Slowly Gene got up, looked at the broken gun in a pool of water, loaded up his papers, and rode off on his bicycle. I got up and did my route. I was thinking, "He can’t squirt me now".