You can’t always get what you want.
The plan was that I was going to go up to Ames, Iowa, on a
fall weekend day to attend a game between the Iowa State University Cyclones
and, I hoped, another good Big 12 football team.
Nard and I hashed this out as he drank a beer or two on the
fourth level of Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge one winter day.
It was a nasty day, and I really don’t like the modern, multiple-stacked-floor
incarnation of the once low-slung bar where long ago I drank beer with Lefty,
ET, Big Mon, whoever was playing the Opry that night. That was back in the early 1970s, and I don’t
need to go on about that here.
Leonard Sandholm, who was like a little brother to me in our
college days, was passing through Nashville from his farm in Red Oak, Iowa. He and
some of his crew from the farm, his seed company and maybe the bar/resort he
owned down on a Missouri lake, were going to a farm convention of some sort
down in, I think, Sarasota, Florida. Never know when a guy might get a good
deal on a combine, I suppose.
Nard, as most of us called him -- though I often called him
by Leonard, because I liked the sound of that full name -- and his crew were
going to go to the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Johnny Cash Museum, and
other tourist sites during a two-night stop here…. Emphasis “going to go.”
I didn’t know he was coming, but he called me late on the
Friday night he got into Nashville. He and his buddies/employees, who all were
occupying one large room at one of our finer downtown hotels, had decided to
wait until the Saturday to do their museum hopping.
Instead, Nard was calling me from the purple bar the
tourists all seek out, because they don’t know any better. The drinking was
underway.
I will have to say here that from the time I was maybe 17 up
until the time I was in my late-30s, I was a world-class consumer of alcohol.
And other things. And I had really earned my reputation as the guy who would
and could go the farthest, the closest to the edge, toes on the ledge, during
my college years.
“Grown up” in my 20s and 30s, I really didn’t need to change
much, as I was a newspaperman, and such errant behavior was expected. Or at
least a part of the stereotype.
Generally after-hours, of course.
But, as I got older and after I got married for the final
time (she’s great and for some reason understands me) and we adopted our
children, I mostly put alcohol away. That’s another story.
Anyway, on that winter Friday night when Nard called from
Tootsie’s, I could tell by the hollering of his crew in the background that
this wasn’t my place to be that night. Nard, who was sober while buying for his
guys, understood that I should probably stay home that night. But he said he’d
like to see me Saturday, before they were going to go to the museums and toured
Music Row. Again, emphasis on the “going to go.”
Regardles, at about 10 or so on that Saturday morning, I
parked my now 37-year-old Saab at Music City Center and walked the few blocks to
Tootsie’s. The last time I’d actually been inside this bar was when I
accompanied my friend, Kris Kristofferson and his wife, Lisa, to a ceremony in
which club management unveiled a metal memorial, 18-inch-square bronze plate in
the floor honoring Kris. Another long story.
Anyway, as usual, the joint was jammed with folks from Iowa,
Upstate New York and Texas. And it was noisy with third-class country music. Nard
had told me he didn’t know where they’d be, other than at Tootsie’s. And, he
said, “I’ll recognize you, Timmy.” In college I was known as Champo, but
Leonard liked to call me Tim or Timmy. Which makes sense, because those are two
versions of my first name. (My mother called me “Timothy” when she was pissed.)
I knew I’d recognize Nard, too. I hadn’t seen him since the
night after Ben Sorenson’s wedding. I only went to that one because I really needed
to see my friends, who I knew all would be there, some participating in the
nuptial celebration. A girl I loved but who had married someone else was
singing at the wedding, so I wanted to see her, too. Again, that’s another long
story.
That was in the late 1970s, I think. After the wedding, we
all went to Tom Carpenter’s trailer in Ames – by “all,” I mean me, Carpy (since
it was his place), Titzy (John Nitz), Jocko (Jim Mraz), maybe Captain Kirk.
Perhaps Wizard, who had transformed into an asshole most of us didn’t like,
though I had spent a few months bumming around the country with him back in
1973. It was OK, since he slept while I drove, so mostly it was me and coffee
and cigarettes on the mountain ranges and dipping in the oceans, warm and cold
from the Florida panhandle to the Big Sur. We did go to a taping of Johnny
Carson, on which Buddy Hackett and David Carradine were guests, while in Burbank.
We drank Orange Juliuses at a stand on Alameda Boulevard while waiting for the
taping.
That’s another long story, so I’d better focus on Benjie’s
wedding day.
Since there had been beer consumption before and after the
wedding, we all had a pleasant hour or two ride to Ames. Sometime around 2 a.m.
Sunday, a verbal fight erupted inside the trailer. I don’t remember who was
fighting. Alcohol can spring and amplify anger, you know. I’ve always been a
mellow fellow. Still, these were my friends, and it bothered me as the argument
grew in volume and intensity. I was outside on a lawn chair and couldn’t stand
all of the yelling. Like I say, I’m pretty much a peaceful fellow, unless
someone I love is threatened or an angry pusher with a knife chases me after I
messed up his deal. Another story.
I’ll leave that angry-in-the-trailer story there, pretty
much, only to add that the next morning I awoke on the floor of the TV room on
the seventh floor – where I had lived – of Larch Hall. There’s a long story
here of how the police had given me my ride there (I wasn’t in trouble, I just didn't want the police to take me back to the trailer, so no one would get in trouble.) But we
don’t need to go there here.
I’ve always been crazy, it’s kept me from going insane.
Anyway, cutting down to save the rest for my memoirs, I
don’t think I saw Nard again until that day at Tootsie’s. Oh, we had
communicated many times on the phone. And once he tried to get me when he and
his family drove through my then-home of Clarksville, Tennessee, on the way to Florida, but I
was working. With the birth of Facebook, though, we had begun fairly regular
“how you doing? chats.
And, oh yeah, he did call me when my Uncle Moose (Red Oak farmer
Steve Mainquist, three years ahead of me in school and a great man who had
introduced me to Nard when the freshman arrived at Iowa State) died. And when
Jocko’s ex-wife, Nola, died.
But, on that day we sat at Tootsie’s, it was like we’d never
been apart. Yes, he did recognize me. Told me I was a little thinner (I am
overweight, some, because of age and gravity, but the beer gut is long gone).
He had grown to the size of two Leonards, but that was OK. We recognized each
other as soon as I took the top landing at Tootsie’s and embraced immediately.
For what must have been five minutes. Or at least two. Whatever, we didn’t feel
like letting go of each other. He asked
me if he could buy me a beer. I told him I’d start with a Diet Coke. He
ordered me a beer anyway.
Probably $5 a glass. A lot more expensive than the
69-cents-a-six-pack stuff we used to favor back in our college days. I always
kept a warm case of Wiedemann’s under my dorm cot just in case someone got
thirsty and the weather turned bad. Or in case we needed a study break and
Smokin’ Joe wasn’t around. That’s another story. Smokin’ Joe was never there on
weekends, as his fiancee was in Cedar Rapids, where his parents lived next to
the Czech National Cemetery.
Anyway, maybe some other day I’ll talk about Smokin’ Joe. He
was a good guy. Grew up to become some sort of international lumber executive.
I’d only planned to be around Leonard for an hour or so at Tootsie's,
because he and his friends were going to go see the museums, do the tourist
bit, before leaving early the next morning for Sarasota.
Problem was that Leonard’s crew drank too much the night
before. “They are back at the hotel, filling up the wastebaskets,” Leonard told
me. “They are going to rest a little
while and we’ll go to the Hall of Fame later.” (They never made it, by the way, and they left for Sarasota early the next morning. Leonard told me, later, that he'd come back sometime with his wife and see the museums. The best-laid plans, you know.)
We took our beers – by then, I also had a Diet Coke – with
us out onto the balcony patio at Tootsie’s. It was cold, but we sat beneath one
of those umbrella-like propane heater things and told stories. Well, they
weren’t stories, really. They were recollections.
“There’s no way we wouldn’t have ended up in jail if we were
going to college these days,” Nard said, with a smile. He’s probably right,
here. Some among us did do jail time, anyway. Others of us bailed us out.
But it was harmless stuff as we went, as I coined it,
“rolling” from Tork’s Pub all the way to Boone or even Des Moines, on weekends
where we generally saw the dawn pass us while we still were on our way back to
the dorm for a few hours of food and rest before doing it again.
On one of those early mornings, the bust of Old Man Hanson,
the namesake of our dorm floor – we were in Hanson House – bounced off the
driveway eight floors below (we were on the seventh residential floor, but there was a full floor for mailboxes and maintenance equipment below us). The bust was scuffed, but otherwise OK. All I was
doing was testing his ability to fly.
We were good guys. The girls liked to crank up “You’re So
Vain” when I walked, usually with Jocko, but sometimes with Nard, Titzy and
Carpy, into parties where we’d not been invited. As Carly sang, we often
watched ourselves gavotte. We were seldom invited, but it seemed like we were
expected. Just like at Tork’s, where
when we arrived on Friday evenings, the whole tavern would grow quiet. Kind of
like the bars in the movies when The Man With No Name comes in the door.
“There’s nothing we did that I regret,” I told Nard, as we
sat in the cold, me alternately sipping on my $5 beer and my free Diet Coke. He
slowly sipped on his beer as we reflected on our times and on what we’d done
since.
I told him why I’d pretty much stopped drinking long before
and he told me he didn’t drink either. “Just doing it some with the guys on
this trip, but I really don’t drink at home anymore.”
I reminded him that he became rarer on the “rolling team” adventures
about halfway through my senior year, when we illegally brought a couple of
kegs back up to the dorm and held a “girls-only-invited” party. Leonard and
Jana, the girl he met, ended up, innocently, curled up on the top bunk in his
room. Nothing untoward. The door was open. And Titzy, his roommate, was in the
room anyway.
Leonard did have to come out to seek my advice. Jocko and I generally
played the roll of “hosts” so we protected the kegs and, of course, sweet-talked
the guests at least until he decided it was time to call Mo. We also charged
the guys $5 apiece to help pay for the beer. That’s another story as well.
Music was generally blaring, out of sync, from every room.
My big stereo, the speakers finally died during the flood of 2010 here in
Nashville, generally carried something romantic like Kristofferson, The Stones,
Abbey Road or, even, Sly and the Family Stone.
I don’t need to repeat my advice to Leonard on that night he
met Jana, other than I told him not to worry about it and that he had a really
nice girl in his room who needed his attention. They were married and lived
happily ever after for the better part of a half-century. It was their
daughter, Kelly, who informed me her dad died the other day.
It was a strange coincidence. I was thinking about my old friends on a
respite from my writing down here in my office. I sent a note to Leonard – I
did that every so often – and I got a note back.
“This is Nard’s daughter, Kelly. I’m assuming by your post
on FB that you don’t know, but dad was diagnosed with Stage 4 liver cancer in
December and is currently at home on hospice. We are looking at maybe a couple
days to a week at the most. If you have any questions, you can give me a call.”
She included her number.
I called immediately. Leonard, she told me, had been told of
the disease and prognosis in December. He didn’t tell his family (I’m sure he
told Jana) or anyone else about it, because he wanted everyone to enjoy the
holidays.
He did have chemo in January, and it made him too ill to
continue. There was no happy ending in sight. But he didn’t tell his family
about it because two of his grandsons were in the Iowa State high school
wrestling championships in mid-January.
Since Leonard had been a high school wrestler – more on this from Titzy later, but Nard continued grappling his way through cold
college nights – he didn’t want to upset the grandsons.
Kelly asked me if I could contact Tom, John and Jocko to
pass the word that the time was near.
I continued my Facebook “conversation” with both Kelly and
her mom, Jana, well into the evening. Tom and John and John’s wife, Ramona,
joined in the conversation, sharing our sadness, offering our services and our
prayers.
Jana even jumped onto the thread, even as hospice oversaw
her unconscious, sedated husband, nearing his final breath in the family home,
to COMFORT US…. “This is Jana… Nard loves all you guys sooooo much! He is
towards the end of his journey but not in pain... I wanted you all to know
that. So many fun memories that he wouldn’t have traded for the world! Love to
all.”
The Facebook message came at 4:55 a.m. Friday, February 12,
just hours after our previous conversation. Straightforward, but even I could
feel the tears in the note from Kelly:
“Just letting you know that dad passed away early this
morning. If you could pass that along to the group, we would appreciate it ….”
Kelly told me where the funeral was going to be, how it
could be accessed on Facebook.
As I’d done the night before, I contacted the other guys. It
hit hard, of course. We are not young men anymore, but even so, Leonard always
was so happy, so full of life.
“One thing about Nard, he lived a happy life,” Tom (Carpy)
said, when I reached him on the phone at his home at Lake Las Vegas, where he
and Deb have retired after his long career as a vet in Orange County,
California. Actually, she’s still a bank executive, but can work via remote.
I stopped to think about Nard for a while. Well, I couldn’t
really sleep.
I thought about the famous Vator Bowl Parade that preceded the
huge, garbage cans and water balloons Vator Bowl that soaked the carpet between
the elevators and helped lead the way for the residence life people to send us
a Vietnam infantry lieutenant to serve as our head resident. Tom Martin was a good guy, but he got stuck
with me and my Merry Prankster pals for two full years. When he wasn’t calming us down and keeping us
from going “too far” – a relative term, to be sure – "Lieutenant Marty" would tell us about the
horrors he saw in Vietnam. And those horrors returned in his sleep, he said.
Anyway, there were so many great times. There was the Viking
Fest, when Jocko and I made pheasant stew from birds Nard or maybe Titzy
brought us. We also bought a turkey and got a lodge out in the country – a
university “retreat” building that we called “Lean Feeners Lodge” – for the party.
Again, we passed the word that girls only could be invited.
It was another one of those parties that Jocko and I charged admission fees to
– to the men, not the women – that helped us pay for our college or at least
for our beer. It came in handy to have a strong fellow like Nard on hand when
it came to transporting 15½-gallon kegs and full turkey roasters through about
a mile of snowy pathways to the lodge.
There was the day that Nard, Jocko and I went out to The
Ledges, a state park on the Des Moines River, out near Boone, where we went
down the snowy slopes like we were skiing, all the while filling our tennis
shoes with snow.
That was the time that Nard got a stomach-ache. We were
miles from civilization and a toilet and the snow was too deep for him to just
use the woods as his restroom. We came upon a stone chimney – no house, just an
ancient chimney, and Leonard climbed to the top, making himself a commode perch
that he quickly used as Jocko and I moved upwind. It wasn’t Santa Claus coming
down the chimney that bitter-cold day.
Tom jumped onto the Facebook conversation the other night to
add: “Very sad day for all of us, Tim. Hard to believe. Nard packed in a lot of
laughs. He hid my desk light one afternoon. We tipped over my chair, put the
light in crooked and left him a note I was in the hospital after getting
electrocuted. It was really funny, until we realized he was running through the
hospital looking for me. I hid for hours when he got back. He will always make
me smile. Love you all.”
John (Titzy) responded to Jana’s note about how much her
husband loved us by saying: “Jana, this is John. Thanks for the note. I am glad he is in no pain. However, if you
will recall, I was his wrestling partner until he chose you. He had to wrestle
me before bed, so he would be tired. (His exercise program). Seemed like he
always slept well, and I was in pain, then he would wake up at crack of dawn
and throw a pillow at me. Many, many memories, all that I treasure. Our love to
you.”
Through my own tears, I read these notes from my friends. I
thought about how long since I’ve been with them. How long ago was the Vator
Bowl and the Viking Fest? Free meals on the run at truck stops and diners. The $1.25
all-you-can-eat pizza and fried chicken joint out by Boone, a weekly jaunt that
usually had Jocko and me lining our school backpacks with plastic bags. Snacks for later.
I kept Jocko in the loop on the messages to the others, but
for some reason it’s been years since he’s replied to me about anything. But
that’s OK. He’s a good man, and I knew he was crying inside for Nard. I wanted
him to know I was thinking about him, the rest of the guys, friendship.
Which brings me back to undying friendship. I actually have
lost old friends to Trump and to religion in the last year. It hurt. But I’ve always been what I am, so I
live with it.
Beside that, I could always look further in the rearview to
remember my times with Nard, Titzy, Carpy, Jocko and sometimes the other guys.
Coach. Captain Kirk. Wizard. Dog Shit. Hondo. Uncle Moose.
It was that first group, though, that I’m closest to. When I
see them, and I have, they look like old men, but their faces show the brightness,
the gleam of happiness that we felt during our evenings at Tork’s, the Viking
Fest.
Our meals in the cafeteria and our late-night/early morning
laughter. The midnight snack of purloined cold chicken and pizza from the Boone
lunches.
I think most of us were “A” students, by the way, so it
wasn’t all just fun at school. But while we did take time out to study, I know,
for me, anyway, the very best part of my college career was spent with those
guys.
At the top of this rambling tale, I write about Iowa State
University and the Cyclones. I had written Nard, oh, a year or so ago, that I
really wanted to come back to Iowa one last time, go to a ballgame, do some
old-man “rolling,” without the girls and grease burgers. We'd hatched this plan, actually, at Tootsie's, where we watched the Cyclones basketball team play on one of the TVs. I didn't want this idea to die.
He told me to come on, whenever I could. Let him know, and
he’d get the tickets. Maybe Titzy and Mona would come down from Northwestern
Iowa, where they farm when John’s not some agribusiness bigshot in Chicago.
Maybe Carpy and Deb could come, if we gave them the right date.
Then came the virus, and any plans for travel to Ames, Iowa,
had to be put off for another year.
Of course, that year has barely begun. And Nard is dead.
I looked back through our Facebook conversations today. Most
of it is just us teasing each other, reminding each other of how much fun we
had. There is something of an all-guys theme of empty beer cans and urination.
And a lot of love.
They are going to have services for Leonard Wednesday in Red
Oak, Iowa. As he was so loved, I’d expect the whole town to be there. Titzy and
Ramona are going to try to go, if the weather cooperates. Mona said they’d be
proud to represent the rest of us.
As I was about to close out this rambling, I decided to go
back through our Facebook messenger chats over the years. I stopped at the last
one from Leonard: “Happy birthday, ole friend,” he wrote. “May we enjoy many
more.”
You can’t always get what you want.
