Ok so we had our historic house (see this post for that story) and now it was time for a summer of fun before Mark went off to college.
We had a few parties, but mostly I remember a lot of running around town on our bikes, playing Frisbee in the park, drinking beer and smoking weed (Well, Mark didn’t smoke weed… yet but I did and so did the rest of us) and just being friends.
Being young and free.
It was some of the best times I’ve ever had, that summer living in my home town of Rochester, Minnesota. I was making enough money at 6-D East (see the series of stories beginning with this post) to cover my expenses, and since I now lived in the heart of town (as you can see by the red circle in the photo above) I could ride my bike nearly anywhere I wanted to go in Rochester.
Of course we still had cars. Our small group of newly free eighteen-year-old fun-loving friends weren’t about to just sit around “Roachville” all day and night. It seems a bit funny to me now that, when I was living at home out in the country, all I wanted to do was go into town. But once I lived in the heart of town, I found myself spending a lot of my free time with friends still living out in the country.
I was starting to become better friends with Buck Anderson in King’s Park. And because of that I also was starting to get to know Hadley Trudeau. They were an unlikely pair. Buck was a year older than me and Hadley was three or four years younger. Hadley was smart, with a wry wit and sharp, curious eyes. He always seemed a lot older than his years.
Mark and I were solid buddies that whole summer and had some great times together. Back when we were still in high school, we’d spent many hours in the loft of our barn playing ping pong and smoking cigarettes. We became the best players at John Marshal High and once we were out of school, we put the same energy into playing catch with the Frisbee. I loved it! We’d take a twelve pack of beer to the park, I’d catch a quick buzz with my handy pocket “one hitter”, and we would toss the disk back and forth for hours and hours… coming up with all kinds of creative throws and catches but mostly focusing on distance and accuracy.
It was so fun and I felt so free. A time and a friend that I’ll never forget.
But then for some reason Mark started putting on a kind of “good Ol’ boy” attitude. He started acting like he had contempt for us “hippies” as he sat there in the party room drinking whiskey while we toked it up. It was about that time when Ronny started coming over.
Ronny Ralston was a year older than the rest of us and Mark had made friends with him at some point during that summer. Ronny was a biker, of sorts. Not a member of a club as far as I could tell and he also had a van that was converted with a bed in back. Ronny had a lot of the asshole attitude I’d associated with bikers (fair or not) and I think Mark got into the edginess of it all. Mark introduced Ronny to our party pad as the guy who would take his room when he went off to collage. I didn’t like it, but I wasn’t assertive enough to contradict Mark. Besides, Mark had hardly ever paid rent, and Ronny made enough to do so easily. He also showed up with cash in hand.
Marvin was sold so I didn’t complain.
Ronny’s introduction to the house would also facilitate my friendship with a guy who eventually became my best friend for many years after and who is still a good friend I very much appreciate. Jim Romano had gone to Catholic school with Ronny’s girlfriend Annie. They were quite good friends and so Jim seemed like a kind of sidekick to the couple. It was an odd relationship that I didn’t fully understand but that didn’t matter. I liked Jim. He was funny and a really good guy. We would spend a lot of time together during those days and I will write more about it all when this again will have to be…
To be continued…
