Before everything else (by Jim)
Before, after and in-between high school seminaries, until I moved to Carlyle in my senior year, there was “Bocko”, Bill Bockingkamp. I include Bocko in my spiritual memoirs, because he was the fisherman, the salt of the sea, the earthy Jesus, the flip side of the mountain-top God, whose bonds held me just as fast. God I loved Bocko!
Like me Bocko was a loner, an outcast, like his brother Dickie, until Dickie overnight went from toad to prince. Bocko and I spent everyday exploring in rugged Ozark mountain foothill woods. The suburbs west of St. Louis was being sprinkled with subdivisions and corporations, which is where I came in, but Bocko lived in a vast unspoiled stretch of huge rolling hills, bulls and pastures, woods and power lines, and a Quonset hut. Steppenwolf’s ‘Born to Be Wild, was our song. We lived for danger, adventure, rebellion.
Bill’s parents had moved there 20 years before and would outrun the sprawl soon, again. His father had bird dogs out back, and called his sons by similar names, like Dukie, and I think he was mostly unaware of his daughter Anne. His parents threw loud, drunken parties, blasting Neil Diamond’s ‘Sweet Caroline’. At work he was notorious for shattering his phone weekly, as he slammed it down into its cradle. Free-spirits. The opposite of my parents - very cool.
Let me tell you of some of our adventures.
First I remember, when Anne invited Bocko and I to join her college friends on a canoe trip. It was the first of many canoe trips, usually down the Current river, deep in the Missouri Ozarks. The rest would float but Bill and I paddled all day, giving us time to rerun the rapids, to climb and leap from the cliffs and bridges, to come quickly around a bend in the river and catch two young gay lovers, on a rock, at it. I remember, Anne had one college dude along who wore a cap all day, so at days end, I was totally taken in by his glistening hair.
Years later, we would again go to the Current river, but finishing up a three day trip in the first afternoon, we returned to Bocko’s house. Grabbing a bottle of his parents whisky, we headed out then for the Mississippi River, but we could never get to it. Finally far out in the country, racing down field roads, along dirt levees, we see an opening, and turning hard, skid to a stop atop it. An artist painting below on the river side of the levee, screams, knocking her easel over and runs off. This is perfect. We’ll camp here tonight, beside the river levee.
The Mississippi is easily a mile or more wide here. I want to cross it tomorrow in our canoe, but Bill’s leery. I talk him into staying near the shore and paddling upstream for a mile to see if we can fight the current. It’s so powerful, we have to paddle hard the whole time to make progress against it. About a mile down we see a damn ahead, spanning the whole width, with locks to the side. We decide we can do it.
That night, after the suns set, as we get looped on the whisky, beside a huge fire, we see lights cris-crossing the river. Running up and down the shore excitedly, we think we are witnessing an escaped felon hunt. As we sleep in the Vega that night, huge lightning and thunder split the sky, and it pours and pours down rain. I listen for water running beneath the car, as I imagine the river rising, but to drunk to care I drift back to sleep.
The next morning, pointing the canoe three-quarters of the way upstream and one-quarter towards the far side of the river, we start across. It’s amazing the waves on the river are about a foot high. Half way across Bill decides he want to swim. I think it is a bad idea, since we have to paddle hard just to stay even with our camp-site, but agree if he’ll tie a rope to himself and the boat. Just as he climbs back in, the Coast Guard boat hails us, and asks if we need help. We say, no. Two-thirds of the way across, a chain of barges and a tug-boat, in the main channel, send huge three foot waves across the river at us. We change our angle to ride them out.
Reaching the far side of the river, we land between two monstrous hills, and head up a steep pasture full of sheep and billy goats, between them. Coming from the backside, we reach the peak of one of them. Now over 300 feet above the river, on the edge of a shear cliff, we see the Ohio split off the Mississippi river. Bill wanting to sit on the edge, lands right on a cactus, and nearly leaps off.
Many other times, we’d been in the Quonset hut on old man Finney’s land. Bocko, on his own, had discovered a huge old Liberty bell there, though. We schemed of anchoring it in the Vega and letting it peel as we sped through the subdivisions. So several nights a week, I’d sneak out my bedroom window and thumb it over to Bill’s, and we’d drag it several hundred feet, then bury it again. In between times, I had gotten a guilty conscience, and so with another friend would drag it back towards the hut. When Bill heard on the police scanner that it was noticed missing, we rediscovered it and returned it.
Another time Bocko and I, and Dickie and his friend, piled into his ‘63 Volkswagen bug, us with two gallons of Tequila Sunrise, and them with a case of beer, to watch an all-nighter James Bond run at the drive-in. After finishing our tequila and polishing off their beer, we headed back to Bill’s house. They were building a mall at the top of Bill’s lane, so after shoving down some construction signs, we climbed atop a castle turret and watched the Interstate far below. Later we waded into huge ponds there that had filled three feet deep with mud. Afterwards we talked about the future. How we didn’t want to be swallowed up by the world. How we’d run away to the mountains together, and how nothing would ever part us.
Like me Bocko was a loner, an outcast, like his brother Dickie, until Dickie overnight went from toad to prince. Bocko and I spent everyday exploring in rugged Ozark mountain foothill woods. The suburbs west of St. Louis was being sprinkled with subdivisions and corporations, which is where I came in, but Bocko lived in a vast unspoiled stretch of huge rolling hills, bulls and pastures, woods and power lines, and a Quonset hut. Steppenwolf’s ‘Born to Be Wild, was our song. We lived for danger, adventure, rebellion.
Bill’s parents had moved there 20 years before and would outrun the sprawl soon, again. His father had bird dogs out back, and called his sons by similar names, like Dukie, and I think he was mostly unaware of his daughter Anne. His parents threw loud, drunken parties, blasting Neil Diamond’s ‘Sweet Caroline’. At work he was notorious for shattering his phone weekly, as he slammed it down into its cradle. Free-spirits. The opposite of my parents - very cool.
Let me tell you of some of our adventures.
First I remember, when Anne invited Bocko and I to join her college friends on a canoe trip. It was the first of many canoe trips, usually down the Current river, deep in the Missouri Ozarks. The rest would float but Bill and I paddled all day, giving us time to rerun the rapids, to climb and leap from the cliffs and bridges, to come quickly around a bend in the river and catch two young gay lovers, on a rock, at it. I remember, Anne had one college dude along who wore a cap all day, so at days end, I was totally taken in by his glistening hair.
Years later, we would again go to the Current river, but finishing up a three day trip in the first afternoon, we returned to Bocko’s house. Grabbing a bottle of his parents whisky, we headed out then for the Mississippi River, but we could never get to it. Finally far out in the country, racing down field roads, along dirt levees, we see an opening, and turning hard, skid to a stop atop it. An artist painting below on the river side of the levee, screams, knocking her easel over and runs off. This is perfect. We’ll camp here tonight, beside the river levee.
The Mississippi is easily a mile or more wide here. I want to cross it tomorrow in our canoe, but Bill’s leery. I talk him into staying near the shore and paddling upstream for a mile to see if we can fight the current. It’s so powerful, we have to paddle hard the whole time to make progress against it. About a mile down we see a damn ahead, spanning the whole width, with locks to the side. We decide we can do it.
That night, after the suns set, as we get looped on the whisky, beside a huge fire, we see lights cris-crossing the river. Running up and down the shore excitedly, we think we are witnessing an escaped felon hunt. As we sleep in the Vega that night, huge lightning and thunder split the sky, and it pours and pours down rain. I listen for water running beneath the car, as I imagine the river rising, but to drunk to care I drift back to sleep.
The next morning, pointing the canoe three-quarters of the way upstream and one-quarter towards the far side of the river, we start across. It’s amazing the waves on the river are about a foot high. Half way across Bill decides he want to swim. I think it is a bad idea, since we have to paddle hard just to stay even with our camp-site, but agree if he’ll tie a rope to himself and the boat. Just as he climbs back in, the Coast Guard boat hails us, and asks if we need help. We say, no. Two-thirds of the way across, a chain of barges and a tug-boat, in the main channel, send huge three foot waves across the river at us. We change our angle to ride them out.
Reaching the far side of the river, we land between two monstrous hills, and head up a steep pasture full of sheep and billy goats, between them. Coming from the backside, we reach the peak of one of them. Now over 300 feet above the river, on the edge of a shear cliff, we see the Ohio split off the Mississippi river. Bill wanting to sit on the edge, lands right on a cactus, and nearly leaps off.
Many other times, we’d been in the Quonset hut on old man Finney’s land. Bocko, on his own, had discovered a huge old Liberty bell there, though. We schemed of anchoring it in the Vega and letting it peel as we sped through the subdivisions. So several nights a week, I’d sneak out my bedroom window and thumb it over to Bill’s, and we’d drag it several hundred feet, then bury it again. In between times, I had gotten a guilty conscience, and so with another friend would drag it back towards the hut. When Bill heard on the police scanner that it was noticed missing, we rediscovered it and returned it.
Another time Bocko and I, and Dickie and his friend, piled into his ‘63 Volkswagen bug, us with two gallons of Tequila Sunrise, and them with a case of beer, to watch an all-nighter James Bond run at the drive-in. After finishing our tequila and polishing off their beer, we headed back to Bill’s house. They were building a mall at the top of Bill’s lane, so after shoving down some construction signs, we climbed atop a castle turret and watched the Interstate far below. Later we waded into huge ponds there that had filled three feet deep with mud. Afterwards we talked about the future. How we didn’t want to be swallowed up by the world. How we’d run away to the mountains together, and how nothing would ever part us.
posted by LifeWriter at 4:48 PM
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