Last night, I asked him if I could look at his high school yearbooks and he brought out a box stuffed with books falling apart and half-eaten by silverfish; handwritten love letters from old girlfriends (remember those?); a picture of him and a brunette beauty on prom night; a letter from his mother imploring him to do his best in college.
There was a turquoise stone on a chain given to him by Helen, his first girlfriend. He talks to her often and loves her still, of course. "If I had been a better kisser, Elmo wouldn't have gotten you," he likes to tell her.
I looked at his elementary school report cards and a newspaper clipping of a time when he was camper of the year. In every photo, he's smiling.
His teachers commented on what a kind boy he was, what a pleasure it was to have him in class, and they asked his parents to read to him and try to interest him in reading. "He tries so hard to read out loud that he gets breathless," one teacher wrote. Because he stuttered, he was teased--but after a while, he decided to just laugh along with them and the teasing stopped.
Fun was and is Mike's primary interest--not reading. He has hilarious stories about high school and I have none to trade with him. For me, high school was not particularly fun--probably because my boyfriend throughout high school was a college boy. Getting in trouble was never a deterrent for Mike if there was a spark of fun on the horizon.
I looked at his baby pictures, a picture of him sitting in the lap of the Easter Bunny, a picture of him on a horse, wearing chaps. His German daddy ran away from home in the fourth grade, jumped out of the window at school and was on his own growing up. "He was a brilliant man, just not educated," Mike says. "The day after that picture was taken, Daddy bought me a black stallion that was wild as hell."
Sitting beside Mike, looking at his life in pictures, reading the words of affection written to him in his yearbooks was enough to give me emotional whiplash, back and forthing from one age to another--just as I feel when I thumb through pictures of my children: my daughter a baby, then a bride, then a two-year-old; my son a Little League player, then a firefighter, then a baby in diapers again.
While Mike's teachers wrote glowing reports of him and his kindness, they marked him down on deportment. Apparently, young Mike was a nonstop talker--no surprise to me. He loves talking with old and current friends on the phone. Countless times I've heard him say to one of them, "If you need anything, just call me." His mantra: I'll do anything for you.
He was class president in junior year and built his first car at the age of 15. He loved music and worked hard, mowing lawns and refinishing furniture he found at Goodwill. He spent lots of time on Beale Street in Memphis listening to the blues and buying his clothes at Lansky's where Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis bought theirs. His classmates wore jeans and khaki pants, madras and oxford cloth shirts; Mike wore red pants and powder blue ones and "wild" colorful shirts. To be able to afford the clothes and cars he liked, he worked every day--mostly at his Dad's die shop downtown. He learned the trade--or as he says, the "bidness."
Traveling back in time, I wish I'd met him earlier. I think I might have learned how to have a lot more fun! Nobody makes me laugh as hard as Mike does.
We all live our lives day by day, the changes incremental and barely noticeable. But when all the years are compressed in a box of pictures and letters, it's like watching a movie in which the scenes flip back and forth, herky jerky.
Seeing the people and places that shaped one man reveals so many endearing facets of him. I've read that we change all the cells in our body every seven years, but the imprints of the man are there in the boy he used to be. Mike is still that little boy who stutters and clowns around, who is unconventional, works hard, and who starts every day with music. He has the huge heart of Pancho (his childhood nickname) and he believes that this chapter of his life is the best yet.
"How many street rods have you built in your life?" I asked him.
"Ah, hell, I don't know. Probably about ten or twelve. But this is my last one, the best set of wheels I've ever had."
It took him two years to build this car and inside he has a plaque that reads: "Dedicated to those boys of the 50s and 60s who dreamed, designed, engineered, and built their custom cars. Mike's Last One"
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| Mike made this "sofa" out of a 1956 DeSoto |
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| Engraved on this mailbox: "Mike loves Linda forever, 2007." |
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| Mike's prized Street Rod 1951 Chevrolet Body on a '77 Monte Carlo chassis '57 Corvette grille, '59 Cadillac tail lights, '51 Pontiac hood ornament, custom orange and white leather interior, exterior painted orange and silver metallic, with lake pipes |
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