Back in the 70’s, I was honored to be a member of an elite group of young men. We were no less famous than the infamous “Rat Pack”, at least, in our minds, and probably had more fun and adventure than those Las Vegas boys ever thought about having. We didn’t have a cool name like “Rat Pack”, but we made up for that shortcoming in that we all had nicknames that set us apart. And like Dean, Sammy, Frank, Peter, and Joey who had the Sands Hotel and Casino as their official hang-out, we had “The Commodore Inn”.
Cub, Shovel, Spider, Ricky-Ricky, Jack ‘em up Joe, Wahoo and the Judge…true friends they were. Through thick and thin, good times and bad, adventure and misadventure, we all stuck together….creating a lifetime of memories and tales to be told that get bigger with each year that passes. The unofficial leader of the pack was named “Cub”. Now, he probably didn’t realize it at the time nor would admit it today, but he was the glue that held us all together in that moment in time. He was a mild-mannered unassuming fellow (unless he was watching college basketball on TV) who was as loyal as the day was long. He had great integrity, intelligence and insight and his heroes were Gen Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. Cub was a great student of the “War of Northern Aggression”. He read and studied book after book on the subject. A wall in his bedroom was adorned with a picture of the “General” and a picture of Stonewall Jackson. Cub could discuss battle statistics and strategy with the best of ‘em…..he knew and often quoted the last words uttered by Jackson before he died: “Let us all gather on the other side of the river, under the shade of the trees”. He would often raise his glass and offer a hearty toast; “Chug one for Chancellorsville”!
Cub would give you the shirt off his back, if he thought you needed it. Many times, when I was cash poor, he would open his wallet and riffle through the bills and report that as long as he had money, I had money. Cub was passionate about the way things ought to be in the world. Although he normally would tack in a conservative direction, he could get riled up and speak of the “New Birth” that was coming. Although his “New Birth” speech was often brought on by too many golden beverages, I sincerely think he meant every word of it. Cub liked to work in his family’s garden, taking great pride in the fruit of his labor and found a good friend in his Dad’s dog, Barfey. He was very proud of his dad and valued his dad’s stories about WWII. Cub had two automobiles over those years that served as unofficial cruisers of our gang. These cars had “character” as noted by their nicknames; Coupe de Slime and the Blue Hila (as in Hila Monster). One in particular had a radio that would stop playing for no apparent reason right in the middle of a great song. Ol’ Cub would apply a swift kick to the dashboard and all would be right with the world again.
Cub was the last of the group to get married,…he found him a real red-headed jewel who stole his heart. Children followed thereafter, along with a mortgage. Today, Cub continues as a solid citizen at his work and enjoys hunting with his bird dog. He’s got a great family. I’m sure there are times when ol’ Cub is staring off into space remembering our adventures and his wife and kids wonder what he is smiling about.
Now if Cub was the leader, the Shovel was certainly second in command. Shovel earned his name for his ability to make a plate of food disappear. He was a tall powerful man who had worked for awhile as a meat cutter. He’s been known to sling a side of beef on his shoulder and carry it from the delivery truck as if it were as light as a feather. Shovel always had a grin on his face and a certain twinkle in his eye to let you know he had an idea for the evening’s entertainment. On more than one occasion and against better judgment, we would follow him for a day of hilarious and risky adventure. You might start out shooting at skunks on his family farm that morning and end up waiting on him to finish a romantic interlude in the parking lot at one of the many bars you had been thrown out of that night. One thing was for sure,…you never knew where you would end up when Shovel was in charge.
Now Shovel knew about love. He had fallen into it more times than you could count. He had been married and divorced three times before any of us were married for the first time. On the eve of his third marriage he told me; “I’ve bought 2 houses and 2 cars and lost them both to love, I think I’ll do it again.” On one occasion, when his third wife was leaving him, he lay down behind her car to stop her and she backed over him. Obviously it didn’t hurt him to bad as he went back in the house in her arms and drank a beer, but the next morning when he met her in the kitchen, she asked him how he was feeling. He replied, “I feel like I’ve been run over.” That was Shovel. Those three women represented only the tip of the love iceberg for him. I’m sure he left a string of ‘em in his wake. There was only one that he wanted and couldn’t have. I believe he had dated her in high school and they broke up. I don’t think he ever got over her. I believe she was his one true love. Maybe the smile on his face on certain evenings these days are from the memories of her.
Spider. He always seemed to be the “bartender” when we were cruising. He controlled the brown bag. A certain signal; a tapping on the dashboard or back seat would automatically send his hand into the bag to retrieve another “refreshment”. He lived at home with his dad and “Frank”. Now Frank was a boarder who lived with Spider. The VA paid for his room and board as Frank was a disabled vet from the war. I’m not sure how or were Frank was disabled, but I do know that he could eat faster than any human alive and he was a man of few words. Spider took care of his father and Frank for years, doing the cooking and the wash as needed. We would watch football games on the TV at his house…a bunch of men gathered around in the small den cheering and jeering as was necessary. The smoke from cigarettes and the camaraderie of friends was thick in that little room. I always noticed the décor of the house. I bet it hadn’t changed since Spider’s mother died, years before. It’s almost as if time stood still in their home. Maybe they didn’t care to rearrange things…..maybe they didn’t want to…but Spider’s mom’s touch remained intact, I guess, until his Dad passed and Frank moved away.
Spider’s love, at the time, was “Sugar Plum”. A name affectionately affixed to her by Spider’s dad. Sugar Plum and Spider enjoyed a love/hate sort of relationship all the time they dated. Plum would tag along with Spider, and he would delight in making fun at her expense and telling stories that would cause you to question her level of intelligence. He told once of the condition of her apartment. It seemed that Plum couldn’t throw anything away and her method of organization was to put her bags, etc. behind her furniture. Spider insisted that she had put so much behind her dresser that it was sitting three feet away from the wall. To embellish it further, he suggested that on passing her bedroom one afternoon, he swore he saw an African Gaboon viper raise its head up from all of the mess, as if searching for its prey!
Spider was also a great fan of professional wrestling. Now don’t get me wrong, he knew it was fake, but he took great delight in imitating some of the wrestlers. Among his favorites was “Professor Molinko”, who was often quoted saying; “Wahoo McDaniels, you owe me $5000.00 for my teeth!” In fact Spider provided nicknames for a few of us from his love of wrestling….”Wahoo” McDaniels, and “Judge” Mike Dubuay, just to name a few.
Spider owned a store for a number of years, after we all were drawn in separate directions. He sold it a few years ago and now has opened a brokerage selling a few select items. He’s married to a lovely lady and is enjoying life. These days, when he is channel surfing and runs across a “wrestling” match, I bet a smile comes across his face as he remembers that Wahoo still owes for those teeth!
Jack’em up Joe had plenty of luck….but most the time it was bad. He was a funny fellow, who worked in the grocery business with Shovel. He was funny when he was just standing still. He became a member of the gang late in the game, but made up for lost time in a hurry. He was always making the wrong choices in life that led to trouble and he earned his nickname just that way. It seemed that Joe was quite taken with a married women and, against better judgment, started seeing her on the side. Little did he know that her husband was the suspicious type, and had friends keeping an eye on her. Well, to make a long story short, Joe got caught and did avoid being killed, but he found his car later with four flat tires….hence the name, “Jack’em up Joe”. I lost track of Joe over the years, but I’m sure he still looks over his shoulder upon hearing loud noises and smiles when he thinks about flat tires.
Ol’ Ricky-Ricky (or Raphael, as his parents named him) is a lawyer these days and a darn good one at that. I believe that he perfected his craft of arguing his case when he had to account to his father why he was running around with “those boys” when he should have been doing something more productive. His father was a nice man, but stern and disciplined. He was the kind of man that wore a tie to work and kept it on into the evening for dinner. His father owned a small neighborhood bar, in not the best part of town, called the Commodore Inn. It was from that place that we would formulate our plans for each evening. Raphael got his nickname from one of the neighborhood regulars that frequented the Commodore. His name was Curtis. Now Curtis was a nice fellow that was missing a few teeth, but could carry on a normal conversation most of the time. Now when enough alcohol passed between his lips, he got loud, funny and unintelligible. So much so, that Raphael would have to lock him out of the Commodore. Curtis would proceed to stand outside the window and yell at the occupants inside and would call to Raphael, not by his real name, but by “Hey, Ricky-Ricky-Ricky!” The name stuck. Ricky-Ricky also was one of the few that earned a second nickname. You see, he was blessed at birth with a lot of hair. He wasn’t just hairy, he was furry. In the summer, when he had his shirt off he looked like he was wearing a sweater. Hair spilled over the open neck of his shirt. If he shaved at 8:00AM, he needed to shave again by lunch…and this was in elementary school. Because of this, we also called him “Sasquatch”. Most of the time this was only in the summer when the fur would fly with no clothes to conceal it.
Ricky-Ricky often worked at the Commodore in the evenings, closing it up at 11:00PM. We sometimes hung around talking, eating Primrose sausages and pickled eggs until he closed up. Sometimes we would go out on an adventure and then swing back by the Commodore to meet him after closing. He would have to carry the receipts for the day back to his house and then we were off and running again, picking up where we had left off.
The Commodore is closed now. Ricky-Ricky’s dad passed away a couple of years ago and now Ricky-Ricky is a dad. I hope his children give him cause to smile these days when he can’t understand why their not “doing something productive”.
Wahoo - named after “Chief Wahoo McDaniels”, the wrestler. I didn’t get to spend a great deal of time with Wahoo. The main reason was that he was always with a girl, which earned him a lot of ribbing. When he was free, he was always a welcome founding member of our tribe. We spent a lot of time at his family’s cabin on Craig creek, below Eagle Rock. It had been washed away a few times in the floods, but they had rebuilt. It was a rustic place, but offered all the comforts a bunch of young men could want. A fire pit, a bed and roof if you needed it, small mouth bass fishing at its best, woods to get lost in, a power line trail to go four-wheeling on and a deep hole for swimming on a hot day….no charge. Wahoo was with us on many of our adventures at the cabin, but most times he was with a girl…..At the time, I always wondered why he didn’t bring her down to the cabin. I guess he had better sense to bring her among all of us. It would have been like dangling a chicken over a pool of alligators….not that we would have harmed her in any way…we were southern gentlemen, but we were young southern gentlemen with a taste for adventure.
Anyway, Wahoo often was absent without leave, but we always forgave him. I bet he’s smiling these days because of a lot of different memories!…..
The “Judge” was named after another pro wrestler, “Judge Mike Dubuay”. I’d like to think he earned the name for his swashbuckling ways and for handing out justice in the face of an unjust world, but I kind of doubt it. More than likely, it was just because the name complimented his own.
Judge was a busy man in those days. He was going to college and holding down an almost full time job. At times he worked several jobs, leaving one and going straight to another. He never complained or, if he did, not loud enough to be heard. He stayed at home during his college career, helping out when he could. His mother was a wonderful woman who suffered for years with cancer. His dad was a railroad man who was away from home a lot on his runs. During those days, Judge would take his mother to doctor’s appointments and to her cancer treatments. She would receive massive doses of chemicals and radiation in an attempt to stop her cancer. After her treatments, she would be very ill and the Judge would take her home and stay with her for as long as he could. He always checked in on her and his grandparents who depended on him for taking care of their house and yard. If anything could be said for Judge it was that he didn’t shirk his duties.
With all that going on, Judge always seemed to steal away a few hours to run with his friends. . Judge had a cool car; a 71 Firebird. Boy, it could fly! It was a favorite with the gang for Saturday night cruising. The ladies seemed to like it too! Judge could always be counted on for picking up the fish bait or giving somebody a ride. When the going got rough, he always could be counted on to cover your back. He loved to laugh and was always joking around. He loved the outdoors. He was a good friend because he had good friends.
Judge is still at it these days, working hard and loving his family and friends. He’s got a wonderful wife and a beautiful daughter and he still wonders how he could possibly deserve them. He smiles a lot, just like he used to……I guess he’s got a lot of great memories too.
Chug one for Chancellorsville.
