Guy Lovely, my next door neighbor growing up, was quite the old character who lived eighty-eight years in the same house. We always referred to him behind his back as “Lovely Guy” and his wife as “Lovely Lila” because that was the way they were listed in the phone book, and just saying “Lovely Guy” knowing the man made you smile. Oh, the serendipitous mystery of language coincidence. We shared a two-party phone line with the Lovelys which was neither entertaining nor a problem. No one hung on the phone in a railroad town where the trainmen were always “on call” waiting to go to work.
Guy and Lila never had kids, so maybe that's why he took a shine to me. He loved that role of “occasional” Grandpa when he could spoil me to his heart's content. And since we didn't have TV, Guy invited me over to watch his shows with him: The Untouchables, The Naked City, Perry Mason, The Detectives—I guess Guy was a law and order man. Once in awhile we'd catch a western like Gunsmoke, The Rifleman, or Bat Masterson. I'd sit on the sofa with Guy and Tibbet, his old overweight Golden Retriever who reeked the worst kind of sour dog I've ever smelled. They served me sodas, popcorn, and once in awhile ice cream, but the smell never interfered with the entertainment or my taste-buds. Lila had all the living room furniture encased in a heavy clear plastic (the car seats, too). She told my mother Guy couldn't smell. Well, that was for the best I guess, because Guy had his own particular essence. The world wasn't obsessed with cleanliness back in those days. Guy wore wool pants and a wool shirt year-round, and of course a union suit underneath his clothes, wool in winter, cotton in summer. When my mother had to call the Lovelys to tell them to send me home the nights I watched TV with Guy, she'd smell me when I came in the door, start fanning the air around me, and ask how I could possibly stand it over there. Obviously, TV and treats trumped sour dog and man.
Guy smoked roll-your-own cigarettes: Bull Durham, Top, Velvet, or Prince Albert. He was always covered in tobacco bits. And Guy loved his beer. When he was six or seven years old, his mother used to send him uptown with a pail to get tap beer. Guy walked the half mile to the bar and returned with a bucket of beer that his mother would share with him as they had their lunch of cheese, bread, venison, and onions. He drank beer for over 80 years, and as an old man I remember him going up to his garden, pulling a fresh sweet onion that he'd wash off with the hose and sit down in his lawn chair and eat it like an apple while he watched us kids play in the dirt pile between my house and his. He'd wash the onion down with a can of beer, then periodically let out a loud burp that elicited surprised laughter from us, interrupting our serious business of Tonka truck highway construction or trenching and bunkering for the Battle of the Bulge.
Guy was one of those infamously “slow” drivers prone to hitting things. Usually he drove an old VW bug uptown to the Post Office and the bar. He kept the Rambler in the garage for those special trips with Lila to Missoula or Superior. It was usually just Guy and his dog in the VW “bumper car.” After Tibbet died, he got a sad-eyed black Lab named Sam. He and Sam cruised at a speed somewhere between crawling and napping, so invariably there was always someone behind them. That was a humorous sight to drive up on, Guy and Sam, who had a large round head and sat in the passenger seat, both looking straight ahead. From behind they looked exactly like two people until Sam turned his head. When Sam joined Guy and Lila in the Rambler, he had to sit in the back seat, so he'd position himself right in the middle, so he could see better, just like I did as a kid. Three heads meant a Lovely family outing.
Guy wasn't the most talkative person, and when he spoke, it was as slow as the speed he drove. So we were perfect pals when I was a kid. Later I found it interesting the stories old railroaders told about Guy. He was a locomotive engineer back when they pulled the trains with steam engines. They said he was as crazy as Casey Jones at the throttle, put more than one off the rails because of speed. Nothing about him in his retiring years suggested he loved speed.
After Guy passed away in 1978, and Lila went into assisted living (she had been legally blind for a few years) their nephew who inherited the house decided to rent it, so my wife and I moved in. He told us the family took what they wanted and anything left in the house or basement we could use or toss, whatever we wanted. We found lots of treasures down there: Lila's pantry was stocked with canned goods; lots of old Milwaukee Road swag from calendars to tie tacks to switch keys; an assortment of local “church keys,” Highlander, Hamm's, Great Falls Select, Lucky Lager, and Olympia; boxes of matchbooks and coasters dating back to the thirties; National Geographics (of course) from the twenties; empty tins of tobacco, coffee, and lard; full tins of nuts and bolts, washers and nails; an assortment of tiggled-up tools, cords, wire, you-name-it. I couldn't bring myself to throw anything away (all those glorious ash trays)! I loved it down there in the basement, so I moved my plywood desk down there to hide out, think and write.
The Lovely house is where our first son was born. So we filled the house with our own memories, but that never erased the Lovely ghosts for me, having spent so much time there as a kid. Guy was born in that house and died there. The above picture of Guy with the moose was taken in 1968. He shot it in Alaska. I don't know what happened to the trophy rack he posed with, but the meat came back to Montana and was consumed before he died. Fortunately for us, there were still canned jars of silver salmon in the pantry which I ate with the horseradish I ground from his garden. Yes, you can be certain it all went down with a few cans of beer.
Since Guy took me back to my childhood, I thought this poem about growing up in my old neighborhood would be a nice finishing touch—like a cold beer after a bite of a fresh onion or a slice of Limburger cheese on a Chicken-in-a-Bisket.
Spoiled Rotten
*
I was a rich kid in Alberton, pampered inside
an old two-shack, ship-lapped, slapped-together house
right beside the Milwaukee Railroad. Creosote ties
footed faded linoleum floors—they supported us like trains
to the splintered end. Barren beaver-board walls
*
Bled frost and our dreams. We were rocked
by vibrations of a west-bound freight, electric engines
and diesels rattled windows and teeth, promised
fear could be soothed by iron. A worn groove on the coal chute
door-sill lip made the perfect rifle rest. That shed,
*
Fort Apache, held our secrets like swallow
and wasp nests. September nights bears came
for our trash. We waited breathless, dug down in sleeping bags
clutching flashlights and holding our water. Our hearts
raced like hummingbirds. Each hour another fantasy indulged.
*
Skittish deer found dinner along the tracks, nosed wheat
spilled meals in the snow. Dawn and dusk, white tails
twitched at us. But we were spoiled most on long summer days
tormenting rattlers and climbing castle rocks, skinny
dipping and fishing up Petty Creek from the narrows
*
To the old goat farm. We swam the Clark Fork like beaver,
circled and slapped, threw hoots and full cannon balls.
We gorged ourselves daily like Romans or kings
eating filthy-rich feasts, everything in season: green apples,
ripe plums, wild onions, and garden raided dirt-sweet carrots.
*
We discovered the neighbors' basement, ate jars
of silver salmon and gagged smelling Limburger cheese.
We sipped on sour dandelion wine, felt out way up the dizzy stairs.
Through a door left ajar, fully framed in a mirror, we saw nipples
round as our mouths—secrets—only told to our dogs.
*
We lazed under lilacs, read clouds going by, never denied
we were flat-spoiled rotten and ruined for good, like Huck Finn,
our hero back then. We, too, would have settled for a raft and Jim,
but we damn sure didn't want to run away. Those days are still
a toy chest so filled . . . that the lid can never be closed.