My Other Brother

We were five years old the first time we met. Our mothers were talking at the end of the driveway. The two of us just stood there, staring at each other. I was quite shy and timid at the time, and eventually looked down at the ground. I suddenly felt his hand touch my arm. When I looked up again, he asked,

“Wanna play cars?”

He was referring to his rather large collection of Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars, and that was the first of many, many times that Jerry Walker and I would play cars.

Jerry’s mom and dad had recently divorced, and his mom, Barbara, had taken a third-shift job at an ammunition powder plant in Charlestown, Indiana, close to an hour commute from her home. My mom agreed to babysit Jerry. But because Barb’s job was third shift and she needed to sleep in the daytime, Jerry was at our home about 20 hours per day.

Barb would carry a sleeping Jerry across the street, to our home, about 9:30 p.m., place him in the spare twin bed in my bedroom, and kiss him goodnight. On many of those nights, as soon as both of our moms had left the bedroom, I’d soon feel Jerry’s finger, poking me in the face as he whispered,

“Shirley! You up?”

Sometimes we crawled inside of my tiny closet. Other times, we’d sit on the floor next to my bed and cover our heads with the bedspread. He would shine his little red flashlight and we’d try to make animal shadows with our hands. I assume my mom was back in the family room, finally relaxing for the first time of the day, maybe watching a television show. She never came into the room to reprimand us, but I’m not sure how she never heard us. Because we did have some serious giggle fits.

We’d wake up the next morning and race to see who could finish our breakfast first. Jerry really loved to compete. He seemed to turn everything into a competition. When we were in the same classes in elementary school, we would race to see who could complete our blackboard assignments first. We’d hold up our fingers, across the classroom, as we completed each assignment. We raced little cars down the hill on my driveway. When we learned how to ride our bikes without training wheels, we would race up and down our dead-end street over and over again.

There was a wooded area behind Jerry’s house, where we often went exploring. We’d make our way to the railroad tracks or climb up in a large treehouse that someone had built, probably many years earlier. That was one of our “secret club” locations.

Behind my house was an open field, which led to a fenced field where several horses grazed. We would trek through the field to make our way to the horses, feeding them onion grass and crab apples. We picked honeysuckle and blackberries from bushes, and cherries, apples and peaches from trees. We’d eat that sweet summer fruit until our bellies ached. The owners of that land never cut the open field during the summer. The grass would grow waist-high on us, maybe taller. Jerry decided that it would be awesome to lay down in that field and roll around, from side to side, until we had a large area of flattened grass. Once we had flattened a large space we could sit down, and no one would even be able to see us! (It never crossed my mind at the time but, when I reflect upon this memory as an adult, I become very skittish at the thought of how many close calls we probably had with snake encounters!) This became our second “secret club” location. Jerry was usually the President of our secret clubs. Sometimes it was just him and me; other times we’d invite some of our other neighborhood friends to join the club meetings. Regardless, my job was always the Hostess, which meant it was my responsibility to bring the snacks.

Curiosity ran high with Jerry, and it often landed us in some sticky situations. Like the time we tried to make popcorn on the stove, and he just had to watch it pop. That popcorn really started taking off right at the moment he lifted the lid. Oil splattered all the way to the ceiling, while popcorn flew across the kitchen. He spied my dad’s shoe polish kit in our basement, one day, and he had to see how that worked. Black shoe polish. Everywhere! He also had a habit of hiding snacks and sweets in my closet, inside my shoes! He did this to keep my brother from eating all of the goodies. Sometimes the plan worked flawlessly. Other times, I ended up with a smashed brownie or a Rice Krispee treat sticking to my sock when I tried to put on my shoes.

Jerry got hit in the head with a baseball once, during a little league game, leaving his face badly bruised and swollen. The ER doctor told his mom to keep him home from school for a couple of days, in order to watch him closely. When he came home from the hospital, he called me and whispered into the phone, “Have a belly ache in the morning, so you can stay home from school.”

“Okay,” I replied. And I did.

We actually did the planned play-hooky-from-school trick a few times. Somehow, we got away with it.

Often, on those hooky days, his Grandpa Denning would come and pick us up. I think that’s where Jerry got his love for competition, because Grandpa Denning was always having us compete at something, from carving pumpkins to decorating shoeboxes to doing relay races up and down their long driveway. “The winner gets fifty cents!” he’d declare. But every competition always ended in a tie, so we’d both get a quarter and a trip to the ice cream shop.

Jerry and I put a serious amount of miles on our bikes during our childhood years. We’d travel through this little path in the field, into the woods, over the railroad tracks. We’d try to time it so that we could be up close to a train passing, and then head to Night Owl Food Mart, for a cold drink and some candy. When a McDonald’s restaurant was built across the street from the food mart, we convinced our parents to let us cross the busy street. My mom would give each of us one dollar, and we’d ride our bikes there for a hamburger, French fries, and a small soda – and still have money left to get a candy or ice cream at the Night Owl.

Our early high school days were filled with baseball and football games, roller skating, going swimming in the summer, and going to play Putt-Putt every chance we got. We worked together on group projects in school whenever possible. If memory serves me correctly, I seemed to get stuck doing most of the work on those projects.

I think it was in 7th or 8th grade that Jerry first convinced me to join his bowling team. I told him I had only gone bowling one time and was really bad at it.

“That’s okay,” he insisted. “I’ll teach you, and we need a bad bowler on our team, anyway, to help our handicap!”

It was quite the sales pitch. I agreed to join the league, and I was really bad at it. But Jerry did teach me how to play better, and I did get better. In fact, my game improved so much that I took home more trophies than Jerry at the end of that first season. He was a good sport about it, but every time he saw those trophies in my room, he reminded me that I wouldn’t have those if it wasn’t for him.

We also ran our own sneaky little game when it came to secret crushes. If I developed a crush on a boy in school, Jerry would invite him over to play basketball and, before long, they’d end up at my house. If he had a crush on some girl, I’d befriend her and invite her to my house. It wouldn’t be long before Jerry would show up. This worked well for us for a while, but it backfired on me when I actually started dating. My boyfriend would come to my house to see me but would often end up at Jerry’s, playing basketball.

Jerry’s mom, Barbara, was like a second mom to me. She taught me how to drive in her brand-new Mustang. Jerry would ride along in the backseat and laugh at my driving. But I got my driver’s license in June of 1976, and he wouldn’t get his until December of that same year. I reminded him of that every chance I got for the full six months.

That was also the time when Jerry and Barbara moved from our street to their new home. For the first time in 11 years, we no longer saw each other every day. I remember feeling sad as they were packing up their home. He hugged me on the day they left and promised that we’d still spend a lot of time together. Later that same night, he called me to come pick him up to take him to Burger King. And I did.

We started out playing with little cars. Before we knew it, we were driving real cars. It was January of 1977. Jerry had only had his driver’s license for about a month. It was a snowy Sunday afternoon, and the roads were freezing over. Jerry called and said,

“Hey! Let’s go bowling!”

I told him my parents wouldn’t let me drive in the bad weather and he reassured me that it was no problem for him to drive in it. (Don’t all males say that?) Anyway, he was on his way to pick me up. When we made it to the bowling alley, it was closed. Pizza Hut was closed. Burge King was closed. Nothing was open, it was getting dark, the temperature was dropping, and the roads were only getting worse. He finally conceded and headed back toward my house. We ended up in a ditch right before turning onto my street.

Did I mention that Jerry was driving – I’m probably going to get the make and model wrong – but it was something like a 1957 Chevy. His grandpa had an antique car collection, and this was one of them. It had been fully reconditioned, all shiny and gorgeous. Definitely not a car that a new driver should be driving on icy roads. But there we were. In the ditch.

We tried our best to push it out. We were covered in snowflakes and our hands were frozen. Suddenly, a truck appeared on the otherwise desolate street. Jerry realized that it was his uncle, who lived nearby. I guess he knew his goose was cooked at that point. He started yelling at me to hide behind the car, so that his uncle wouldn’t know it was him. I reminded him that, of course, his uncle was going to know it was him because of the car he was driving! It’s not like there were a lot of people in our little community driving around in a fully refurbished 1957 Chevy! His uncle helped us get the car back onto the road and gave Jerry “the lecture” before sending us on our way. It was a long night, but we both got home, safe and sound.

Life got more difficult toward the end of our high school years, as Barb became very ill and eventually passed away. It was a devastating time. But Jerry also found his soulmate during this same time period, in meeting Jo Myra Campbell. I knew he was really in love with her because she was all he talked about whenever he and I were together. He never talked about any other girl that much. Navigating his next steps in life without his mom there really made things difficult for Jerry. Having Jo in his life made that journey easier.

I was living in Richmond, Virginia during the year when Jo and Jerry got married. I drove for 8 hours to attend their wedding. Tears started down my face as soon as Jo began walking down the aisle to Elvis Presley’s “Love Me Tender,” because I knew that was a tribute to Jerry’s mom. (She loved Elvis dearly. I still remember her calling me at work, sobbing like a little child, to tell me that Elvis had died.)

Jerry came up to me at the reception, gave me a huge bear hug and then, he lifted his foot and asked,

“How do you like my shoes?”

They were red and white dress shoes, to go with their red, white, and black wedding theme. He was, clearly, very proud of them. I glanced down at them, smiled, and told him they looked a lot like our old bowling shoes. He laughed the way only Jerry could laugh.

Mine and Jerry’s lives went in different directions as adults, and we no longer saw each other all that often. We would run into each other now and then at a wedding or a funeral. He worked at the airport, and I traveled sometimes with my job, so we’d run into each other there. We’d also talk to each other on the phone from time to time. We weren’t really an active part of each other’s lives any longer, but we had this unique connection that is difficult to put into words. We had a plethora of sweet childhood memories that only the two of us shared. I always carried a piece of him in my heart, and I hope he did the same with me.

Jerry always knew how much his mom and dad and grandparents loved him. But he spent his childhood going from his mom’s house to his dad’s house, to my family’s house, and often also to his grandparents’ house. Other people came into some of those houses – stepdads, stepmoms, half siblings. But Jerry was the only one who was bouncing from house to house. I’m not sure that any of those houses actually felt like his home.

I struggled between laughter and tears at Jerry’s Celebration of Life service, as Jo Myra shared so many sweet, funny, and heartwarming stories of their lives together. When I hugged her at the end of the service, I told her I was so glad that Jerry had married her because I knew that, when he found her, he found his home in this world.

My hope now is that he is home in Heaven, with his mom and his dad and his grandparents. And when he visits his “other mother” – my mom – I hope he gives her a big hug from me.