Donkeyland, Minnesota (Part Seven - Integrity & Treachery)

 Donkeyland had its old timers as well, they were always around, you just never seen much of them: Mrs. and Mr. Stanley, the old man had retired in 1959 from the Railroad, died in 1964, lived next door to the Evens, and to the opposite side, by the Williams, they'd sit on their front porch in the front part of the house or puttering about in the backyard garden by their garage or by their garage, the old man had bought a new 1959, Rambler, his pride and joy, and if he wasn't on the front porch, or in the garden, or thereabouts, he'd be washing or waxing that Rambler, he did it more days than he drove it Jungle Boys Weed for sale. They were good ole folks, busybodies, the boys in the neighborhood called them, but in reality they just minded their own business, and watched everybody else's.

On Agate Street, a few streets over from Cayuga, Aunt Mary Clemens lived, of the old people, a sister to Anton Evens' deceased wife, she was in her late '70s. They were-for the most part, an uninteresting, soft voiced lot. Then there was Anton, who always looked old to his grandson Chick Evens, he was in 1965, seventy-four, a silent-if not grumbling-old man with thin white to brown hair who befriended the only Blackman in the neighborhood, and because of him, the boys didn't cause the Blackman any trouble. But the Evens boys were questioned by the local gang members, voices saying "Why's your grandpa catering to niggers?" But it was left at that.

Then Chick's grandpa, that year, 1965, after the state surveyed the empty lot, finding out his garage was halfway on state property, he had to move it to the backyard, funny the old rickety, lopsided board outer-covering didn't fall to pieces in the transfer, over a loose framework on an old brick foundation, and a dirt floor. It was I would guess, a small horse stable, from the '20s.

It was-at one time- the empty lot and all, next to the Evens' garage, that a number of houses that now remained around it, were but a larger cluster of houses joined together in a rather random comportment twenty-years prior. Now, inside, the empty lot, the one Ernest Manning had cleaned out, and cut the grass, with his own lawnmower, and picked up rock after rock, the boys now had made a baseball diamond out of it, and it was no longer just a drinking hole. Earnest was also becoming one of the old folks. He was in 1965, fifty-nine years old. Planning early retirement, he was a painter from the slaughterhouse out in South Saint Paul. And Joe Williams, and Roger Landsman father, all planning their retirement.

So Donkeyland, as the police nicknamed Cayuga Street, and all those streets that seemed to connect to Cayuga-invisible or not, and that empty lot, and the turnaround that was next to Evens' house, was a place full of surprises. At one moment all was quiet, then doors began to open and cars roared, and that is how Mike Evens got his nickname: Gunner, he would gun his car, and rip up and down Cayuga Street with his black 1940-Ford as if it was right out of the Marlon Brando movie: "The Wild One" with its big engine, and all one saw was a streak, and you could heard the pilling of rubber being burnt off his tires-even if you were watching television in one of those houses on Cayuga Street-as was the case for Gary, nicknamed: Mouse. The neighborhood grease monkey (or backyard mechanic, and clock man, he had old clocks he worked on likewise). And the old folks, would stare out their windows, and Smiley, out his window, he was not one of the old folks, rather a new-younger lad-in his early to mid thirties, who had bought a house kitty-corner from the Evens, a big bulk of a man, with a nice family, with children, who never smiled, and one day, all the neighborhood kids were gunning their cars, and making noise, and the police came, and they police left, and the police came, and there just was no end to the game of chasing: you know what I mean, the cat and mouse thing. And Doug Swords, a rowdy, and well build fellow, looked like the wrestler Crusher, back in the '60s, strong as a bull, was boastingly, clattering with several of the boys, in front of Smiley's house, about four years Evens' senior, not paying any attention to the noise he was making, matter-of-fact, annoyed that he called the police. And then Smiley came out, and we looked at this big bulk of a man.

Down the few stairs he came, a murmur from his soft voice arose, and our eyes appeared to be listening more than our ears, to his dozen or so obscure words, and he walked up to Doug, who was standing on the corner edge of the sidewalk, an inch from the street, "I've already mentioned this to you," he told Doug, who at that moment looked a bit dull-witted, "what do I need to do to make you understand, there's a limit to my patience!" And he pulled out a revolver, it looked like a 38 Special, and he aimed it at Doug, pert-near shoved it in his mouth, "Next time, I may pull the trigger," he said, and turnabout, and walked away.

The War Years: and Soldiers

By this time the Vietnam War had started, it wasn't long before everyone in the neighborhood was talking about this unknown country, some place in Asia, no threat to America, but it was loosely said: if we don't stop communism here, then where? The Korean war had been over for ten-years or so and World War Two, for some twenty-years. And in due time many of the boys in the neighborhood would go to war, or off to some other place for soldiering. First was Evens' friend, Joe Parker, a new kid on the block, he was eighteen, got killed that year in the jungles of Vietnam, he was the only one that Evens knew who wasn't drafted, he wanted to go to war. Then there was Bill Kapuano, he survived the war, but when he came back found out his wife was seeing his brother, that didn't stand very well, but they didn't divorce; Terry his older brother, looked much like Bill, and so there was an immediate attraction there. And in 1985, Bill was killed by an electric current, while working at that steel plant, near the railroad tracks, in back of Roger Landsmen and his younger brother Ronnie's house (Ron, for short, he and Evens hung out for several months or so, back in 1965, driving his 1960 black Chevy Impala, up and own White Bear Ave, and Cayuga Street, looking for girls, as they were on Route 66). And Jack Tashney went off to war (another friend Evens hung out with, and they'd also drive about, in his 88 Oldsmobile, the white knight, showing off, and trying to pick up girls), and came back mentally messed up forcedly had sex with two of the neighborhood girls, causing some commotion, and almost landed himself in prison. In Nam, he ran over a cluster of Vietnamese village people, who allegedly on the road, were trying to escape the Vietcong, and ended up, maimed, dead or wishing they were. Evens went to Vietnam in 1970, and came back a better man than when he left, used the GI bill until there were no funds left in it for him. Pat Grains (the strongman of the neighborhood, the one who inspired Chick to start weight lifting, the one who lost his girlfriend to Doug Swords, when he went into the Air Force, she couldn't wait, and got pregnant), never saw any war action: and Larry Lindsey the tough guy of the neighborhood, was serving his time in the National Guard. The others-more or less-got married before 1965, and hence, were allowed to avoid the draft, as for Gunner, and Mouse, and Reno, and all the other boys. And as for Ace, he had flat feet, and I would guess, would have gotten deferred if not from that, from mental incompetence.

Indians Hill

When Earnest Manning had cleared away all that thick foliage and bush, and rubbish from the empty lot, and the boys started playing softball in it, and there of course was no ownership of the place, much of the harder part of the work of clearing had been done, but the boys clung to old traditions and helped the old man out, Earnest, and after a few weekends, widened the lot, clearing even more, and picking up even more rocks, and now behind them was a big hole where a house used to be, another small lot and Indians Hill, so it was called. Many of the streets and areas in that local had Indian names, Minnesota is famous for the Chippewa Indians that had once lived in the area, and called this place home- a few hundred years back.

In the fall those trees on Indian's Hill, were a drab color of a colorful rainbow, most beautiful, and through most of the winter the hill was used for sliding, back in the late fifties and early sixties by the neighborhood boys but now, now in 1963-'65, they were no longer kids, it was used as an escape route for the boys, when the cops chased them, or it was used for drinking parties. It became for a while there, the Sleepy Hollow, of Donkeyland.

Several young men were drinking on Indians Hill this one evening (Ace doing his little dance singing "Twenty-four black birds baked in a pie..." he had forgotten his teeth again and you could see his gums, and his eyes popping out and a few of the boys were saying, "Come on Ace, come on, put more into it," and Ace jumped up and own and just like he was crazy and everyone laughed and had to hold their stomachs, and then he'd stop, and ask for a drink, and god forbid if you gave him a bottle of wine, it would be gone in three gulps), Evens sitting down in the lot below listening to all this, with Ricky Grains by his side, Pat's younger brother, and two years younger than Chick-the best chess player of the gang; Chick half snapped on a case of beer, the other guys drinking hard eating heavily, a bonfire going, of track of greasy food, a few girls: Jackie, Jennie, Nancy, and Mike's future wife Carol Landsmen, a relative to Roger and Ronny, and a few others were there, and a few of the boys were passed out this night, slept like tired beasts on a bed of grass and leaves and straw like weeds. Into their lives came a little excitement, and it would end up being not the mild night they had planned, two squad cars came down Cayuga Street, stopped at the empty lot, jumped out, with clubs in hand, and brutal and outwardly they were themselves coarse and brutal-and wanted blood.

It was Saturday night, Evens was fifteen, and the cops ran right by him, up into Indians Hill, and there was a squad car full of cops behind, on the other side of Indians Hill, there they all stood, the boys were all dressed in overalls flecked with dirt and grass stains: their hands as they stretched them out to fight-making fists, the heat of the bonfire crackled with red sparks. It was difficult for them to talk and so they for the most part kept silent, and Larry cold-cocked one of the police officers, he dropped back like falling timber, and then another one, Larry was fast like Clay, the boxer, and his punches stunning. And they grabbed him as the others got away, and pulled him into the squad car, and brought him down to the police station; beat the crap out of him on the elevator buy weed tins online.

When they had bought him down, they had also brought Evens down, he was drunker than a skunk, and he had just kept sitting on that case of beer, as if it was the Lost Treasure of the Incas. And then when the day came for his mother and him to face a juvenile judge, he told him, face to face, "I want to go to Red Wing, that boystown, or reformatory, where you got my brother," and that was when the boy saw his mother cry for the first time in his life, the hard hearted woman from SWIFTS Meat, out in South St. Paul, where she had earned that reputation, melted like butter in front of her boy and the judge, she just couldn't hold it back any longer.

Consequently, the boy was sent to a juvenile pre trial waiting correctional facility, called Woodview, and that would be for two weeks, and it would have an influence on the boy, never to return again. When the judge visited him, he asked, "Now you have a very light taste of jail, what do you think of it?"

Chick Evens could no longer kept suppressed his dismay, he was breaking up inside of him, he hated being locked up. A kind of crude and animal-like poetic justice-he felt, oh he deserved it. Vehemence took possession of them, and if not released, it would be a long and bitter struggle. When all turned out well he emerged from his incarceration, placed in the custody of his mother once again, and went back to High School, as though nothing had happened.

Fire Alarms, Girls and Victims

Then the neighborhood had been well for several months, things died down suddenly, and it must have seemed to the police the boys altogether were discouraged in causing trouble, even though there was still a raid of stolen cars in every parking lot in St. Paul, racing up and down the side streets of the neighborhood. Chick was seventeen, going out with a girl called Barb Ergot, fifteen, from Johnson High School, who everyone at Johnson High School seemed to know, and she was originally a blind date, one Sid Molar had fixed up for him, Sid was going out with Eva, a East European girl, who had now been in America ten-years, of the same stock, both short, both with bronze skin, both very attractive, and both knowing it.