for debk: The Party

[franksolich]

This is for debk, who knows, or knows of, some of the individuals in this story (although all names have been changed).  This story is wholly true.  I myself was not an eyewitness to any event, other than to the reactions of the parents that summer.  The details are from what others who were actually around, told me, and from yellowing newspaper-clippings.

I dunno how long this is going to be; I assume about three "comments" long.  Or maybe thirty.

The Party.  The summer I was eleven years old, there took place in a mellow, laid-back, placid, serene town in the middle of the Sandhills of Nebraska, a party, college students and high-school students, which shocked and convulsed the town for days and weeks on end; a party which is still commemorated at the high-school class reunions of an older brother and older sister, when everybody goes out to the cemetery--really--to pay homage to those of themselves no longer in this world.

It has been forever memorialized in the annals of the county historical society, and in the morgue of the local twice-weekly newspaper, as ".....the party at the residence of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Harris, Sr."

My parents did not drink, nor did they host parties, despite that they were considered prominent members of this community of 3,000.  They were new to this town, and at first it was generally supposed, "Oh, they're new, and don't know anybody yet."  As the months dragged on, the opinion evolved into, "Oh, they're from New York, and so they're stuck up."  The truth was actually that the parents had always been this way, modest and reticent, whether in Pennsylvania, New York, or Nebraska.

My parents just did not drink; not that they had anything against it, but simply because it wasn't their thing to do.  Upon the birth of an older sister of mine, some well-meaning but ignorant acquaintance had given them a bottle of Haig & Haig whiskey--whiskey that came in an oddly-shaped bottle.  That unopened bottle, sitting on the top shelf in a kitchen cupboard nine feet from the floor, remains one of the most-enduring memories of my childhood. 

Some twenty-five years after the bottle had been presented, and after the parents died and the estate was being settled, the older brothers took it down and opening it, split the contents among themselves.

The editor of the twice-weekly local newspaper had enjoyed a close association with the hospital administrator who had preceded my father, the two of them constantly exchanging confidences a few times each week at the local country club.  The editor had expected a similar association with my father, but was quickly disabused of this notion.  When a prominent citizen was hospitalized with a disease respectable people did not get, and the editor had to learn it from other sources, he thereafter banned any mention of my family in his newspaper.

That is, until ".....the party at the residence of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Harris, Sr."

[franksolich]

It was towards the last Sunday of May that year, when the parents happened to be at a hospital convention in Chicago; one of the older brothers was home from college, and one of the older sisters just concluded her junior year in high school.

My brother decided that it was an ideal time and place for a party, the weather pleasant, this big new house out in the middle of nowhere, and several friends of his from college, and from our earlier town, being around.

Almost immediately, problem.

The sister wanted to have a party too.  The brother said, no, it wouldn't be a good mix, all these worldly-wise college students and old friends, with her high-school chums.  The sister said she would "tell," if she couldn't have a party too.  So they made an uneasy agreement to have two parties.

My younger brother and I were chased out of the house.  We spent the early-summer afternoon with three similarly-aged friends, "camping out" underneath a railway trestle two miles from home, putting one-cent pieces on the railway tracks, for passing trains to flatten to the size of Frisbees.

Now, accounts of the party varied considerably; even on the witness-stand, under oath, 64 different stories eventually emerged, and there were of course those unsworn versions talked around town.  There were more observations of the party, than there were tales in The 1,001 Arabian Nights.

As only two people actually touched each other, and selecting from the most credible parts of each tale, it seems to me this is what happened:

There was a local boy there, from college, from Old Money and Much Money.

There was a girl there, from high-school, newly-arrived and nouveau riche, desperately trying to get "in" with the High Society, the Country Club set, such as it was.

The father of the boy, Old Money and Much Money, had been left widowed, childless, when a couple of years past 60, he had married a woman one-third his own age.  The son, his only child, had been sired when the father was 66 years old.

The girl said something denigrating about that.

The boy shoved her.

Immediate pandemonium, much yelling and screaming and shrieking.

Someone telephoned the county sheriff (the house was not yet within the city limits), a 77-year-old gentleman who had been county sheriff for 48 years and was running again for re-election.  Because he had nothing else in particular to do, the city police chief, 69 years old, upon hearing the summons, decided to go take a look-see, to see what was up.  It was also quiet at the headquarters of the Nebraska State Patrol, and so two officers, in case the sheriff needed help, decided to answer the call too.

Before the services of law-enforcement arrived, nearly everyone had managed to scamper away, drag-racing out of the driveway or high-tailing across nearby fields.  By the time any of the four officers arrived, there was just the girl and two of her friends still on the premises; premises copiously littered with empty, near-empty, near-full, and unopened beer.

After getting the details from the girl, the police chief telephoned her father, a man with aspirations of becoming the dentist to High Society.  He came to our home, and after talking with his daughter, demanded of the sheriff that the boy be arrested and prosecuted for assault and battery "of an especially heinous sort."

The ancient sheriff went out to the home of the boy the next morning (Monday morning; the party had happened on a Sunday, remember) to "arrest" him.  The boy, standing in front of the 82-year-old county judge, pleaded "not guilty" and demanded a trial.

The 86-year-old father of the college sophomore stood by the side of his son, saying nothing but watching the judge, twisting his cane in his hand.

The news broke in the Wednesday edition of the twice-weekly newspaper.

Top of the fold, headline.

The hospital convention in Chicago had ended that same day, and the following morning, when the parents were still circa 90 miles away from home, they stopped in at a gasoline station which sold regional newspapers, and picked up a copy of this, without glancing at it.

It was not until some miles down the highway, my father driving, that my mother casually unfolded the newspaper.

And there it was, the whole bit, at the end of the story, that comment that was to be repeated at least two times a week all summer long as the newspaper editor exacted his pound of flesh, ".....the party at the residence of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Harris, Sr."

[franksolich]

I have no idea what transpired between my parents and their two errant offspring.  My brother of course had immediately run back to Lincoln, the University of Nebraska, but my sister, like many who had been at the party, had no place to run and hide.  I do recall that there were many telephonic conversations between the parents and my brother, and that my sister, usually outgoing and vivacious, was unusually sullen all summer long.

It was a very odd summer; my parents, my younger brother, and I used to eat supper together, and those evenings the local newspaper arrived (Wednesday and Saturday evenings), there was no conversation, absolutely no conversation, at the dinner-table as the newspaper was passed around in glum silence.

Many years after the fact, it occurred to me that my younger brother knew a great deal more about what was going on than I did--a revelation that would have startled me at 11 years of age; he was younger than I was, and so therefore couldn't know as much as I did, or so I thought.

Of course, my younger brother, being a hearing person, was picking up all sorts of things in the air, while I was just absorbing what the newspaper wrote, nothing more.

As far as I was concerned, it was no big deal, our names in the newspapers two times a week.  The family had always been in the newspapers, and in fact I myself had made my first of many such appearances at the age of 3 years, and so there was nothing unusual about it.  And it was certainly no slur on the family name; my family had nothing to do with it other than in the geographic sense.  The villains were all these other people, and certainly any reader of the newspaper, possessing average and normal sophistication, could understand that.

After the story of the charges, the next edition announced a "thorough search" for all those who had attended the party, to be summoned as witnesses for the trial, so as to "ensure the proper execution of justice" in matters related to ".....the party at the residence of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Harris, Sr."

There were eventually identified 64 who had attended the party.  About 60 of them, having nowhere to run, were easily and quickly served with summonses to testify as witnesses; three or four of them hiding out a little more effectively than the others, but having been served by mid-June.

But as May waned into June, and as June eroded away, the local newspaper two times a week reported that "thus far, the principal witness, young Robert Harris, Jr., has not yet been located, so as to give his version of events transpiring at" ".....the party at the residence of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Harris, Sr."

My brother was especially sought because, even though only in his early 20s, he had long ago established a firm and valid reputation for blunt straightforwardness and impeccable honesty; and so far, when teenagers and college kids had been questioned, there hadn't been much of that, if any at all.

The problem being, my brother was close friends with both of the parties involved.

He didn't want to have anything to do with it.

The county sheriff, well-acquainted with my family, had some ideas about where my brother might be, and issued duplicate summonses for county sheriffs in all counties alongside the Platte River, from Omaha to Kimball in the faraway panhandle of the state; places the family had lived before.

Normally, in cases as picayune as this, such law-enforcement would look at the paper, slamming it down onto the desk, "Oh, what the Hell, this isn't worth our while," but this county sheriff, having had been in office since before many of the other sheriffs had even been born, had over the years and decades performed many useful favors for other sheriffs.  And so while such summonses never enjoyed the top priority this county sheriff wished them to have, the summonses weren't exactly left idle, getting dusty, in "in" boxes on desks either.

While still looking around for my brother, the newspaper kindly printed the names--and ages--of all those who had been present at ".....the party at the residence of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Harris, Sr."   

[franksolich]

About a week or ten days before the trial was to start, my brother was zipping down U.S. Highway 30 in west-central Nebraska when it happened; he got stopped.

Why he had never been stopped before eludes me; at the time, he had a 1946 Studebaker, brown-and-gold, excellent condition, which he used as an ordinary vehicle, even though by then decades had passed, and the automobile was considered some sort of "classic."  (He had purchased it from an old-maid schoolteacher when still in high-school, and as she had been its original owner and kept it up, it demanded no "restoration.")

Now, surely by then, there could've been only one 1946 brown-and-gold Studebaker traveling the roads of Nebraska; although there may have been three or four, I don't know.  How he possibly avoided the detective eyes of Nebraska law-enforcement until then, I have no idea.

The deputy sheriff talked to him.

"Look, Junior, I have this piece of paper for you, but I don't want to give it to you.

"I think you should go home and get this piece of paper from your sheriff there, and I'm going to let you go without giving you this piece of paper, because I expect that's exactly what you'll do."

When I awoke the next morning and walked into the kitchen, I was surprised to see my brother sitting at the breakfast-table, waiting for my father.  The two of them went down to the county courthouse, and my father asked the sheriff to give the reluctant witness his summons, which was done without comment.

Excepting comment by the local newspaper, "the last witness being secured, and the trial set for next week, the public may expect an accurate rendering of justice in the events surrounding" ".....the party at the residence of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Harris, Sr."

The trial started on a Monday morning in late July, and lasted three days.

Sixty-four witnesses was a lot of witnesses, but because of the general youthful levity about "telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," many of the witnesses were excused after just a few minutes on the stand.  Also, there was self-interest involved; the courtroom was packed, people smashed up against the far walls, many of them parents of the witnesses.

Some parents were great discombobulated at descriptions of the behavior of their descendants, and then just as quickly reassured at descriptions given by the following witness.  It was, obviously, a chance for many teenagers and college students to settle old scores among themselves.

There appeared also much self-interest based upon which of the two parties a witness had as a friend, contradictory testimony flying like lightning around the room.

There were disputes, for example, about whether so-and-so had been as sober as a Sunday school superintendent, or sordidly drunk, at the time of the assault, and ample testimony was given to support both versions.  As for the party in general, there was plenty of testimony supporting that it had been as staid as "television time" in the nursing home, or as wild and raucous as a fraternity house at college.

Even though the testimony was pretty even, the newspaper tended to print the latter charges, that some sort of decadent Baccanalian orgy had happened at ".....the party at the residence of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Harris, Sr."

That was in the week's Wednesday edition of the newspaper, and the trial ended that same day.

Early Wednesday evening, after the newspaper had gone to press, the ancient judge rendered his verdict on the boy: "guilty."  And then fined him one dollar for the transgression.

Immediately there outbroke a melee in the courtroom, partisans of the boy, and partisans of the girl, yelling and screaming at each other. 

And so Saturday's edition of the newspaper carried a description of the "near riot" ensuing at the end of the trial, a "near riot" caused by a "dispute over accounts of what happened" during ".....the party at the residence of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Harris, Sr."

The trial over, and that newspaper flung aside, my mother commented, "Well, that's that."

To which my father replied, "This thing will never die; it'll go on forever......"

[franksolich]

Late that summer, in late August, the ancient judge was standing in line at the post office when the 86-year-old father of the boy approached him.

The father lightly slapped the shin of the aged solon with his cane, muttering "Hanging judge."

The judge said nothing, instead stoically looking straight ahead.

The father hit the shin of the aged solon with his cane a second time, muttering "Hanging judge."

The judge stood there, remaining silent.

The father thwacked the shin of the aged solon with his cane a third time, muttering "Hanging judge."

The 82-year-old juror began wrestling with the 86-year-old father, trying to take the cane away.

The two old men crashed to the floor, the father flaying away with his cane, and the judge using his feet to kick him away.  There was some really enthusiastic damage going on by the time the 69-year-old chief of police arrived, followed shortly by the 77-year-old county sheriff, who had nothing in particular going on, and went to see what was happening here.

By the time two state patrolmen arrived at the scene of carnage, all four elderly gentlemen were rolling on the floor, kicking, punching, hitting, slugging each other.  Broken eyeglasses, torn clothes, some blood, that sort of thing.

My father was at the hospital to receive the four battered warriors; the nearest physician was fifteen minutes away and coming, but not there yet.  In the wake of the ambulances came a reporter from the local newspaper, to interview all those involved in the fracas.

My father ordered the reporter away, threatening to have the state patrol arrest him for trespassing and disruption, if he hung around the hospital.

The next edition of the newspaper had an account of the geriatric brawling free-for-all, carefully reminding readers its origin lay in a dispute about events happening at ".....the party at the residence of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Harris, Sr."

"Well, that's it," my mother optimistically remarked; "surely it's over now."

To which my father replied, "This thing will never die; it'll go on forever....."

[franksolich]

Some years later--seven, to be exact--when I was starting college, my mother wrote me a letter, contemplating upon what she should do about my younger brother, then 16 years old.

My father had died by then, and my mother was dying, although there appeared no evidence of the latter.

Of all her children, my mother wrote to me most often.  Not because there was anything special about me, but because while her other children of course wrote her, I was the only one who dutifully wrote her every single day.  The siblings had it easier; they could telephone her every day, but I had no choice but to write instead.

She enclosed with the letter the entire front page of the local newspaper, in which was described a "prank" attempted by my younger brother and two of his friends.  It had been a rather, uh, overambitious prank, the result being that six enormous bison from the city park had been roaming the streets of the town.

(No damage done, these being pretty tame bison, but it was a good thing much of the populace had been wearing brown pants upon encountering the sight.)

My mother had sent me the entire front page of the newspaper, and I idly flipped it over, to see if there might be something of interest on page 2.

The editor, sometimes to fill empty spaces in an edition of his newspaper, culled things from the "morgue," to make an "Out of the Past" column, retelling random stories dating back to 1890, when the county had first been settled.

There was a "On This Date 7 Years Ago," "Mark Connelly was charged with assaulting Wendy Switzer"--and then the grim accusing finger, during ".....the party at the residence of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Harris, Sr."

[Wretched Excess]

need a little help, buddy?

[franksolich]

need a little help, buddy?

Yeah, unlock it so people can comment, if they wish.

Now that this is done, I'm getting ready to "install" the printer/copier/scanner.

[Flame]

Frank, I've said it before, and I'll say it again....you REALLY need to write a book...or submit stuff like this to a magazine for publishing (Reader's Digest, or whatever).  I LOVE reading the stuff you write!

[terry]

Frank, I've said it before, and I'll say it again....you REALLY need to write a book...or submit stuff like this to a magazine for publishing (Reader's Digest, or whatever).  I LOVE reading the stuff you write!

 
 
 

[mamacags]

I agree too too!

[lastparker]

Thank you, Frank.  I feel complete, now.

 

[MrsSmith]

Frank, I've said it before, and I'll say it again....you REALLY need to write a book...or submit stuff like this to a magazine for publishing (Reader's Digest, or whatever).  I LOVE reading the stuff you write!

Take up your second career, man!!   

[Chris]

There are a few internetz people that have turned their blog and forum posts into successful publishing endeavours.  Just a couple (on the tasteless side of the scale) are Patrick Hughes (badnewshughes.blogspot.com), Brian Briggs (bbspot.com), and Tucker Max (who also has a movie in the works to go with his book).

[franksolich]

Frank, I've said it before, and I'll say it again....you REALLY need to write a book...or submit stuff like this to a magazine for publishing (Reader's Digest, or whatever).  I LOVE reading the stuff you write!

Take up your second career, man!!   

When God propels me that direction, I'll go that direction.

But right now, it seems God is propeling me to learn things such as charity, compassion, forgiveness, humility, courtesy, and I'm still in the 1st grade on that stuff.

As a diversion, however, I am working on another Sandhills story--true humor, although debk wouldn't know of this individual--about the village idiot of my teenaged years.  It'll be much shorter than this one, but I hope as ludicrously funny.  Funny, but true.