March 1968.This is about my bud Bill. He died of Cancer a few months ago. We got to know each other in the old Veterans Hospital Minneapolis. We both had surgery that day, woke up in the ICU, both needing pain meds!Bill had been drafted into the Army at 27 years of age. He went airborne and did a tour with the
173rd. Bill's evil 1st wife had notified the local draft board that she had divorced him in 1965. They then drafted Bill,which made him Minnesota's oldest draftee.That 1968 Minnesota spring, as the weather warmed, Bill and I spent a lot of time outside smoking weed. The Ortho ward was so busy that no one paid any attention to us. As we drank bottles of Boone's Farm, brought in by a nurse I grew up with, we remained mellow, and I got yellow. It was soon apparent I had brought the malaria bug home with me.Bill was discharged a month before me. Bill would open a huge shop on Lake Street. He called it Gepetto's. He was good at rebuilding and repairing old antique furniture. I moved into the loft of the shop, with enough room downstairs to keep my van, which Bill used, with my bikes safe and sound inside. We smoked and drank a little better wine. Anyhoo, life was good. Both of us would screw that up. How? We married evil women. Three a piece. 1980. Bill would be charged, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison for killing a woman he picked up in a bar! Always said he didn't do it
(they never looked at the boyfriend). It never mattered to me. We were brothers! For the next 21 years, I would visit Bill in two of Minnesta's prisons.On his 21st year, Bill was released and he and I had a party. Getting a job in his brother-inLaw's hardware store satisfied his PO. It was here I would visit him. Three years after Bill was released, he would marry for the 4th time. We saw less of each other, mainly cell phone conversations, usually one or both of us driving.Three summers ago, Bill invited me and my wife to go sailing with him and his wife on Lake Pepin. My wife Cheryl agreed only after she was reassured they had life jackets (she is afraid of water ,can't swim). Lake Pepin is a huge lake with the Mississippi running through it. The sign days ``where water skiing was invented!! “
Anyhoo, the sailboat crowd loves it. The day we went sailing was a nice hot June cloudless day. We got Cheryl all bundled up and sailed into the middle of the lake. The wind died and there we sat, right in the barge traffic lanes. Windless, Bill and I drank beer while his wife was below in the galley. Bill said “Honey, did you ever tell Cheryl how we met?” Donna sweetly responded with the declaration, “I killed my husband! After doing 18 years, I was required to attend a “How to Reduce Violence” workshop. That's where Bill And I met!”
Turning my head, I saw my Ojibway wife turn white. ” Uh-oh,” I said, “we are in trouble!!” A towboat pushing 12 barges, which are longer than an aircraft carrier, had entered the lane and was bearing down on our little sailboat. Cheryl pointed her finger in the barges direction, but nothing came out of her mouth. Bill and I both had a good laugh. He started the inboard and we backed out of the channel.That was the last time I saw Bill. Two years later the Cancer would kill him. I was unable to visit Bill as I was sick and taking a drug that made me vulnerable to infection. I had to stay out of the hospital. Before his death, I saw Bill on TV as he was being escorted aboard an “Honor Flight'' and flown to D.C. He had never seen the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. I talked to Bill one more time. He told me he was going home to die. Bill had asked his wife to cremate him, and that'swhat she did.....RIP BROTHER BILL!
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