A scant two miles from town on an old railroad bridge we’d: meet, drink, tell tales, and most surprising of all sing. Sometimes we’d lie, to help give the tales punch, to give them legs so to speak. This is one of the tales framed by lyrics of Elvis. We were accompanied by six guitar chords played by Tom who was proud having learned all six. I realize those of us who listened to Elvis first time around, and who loved imitating him is a dwindling number now. Even the more reason to tell it.

For pure added sauce, I’d have a local wino go in to buy us beer, (we were underage). The beer served to give us with what I’d call “dutch courage.” We were too young to either drink or drive, but certainly old enough to get tipsy. We’d give Lonny (the wino) enough money on a late afternoon to get a bottle of wine, for himself, along with a case of cold beer for us; we took the beer and lugged the case the two miles down to the old bridge. Enough P.B.R. to get silly and noisy. Usually there were four of us. Lenny got quickly lost somewhere between the liquor store and the bridge as he wouldn’t want to chance getting caught with us. I could also say he continued to be lost somewhere between life and reality, but that would divert this tale to another whole story. We always arrived thirsty.

We’d be semi-sloshed by around 10:30P.M. Around which time we would jump on a freight train, drink, and sing not in that order. “First one to not hop on is a coward” I can still hear the taunts and songs drifting through the air. Luckily, hopping on the train was easy some nights because we’d catch it just before it slowed to cross the bridge. And we’d have been warned of its arrival by the far-away early blasts of it’s whistle. So we’d jump on when the train lumbered close and curved just before it crossed the bridge, then we’d jump off again either in the middle of the bridge or as it went back around the hill making its transition back again from bridge to solid ground. It was one short but exciting ride. Some nights we’d miss the jump because we’d run out of decent planks on the bridge or the train hadn’t slowed down enough to make a switch. Jumping when at full speed was a whole different ball of wax and we wouldn’t jump a really fast train..

Backing up. The railroad tracks led along the river which had as its outlet the “big lake” (Lake Michigan). Surrounding the river were steep hills and thriving second growth trees. The hills had been logged at the turn of the century because of easy access to the river, but also because the hills were so steep they weren’t of any other practical use. Scrub oak and elms continued to be plentiful, and by now had grown quite tall. The hills climbed rapidly to windswept heights, as we walked (because too young to drive) down to the rusty bridge on a little used logging road. The woods themselves were the reason for the rail’s existence but not needed for lumbering any more. The wooded hills gave us the cover we used for our sneaky beers, and we would feel the thrill of two things at once. In case you didn’t know, getting high on a bridge is great sport for teenaged boys. (Hiding while high in more ways than one, while at the same time flaunting it. Two for the price of one.) All that, and the hills provided a muffled if garbled echo.

Warm spring and summer nights seemed to get dark early in those days. Dark suited us for our teenaged beers. We could get stupid, and still get back by a “reasonable” time. On lucky summer nights, we would arrange to sleep at “Rick’s cottage.” His folks’ cottage had a back entrance and served as a bunkhouse-like “annex” carved out of their detached garage. We could report “back” to Rick’s mom without having to pass the gauntlet we’d have had to face with our own parents. Rick’s mom was often sloshed early on Friday nights, and her chain smoking habit made it certain that she’d never notice the scent of beer. It seems to me now that though we were binge drinking I can forgive us for trying cheap alcohol on for size. The bridge, on the other hand, made it feel really exciting because of a dose of extra danger.

To illustrate how our mild-delinquent escapades began, we’d pop the tops of our bottles of beer and would add singing in our own tortured way. This is how Elvis’ songs help frame this story. Jim would bring his guitar and we would sing in chaotic spurts as he worked on his cords: “You ain’t nothin but a hound dog. Crying all the time. You ain’t nothing but a hound dog, crying all the time. You ain’t never caught a rabbit and you ain’t no friend of mine.” The rhythm would start slowly and haltingly as he found each next fingering. Eventually of course it would pick up tempo. He only handled the instrumentals, because his jaw had been broken in a pick-up football game and was wired shut while it was mending. He made a buzzing sound between his wired shut teeth. i.e. He was both the guitar and kazoo section.

Of course we substituted lyrics and would take turns. “Hound Dog” would build in volume and tempo moving towards, “you ain’t nothing but a rabbit”……. as replaced with…… “caught a rabbit”. We loved hearing echoes from the other side of the river ringing out with our own various substitute lyrics. “You ain’t never skinned a rabbit. You ain’t never boiled a rabbit. You couldn’t ever catch a rabbit. Your mother was a rabbit. You’ve never kissed a rabbit. You ain’t never screwed a rabbit.”
I realize that they aren’t particularly funny nor elegant; but after buckets of teenage-beer back then we thought they were a stitch. We’d sometimes retard the tempi between verses inserting: “chug…chug… chug!” Or we’d taunt and challenge each other: to drink, to sing, and as an addition to our idea of fun get a kick out of hopping on and off rolling boxcars. Hard to believe, but when filled with “enough beer,” we also jumped off the bridge into the stream below.

Back to the bridge. It was rusty, wooden and half of its planks were missing. It was not designed for foot traffic because there were only skinny “service planks” running along both sides of the tracks. Most of the time we didn’t use them because we would stick to the center ties of the empty bridge. A freight train would come through around 10:30. Most nights we’d first hear the engine itself in the distance, next we’d hear the two “hoots” of the engine as it passed an intersection about a mile away. We also watched the time. That’d be our cue to hot-foot it to the front of the bridge. We knew the routine, and the rail road has usually been known for being sometimes“on time:” “Is that any way to run a railroad?” True, sometimes it was early or sometimes late keeping us on our toes

On a perfect night, the preliminary pass of the train would slow to a stop and then back up, picking up empty cars from the switch about a quarter mile in reverse towards town. Then the train would stop midway on the bridge, backing up to switch again, at which point it would be coupled with more box cars for the train as it was being assembled. For that very reason, it was the spot where “bums” who rode the rails in those days jumped on or off. So it was the perfect distance for them to avoid the railroad “bulls” and when it pulled to a stop they would sometimes hop off. That’s when we’d jump on, but only for our short-term backward bridge ride. We lacked the courage to jump on for more than one ride across the bridge, and we’d hop off again while the train resumed its slow forward-roll headed out of town. None of us wanted a filthy ride to Chicago or points west; nor did we know how we’d be able to jump off if we stayed on too long after the train would pick up speed. Based on our trial runs on the bridge: both the real hobos and the empty boxcars held no glamor as we shared rides with them. The men who jumped off were some of the scruffiest and most dangerous looking I had ever seen.

There was no predicting for sure which nights would occasion the train switching, but we lived for them. The open doors were around a noisy three feet off the ground. Most times we wouldn’t try to jump into one of those open cars but only tried to grab the ladder on the back of the box cars for our short thrill rides.

Remembering more lyrics from my rebellious youth, we would sing (with a kind of call-and-response): Come and won’t you be? MY TEDDY BEAR. Put a chain around my neck. AND LEAD ME ANYWHERE. And at the musical “bridge,” I don’t want to be a tiger. CAUSE TIGER’S PLAY TOO ROUGH. I don’t want to be a lion. CAUSE LION’S ARE THE KIND TO LOVE ENOUGH. OH let me be. OH LET HIM BE. YOUR TEDDY BEAR.

Some nights the songs would get ridiculously loud with us swinging from boxcar ladders holding neither close to pitch nor tune. I can’t fathom why we were never busted by those same railroad cops. The bums were probably right, the bulls rarely visited up at the old bridge. An absolute favorite memory of mine was when we would begin the run backwards across the bridge at the moment we’d first hear the train clank into reverse. We started the song at a walking tempo, but then we’d build in tempo, because if we didn’t jump on as it went backwards across the bridge we wouldn’t have a chance of grabbing a rung of the ladders.

Would I have jumped off the bridge? We had talked about it all afternoon, because we heard about one of the derelicts who had either fallen off or been thrown off the bridge depending upon who told the story. The moment we knew that the long fall into the murky river was survivable, it was only a matter of time before we would jump for it our own fool selves. I’m not sure why we considered it a thing to do. Except of course that it would be pure gutsball.
But according to one version of this story, the bum had been very sloshed when he slipped, and survived only by the skin of his teeth. O.K. he probably didn’t have any teeth, but it was said that he was loose enough when he fell so that it was pure luck that he didn’t break any body parts. (He also supposedly couldn’t swim, and we only heard about him because one of our distant mates had seen the fall, and fished him out of the river).

So we started to talk about the prospect of jumping, but none of us had gotten gutsy and resolved enough to do it. It was a long fall to scummy water. And then there was Adrian Merriman.

Ade was a guy with one of those secret, sly, impish smiles. I remember that most about him. A smile was what you got. Always. He was for sure a guy who didn’t talk much. He is memorable to me in part because we were roughly the same size, we had gone to the same grade schools through sixth grade, lived two and a half blocks apart, and remained as different as oil and water. He would never want to be noticed, sort of sneaky and impish. He’d get away with spitballs or marbles down school room aisles without ever having to stay after. We hung out together from early days, me stealing some of his qualities, and he some of mine.

My thoughts of Ade center around the third of those Elvis’ songs from our salad days. The tune I’ve recently learned was borrowed from the famous Italian ballad, “O Sol O Mia,” and it also had a 50’s Tony Martin version which I heard on my car radio, of all places. “There’s No Tomorrow,” by Tony Martin. I certainly had’t realized either background. All I really remember from back then was that it had a sweet and soaring statement: It’s now or never.” And the musical bridge: “tomorrow will be too late”. We had no thought that that there would be tomorrows, nor what tomorrows might bring, nor to be fair any thoughts that entered the picture at all. . We were a gang of immortals.

.

I had wondered if we should try a jump, Jim was preoccupied, working on his guitar chords. Rick was typically filled with excuses such as not being willing to jump till the river water would be cleaner. But Ade simply went for it.

He jumped from the middle of the bridge into the river. One minute we were all standing together singing at the top of our lungs, and the nest minute he was gone. I know Jim had the excuse of guarding his guitar. I was shamed into it by Ade’s pluck as well as suddenly finding myself singing, “tomorrow will be too late” all alone.… (it’s now or never, my love won’t wait.) I can sometimes almost hear the other guys, but specially my dad’s voice rings in my ears ….”.if your friend jumps off a cliff, would you ….. and do it?” If the friend was Ade Merriman, yes I would dad and yes after a deep breath and taking the leap, I did. The jump took seconds, and felt like an eternity.
There’s a haunting poignance in all of this. First, what drew us to risks, drinking, and danger? We were a gaggle of teenaged boys doing what none of us would do individually. The gang was fueled by peer pressure. There was not enough excitement in our little midwestern town, so we imagined and cooked it up. Before we got to approaching the second verse we were usually riding the train backwards while it went for the switch. We had all practiced the stupid jump for the river in daylight. That was scary enough. That night proved for the record books, and I think now that I ended jumping exactly on: “It’s now or never…
Jumping to what seemed forever, but really was only two years later, I had been far too clever to get drafted while Jim and Rick both proved insanely lucky with the lottery. This left Adrian Merriman who was neither lucky nor clever. I had lost touch with him till after he came home from his 1st hitch around 1965. Time and distance in pre-internet days had made losing touch far more commonplace. Dear sweet, shy, fireplug-like, working-class, Ade with his buzz cut. He had ducked the draft by enlisting in the Navy. He said he thought the Navy wouldn’t be involved in Vietnam and after basic training had volunteered to be a Seabee. I simply thought him a “old pal”. Gave as good as he got. A “Seebee?” What did I know about defense department construction needs? He was the boldest of us to jump into the river from the bridge, simple as that. Weadmired him. His guts-ball leap had shamed the rest of us. He was nonchalant. He just did it. I remember his silly wet smile coming up from the banks of the river, saying: “next!” Of course we all were shamed into going forward with the stupid, long, heart-stopping jump.

The things we did high on the bridge are almost forgotten by me now. I know we were both foolhardy and gutsy, As it turned out, Ade didn’t come back from his second tour in Viet Nam. I only heard of it long after he had disappeared from my life. I was off at my third year of college before I knew of his loss.

I have long had a reluctance, pure denial, that I would ever be willing to say goodbye to people. I had not said good bye to Ade among others but rather: “so long”, “see you again on the other side,” “etc. etc.” It was the same as high on the bridge, all of a sudden he was gone.

I think now that losses build up. Some schoolyard playmates have gone forever from my life. I know in the case of Viet Nam losses there’s a whole wall of their names forever etched. We’ve seen reflections of families and friends going through their postponed goodbyes at that very wall. Why had we not made more of saying goodbye? My feelings flood to me in the very haunting musical “bridge” or second verse to Elvis’ song. . It is slow, haunting, and in form is a pure sad lament.

Just like a willow
We would cry an ocean
If we lost true love
And sweet devotion
For who knows when
We’ll meet again this way