Cedar Mountain's red rock cliffs remind me that when I came to Cedar City to stay, I was bruised and bleeding and hanging on a wall. I came to a place where what remained of my family responsibility would be safe while my tremorous right hand and arm held long enough to put things in order. I didn't come here to live, I came to die. I came here to cling to the wall as long as I could with Parkinson's disease. I came to a place where I could choose the time of my letting go, only to be reminded that letting go is not the choice. Gravity will force the letting go. Humanity will hang on. I've been here before.
When I was eight or nine, I lived in the first house, in the fist town I can remember: Sedamsville. Sedamsville is on the very outskirts of Cincinnati. Dad used to say the city limits were at the maple tree, half way up the hill to the house, so the house itself wasn't in the city. Don't hold me to what Dad used to say. Dad used to say a lot of things I continue to believe solely out of parental respect. The "city limits" did, however, give us license to shoot our twenty-two rifles from the porch so long as we aimed away from the city and the town. Of Sedamsville, my brother Tim (who was really named Richard) once remarked, "It was a place painted by Norman Rockwell."
By this, he didn't mean Rockwell stopped by with his easel to capture the place on canvas. Tim meant that Norman Rockwell painted the place into existence. Descriptive hyperbole, perhaps; but since the only other philosophical statement I can remember Tim uttering these fifty years has been, "Everyone should believe in something. I believe I'll have another beer." the Sedamsville statement about Rockwell is significant if not accurate.
My childhood in Sedamsville was idyllic and halcyon. I one had a college English professor who red lined "halcyon" in a paper I had written and she editorialized with the word: "archaic". I havent' used the word since, but how else can I describe a place where a real stern wheeler steamboat boarded half the town's people every summer and serenaded them with a steam calliope on the way to the amusement park up river. How else can I describe a place improved out of existence, a place where a troop of lost boys once roamed.
I was the youngest of the boys. My cousin Eugene was the oldest. Actually, my brother Walter was the oldest, but Walter was studious and responsible, like I would one day become, and he couldn't properly be counted as one of the troop, but when I was eight or nine, I was one of the boys, and in between me and Eugene were cousins Ron, Tom, Bob (his real name was Herbert) and my brother, Tim. Occasionally we picked up a non-relative, but they never lasted.
We were engaged in a perpetual game of follow the leader, and to last required blood ties. As the game wore on the leader got bolder. The rule was, if the leader failed his chosen obstacle, he went to the end of the line. I was the youngest and usually occupied that position. The line stopped at a retaining wall. We had walked up the driveway around the old milk wagon garage and stood on the wall overlooking the garage roof. The roof pitched downward from left to right so the end of the roof on the right was lower than the wall. The distance from the wall to the roof was more than a step, but less than a running jump. It was more than a standing flat-footed jump, but jumping wasn't the problem. The slant of the roof was the problem. Once you hurled yourself from the wall to the roof, you had to stick or you would fall to the ground, only there wasn't any ground, there was only glass. Layers of broken glass milk bottles, deposited by generations of pre-ecology milkmen, hid the dirt, with peril to barefooted boys. Once you made it to the roof, you had to scamper up the roof to get above the wall to jump back. Here was a challenge. Eugene, the present leader, and nimblest of us all, jumped to the roof; scampered to the correct height and returned to the wall. The rest followed in similar formation, except for me. There are times when Darwin's concept of evolution is flawed. Some of us choose a poultry genealogy. I chickened out! Shame among catcall clucking invited me not to the end of the line; it demanded my removal from the line, from the troop, from the tribe.
I was alone for days or weeks (years and eternity to an eight year old boy) until need and pride brought me back to the wall alone; still emotionally covered with feathers, but resolute. There was no way I would not jump. I had calculated the improbability of success; I was sure I would fail, as sure as I knew I would jump. I thought about the glass. I saw myself roll off the end of the roof. I saw bare feet from the broken milk bottles' view. I saw the blood. I feared the loneliness. I feared the shame of tribal uselessness more. I jumped. No slow motion. No arboreal flight. Electron-tunneling, timeless speed. My feet on rough concrete one second and at the same second my feet on asphalt tar-papered roof. No time between the two events. Then, feet, hands, legs, arms and body "velcroed" to the roof. I was safe. I was redeemed. I only needed to get back to the wall and from the wall to the troop. Jumping back was easy. I jumped from just below the roof peak. Gravity did most of the work. My feet touched the wall. Overconfidence did the damage. M feet touched the wall only briefly, and then my rib cage caught the concrete wall's vertical and horizontal meeting, forcing air from my lungs and blood from broken skin. Pain slowed time. I grabbed the fagged concrete; it grabbed flesh. Gravity accelerated boy mass and speed. My chin made rapid contact with the place my ribs had been. Tooth on chipped tooth bathed in blood behind my lips. Time stopped.
I woke up bruised and bleeding and hanging on the wall. I hung there eternally, with gravel impregnated hands. Time and gravity were my enemies; the glass below my bare feet was my end. I felt fingers wrap around my wrist, and although my own fingers were determined to defeat gravity, they were not prepared to overcome levitation, nor could they fight both forces at the same time. I floated upwards, my hands outstretched above my head, in a slow ascending dive; propelled by salvation in the form of an older neighborhood boy. He was, perhaps, only several years my senior, but at least a head taller and strong enough to get me off the wall. I can remember the general area in which he lived. I can recall his build and the shape of his face. I distinctly remember he was wearing a white shirt that day. Sedamsville was not, and is not, a white shirt community. Although I knew his name the, and although I remember the wall incident in vivid detail, I cannot today recall who he was. I know who pulled me from the wall in Cedar City; another neighborhood boy, several years older and at least a head taller, and strong enough to get me off the wall: Ken Benson.
Thirty years of Parkinson's disease and an aneurysm "as big as a grapefruit" preceded Ken's trip across 300 West to greet me on a clear, southern Utah, June afternoon. Ken is difficult to understand (one of the many Parkinsonian symptoms), but I remember his first words to me: "Do you know that I have Parkinson's disease?" Had I not just thought, "that man has Parkinson's disease" and had the thought not come with a euphoric spiritual assurance? I can only vaguely define in retrospect, his greeting may have seemed totally incongruous. I smiled and offered him my trembling hand and softly said, "I know. Do you know I have Parkinson's disease too?' I hung around Cedar City for about a week before I had to be in Washington D.D. to bless a new granddaughter and to witness the Fourth of July celebration on the Washington mall. All that week I watched Ken from my front porch. He raced up and down the street on his three-wheeled scooter, crossing when he wanted to and waving at everyone. People often slowed or stopped their cars to wave or say hello; pedestrians always stopped to talk. If the city fathers ever tire of the geographic addresses imposed by the Mormon village model, 300 West in Cedar City will have to become Benson Boulevard, not because Ken's grandfather farmed most of the area traversed by 300 West, but because Ken "owns" this part of the street!
One Thursday morning after I had returned from my trip, I began to know my new neighbor as I began to confirm a friendship. I watched Ken attack a trash can. Attack is the best word I can use, for that's the way it appeared to me. Ken grabbed the big awkward container by its handle and tipped it on its side. He poked inside with his cane and righted the can and dragged it about. I was reminded of some video footage I had seen of a grizzly bear in Yellowstone Park playing with a fifty-gallon drum. I watched this game for a full fifteen minutes and I don't know to this day what it was all about; it really doesn't matter. I learned that this man doesn't give up. That matters!
I don't know when I first saw Ken stand up. I knew he had been a football player. His autobiography, which he let me read, says he was a fourth round draft pick for the Bears and the 49'ers. His son, Did, always mentions first round. I don't know the difference. I suspected Ken was big; I mean really BIG; I didn't know how big until I saw him stand up. I don't remember when I first saw Ken stand up. I can tell you I was impressed. Ken Benson is a giant! But six-foot eight and three hundred plus pounds are one kind of giant; I was more impressed by another measure. I was more impressed the first time I saw Ken give one of his grandchildren a ride to school
A giant on a three-wheeled scooter, giving a ride to a child who love him is a scene size cannot describe. It is an act that taught me, despite affliction I could still be useful. I gave meaning to what I learned on the wall. Hang on! There is reason to endure to the end!
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