WARD'S MOUNTAIN

    

“If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you”

                                         ~ Nietzsche

Sometimes family history is nothing more than the continuity of good memories. Sometimes it's the people who've touched your life.

As always, unapologetically unedited. 

I.

The mountain watched over us. It watched me that day too, as sometime around my tenth year I sat on a bicycle on top of one of its many hillsides gathering my courage. The mountain watched with its usual solipsistic indifference as I spun the bike's pedals back and forth and waved to those waiting for me below. It was so steep! Everyone will be watching you! I felt frozen there at the top; my stomach roiled as I looked down the hillside. A sweeping vista of flowering almond trees spread out below me. The trees moved down the hillside and making me believe for a moment that I was far above the clouds. The hill protruded down and away from a place they called Mt. Diablo and down into Mitchell Canyon and to a place I called home. I lived at the bottom of its north end, and with that particular hill extending off the mountainside like the middle finger of some devil's offspring.

The mountain seemed to be asking me to tempt fate. Can you do it, kid? Can you go down the hill? The only thing I knew for certain was that I was afraid. However, like some acolyte in a rite of passage, I knew I had to meet the mountain's freefalling challenge. 

The mountain watched on silently adjudicating my fate. 

I was there that day with my best friend, Ward. Yes, long ago, in the days before there were ever my beloved friends at Huntington Beach, and long, long before there were ever my dear college alums from Santa Clara U., there was this kid named Ward. We met in the fourth grade when my family lived in Clayton, in the rural areas at the foot of Mt. Diablo - a mountain that has always somehow been present in my life. We were nine years old and he quickly became inseparable. We invented and spoke a secret language between us. We made horny kid "big boob" jokes about our fourth-grade teacher the Junoesque and titian-haired Mrs. Lackey. Together, we were mad for all things Man from U.N.C.L.E. Hell, it was, after all, 1965.

Indeed, Ward was the coolest. He was fearless. He had a bright and ascorbic wit that at even nine years old would leave you busting out laughing. Even my mom adored him. She and he would play this silly game that she was actually "Lilly Munster." It was a game that somehow endeared them to each other. For as long as I can remember he always called my mother "Lilly." 

And how is dear Lilly? He'd say. 

In a word, Ward was fun. 

                

     

My sister's and me circa 1965

Sitting on that bike at the top of the hill on the side of Mount Diablo I surely did not want to disappoint either him or myself. I knew I could do it. I was sure of it. He had gone first, successfully navigating the bike and steep terrain's treacherous downfall from the top of North Mitchell Canyon Road. Ward had taken that freefall bicycle ride down the hillside. Yes, I was sure I could do it. Ward had even lent me his brand-new bike to use!  He'd generously shared his new bike to make my flight both up and down from that hilltop. He believed in me. Seriously, Jeff. How hard could it be to ride up the long steep hill and then to fly down the hill daring speed and life to redeliver me safely to the bottom? 

                     

                      My best friend Ward 

Starting out, the handle grips on Ward's new bike were sweaty on my hands. I watched over my shoulder as my sisters, the red-haired girl across the street, along with Ward grew smaller behind me. I pedaled harder, and as fast as I could to climb that bike up the hillside. It was arduous. I strained against the grade with the wind in my face. I began to see all those almond blossoms fade to the next level below me. I had headed up higher, well past the houses of the families of the peculiar Connellys and the happy-go-lucky Cooks. I sped past those sneering bullies the Jenkins kids who lived catawompous to us. May they rot in whatever jail they ended up in. I even got past that massive chained-up barking dog on the corner in the Daugherty's yard. You know, the one I was convinced was going to eat me for sure. 

I could do it I thought. I could make the climb up the hill. I could climb the hill of Mitchell Canyon Road. Dang! It's all straight up! However, getting to the top was the easiest part. I would have to have faith to let the bike run free going downhill. I'd have to have faith that nearly without brakes I'd make it down that hill. If you put on the brakes you will crash, Jeff.  It felt like everyone was watching me. Besides all of this, Ward had lent me his bike to do it with. Not my old black Schwinn, but a really cool new three-speed.

He had faith in me. Hell, aside from him and the red-haired girl who lived across the street nobody had ever had faith in me.

Arriving at the top of the hill on North Mitchell Canyon Road I rotated my wrists back and forth on the grips trying to gather the courage. It was so steep! I felt my gut clench up. Well, he went before you Jeff so you know it can be done, right? I let go. I felt the bike catch the wind and speed up. I felt the grade. I whizzed past the upper houses at the top of North Mitchell Canyon. I saw the almond blossoms below me begin to move faster and close in. In the distance, I could hear the barking dog that still wanted to eat me. I could see the Conneleys's house and those stupid sneering Jenkins kids. I could make out my sisters, Ward, and the red-haired girl waiting for me at the bottom of the hill. I was flying. I was going soooooo fast!! I was free! I was doing it! I was flying down that side of the mountain!!!

And then I hit the brakes.

The bike spun, crashing me to the asphalt below me. I heard more than felt the bend of the metal as it went down, and as I went down with it. I managed to bring it down on the side of North Mitchell Canyon Road, not too far from the barking dog who grinned that he'd have me for dinner yet. I wasn't hurt. I was a little scraped up but I was okay save for my pride and save for realizing that the whole neighborhood including those shit-ass Jenkins kids had watched me eat it on the hillside. Nah, I was fine. But Ward's new bike? Well, it was broken big time. I had somehow bent the framework coming off the hillside. It couldn't be ridden home. I had ruined my best friend's new bike.

                   

My family's home in 1965 at the bottom of North Mitchell Canyon Road and at the foot of Mt. Diablo

Ward looked forlorn but he never said a word. Would he still be my best friend? Was he disappointed that he'd lent his new bike to his idiot friend to destroy? He never said. He just said a quick "I'd better get home" and limped that bike back up the hill on North Mitchell Canyon Road where he disappeared into the area up by Pine Hollow. "Lilly," my sisters, and the red-haired girl, watched on as he limped that new bike away. 

The Jenkins kids just sneered.

                                                                           *******

II.

It seems my family moved away not too long after that. And like friends do, we did promise to keep in touch. We were pretty good about it too even though my family had moved five hundred miles away and my parents soon divorced. Ward kept me in the mountain's loop; he let me know when a fire had tragically claimed our friend Cindy's life. She was a cool girl. Sweet really. I know that Ward had a crush on her. I don't believe he ever really got over her tragic death. The idea that someone could firebomb a house full of sleeping children didn't make any more sense now than it did then. 

Ward kept me informed about the comings and goings of his brother and sisters. The Steiners were a wonderfully dysfunctional bunch, somehow always at war with each other but far more interesting and colorful than my bland puritanical Record family ever was. Still, the years began to slide by us and distance took its toll. We weren't nine years old anymore. 

                            

Ward pursued his passion which had always been - flying. He had always liked small planes even when we were kids. Even at nine years old he knew all the differences between planes, like Cessnas and Pipers, and Beechcrafts, and he loved small airport life. He quickly became a small plane pilot and enjoyed an immediate and polite career in aviation. He never strayed too far from the mountain though. 

That same mountain that watched over us the day of that fateful bicycle ride.

I can count the times I saw Ward after that. Life is soooo short when it comes to the time you get to spend with the people that matter. I saw him in 1972, maybe once in the 80s at his apartment by the airport, in 1993 at his folks house out on Morgan Territory Road, once about 1997 at a restaurant in Vacaville to catch up on things. The last time in 2006 - when I took my mom "Lilly" to see the old mountain again -  and to stop in to say hello.

Five visits in fifty or so years. I don't know if I feel cheated or lucky.

However, 2006 was a long time ago now. Eighteen years of middle age has gobbled us up and delivered us into our  Golden Years. I stopped hearing from Ward awhile back. He didn't reply to my calls or messages. Life moved on for all of us. Maybe he was finally done with me for wrecking his bicycle back in '65 on that hillside on North Mitchell Canyon Road.

III.

Did I mention how that mountain always looks out for me? It watches over me anyway - even now from where I live a hundred or so miles away. On a not-so-clear day, I often walk my dog up a trail here in Lincoln Hills where I can still see the mountain. From there I breathe in the air that flows through the Golden Gate and surrounds Mount Diablo. I can feel the almond blossoms in the air around North Mitchell Canyon and I can still hear the ghosts of the old toads that I surely kept as pets or wrongly killed, or the tadpoles I hunted from down by the creek there.

It's a haunting feeling to look out at that mountain sixty-plus years later. It is also a soothing one.'

  

The other day though it was May 4. As I woke up I thought, Hey, tomorrow the 5th is Ward's birthday. He will be sixty-nine years old. So like the idiot who flew Ward's bike down the side of that hill sixty years ago, I figured I might do some free falling and take a chance. What the heck could it hurt? I had an old phone number for Ward. I'd never actually spoken to him at this phone number - or at least not in eighteen years. So why not? I thought. Why not send him a text message. 

What would it hurt to not get a reply back? Hell, the phone number probably wasn't even any good anymore. It had been so long. However, I did hear back.

There was a reply.

He replied via text message that he would call me the following day in the late afternoon. I was so taken aback that he replied at all - that there was any reply at all - that honestly for a bit I wasn't even sure it was him. The text message said he had too much to tell me over a text - and that he had a gift that he wanted to send me. The text asked me to confirm my address for him. Was it really Ward on the other end of the text? 

Okay....???

A gift? 

Did I really reach "Ward Steiner" on my phone or had some .com that purchased his number a decade ago and was now trying to send me my "free" vitamin supplement "gift" through the mail. At that point, I didn't question it. I assumed that nobody was going to be calling me "on the 5th" and that I had just been text-pranked by some 21st-century Jenkins kid who was now selling Medicare supplements and sneering that I was still an idiot.

Yet the phone rang yesterday. It was Ward. 

It was amazing. It was joyous. It was 1965 and Mrs. Lackey's big boobs all rolled into one.

Ward was still my friend. Life had just gotten in the way.

We talked quickly and fast. It was as if there was just too much to say, too many quick remembrances. We talked about the fire that had taken Cindy's life, our families, and about how he and his wife rescued rabbits in the wild in need of help. He told me how he was sorry not to have contacted me when my mother died. He said he wrote a letter, but never mailed it, because he felt that anything he wrote just sounded trite. He was kind as he talked about his friend "Lillie."

He talked about "the gift" he is sending me. He told me he had found it at an auto show a couple of months back and that it "just screamed Jeff Record all over it." I was floored. I was flattered. The friend I hadn't spoken to in eighteen years remembered me enough to see something to get and put away for me as a gift??? I was humbled. ( He won't however tell me what it is - only that I will never guess it and that it's in the mail to me.)

I made him swear that it's not a lock of Mrs. Lackey's hair. Eeewww....

If nothing ever shows up I am still so grateful to even be thought of. 

Then he told me he has fucking cancer.

 

 Ward - 1993

Ward Steiner has prostate cancer. They've done surgery, removing the prostate and are treating him with radiation. He's accepting but still understandably angry about it all. He's hopeful, but a bit resigned that this cancer may, in the end, win.

We ended the conversation with promises to get together sometime soon. I sure hope so. We are old men now, running out of time. Since his call I have felt the foundation of my life shake. For Ward to be so sick, for Ward to be so ill shakes me up, it eats at my core. While we didn't see each other or speak for many years at a time - just knowing Ward in my lifetime has always been fundamental to who I am.

I love him. 

Please great mountain, I  beg you, watch over him. 

☮️