Requiem for a common man: King of the Road

We met at the DFL precinct caucus in 2004.

The Marines Vietnam vet still a had a touch of red in his hair and beard, a good union job, and a sense of play, but I managed to keep my flirting on a leash. No need to stir up any trouble: he was supporting Kerry and we were an Edwards girl. Immediately taken by the stranger's easy laughter and good looks, I assumed that he had to be married or at least attached to an offstage girlfriend.

Flash forward to early summer: I was canvassing for John Kerry, and called Chuck's number. After a little conversation,  he invited me over for a drink. I came over to his place, an old farmhouse on the edge of town, and met his pinto horse, his Dalmatian, and his black and white cat, Buttons. No lady in sight--but it took about a month of flirting before we became a couple. With age sometimes comes a little caution.

But what good fortune that was, once we eased our way into it.  He was about 6'3"; I'm five feet tall on a good day. When we started showing up at fundraisers, DNC member Nancy Larson dropped her jaw, then said, "Oh! Oh!--you've got yourself a Viking!" The gospel truth. Born of German and Norwegian stock in Renville County's rural Franklin area, Chuck was every inch the Vietnam Vet, Teamster shop steward, Harley-riding, ex-farmboy he seemed to be.

And yet that hadn't come easy. He was the first child to contract polio in Renville County in the epidemic that swept the country in the 1950s and had spent a month paralyzed in an iron lung at Sister Kinney's in Minneapolis. His father died of diabetes while Chuck was still a boy. Not a smooth start, but at 17, he was able and willing to serve his country. His mother signed his enlistment papers, and he was off to basic in 1963.

He didn't go to Vietnam until the final year of his service as an aviation mechanic; once there, he was choppered into the jungle to help recover downed aircraft, mostly spotter planes. His pictures from that time show a handsome giant with heart-stopping six pack abs; I'd tease him about how the Vietcong could  have missed. How could a giant redhead not stick out in the jungle? But he made it out without a scratch.

Back on the farm, he barricaded himself in his boyhood room in his sleep. His mother and stepfather fretted a moment, then told him to go get a job within a week of his return. Chuck was off to Minneapolis, his union card, and a stint at the U's General College. He joined the Vietnam Veterans Against the War ("We had no goddamned reason being there" he told me in the proper Teamster vernacular) and marched for peace.

After marriage and a succession of four daughters, it was back to rural Minnesota. The marriage didn't last and he ended up at the place on the edge of town. We started dating when his youngest daughter was entering her senior year of high school, and he babysat his toddler grandkids. He was the perfect grandpa.  He collected pieces of the rural past, uncomely and broken, things worn out and old, and made them new again: vintage Cockshutt tractors, lovely firearms, eccentric friends. He could get just about any old machine running. And so he did.

Few adult romantic relationships are ever perfect, and ours only lasted two years, although we had lately become good buddies again (without benefits). It was easy to see what had attracted me to him in the first place: the strength, the ultra-rural hyper-masculinity ("What's a metrosexual?" he asked once when the term was used on television; "Never mind," I said, "Just don't ever become one"), the sense of justice and fair play, the wealth of practical skills, the easy laughter.

He was frequently surprising. One day he came home from work, driving one of Cemstone's blue cement trucks, wildly enthusiastic about a senator he'd heard interviewed on public radio. Public radio? He'd caught it from me, and would switch once Tom Barnard was over to MPR. He thought the guy being interviewed that day in 2005 spoke right to him--was the name? Somethingback?  "Brownback?" I asked, furrowing my brow.  "No, no, something weirder than that." I paused: Barack Obama? That was it. Chuck decided he'd like the senator from Illinois to run for president.

And there was music. Aside from a few old buddies in Detroit Lakes and Fayetteville, my friends aren't fans of real country music, the Outlaws,  Johnny Cash, Lefty Frizzell. Lucinda Williams. None of that pop crap you could play at a Promise Keepers' meeting.  With Chuck, I could create whole playlists that would last all the way to Morton and back.

And then suddenly two and half weeks ago, he stopped taking my calls. I hadn't known what I had said or done; was I too tardy in getting that rhubarb pie baked? After a week and a half of silence, one of his daughters called back shortly after I left a message. Her father had died two days before his 62nd birthday, when his pacemaker malfunctioned while he was napping. I hadn't picked up the local paper --and the girls had been too grief-stricken to contact all of his friends. I missed the funeral's closure.

His big laughter is gone from the world. This last week has been a trial, going about town, knowing that he won't be at his haunts, nor will I again hear his vivid expositions against the Republican Party, too Teamster-esque to publish on this blog, even in paraphrase.

Mostly, I've been thinking about how much fun he was. One night in particular keeps coming up: a perfect full moon in cloudless October sky,  still warm enough to take the Harley out. We were heading up Highway 15 when a local radio station served up Roger Miller's "King of the Road."  We both started singing over the engine's roar.

Life was as good as it gets, right that moment.

So here's a serving of Roger Miller and Johnny Cash, clowning around in 1969. Rest in peace, Viking warrior, and have a laugh in heaven.

Comments

[Phoenix Woman]

Ave atque vale, Chuck!

Thanks for sharing, Ollie. (((hug)))