The lost boys

My cousin, David Johnson, died two weeks ago and it’s a sign of how frayed the family news wire has gotten that I found out at the post office the morning after the funeral.

Death in Chariton announces itself with calling cards --- funeral notices scattered around town by Clark Fielding or John Pierschbacher. So it’s not unusual to glance at the counter while sorting mail --- or at Casey’s while paying for gas --- and see the face of someone you know smiling up at you dead from a neat paper square.

It would be an outright lie to suggest that David and I were close. I hadn’t seen him in years. And although the relationship was fairly close for Lucas County --- our dads were first-cousins --- it would be considered distant elsewhere. Still, David and the other lost boys --- his younger brother, Paul, and Albert Johnson (no kin), my Russell classmate, were part of growing up.

I saw David last, I think, at the last Myers reunion he and his mother, Thelma, attended before she died. We both smoked and no one else did, so around and around the block we went, cigarettes in hand, catching up. After his mom died, David didn’t seem to be able to hold it together on his own, so a place was found for him at the Iowa Veterans Home in Marshalltown. I guess he died there, but don’t really know. It may be there’s no one left to write an obituary. That family circle is closed now --- David, Thelma, Emory and Paul all in a row in the Russell Cemetery.

I kept thinking for years that I should stop in Marshalltown on my trip south some Sunday afternoon and see him, but didn’t. We always think there will be time and, in the end, there isn’t.

David and Paul were orphans and Albert, a foster child --- and that made them unique to those of us who, 50 years ago, were parts of dense family webs. Always slightly outside no matter how hard everyone tried to make it otherwise. And when something went wrong, as it often did with Paul especially, it was always in neighbor eyes and the clatter of relatives the fault of unknown biological parents who had thrown their children away, adoptive or foster parents foolish enough to lovingly borrow trouble, and of course the boys themselves --- somehow flawed because of circumstance.

I don’t remember when David and Paul arrived, brought I think from eastern Iowa, perhaps the Annie Wittenmyer Home at Davenport. They were always there --- built-in playmates.

But I do remember Albert’s arrival --- that first morning we stopped for the first time ever in the old Russell school bus at Charles and Dortha Relph’s farm halfway down the Transformer Road between Russell and the Wayne County line. Born 10 July 1946 at Dubuque, he arrived among us on Jan. 31, 1957, when we both were 10.

David and Paul, biological brothers I think, were adopted by Thelma and Emory and given the Johnson name. Albert never was adopted --- always the foster son. His Johnson surname was original equipment. Although his mother, Grace, still was living and there reportedly were several brothers and sisters, we never saw any indication of their involvement in his life.

Paul was the smallest of the three --- and smart as he could be, but also the most available when trouble made an offer. David was fragile, jumpy. My dad used to adopt every stray pup that wandered up the road. You always could tell when a pup had been kicked around before it was dumped --- fragile, jumpy. Like David.

I think maybe Albert (left) had the best chance of the three --- sweet disposition, a hard worker. He had trouble reading, though; and this was before teachers were smart enough to realize it had something to do with a learning disability --- not intelligence. So teachers were just mean to him sometimes and I’d gladly spit on Pearl Evans’ grave for that ( If you think kids forgive and forget, think again).

Charles and Dorothy kept Albert close to home, so he didn’t get to do some of the foolish and fairly harmless things the rest of us did --- chasing fire trucks out into the state forest rather than sticking with play practice (we got in big trouble for that), jumping the Wolf Creek railroad bridge in Larry Arnold’s car --- just to see if it could fly, seeing how many of us could fit in the Cottingham Cadillac when her folks let Gwen Ann bring it into town.

In the end we all finished high school in one way or another and began the drift apart.

Albert was the first to leave us. On the night of 22 March 1965, less than a year after graduation and near the Highway 34 twin bridges east of Chariton, he tried to pass a car on ice-slick pavement, lost control and slid into an oncoming stock truck. He was thrown from the car and died on the pavement.

Albert had gone to work in Chariton after graduation and was renting the upstairs of a house my mother‘s cousin, Edna West, owned. He had enlisted in the Air Force and would have left for basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio on April 1 had he lived.

Charles and Dortha buried Albert in the Russell Cemetery, then did an odd thing. Instead of having Albert’s wrecked car hauled to the junk yard, they brought it home and stuck it in a ditch southwest of their house, always after that part of the view from their front windows. And a reminder to those of us who drove down the Transformer Road for years after (and I had to because that was the road home) of Albert and how he died. That car rusted in that ditch for years --- until finally the farm was sold and the new owner had it hauled away. We never figured out why Charles and Dortha did that.

Paul, a couple of years younger, had established a promising criminal record for himself in Lucas County before the judge called a come-to-Jesus meeting in 1972 --- when Paul was about 22 --- and told him the next stop was the penitentiary or the Marines. Paul opted for the Marines.

He seemed to do OK there and was home on leave during April of 1973 before heading off to Okinawa. Racing down the pavement one night north of Oakley with two other young men, he lost control of his car and it rolled several times, off the road, then on again. Paul and a 17-year-old were killed. The other passenger survived.

My dad said Paul clipped the rail of the bridge across Whitebreast Creek just below Mount Zion Cemetery and that was what caused him to lose control. The pavement takes a dangerous little turn there so the bridge can cross the creek straight and every time I approach it from the north I think of Paul and treat that kink in the road with respect.

David kept on through the military, jobs, a failed marriage, watching out for his folks, who in turn watched out for him. And now he’s gone, too.

Could be there’s a lesson here, but I can’t find it --- unless it has something to do with the great unfairness of life. But I like to think about these guys, remember them, worry the situation like an old dog with a bone. Maybe one of these days clarity will come.

Postscript: David's obituary finally was published in the Chariton Leader on 6 May. Here it is:

David Howard Johnson, age 61 years, 11 months, died April 10, 2008, at the Iowa Veterans Home in Marshalltown, Iowa.

David was born May 31, 1946, to Emory and Thelma (Hall) Johnson (actually he was adopted later by Emory and Thelma) in Keokuk, Iowa. He was stationed in Korea during his military career. He returned to Chariton, Iowa, after his military experience. David then worked various jobs in the Chariton area, which included farming and other outdoor occupations.

David was preceded in death by his parents, Emory and Thelma (Hall) Johnson, and one brother, Paul Johnson. Several aunts and cousins from Chariton, Iowa, survive him.

David had made his home at the Iowa Veterans Home for the past nine years. The Veterans Home will be honoring him with a memorial service on Wednesday, April 16, 2008, at 11 a.m.

Graveside memorial services with military rites will be held at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, April 15, 2008, at the Russell Cemetery. American Legion, Carl L. Caviness Post No. 102, will be officiating the service. Fielding Funeral Home of Chariton, Iowa, handled the service arrangements. Memorials may be made to the family.