APRIL 15, 2024 – After the Fenwicks moved out, the Snyders moved in at 443 Rice—the parents, Ivan and Dorothy, the son David, who was a year ahead of my oldest sister, then Jane, in Elsa’s class, Beth, a year older than me, and Bobby, who was two grades behind me.
Bobby and I spent lots of time together, usually as friends, but sometimes as adversaries. We’d get into disagreements about one thing or another, usually over something dumb like whether a baseball was outside an (invisible) foul line, in which case we’d wind up in a fist-a-cuffs that involved no clear victor. Though Bobby was two years younger, he had more heft than I carried, and that could be a problem if he managed to yank my arm behind my back, push me to the ground, then slam himself down on top of my back. I remember trying to avoid these predicaments by trying to negotiate “rules” before the fight actually got under way. Sometimes Bobby followed my rules, but more often, he didn’t.
It’s amusing what incidents you remember out of the vast number that blend into the streams of childhood memories. For some reason the most memorable times aren’t necessarily the most remarkable.
Initially, Bobby was quite friendly toward me, mostly because he had to be: his family had just moved to town, and he was eager to make new friends. I was just as keen on making a new friend, since no one my age lived at our end of the neighborhood, unless you counted Jill Caine, who was a year ahead of me, but she wasn’t into playing war. I met Bobby when I was riding my bike up and down the street. I’d noticed his family’s move into Fenwicks’ old house, and on that summer afternoon, Bobby was sitting alone out on the steps that spilled from the front door of the house down to the street. I stopped, introduced myself, and asked if he wanted to ride bikes up and down Rice Street. He did, and away we went.
A while later we stopped at his house, and noticing that his dad had arrived home from work, Bobby invited me in. As we paraded through the living room, we saw Bobby’s dad seated at a small desk in the corner. It looked as though he was paying bills, because noticed he had some papers on this desk and was filling out on check. “Hi, Dad,” said Bobby. “Do you want to meet my new friend?” I was flattered by Bobby’s question and the bounce in his voice.
I wasn’t prepared for his dad’s response, however: “No. I don’t wanna meet your friend.”
I was too young to think, Hmmm. Bad day at work, apparently, or maybe the problem was those bills. Instead I thought, What?! What a mean, nasty thing to say. My dad would never, ever think of reacting that way. From that day forward, Bobby’s dad never gave me a reason to change my initially negative impression of him. I never saw him laugh or smile or say something kind and welcoming. And all that I’d learn about him was that he worked as a type-setter at the StarTribune newspaper down in Minneapolis.
A year or two later Ivan decided to grow a beard, which, as I now reminisce, gave him more the appearance of a 19th century Russian novelist. I remember one evening attending a PTA program with my parents and sisters Elsa, and Jenny. We were already seated among the crowd when Snyders appeared. Ivan was wearing a bulky light brown sweater, which made him stand out even more than he usually did. His wife Dorothy and kids were eclipsed by his sizable stature, characteristically lugubrious countenance, and now—by the beard.
As we looked over at Mr. Snyder, Elsa—who was in seventh grade—said, “The beard makes him look intellectual . . .” then added, “. . . Which he is not.”
“No,” said Mother with a chuckle, “he’s definitely not.”
I didn’t disagree with their assessment, but I remember feeling a tinge of disappointment. If only he were intellectual, I thought, that quality would help offset his lack of sociability.
By contrast, Bobby’s mom was far more at ease, though she had no compunction about diverting kids from dumb ideas, provided she knew about them. One example of both a dumb idea and her not knowing about it because she wasn’t home was the “sledding contest.” This Olympic event consisted of riding our sleds down the “hill,” as it were, in front of the Snyder’s house. There was nothing particularly dangerous about the hill itself, the top of which we kept extending until our sled runners were pressed against the front door as we used the front steps as our launching pad. The dumb part of our course was the street below over which we were pretty much airborne, given the lip on the snowbank at the base of the slope. As we competed for the longest run, we wound up playing a form of Russian roulette with neighborhood cars that drove by every four or five runs down the mountain.
As I recall, Bobby’s mom worked as a secretary for the school district, so there were many other times when she wasn’t around to police us. Bobby’s siblings weren’t around much either, which meant he and I had the run of the house. I was duly impressed by how messy it was, especially the laundry room, which also served as the main passageway in and out of the back of the house. The family’s approach to dirty clothes seemed to be to throw them helter-skelter on every horizontal surface and leave them for at least a month wherever they happened to land. Every time Bobby led us through that space, I felt as if I were passing through a simulation of insanity. (Cont.)
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© 2024 by Eric Nilsson
