The Boy from the Midwest

((From the book “Romancing San Francisco”; reedited, modified chapter,
Two for independent story) (summer of 1968))

Master Yamaguchi Teaches
[Buck becomes a Friend]


Part One of Two



The weather was warm, in San Francisco, in the summer of 1968, a breeze from the bay seeped through the city, and the Turtles, the Doors and the Beatles music were being played everywhere, along with “Elvis’ Comeback.” Everyone dressed like Sonny and Cher, or the Momma’s and the Papa’s it seemed everyone but me that is; inasmuch as I liked the way everyone dressed, I found myself still quite conservative—the boy from the Midwest.
The trees along many of the streets especially Dolores Avenue (where I would eventually, find an apartment in a mansion), were glossy green. I bought some bread and white spread-on cheese (Philadelphia cheese), brought it to the dojo (where I living temporarily) and put it in the refrigerator in the back room; I liked it, something new that I picked up in San Francisco. Along with a corner store that would make any kind of sandwich you wanted.
Because of the change in weather from Minnesota to San Francisco, my eating habits were also changing; I appeared to like the lighter foods that is, and less meats, more Chinese foods also. I really didn’t care for Japanese foodstuff. Some one brought in raw snake with white rice and offered it as a treat for all of us at the dojo one evening, it must have been Goesi, but that is a guess, I can’t remember for sure. Although I always seemed to have a good appetite, after a bite or two of the so called treat, I lost it for the rest of the evening. But as I was going to say, with all the walking, and now working at Lilli Ann (the dress designing outfit), and doing my Karate everyday, my appetite at times was vigorous.
It was great to walk the night away along the oceanfront with my karate friends, looking at the many fires along the Pacific Coast. The warmth of the fires shifted all the way to my sensory-senses, smelling the burnt-wood on the fires, the ocean, the mud, the greenery, all several of us, watching the flickering of the flames from the fires, the sparks ascending to the asteroid belt; the gibbous moon lighting up a long streak in the ocean, right to its shoreline, as if it had been called to attention right at that spot. I felt it was a good time to be alive. I loved the water; the sounds of the huge waves hitting the coast: the white foam splattering all about.

My days seemed endless, filled with so much, in comparison, to my conservative city in the Midwest, St. Paul, the city along Mississippi that ran all the way down to St. Louis, and onto New Orleans, right to the Gulf of Mexico.
As a kid I’d play down along its banks with my friend Mike Rosette. We were quite the team back in those days. We’d run in and out the caves along the cliffs that paralleled the banks of the Mississippi sometimes dodging the drunks asleep, snoring away the morning or as sometimes it would be, forenoon, and even some afternoons. But this was different, this was not the Mighty Mississippi, Mark Twain’s haven, as he so loved to write about, as I loved to walk beside as a kid, rather, this was the gigantic Pacific Ocean—that led into the South Pacific to Hawaii, Japan, and beyond. It was simply, hard for me to adjust to seeing so much water, instead of cornfields. It took my breath away, like standing in front of the Empire State Building looking up, or looking down the Grand Canyon. I had to run up to it just to say to touched it, and then able to say I got wet from it; as if it was sacred waters. But then anyone from Minnesota would have done the same I’m sure, or lied that they didn’t and did.
Also, along the Mississippi, you’d see rats as large as fat cats, or small dogs, here you saw white jellyfish, colored seashells, among a few other things. To everyone else it was common, to me I was spellbound. In St. Paul, they stopped allowing fires back in ’63, too many false alarms, and the fire station (s) got sick and tired of running for every little fire that. We no longer could burn our trash in the fifty-gallon drums we used: normal, after about six to nine months, grandpa would have me and my brother tip it over and empty it out into a dugout hole, and bury it. But those days were now gone; along with burning the fall leaves, I liked that also, the smell of the fall leaves never left my mind, my senses, the sparks from the leaves reminded me of this oceanfront fires, that the hippies had.
“Buck,” (Donald Buck) I said, asking, “…don’t the police do anything about these people laying about, drinking, smoking pot, having fires, sleeping the night away… and whatever?”
Buck looked at me strange, “No Chick, it’s just the times…everyone leaves everyone else alone here; or tries to. These people are just here for a short period of time, anyhow.”
We stood and looked over the little camps, the flames, listening to the oceanfront waves hit hard and soft, until we finally got tired and headed back to the dojo; it seemed it was the place everyone would eventually end up at.


Part Two of Two
The Fiend

“The Ghost of the Collingswood Dojo”



It was a Thursday evening, I had walked back to the dojo, it was going on 5:30 p.m., I had stopped at a Chinese restaurant, and ate dinner, some rice with beef and dark gravy and green peppers, it was delicious, and I had some green tea that sunk to the bottom of the tea-pot that also was excellent. Then again, back to the dojo. By the time I reached the dojo, everyone had left, it was 7:00 p.m., usually I got back early to workout, do some exercises, and katas, and Friday nights I avoided going back to the dojo because it was Black Belt night until 8:00 p.m. And I wasn’t at that stage yet. None-the-less, I entered the dojo, and sat back placidly against the sofa, the counter to my left, the archway to the gym [dojo] straight ahead of me, staring at me; as it normally did. And then at about 10:00 p.m., it happened— what everyone had told me would happen, the ghost, the fiend, made its approach that is what happened, oh yes, I met him in a cadaverous kind of way. I can’t describe it emotionally with prose, so I had to write it down after the contact, in poetic prose—kind of.
I shall call it,


“The Ghost of the Collingswood Dojo”


(Notes from my Journal) “I heard him last night, about 10:00 P.M., in the silence of the dojo. It as if he or it, were trying to get my attention. Tapping at the windows, the podium stand; Knocking over wooden chairs –as I was half-asleep, on the sofa, near the gym. Then, I found myself standing by the archway entrance, to the dojo, were I worked out, I could hear, his footsteps pass me, I even saw the wooden floor absorbing them, as if his weight was tremendous. I yelled out, ‘I’m not about leave this dojo, and I’m not afraid of you…!’
“Something told me not to challenge the spirit, and I automatically called out, ‘Lord! (meaning, Jesus Christ),’ and all the noises went silent, even the footsteps, as if waiting for some hurricane.



Note: Originally “The Ghost of the Collingswood Dojo,” was published in the Minneapolis, Minnesota, Independent Newspaper, “Insight,” @ January 6th, 1983, under the title “About 10:00 P.M. Copyright @ 2003 “Romancing San Francisco,” by Dennis L. Siluk. Dlsiluk @ 2009, “The Boy from the Midwest” (Modified chapter two for an independent story)