I Remember Freddie

I Remember Freddie

By Bill Schaeffer

It was a long time ago, when I was only five years old.    The memories are faded now. 

I can only recall a few incidents distinctly, and even these memories are just caricatures of the original memories.

I don’t even remember when I met Freddie H.    He was a year older than me and it seemed to me that he was the happiest, wisest, most talented, and luckiest boy on earth.

Freddie knew how everything worked and he explained it to me with great enthusiasm.    He had straight black hair, bronze skin, and a smile that could charm the princes, and princesses, of the world.    He was always laughing, and we had many adventures together in the woods at the bottom of the street.   I don’t remember much of our play, but I remember that he would tempt me to do things I had never thought of and we had outrageous fun.   It was perhaps this adventurous quality that made my mother dislike Freddie.   

Freddie had a younger brother, Billy who was my age.    I never got along with Billy.   He would pick on me, and even though he was a few months younger than me, he could always beat me up.  Once, my father rescued me from having my face ground into the dirt by Billy. Apparently, Freddie picked on Billy also, but I never saw it.  Freddie was never mean to me and we always had fun.  Freddie was my favorite friend.

He showed me how to be blood brothers and explained that pirates used knives to cut their palms, but we could just prick our thumbs with a pin.  Once we pressed our thumbs together and mixed our blood, we would be blood brothers forever.  Even a single drop of blood was enough.  So, at five and six years old, we became blood brothers.

Freddie had an older brother who was blind from birth.    He was more than seven years older than us and spent the days swinging on a swing set in the back yard.    Noiselessly swinging back and forth talking to nobody all day long; pumping the swing furiously in the summer sun.   Even at five years old, I could not imagine what his life must have been like, or what he possibly could be thinking.

I don’t remember Freddie’s mother, and I don’t think I ever met his father.

In July, the County Fair would come to town and for a week, and the fair grounds were transformed into the most magical amusement park on earth.    Even though the fair grounds were only a few blocks away, I could not go by myself.    But Freddie went to the fair and the stories sounded exciting.   

When I was older, I would spend hours walking around the fair looking at all the exhibits and collecting free handouts.    The Democrat’s booth was the best, because they gave out tiny little cartoon books and gum and prizes.    The lung association gave out fans with a picture of an old ugly person and the phrase “Smoking is very Glamorous.”

All the neighborhood kids would go to the Fair and occasionally we would play the games.   One year we won thirty, or forty, drinking glasses for our mothers in the toss a nickel game.   Sometimes, if we had money, we would ride the rides.   The Tilt-a-Whirl, The Squirrel Cages, and the Round Up.   But, the Salt and Pepper Shaker was the best.   You sat in a cage that was attached to long arm.    Your cage would spin around a hub between the seat backs as the arm rotated in a vertical circle.   We talked endlessly of surviving the perils of the Salt and Pepper Shaker.    But mostly, we would just walk around the fair looking at things; trying to find money on the ground.

We would walk through the animal pens, and look at all the farm animals laying in the hot shade.  The pigs were huge and the sheep were loud and the whole place smelled of straw and manure.  One year, they had a demolition derby on the race track.   Another year, some Hippies set up a strobe light in a dark tent and charged admission.  

But at five, for me, these joys were not yet discovered.   Instead, we would play in the neighborhood.  At night we would play hide and go seek with the neighborhood kids until our mothers called.    The fireflies would twinkle in the twilight air as we ran through newly planted bushes marking the property lines.    I have a pleasant stereotypical memory of a warm dusk evening where we are laughing and running around chasing fireflies.   Just “having fun” was the most important thing we could do and we pursued it with enthusiasm unbridled. 

All the neighbor kids joined in these games it seems:  Jeff and Ronny Z. (from next door), my brother Brian, Freddie and Billy H., all the kids in the S. family (from next door on the other side), and several kids whose names I have forgotten.

It was on one of those dusky nights, during the Fair, that it happened.   I heard the next morning.    Freddie H. was coming home from the Fair and he had been hit by a car.   

He was dead.    My mother explained that the driver of the car was blinded by the lights of oncoming traffic and did not see Freddie run into traffic.   Apparently, Freddie died at the scene.   Six years old and he had already lived his entire life.    I would never see Freddie ever again.

I don’t remember going to the funeral.   My parents probably thought I was too young to understand death and dying.    I don’t even remember seeing anyone from the family ever again.   They sold their house and moved away.    Life settled back into a routine and in the fall I went to school and met with a whole new series of adventures.

A few weeks after Freddie died, on a beautiful sunny morning in August, my mother was ironing the laundry.     I was thinking about Freddie and asked my mother if she was glad that Freddie was dead because she never liked him in the first place.    She paused for a long time and carefully chose her words when she spoke.   “We are never happy when someone dies.   It is always a terrible tragedy.  Especially when it is an innocent child…” she said -- or something like that.

I’m not sure I believed her, but it was a long time ago and my memory is fading.   We never spoke of Freddie or the H. family again.    But occasionally I remember Freddie and wonder at the mystery of life.    How one so vital and full of life could lose it so quickly and how others can continue on.     Almost no one remembers Freddie now, I am sure, and my memories are few and uncertain.     I sometimes wonder what sort of man he might have grown up to become.   I am sure he would have been successful.   But to me Freddie will always remain as I knew him.   A quick and lively six year old boy, with bright flashing eyes and a winning smile who was always ready to find the next adventure.      He will remain forever an impish, mischievous playmate challenging me to new experiences.   

I miss you Freddie.    I’ve never really said it before, but I miss your spirit.    I miss your joy of life and sense of adventure.   In the intervening years I have met and known thousands, if not, tens of thousands of people.    I’ve come to know life and understand joy and hardship in ways that a five year boy cannot imagine.    But in that whole time, I’ve never met anyone who was as full of life as I remember Freddie was.

Thanks Freddie.    May God bless you and may you Rest in Peace forever.   I hope you are having fun in those heavenly forests, playing hide and go seek in those Elysian Fields; chasing fireflies, and pirates, through all eternity.  

Take Care my friend. 

I still remember.  I will always remember, and I will never forget.  

Blood Brothers forever.

I promise.

Copyright©2007, 2014 William A. Schaeffer