MY FRIEND DUNK

After Mrs. Dunkers house was put up for sale I have been thinking a lot about my good friend Dan, her son. Also with his upcoming 50th birthday I can't help but wonder how my life may have been different.

Most of you may know that I met my bride on the night of Dan's funeral. Was it Dan that was watching over me, giving me strength to ask that hot girl to dance. Or did I just say hell with it. The worst she can say is no. Which she did. She told me no. But I ask again and she said OK you little dofuss. The rest is history.

I do remember sitting at the Forum with Dan several weeks before and seeing Cindy and her cousin Becky. We both thought they were way out of our league. It is funny that I didn't care about this chicks rejection that night because what the hell, I just lost one of my best friends.

I have so many memories about Dan. The earliest one is of walking home from kindergarten together. His mom gave him a nickel to get a popsicle at the Modern Dairy. So we stopped there and he gave me half of it. Who said you can't buy friends?

Dan went on to public school so we didn't hang around to much until we got a little older. I went to a private school for gifted short people. By the time we were nine or ten we did all kinds of things together. We rode our bikes to Indian Mounds to go swimming. We started to do a lot of fishing together. All those times we would go sled riding in the back alley. That was back when we actually got snow. And if we didn't and it was cold enough we would run a hose out to the alley and ice it down. Man did Mr Stegeman get mad. Dan and I use to cut Schaffers yard. The big one behind our house. He would cut the banks and I would cut the rest. Looking at the yard now it doesn't seem so big.

We spent a lot of time in his upstairs doing what teenage boys do the most.......... no not that. We would have fights with these little rubber blow darts. You would shoot them out of a tube about the size of a pen. The darts would glow in the dark so this was something else we did with the lights off. Another thing we did was shoot these Star Trek disk from a gun. The disk flew everywhere. When we were doing a lot of remodeling here we would still find those disk. I am sure we could find one in the duct work.

I still remember my first year at the PO and I would get off early, I would give Dan a call and we would go out drinking. It is hard to believe that two studs like us never got laid. We would drink until midnight or so and then rush down to Yoagies Hoagies for a sub. Man what I would give up just to have another one of those.

When I was about 15 our friend Rollo moved in up the alley. And once his dad let us put up a cardboard club house inside his garage that cemented a friendship for a long time. Mainly between Rollo, Dan,Rick Olps and myself. Yes occasionally Jay and his friends would bother us. But for the most part we were like the 4 horse backs of the atrocities.

Peeing for distance. It is amazing how far a young man with a bladder full of beer can shoot that. I know we were accurate at 25 feet. Wish that could have been an Olympic event.

Anyway back to Dunk. Him and I were always partners when we played foosball. I loved it because he would always want to play the backfield so I got to play up front which I wanted and was better at. He would always amaze me how he could score from the backfield. We got to be pretty good.

I saw Dan's mom recently and told her I visit his grave still quite often. I always go on March 3rd the day he died, his birthday Aug 31 and of course we all go on Jan 1st.

We had a lot of laughs and cried a bit but I still have hundreds of great memories about my friend Dunk but the best one is I believe he brought Cindy to me.

Thanks Dunk.

Sadly this is one of only a handful of pictures
I have of Dunk.
Rocking with Jay on his juice harp.

The Burger Chef picture speaks for itself.

Plus a picture of my coolest car.