“Upon the black iron throne brooded Thulandra…The bones of his narrow face seemed molded by a sculpture.”

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The Summer We Were Working Together

We became pretty close because we would talk everyday and hangout. I met a lot of his friends that would swing by when we were on a job. He would tell me about his life outside the job. We hung out a lot and playing softball and drinking a few nights a week and then on the weekends. I can’t think of much except for him talking about his dad.

Dave’s Family House

His dad was the one that taught him how to do concrete work and layout forms. His dad did have an accent so probably did come from Poland. His mom and dad both had Polish accents. He fought in WWII for the United States. When he came home he worked full time and built their house by hand while still having a full time job. There was this detached garage and his dad put in a pit so you could walk down in this walkway like five feet in the concrete and walk under there and change your oil and work on the car from a standing position without having to put the car up on a hoist or jacks. It was a two story, pretty standard, 2,000 or 2,500 square foot house with a basement. They had a good size lot.

The house was in Joliet on the East Side. The neighborhood turned to shit around them and most of their neighbors were Negroes. This was the part of town where they had bussed in people to our high school from, which led to a lot of violence. He lived there with his parents until he bought the house in Wilmington.

Shootouts with Negroes

Dave’s dog had a fenced area parallel to the gravel alley, in and the dog stayed outside with a dog house. His dog looked like a lion. He should have trimmed his hair to look like a mane. He was a chow, a big one. His dog was basically the Negro alarm.

The main thing is that people would try to break into his garage and the dog would be barking and Dave would jump up and grab his 3.57 revolver and head out the back door and confront them. Sometimes he was shot at, sometimes he shot back. This all happened when we were working together over a summer. There was also random shootings in the neighborhood and he would get his gun and go check it out.

I know he was shot at and returned fire and hit the deck in his own back yard coming out the back door to see who was breaking into his garage. I don’t know if anybody got hit on the other side. We used to go to his garage, because we stored material for his concrete business in his garage, stakes, expansion joints. Even when I was in high school it was known that his neighborhood was one of the worst around. There were no encounters when I was there when we pulled up and loaded up. I don’t know what happened to his house or parents. I didn’t get to talk with Dave’s family after he moved to Wilmington, but to our friends. He had a brother and a sister that I know of.

The Last Drink with Dave

He had bought a house in this tiny little town, Wilmington. The house cost less than his truck did. I remember he bought the house for $17,000. I went there a couple times to hang out and visit. I might have been closer to thirty, so he would have been closer to thirty-seven. He had bought the house ten years previously, and I went there a few times when I was in the neighborhood. Interestingly enough, when he moved in, there had not been a murder in Wilmington in 118 years. Then, right after he moves in, there was a double murder two houses over!

Dave’s Fate & Funeral

Dave died of kidney failure, congestive heart failure as a result of the kidneys not functioning. Since he lived by himself they put him into an assisted living place. I was saddened that I didn’t know he was sick, otherwise I would have come to visit him. We went to a little luncheon after the funeral and none of us knew that he was sick. He deserved better. He was a very good friend to everybody else, would come over and work on people’s houses all the time. That summer I did concrete for him we poured a big patio in the back of my mom and dad’s house. It is still in excellent shape. Nobody can get over that it is still in such excellent shape since 1987.

The funeral was very touching. He would have loved it. I could imagine him smiling down. It was summer and the cemetery is in the side of a hill and we had the windows down and were driving up from the service and there was a bag piper up on the hill towards the entrance. When you were pulling in you could hear the bagpipes playing, I know Amazing Grace was one. It gave me goosebumps. The bagpiper was in a kilt, full Scottish gear. Dave was never married. I don’t know that he had girlfriends. There was probably sixty people there, mostly relatives. There was a dozen of us friends who went to a lunch afterwards and reminisced.

He was a good, hard-working guy and a lot of fun to be around.