We were buddies in the year I went to Ephrata Junior High, or was it before that? I don’t recall when Bill died, but I recall we were pals with John Hann, Mike Parks, and others, Terry Kearns? Jeff Chambers? I don’t recall Bill’s funeral, I know he is buried in the Protestant section of the graveyard, I’ve seen his grave, I went there for a connection to someone who died very young, before we knew that death takes us all.
Ken, who’s last name I will remember, also died in that confused time before we finished High School. I recall Ken’s death was sporting, he missed a turn on water skis and drown after hitting some rocks at Blue Lake.
Ken and Bill and I all smoked. Ken’s people didn’t care if he smoked, he couldn’t smoke at high school but off campus, nothing stopped him. He had an odd way about how he smoked, pulling the drag in to his mouth, inhaling through his nose, then exhaling the mix. Odd.
Bill however, was a serious smoker. He, I think, only had his mom, and he was out of her control. He treated her well but did as he pleased. He smoked with great flourishes of bony hands, and skinny arms.
I don’t recall how Bill died, was it a car wreck? Did he get sick and die which happened to people back in 1965. I’m not sure any more what took him. I do recall the mystical connection I felt when I was visiting his grave, up the back of the skull and into the brain, a chill of knowing someone who is here, and will not move, bum a cigarette or a coke, or a pancake for a breakfast on a frozen morning, at the cafe. Jeff, will he remember the details of Bill’s death?
We were on the edge of something then. We were bad boys, we smoked, we talked about girls and chased them as best we could. We were an embarrassment of young nerve, nerves, perspiration, physical discovery, unmentored forays into the land between smart and naive. Did something stupid kill him? I don’t recall anything tragic. Billy Rader getting his head busted by the steering wheel of his car on the highway out side of town was discussed as tragic, loss of prospects, devastation to his family and mine, as my father and Billy’s dad were great friends.