Tom

Thomas Havran: December 6, 1952 - March 5, 2006

     Tom, of all my brothers and sisters, was the one to whom I was most likely the closest. He was older by nearly three years, but we shared many common interests, mostly sports and the boy scouts.

     I have thousands of boy scout stories. It was Tom who talked the scout master into dragging me along for my very first campout even though I would not turn the required minimum age of eleven until the last day of the annual week long trip.

     One of the many “un-official” camping rituals was the apple fights. The campsite was adjacent to an overgrown, abandoned apple orchard. The timing of the mid-summer trips coincided with the apples reaching near full size but not yet having ripened. Sour apple eating was common but nowhere near as popular as the apple fights which usually pitted older scouts against younger. Often, small firecrackers were brought into the battle and placed into holes carved into the apples prior to their lobbing. The resulting explosion yielded a “napalm effect” of applesauce over anything in the vicinity greatly expanding the weapon’s effective range. It was not unusual to see tents, trees and fellow scouts dripping with applesauce after a barrage of loaded apples.

     One time I was standing with one of my friends in the middle of the campground during a firestorm of an apple battle. My brother Tom, the enemy, was armed with a couple of apples and in pursuit of a fellow younger scout through the woods well over a hundred feet away from us. I fired an apple through the trees hitting my brother squarely in the temple. He howled, staggered but did not fall, and continued on chasing his foe while holding the side of his head. Meanwhile, my friend had fallen to the ground in laughter. Everyone knows how much I hate to brag, but Tom always said that the very second the apple struck his head, he knew who threw it. In his mind I was the only one who could have done that.

     I looked up to him as younger brothers do and he was always trying hard to impress me. “Jim, watch this,” usually prefaced an event with the out coming not quite how Tom had anticipated it.

      On one such occasion we were coming home from Church. He was wearing dress shoes of course and was going to jump a guard rail after stepping on top of it. However, given the leather sole, he slipped off the guard rail hitting his knee on top. I got a quick glance of the gash before he got up and ran the rest of the way home. Another “watch this” occurred while we were sledding, a favorite winter past time. He was going to brave the large hill with a big pile of snow at the bottom. I watched as he sped down the hill. He and his saucer than lifted up into the air at the snow pile and Tom did a half somersault. Half. He came down upside down and landed quite squarely on his head. He hated to show that he was in pain and would seldom react. One time when we were playing tackle football an opponent ducked as Tom, the ball carrier tried to run past him. Tom flipped again landing squarely on his head. He came back to the huddle and you had to look real quick to catch him rubbing his neck.

     I always hated winter but another thing Tom and I did was play backyard hockey. My father hated it but I couldn’t skate so Tom and I made up a backyard hockey game turning the end of the driveway into a hockey rink. If the weather didn’t cooperate, we would take water from the kitchen and pour it out over the drive to get a good “skating” surface. The rink couldn’t have been more than twelve foot long or wide. We didn’t use skates preferring old basketball shoes with little or no traction. We set up a couple of makeshift goals and converted brooms into hockey sticks. From somewhere, we had gotten a puck. In fact, this puck more than likely provided the inspiration. Our hockey games were just shoving matches. The best defense was using your broom to hit your opponent in the leg causing enough pain for him to stop and you to score. Duct tape soon became a staple in the equipment manager’s room and frequent broom repairs delayed many games. This was hockey to me. We did have some great diving saves every now and then.

     The hockey playing was the source of one of the lines I used against Tom throughout his life. I’m unmatched in my ability and determination when it comes to badgering people about their shortcomings. Tom was no exception and he often bore the brunt of my most pernicious attacks. Beating my ankles thoroughly in one hockey game led to countless delays. Finally, after an extensive and lengthy repair session to his broom Tom commented, “If this hockey stick breaks, I’m not going to play again until I get another one.“ Now Tom insisted that he had said “until I get a REAL one” but it made no difference to me and I continued to joke about how stupid his comment was. Of course he wouldn’t play again until he got another one. Later one Christmas we did get some real hockey sticks and a couple of new pucks. In spite of that, we still had fun.

     Tom liked to bowl. I not as much. But he was fun to watch. He wasn’t too bad. He would stand ready for his approach and go through a near flawless delivery. After releasing the ball he would immediately turn away and walk back towards his seat. After hearing the pins fall he would get down nearly on one knee and pump his fist back and forth pleased with the sound of his “strike.” Then he would take his seat. If pins remained standing when he finally turned to the alley, he would feign shock, “I had that buried up to here” pointing to his armpit. Inevitably it was the alley or the bad rack of the pin-setting machine. His second ball was always thrown in anger directed at, or contempt of, the remaining pins.

     I remember when he tried to teach me tennis. I had even less patience as a student than he had as a teacher. He would serve the ball over to me and I would use every ounce of strength to return the ball with as much velocity as possible. Accuracy was not a concern. Only speed mattered. On occasion my return would actually be in bounds but this was rare. After one particularly forceful and errant smash Tom, meaning to say “Jim, maybe you don’t understand the idea of tennis” instead replied “Jim, maybe you don’t understand the idenna of tee-is.” Ah! Just what I needed! Something else to constantly remind him of his imperfections. I got a lot of mileage out of the idenna of tee-is because Tom knew he really had said it.

     One of my favorite Tom stories didn’t even concern him at all. I repeated this story one time inadvertently adding Tom to the story and asking him if he remembered. Of course he didn’t because he wasn’t there and he told me so. Nevertheless, this story, which I have repeated thousands of times, was always told with Tom as a participant. He would constantly interrupt telling me politely “Jim… I wasn’t there.” And I would continue on with the story. “Tom, remember when we were heading home from Cedar Point and me, you and John were in the back seat. Mary was driving..” "Jim… I wasn’t there.” “And John was sleeping and woke up when oncoming headlights hit him right in the face…” “Jim… Jim… I don’t remember because I wasn’t there.” “And John was startled and shouted 'Mary! Watch out!’ Remember?” “Jim… I wasn’t there. So I don't remember.”

     But he wouldn’t get angry with me. He would always put up with whatever I could deal him. His usual reaction was to hold up his little finger on his right hand and bend it backwards, an attribute he said was due to something I had done to him. I’m sure he was right though I don’t remember such a crime.

     Now, he, himself, he couldn’t deal with. Tom was famous for his fits of rage… as many in my family are… when things didn’t go as he had planned. One minute he would be working on his car nice and peacefully, the next, his tools were being tossed onto the neighbor’s roof. Tom lived with me for some time. One winter he parked his nice Jeep in my neighbor’s garage for storage. Spring finally came and it was time to get the Jeep up and about. He couldn’t start it and asked me for help. You might as well ask Mike Tyson to help you with algebra as ask me to help work on a car. But I helped. And we worked feverishly but could not get it started. We jumped it. We tried starter fluid and new gas. Everything. After about two days a light bulb clicks on top of his head… “I think I know what it might be! Maybe it’s the anti-theft KILL SWITCH I installed last fall!” MAYBE??? You think MAYBE???

     Tom had a good job and nice cars. I usually had beaters but once we went out and bought brand new Chevy Vegas together. Mine was actually a leftover from the previous year but had remained unsold. Tom, for some strange reason, asked me again to help him on his car. Because, though new, Tom had to improve it. On this day he was adding some fancy mud flaps. He drilled a couple of holes in the fender and wanted to see if everything was lined up right. I was already holding a screwdriver for him when he handed me the electric drill saying “hold this.” He started bending over then quickly turned back around and added “And don’t do anything stupid!” Well that was like asking Mike Tyson not to dine on your ear lobe. So he bends over to look at his freshly drilled hole and I stick him with the screwdriver just as I hit the button on the drill. I never knew he could somersault. He landed… and I swear… he came down sweating and gasping for air because, as he put it “I was stupid enough to do it.”

     Yet when my Vega finally broke down I had to call him for help. It was in the parking lot of the store where I worked. Tom showed up. It was about four degrees. I remember him crawling under the car. His jacket would ride up and he would be bare skin against the frozen ground working on my car bare-handed as I did the impossible and important job of holding the flashlight… with two pairs of gloves on. And I remember how cold I was. But that’s how Tom was. I needed help so he was there to help me. What’s the problem?

     Another example was from when I was in the Marines. I hitch-hiked home to Ohio and back to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina several times. One time I had made arrangements to be picked up by some fellow travelers but we missed connections. Now I had no time to hitchhike, I may not get back to Camp in time and would be AWOL. So I did the only thing I could do. I asked Tom to drive me. So he, my brother Ed and a friend of mine started off and they drove me to North Carolina. Of course, it was a holiday weekend so Tom forfeited his holiday pay when he did not make it back to work the following Monday. But hey, what are brothers for?

     We lived together as any red-blooded bachelor American brothers would have. Bad smells were something that just kind of appeared from time to time. We had a chest time freezer in the basement that needed to be manually thawed. Well, we didn’t have time for the ice to melt so we just chipped it all off. Of course we weren’t chipping fast enough so I had to punch a hole in the Freon line to speed things up. Dejected we tossed the tools aside and just went upstairs. It took a few days before we noticed something wasn’t smelling right. It got worse and worse and we would go from room to room saying that it seemed to be in that very room. We just couldn’t find the source. Well, I ran out of clothes finally and headed down to the basement to do some wash. And by the way, where was my girlfriend? Anyway, WOW! That’s where the smell was coming from! Right from the bucket with the rotting meat placed conveniently in front of the furnace intake.

     We didn’t do much cooking either but somehow one of us had picked up some fish sticks for dinner so we needed to use the oven. We emptied it of everything we stored in there and fired up the fish sticks. Again a few days later we noticed the kitchen was beginning to take on a bad odor. Again it took until one of us had to re-warm some pizza or something and opened the oven door. I’m guessing the pizza probably went uneaten until the odor finally cleared out a few days later.

     In 1995 the Cleveland Indians finally made it to the play-offs. I had waited a lifetime and so had Tom. I told him I could sneak us in. What I didn’t tell him was I could also get us caught. I did and we spent most of the evening underneath the Jake listening to the crowd roar as the Tribe toppled the Seattle Mariners.

     We all miss Tom and I’m sure we’ll continue to do so. His death this past year was one of the most difficult experiences of my life. He’s up there now and he’s probably a little worried because we miss him so. He wouldn’t want that. His finger probably no longer bends backwards and no one sticks him with an electric drill but I know he’s happy and waiting for us all.



Copyright © 2007 Jimmy "Hurricane" Havran