The Impact of Stones

By William Traband

The spillway seemed to be drying up. The path they used to walk to get down to the cement opening was overgrown. It was clear that human traffic in the area had diminished. Like Scott, it was as if the wilderness of their childhood was entering a new phase of existence. The neighborhood kids had grown up and left their childhood and the woods behind. They no longer descended upon the area like a swarm of worker bees, so the woods and the ravine had finally found rest. It was not going to be the scene of adolescent exploration anymore. New explorations of the mind had taken hold, and some of that took place at the fallen tree. The neighborhood kids had outgrown that magical forest of adolescent dreams. He was down there looking for something, anything that might bring a sense of the past back. So much had changed in such a short time. The changes, like time moving, is forced upon all. As Jim Croce wrote, "My only boss was the clock on the wall and my only friend. It never really was a friend at all." In life, Scott kept moving forward in a zig zag wandering pattern. Knowing he had obligations ahead but wanting to take everything he could from the past with him as he plodded along. As he sat on the concrete drain that fed the water into the spillway, he realized even the wooded arena of his formative years had changed. Nature, like life, moved forward and nothing was ever going to be or stay the same.

• Language: English
• Publisher: William Traband
• Release date: Mar 14, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215075906

William Traband

For the past twenty years I have been a teacher in mostly alternative settings working with "at-risk" students. Prior to teaching, I worked in both the insurance and investment fields. I've worked at AG Edwards (now Wells Fargo) and Shelter insurance. I grew up in Edwardsville, Illinois and attended SIU at Edwardsville after graduating from Edwardsville High School. After high school I did take a one year detour through McKendree College in Lebanon, IL. I am married with one child who is now a teacher in her own right. I did lose my older brother when I was seventeen, and still miss him. He truly was my hero and friend. My books are works of historical fiction to be exact. My books are a collection of the stories based on real events with the names changed to protect the innocent and the guilty.

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The Impact of Stones

Copyright 2023 William Traband

Published by William Traband at Smashwords

Smashwords Edition License Notes

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Prologue

Chapter One: Summer Soul’s Iced

Chapter Two: Hot Topics

Chapter Three: Ripples

Chapter Four: Tuck and Run

Chapter Five: A Timepiece and Wheels in Time

Chapter Six: Hallowed Halls

Chapter Seven: Merry Christmas?

Chapter Eight: Forward March

Chapter Nine: A Conversation on A Mild Winter’s Day

Chapter Ten: Southbound

Chapter Eleven: Who’s Driving?

Chapter Twelve: Hockey Night in St. Louis

Chapter Thirteen: Consuming Education

Chapter Fourteen: A Rush to a Conclusion

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

There are a few people I want to thank. First and foremost, my editor Stephanie Malench. My friends from the Class of 1980 who contributed memories to this work. Scott Reid who, without his help, I could not have written about the Florida trip. I also wish to thank Jim Jatko for his help with the scores from the two Belleville Althoff games. Along with a host of other friends who reviewed text for historical accuracy. I also want to thank Jim Nickerson for the cover art.

Prologue

Someone is waiting just for you

Spinnin' wheel, spinnin' true

Drop all your troubles by the riverside

Ride a painted pony let the spinnin' wheel fly

-Spinning Wheel David Clayton-Thomas Blood, Sweat, and Tears, 1968.

The ground was soft under his feet as he walked among the brush and trees. He was careful not to touch too much foliage, as he remembered the awful cases of poison ivy he suffered as a young child. Scott was down in the ravine in the woods behind Lusk Cemetery. It had been a few years since he was that far down in the woods near the spillway. It is not like he had not been to the area since he was a child. Near the crest of the ravine sat a fallen tree that rested in the crux of another tree that teenagers used as a hidden spot to drink and smoke in town, just out of sight of Edwardsville’s finest.

Yet it had been years since he wandered all the way down to the spillway. The place his brother Nathan and he caught so many crawdads, snakes, turtles, and frogs along with other such water born creatures. He remembered when his brother caught a red striped ribbon snake. It was small and extremely fast. The kids called it a red racer; it was one of Nathan’s more prized possessions until it escaped. The boys were never sure if it escaped inside the house or outside. They never heard their mom scream, so they figured it was outside.

The spillway seemed to be drying up. The path they used to walk to get down to the cement opening was overgrown. It was clear that human traffic in the area had diminished. Like Scott, it was as if the wilderness of their childhood was entering a new phase of existence. The neighborhood kids had grown up and left their childhood and the woods behind. They no longer descended upon the area like a swarm of worker bees, so the woods and the ravine had finally found rest. It was not going to be the scene of adolescent exploration anymore. New explorations of the mind had taken hold, and some of that took place at the fallen tree. The neighborhood kids had outgrown that magical forest of adolescent dreams.

He was down there looking for something, anything that might bring a sense of the past back. So much had changed in such a short time. The changes, like time moving, is forced upon all. As Jim Croce wrote, My only boss was the clock on the wall and my only friend. It never really was a friend at all. In life, Scott kept moving forward in a zig zag wandering pattern. Knowing he had obligations ahead but wanting to take everything he could from the past with him as he plodded along. As he sat on the concrete drain that fed the water into the spillway, he realized even the wooded arena of his formative years had changed. Nature, like life, moved forward and nothing was ever going to be or stay the same.

Chapter One: Summer Soul’s Iced

Looking through some photographs I found inside a drawer

I was taken by a photograph of you

There were one or two I know that you would have liked a little more

But they didn't show your spirit quite as true

You were turning 'round to see who was behind you

And I took your childish laughter by surprise

And at the moment that my camera happened to find you

There was just a trace of sorrow in your eyes

- Fountain of Sorrow Jackson Browne Late For The Sky, 1974.

As years pass memories can become like discarded grass on the side of a yard, tangled and clumped together. Actions and reactions sometimes lose their order of placement. Yet, the events in the mind of Scott concerning his brother’s death were to be stratified in precise order for the rest of his life. It was like a well-ordered path Scott walked down to the same dreary conclusion each time.

Feeling frumpled and disconsolate, Scott sat in his back yard. He peered at the yard as if he were waiting for something to appear that was not readily available to the naked eye. Hoping to regain the sight of former images that once populated this venue of childhood and gave it charm and grace. It was the summer of ’79, and he just wanted answers to unaskable and unanswerable questions. He had owned Jackson Browne’s Late for the Sky for some time. He found a certain level of consolation and comfort in its feeling. Its tone, as one of his English teachers might put it. The work aligned with his own, somber, and melancholy mood, with just a hint of anger.

Though he psychologically connected with Late for the Sky, music which made him wrestle with Nathan’s death. The music that made him think of Nathan’s life the most was that of the band America. For the rest of Scott’s life, when he heard a certain era of the band’s music, he could almost feel his brother’s presence. Their music seemed to encapsulate his brother's personality and character. If one asked Scott what made the connection so strong, he could not tell them. It was just there, anytime the music played. There was a comfort and an agony that brought swirls of emotion. Music had always been a refuge for both, now Scott sat in their psychological shelter all by himself just listening for echoes of the past. He wanted badly to bring the past into the present, but all he got was a whiff of a few neatly placed chords. He was truly cruising through a desert on a horse with no name.

An album that made him feel closer to his brother was Jefferson Starship’s Red Octopus. Nathan owned the 8-Track and really liked the album. In 1978, they had gone to another football Cardinal game that their father had provided tickets for them from another person at Clark. This time there were just two tickets so the two of them, Scott, and Nathan, set off for the game. They parked at an outdoor lot not too far from the stadium. Normally they parked in one of the garages, but Nathan thought that his one time they could take a chance on a lot nearer the stadium. After the game, Nathan and Scott returned the car. All seemed in good order except the tape they had been listening to on the way to the game, Red Octopus, was gone. Nathan exclaimed, Are you kidding me?! All the tapes in this car they take the best one!

Once again Scott could not explain to anyone why the sound of that album made him feel his brother’s presence so strong, it just did. Shortly after that incident Scott bought the Red Octopus on vinyl, and within a few months was glad he had the album as an emotional crutch.

As a young child Scott had always dreamed. Dreaming had always been an escape. Not that he had all that much to escape from, he enjoyed his childhood and wanted it to last forever. When he first started cutting grass in the seventh grade, he used to pretend his lawn mower was a tank (actually, one of Patton’s tanks) and he was mowing down the Soviet Block. He was going to make the world safe for democracy. He dreamed of hitting the home run that won the World Series or throwing the touchdown to win the Super Bowl. In grade school when students were asked to write down what they were going to be when they grew up Scott always wrote down 1. Professional Baseball Player 2. Professional Football Player. The teacher always said, Scotty, why don’t you think of something more realistic. Without a beat and with no discouragement Scott said, This is realistic (as he pointed to his list), I’m good at both of these. The teacher simply smiled and moved on. Just the earliest of the dreams [he’d] never see (Allman Brothers, 1969).

Scott was thinking about Yes in the round in June of ’79, just a couple months after Nathan’s death. The tour was in support of the Tormato LP that was released in September of 1978. The band Yes had always been a well-respected entity within the realm of Edwardsville’s music moguls. The concert was at the Checkerdome. Back in those days, if they took a bong anywhere, they put it in a gym bag. As they were approaching the gate the normal conversations took place.

What are they going to play first?

I think they will definitely play ‘Starship Trooper’, man. They gotta play ‘Starship Trooper.’

How many encores do you think they will play, man?

Awe man, I heard they been playing about three on this tour, dude.

Scott began looking around to see what he considered an amazing sight. Scott noticed hundreds of people carrying gym bags. He had always been of the mindset that they were original in their carrying case. He was wrong. By mid-show Scott looked up to lasers piercing a thick cloud and not much of it was traditional tobacco.

Scott gained and lost a shirt that night. He bought Yes concert T-shirt. Before he got in the FBI car to leave, he took off the shirt he wore, placing it on the roof and put on his new prize the concert tee. Unfortunately, he never took his other shirt off the roof. It ended up in the Checkerdome parking lot.

The multipurpose backyard of Scott’s childhood became a bit of a haven for Scott after the tragedy. Many memories were packed into that space. It was sort of a cathedral for him. The legendary treehouse was now just the reinforced floor, the walls and roof were gone. In a moment of what Scott considered genius-based inspiration, he took a chrome and plastic lounge chair and placed upon that treehouse floor. The treehouse was just outside the window of Nathan’s old bedroom that Scott now inhabited. At various times he sat in the lounge chair in cutoffs; sans shirt and socks, listening to tunes from the speaker he placed in the bedroom window.

It came to Scott’s mind how during the spring and summer the backyard took on this special glow about an hour before the sun went down. Years later he still paused at times during that time of year just to remember and take in that time of day. He just breathed in the sights, sounds, and smells that could only be found then. It reminded him of swatting lightning bugs or catching them in a jar. As a small child, when he caught them in a jar, he and Nathan took them to their shared room. Scott put grass in the jar, so they had something to eat. He then placed the jar right next to his bed so they could serve as a nightlight.

Scott began dreaming a lot about the past. He became thoughtful sitting in his back yard. He kept trying to wrap his head around losing his brother. A lot of good times were had in that yard. He sat on that swing and wondered why this all had to be realized. One thing that was never in his past dreams was a future without his brother. It was not even among his nightmares.

When he sat in the homemade swing that rested in the crux of a tree, he looked at the large sycamore tree that stood just behind the house. When Scott and Nathan were younger, Frank mounted a backboard for basketball on the tree. They spent a lot of time playing H.O.R.S.E. In that same area they helped their dad chop wood for the fireplace.

It was in that tree that an incredibly special resident had made his home. A squirrel the family named Petey. He became a wild pet the family fed. He did not run when family members were out, except Trixer the dog. It was hard to explain the connection. The squirrel just had warmed to the family. He came closer, stayed longer, and seemed to recognize these people as his friends. It was the most unique relationship Scott ever remembered with a squirrel.

Then one night a very tumultuous storm blew through Edwardsville. The next morning a lot of branches had fallen and among them,