We read about violent crimes and serious accidents every day. It is part of the daily news scene. We read about it in the papers and are seeing it on the news from anywhere in the world just minutes after they happen. We should be immune to it but it still bothers me to see all the heartache there is and it probably won't get any better. We've become more populated, live faster lives and are less tolerant of one another! We also tend to think that these things only happen the cities, like Los Angeles, Chicago or New York City. Well, that just isn't the case! Sure they get the most exposure because they are more populated and do have a higher number of violent crimes and tragic accidents, but these things happen everywhere and all the time.
My nephew, Lowell, lives in a small city in west central Minnesota with a population of about 12 - 15 thousand people. We have been there and it is a very nice average U.S. city. It could be anywhere, Nice Town, U.S.A. Lowell and I keep in touch via e-mail and share all the current events. The other day in one of his messages he told about a man driving up from the twin cities to check on his brother and his family. Apparently he hadn't been able to get in touch with him and came up to find out why. What he found was all four dead. It was an apparent murder/suicide. It looked like the father had strangled the son and then shot the daughter and wife before shooting himself. Whether or not this is actually how it happened the fact remains, they are all dead and it is a tragedy. This happened just several blocks from where Lowell lives!
I don't know why but this story seemed to keep coming to mind the rest of the day and it even went to bed with me that night. Sometime during the night, still running all of the worlds sadness through my mind it reminded my of several stories that happened to close friends of mine when I was a small boy growing up in Mineral, Washington. I'm relating these situations simply to show that not only did tragic things happen in small towns but they can happen to anyone at anytime!
My parents and I had moved to Mineral about a year before in 1946. We lived about a half mile out of the small logging and mill community. It had a population of about five hundred people and about the only thing that happened there was an occasional fight in one of the taverns on Saturday night or maybe a drunk driving into one of the big maple trees that lined the main street back then. Mineral is in a beautiful location, nestled in the mountains with a lake and a great view of Mount Rainier. Tragedy? Well, you wouldn't think so but in just three or four short years a lot of peoples lives were changed because of violent or tragic circumstances.
Our neighbor who lived just across the road from us had two grandsons, Larry, about nine or ten and his brother who was my age, eleven, They lived in Enumclaw, Washington about an hours drive from Mineral. They came to visit occasionally and on this particular day we were playing in my yard. In the garage were a variety of bottles and cans with paints and solvents in them my dad had neglected to get rid of them and one of them became the reason for this first incident. The three of us were in the garage playing. The brother and I left Larry there for some reason and in just a few moments he came running and screaming out of there with the upper half of his body in flames. Somehow he had ignited one of the bottles and had splashed some of its contents on his clothes. We rolled him on the grass and my mom came out with a blanket and wrapped him in it. He was burned badly! There were no medics or an ambulance, his grand dad took him to the hospital. As they drove off you could see big pieces of skin hanging from his arms. His hair and eyebrows were mostly gone. Larry lived but he had to have a lot of grafting done, fortunately his eyes were spared. His big reminder of this day would be the scars, but the two boys would be getting bigger and deeper scars in just a few years. We will come back to them later.
A short time later a woman with four boys moved into a place about a quarter of a mile up from us. The oldest lived in Tacoma but the three younger ones lived with her. Eddie was about sixteen and Maurice was about my age and then there was a baby about three. After they had been there awhile the mother married a fellow who was the father of a boy that I went to school with in Elbe, just before we moved to Mineral. They moved into Mineral at one point, I think their house had burned down and they were now living in the apartment above the Storm King tavern. One Saturday night the parents went to a dance and while they were there they began to argue and she left with another man. He took her home and at some point after that the husband came home and got an old Italian army rifle out and shot her dead. He then went into the bathroom with a large caliber hand gun, putting the barrel in his mouth, pulled the trigger. The bullet rolled around in his mouth and knocked out all of his teeth and exited out of the side of his head. He lived but was sent to the state pen in Walla Walla, Washington for seven years for second degree murder!
Now the time period moves ahead to 1949, I'm now about thirteen years old, life is good and the murder is well behind the quiet small town. But a very tragic accident changed that. Two close friends of mine, Ralph, the twelve year old son of the schools cook, his father was the schools janitor, and Charlie, also twelve, was the son of a local logger. Both families were well thought of and each boy was an only child. Charlie was an athlete and an outdoorsman and Ralph was just the opposite, quiet and reserved. Charlie had just came back from shooting his rifle in the woods and stopped at the general store to pick up the mail. Ralph was there also and they left the store together. Walking side by side with the rifle cradled in Charlie's inside arm the rifle slipped from his grasp while he was looking at the mail. Needless to say the gun was loaded and it discharged killing Ralph. This was really a sad incident and this stayed with us all for a long time. There were no charges made but Charlie and the rest of us moved on. I haven't heard anything about Charlie for 40 years but I'm sure the memories of that day stayed with him for many years.
I'm not exactly sure of the time frame here but my best guess was 1950, I was about to go into high school. The Adams boys, Larry and his brother, still came to visit their grandparents and we were still allowed to play together. Life was about as normal as you could expect. But things were about to change their lives forever and the scars would be deeper than any that Larry already had gotten from his burns. One Saturday night their mother and father went to a dance or party. I never really knew for sure, but something happened during the evening that caused a big fight to erupt. When they came home the fight continued in the kitchen area and the husband got his gun out and began firing. His aim wasn't good and he only wounded her causing the kitchen to become a blood splattered mess. She was able to get away from him and ran into Larry's bedroom and climbed into his bed with him. His dad followed her in the bedroom and finished killing her in front of him. Larry wasn't hit. The boys dad also went to Walla Walla with a seven year second degree murder sentence!
My whole point here is that crime and tragedy is everywhere! We aren't necessarily safe anywhere. We have drive by shootings, family disputes, gang killings and just about any scenario that you can imagine. Is there a message here or a moral? Probably not, but, if you are one of the people who goes to bed tonight and hasn't had a sad or tragic thing happen to them today, be thankful! And at the same time say a prayer for the people who wasn't as fortunate!
Written by William Wandke on 1/20/99
