When we were kids, y long-time friend Mike Nowland and I were better at different things, and yet we were equal in so many ways. He was better at throwing the football, and I was better at running to catch it. He was better at math, and I was better at English. It was uncommon that one of us dominated the other in much of anything. I could run faster than him, but he’d whoop me in basketball unless we were playing with a rolled up aluminum foil ball and a garbage can in the corner–then it was competitive. We were pretty much equally competitive in anything.
We were both easy-going, self-motivated, and had a similar sense of humor. Neither of us had the passive gene that made us easy to persuade; similarly, we didn’t have the domineering gene that might lead to intimidating others to do things they shouldn’t.
On that note, I’ve been known to do more stupid things than Mike, like jump from a 2nd-story window, expecting my two older brothers to catch me with a fitted sheet like they did in the old firemen show, Emergency 51. They didn’t. And, I was usually more willing to take a dare … like, for example, jumping from a 2nd-story window, expecting my brothers to catch me with a fitted sheet.
If one of us thought something was a good idea, we usually agreed. Conversely, we usually saw eye-to-eye on whether or not it was a bad idea, so our ability to reason out possible conclusions to potentially risky behavior was fairly equal.
Of course, sometimes, we had a lousy idea and neither of us saw it.
This is that story.
I’ve been friends with Mike since 1972. Since first grade; 47 years. We were both the youngest of multiple brothers who were athletes, so we always found new ways to play. If we had a baseball, we’d play baseball. If we had a softball, we’d play softball. Wiffle ball meant Wiffle ball. And if for some reason we didn’t have a ball at all, we’d roll up duct tape and make one, or hit worm-infested apples from my backyard just to watch them explode.
The Nowlands lived 12 blocks away in a small, three-bedroom house. It was unkempt, to say the least, and not reflective of the family that lived there.
The back yard was overgrown and unused. When I slept over, I’d occasionally pull a curtain or roller shade to the side so I could look through a dirty window at what was going on back there. There was an old, rusted swing set that looked like it hadn’t been used in decades, a couple trees, a broken lawn chair or two, and weeds and grass ranging from two to six feet in height.
Mr. and Mrs. Nowland did not make their kids clean their rooms, and in the room that Mike and his brother Cree shared, there was one dresser, a closet, and single mattresses on the floor. At one point, they painted purple polka dots the size of silver dollars on the white walls. As a kid, who cares? Today? Hideous.
Because the floor was covered with mattresses, pillows, and clothes, it was perfect for little kid wrestling. Mike (and his entire family) slept until late in the morning, usually hours after I woke up, then we’d eat Boo Berry or Fruity Pebbles cereal, and then it was on: we’d wrestle until one of their parents finally told us to “knock it off.” Then we’d start again until they told us to stop, and then we’d do it all again.
Their family dog, Slugger, was a mutt that was foot tall and a foot wide, with gray bristly fur, and he would often break us up by biting one of our pant legs, growling, and tugging on it until it gave the other an advantage. “Slugger, stop it!” We’d push him into the hallway, close the door, and get right back at it.
We loved competing in everything we did, and both of us could handle losing badly, and gloated we freely when we won.
All the Nowlands were good-natured, funny as hell, and emotionally healthy. I’m sure they know stuff about their family that I don’t and might disagree, but from what I could tell, they were consistently decent, hard-working, honest, and friendly. They could be sarcastic asses and loved a good prank–even if it hurt a little. But in their hearts, good people through and through.
Mrs. Nowland was the breadwinner, I think, and worked the usual 9-5 shift, and Mr. Nowland was home on disability. If you knew them, you understood why their kids were the way they were.
Every time I entered their house, my height was about a head above Mrs. Nowland’s lounge chair, and without fail, I would look to my left and see Mr. Nowland in his reclining lounge chair, watching television on one of those big wooden, boxed-in sets.
As soon as we made eye contact, Mr. Nowland would say, as if straight out of a Jimmy Stewart film, “Hello, Johhhn.”
“Hi, Mr. Nowland.”
“How’s tricks?”
Here, I stumbled. Every. Single. Time. For at least a decade, I didn’t know how to respond. My little brain’s freshly developing executive function labored:
What does he mean, “tricks?” Is he asking how I am? If he is, I don’t have any tricks, so I can’t really say good or bad. What do I say?
In all the years I walked into that house and looked at Mr. Nowland, sometimes in his pajamas and robe, sometimes not, I smiled sheepishly and looked for a way out because I had no idea how to respond. It wasn’t uncomfortable, because Mr. Nowland just didn’t make a person feel that way, but I could never find a clever way to respond.
He had a well-trimmed mustache, and in retrospect, I remember him smiling real wide under it as he waited for me to reply, and though I didn’t hear him laughing, his body moved up and down in time with what I now realize was laughter.
He delighted in making me fumble for words, and it’s still one of my favorite memories of him.
In some ways, that one scenario explains the whole family, as Mike was the same way. He loved to goad and poke fun. They all do.
When Mike and I played football, he was the quarterback. He was taller, preferred the position, and threw a nicer spiral. Naturally, I was doing a lot more running around since throwing the ball is something he could do while standing in one spot.
In those early years at Jackson Elementary in Oak Park, Michigan, we didn’t play tag with the other kids; instead, we played “catch John and Mike.” It was like that because some of those kids chasing us around weren’t very fast. Playing tag was too easy, repetitive, and dull. On the other hand, seven or eight kids chasing around the two fastest kids was more fun because it was a more dramatic challenge for everyone.
In 1975, we won the Oak Park Flag Football Championship, and 95% of the plays consisted of Mike running a quarterback keeper or Mike handing the ball off to John. It made sense because we were also faster than the other kids throughout the city, except for the speedy Reggie Clark. I always felt bad for him, as we beat his team in the championship game. They might have won it all if they had two Reggie Clarks; poor guy had to do all the work.
Later, in high school, our physical prowess and talents were caught and surpassed by other area kids. We both ended our football careers in mediocre fashion, so our golden age was 1st through 8th grades.
One quiet, overcast summer day in 1977, we were about 11 and had nothing else to do. The cereal had been eaten, the wrestling matches were over, and Mr. and Mrs. Nowland had had enough of all our inside energy and ordered us to find something to do–elsewhere.
Mike and I were in front of his house playing catch with a Nerf football. He lived on Rensselaer near Oak Park Blvd, a quiet oak tree-filled, suburban side street less than a mile from where I lived on Sherman.
It was an overcast day without much threat of rain, but we had no ball games scheduled, no other friends available to get a pick-up game going, and this was it. Two bored kids and a Nerf football.
Mike had an idea to mix things up. He would play quarterback. I would play wide receiver. I would go into the street on the family’s yellow Schwinn Speedster and ride the routes rather than run them. I would ride from Mike’s right to left because I was right-handed, which kept my catching hand available — and I could steer the bike with my left.
At first, I would go by slow enough to get in a few practice throws. I caught a couple and missed a couple, and we were sure this idea was a good one. The great thing about being a bored kid is that a new activity, however ill-advised, holds the promise of hours–days, even–of entertainment. Possibility always exists when you’re young and bored.
Maybe that’s one of the problems of becoming an adult: we’re smart enough (most times) to quickly project how long a new adventure might last, so when we realize we’re only going to get 10 or 12 minutes out of it, usually we don’t bother. We quit before we start. When you’re nine years old, for all you know, this might last all summer long, and next summer, and the summer after that.
We might get all our friends in on the idea and play teams. It’s limitless!
I began riding the route faster in order to make the throws and catches more challenging. It was serviceable, but around that critical 10-minute mark, we began to realize this game was not going to be a perennial favorite. If Mike overthrew the ball or I dropped it, I had to get off the bike, throw the ball back, get back on the bike, ride over to the right side of his throwing view, and start pedaling–all of which is a lot more work than running.
Even though we saw the end of the game coming, we continued, and then Mike threw a beautiful bullet, making a good strong throw with a perfect spiral. It was low, and I saw that it was uncatchable. Instinctively, I grabbed the handlebars with both hands as the ball was headed for my front tire.
I was moving at a pretty good clip when the soft, spongy, pliable point of the ball went magically between the fender and the tire. More precisely, behind the fork.
Like an unplanned and successful experiment in physics, the materials of the tough and foamy Nerf combined with the grabbiness of the rubber tire had allowed the point of the ball to get sucked into the forward motion of the wheel, stuffing it irreversibly between the tire and the fender and the fork.
If the goal was to instantly terminate the movement of the bike (and the person riding it), it was a complete success.
Faster than you can say the word “now,” the wheel went from turning normally to perversely stopped. By the sheer laws of physics, the rest of the bike, including the seat I was on and myself, had nowhere to go but straight up. And then the seat naturally arched forward and over the handlebars, with the front tire acting as a fulcrum.
The bike weighed around 25 pounds, and as an average 9 year-old boy, I likely weighed about 65. While I don’t recall exactly how fast I was moving, the velocity was great enough that the momentum was able to lift my 90-pounds 4-7 feet off the ground. Swiftly. Instantly.
However, a moment later, my body was upside down at the peak of my forward flip, and everything for me went dark.
Mike watched the event unfold, waiting for broken bones and blood and possibly a loss of consciousness. Instead, I gripped the handle bars tight with my rear end glued to the seat.
What he saw was the entire bike (with me on it) stick a two-wheel landing. The Schwinn and I performed a perfect, end-over-end, front flip, from two wheels in motion to two wheels motionless on the cement.
I had no idea what had just happened. The bike and I stood still, and balanced, upright for a second or two, before delicately toppling over to my left. I was unscathed.
No broken bones, no broken head, not even a scratch. Fully conscious.
Mike ran over to see if I was okay, and, miraculously, I was okay. It happened so fast that I wasn’t even shook up. He jogged over to me and we kind of nervously grinned at each other. The sheer luck and incredulity was so overwhelming that we didn’t really talk about it. It was as if we instinctively knew we had cheated fate, or maybe fate played a practical joke on us. Who knew? Either way, we remained relatively quiet and humble.
We walked the bike back to lay it down in its usual resting place, anywhere on the front lawn, and, without ever saying so, equally agreed that that was a lousy idea, and we would never try that again.
Written August 8, 2021
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