A Few Steps Away from "The Pour House"

I was reminded of that just yesterday, when I stopped in Coloma, Michigan.

Some kids at seventeen are immature or unsure of who they are. They have some growing to do.

At seventeen I was a senior at Evergreen Park Community High School. I had recently decided that I wanted a future, so I began to really apply myself to studies. It was almost too late in the game, but I pulled off a 3.75 grade point average (out of 4.0) for the year. Not bad.

Evergreen Park Community High School (EPCHS) is a one high school district in an older suburb of Chicago. It has only one famous graduate: Theodore Kaczynski. He traded under the name of the "Unibomber". He apparently paid attention in chemistry and perhaps English Lit.

When I was in school the world was divided into the "jocks", the "freaks" and the "normal" kids.

I was, I guess, a normal kid.

But I was different in one small way. I loved to read. When I was very young I used to take a flashlight and read under the covers. When my mother asked if i were "going to sleep", I always lied. Instead I was reading about some Civil War battle or Abraham Lincoln or a little Jack London.

In those days reading was not cool. It was the providence of losers with thick glasses and no friends. I think it is still that way today.

When I was a senior in high school I met a person that most influenced my life, another student. His name was Bill Powers. That is his real name. He was a guy who was not a jock, but an ordinary guy. He was a little pudgy, out of shape, but always had a smile on his face, and was as sharp as sharp with comebacks and replies. He was always pushing his thick glasses back up his nose too. He never pretended that he was stupid just to get along. He read. He was smart. He was himself in a world that posed.

I noticed that Bill moved though all ranks and levels of high school. He knew the jocks. The jocks knew him. They respected him. The freaks knew him. He could talk to them, and they to him. The teachers even knew Bill, and talked to him like an adult.

Bill always had something in his back pocket. It was a book. He was always reading.

We became buddies.

Bill's parents owned Diamond Automotive, an auto parts store, at 79th and Western Avenue. Bill worked there.

Eventually, Bill's parents sold Diamond Automotive. They moved to Coloma, Michigan. They still had their house in Evergreen Park, and this is where Bill lived with his brother, Archie. How cool was that? A kid living alone. Bill pulled it off.

The summer after we graduated Bill had a couple of us up to Coloma, to his parent's place on Paw Paw Lake. It was a great time, fishing, hanging out and seeing what girls we could find.

One night we went to a local bar, "The Pour House", as it is called now. We were seventeen. Bill had me borrow his brother Archie's driver's license. In those days driver's licenses didn't have pictures on it, and I somewhat matched Archie's description.

We have our drinks and staggered out into the warm summer air. You could smell the lake not far away, and the crickets chirped loudly off in the country darkness.

As we staggered away from the bar the local police pulled up. We were busted.

I showed the cop Archie's ID. Bill also showed the cop one of Archie's old IDs. The cop knew the score, but we had left the bar and were walking and had no alcohol on us.

"Hit the bricks," the cop ordered. Those words ring in my ears today.

I always promised myself that I would leave Bill a case of beer for his hospitality that summer. I didn't.

I haven't seen Bill Powers in 33 years. I think I should get him two cases of beer. Maybe more. He taught me more than any school book and teacher. His lesson was that it's okay to be who you are, even if it meant that you sat on an old paperback.