Chris and I had just finished another arduous pop bottle run. We were now comfortably lounging on a stack of newspapers on the bottom shelf of the magazine rack at Hansen’s Variety Store. Little did I know just three years later I would be working there as a stock boy to protect pop bottles from boys like me and Chris and keeping youngsters off that magazine rack.

Chris wasn’t my cousins first name. For some reason he didn’t like his first name, and said it reminded him of someone he didn’t care for. As you can imagine, his first name was a source of amusement and the point where we could tease him. For the record, his first name was very common, so it wasn’t like he was named Ebeneezer or something.

Hawking pop bottles was a common theme for us over that summer and then the next. It became our “job.” It made us dirty and sweaty, but that was no big deal to us. We’d just traded in pop bottles we had found alongside roads and bridges, plus a few we might have borrowed from the backyards of unwary housewives. Now we were enjoying the fruits of our morning travails and waxing nostalgic.

The year was 1969, a hot summer in our little Illinois hometown. I was twelve then; Chris bragged he was eleven years and seven months. Those extra months seemed important to him. We didn’t know it at the time, but Neil Armstrong was fixing to walk on the moon that summer. We’d see that later that month on a visit to our grandfather as he had a color television. I vividly recall he sat there dumbstruck at the feat, as he still recalled the days of horse-drawn carriages.

Coins in hand from bottles, we’d buy ourselves each a pack of Topps baseball cards for five cents, a Mars bar, also a nickel, and an RC Cola for ten cents. Usually, we could only afford one bottle, so we split it between us. At the time, we drank RC because it came in a 16-ounce bottle, rather than those puny twelve-ounce Pepsi bottles.

We were enjoying the air conditioning, helping ourselves to a variety of magazines carried by the store. Hansen’s had an enormous book rack with a base that stuck from the floor as a place to throw newspapers, and on occasion, me and Chris. Hansen’s carried every magazine imaginable, except for the ones with naked women. They kept those underneath the cash register out of sight, but I would find this stash when I went to work for them.

We only read those periodicals that dealt with some of the more important points in the life of 12-year-olds, such as Alfred E. Newman’s MAD magazine or perhaps Eerie magazine, which usually had a picture of Godzilla or Dracula on the cover. I was a huge Dracula fan, Godzilla, not so much. Sometimes I’d pick up a Time Magazine just to see why dad had a subscription, but had no clue at what could possibly interest a person.

More often than not, we’d leave chocolate prints on the corners from our Mars-bar-fingers, particularly MAD as it was the one we studied most intently. Chris usually had some chocolate on his face as well.

Sports Illustrated was the most popular choice when it was baseball season, especially if they had pictures of Chicago Cubs players. A few weeks prior, Ron Santo was on the cover, leading off of first base and talking smack to the pitcher. I vividly recalled that game as Ronnie got on with a rare error by Mike Shannon when they were playing the Cardinals at Wrigley Field. Ronnie would soon score off a homer by Willie Smith. The Cubs won that game 3-1, scoring all three runs in the 8th inning off Bob Gibson. Both pitchers, Bob Gibson and Cub Fergie Jenkins would pitch complete games, something I appreciated more when I got older. Sadly, complete games are a rarity today. 

There we sat, much to the consternation of Aunt Bob who ran the store. She’d throw us out soon or more quickly should someone trip over our feet as we sat there lounging. Everyone called her Aunt Bob, although nobody knew if she was really somebody’s aunt, nor why they called the woman Bob. She lived right behind the store in a very nice double-wide mobile home, although in our small town, we just called it a trailer. Chris lived in a trailer himself about three blocks away.

Chris was looking at me while holding his hand out for a turn at the bottle.   I took a big swig then belched proudly. Aunt Bob, who was leaning over the counter keeping an eye on us, gave me a disgusted look.

Hand still out, Chris says, “Web,” (everyone called me Web when not calling me a derogatory name) “ya really think the Cubs can win the pennant this year.”

Handing the bottle to him, I comprehended the immense weight of his question. It was a heady one indeed. He seemed to be putting a great deal of trust in my opinion so I wanted to give him my most educated response. While pondering my answer, I noticed he was wiping the top of the bottle, where I had just drank from, with his dirty T-shirt, evidently afraid of catching my germs. I winced, making a mental note to leave some backwash in the bottle next time I took my drink.

“Well, Chris,” I began slowly, “it all depends.”

“Oh yeah, on what,” Chris asked quizzically.

At this point I should tell you that I really suspected Chris was still harboring feelings for the crosstown White Sox but wouldn’t admit it. He was just warming up to becoming a Cubs fan because they were having a good year and were expected to go on to the World Series. I surmised he had to be asking me that question only because he knew more about Sox players than Cubs, so he was hedging his allegiance.

“Well,” I said philosophically, while eating the last bite of that wonderful Mars bar. I can still taste it to this day. “If Santo and Banks keeps hitting those homers, and Williams and Beckert can keep those batting averages up, I think they can.”

Chris didn’t reply. I could tell he was thinking, or still hedging. I also noticed he still had his dirty hand wrapped tightly around that RC bottleneck.

“Oh, and Jenkins’ arm don’t fall off,” I said, while reaching for the bottle.

A few minutes later while paging through an old copy of MAD, looking for more Spy v Spy cartoons the editors scribbled on the sides and tops of the pages, a thought came to me that had been on my mind of late.

“Chris,” I said. “You a Democrat.”

“Why yes,” he answered almost indignantly if a boy of eleven years and seven months can be indignant.

I nodded in unison before asking him the next question. Guardedly, I said, “You know why we’re Democrats?” This was a question that had been eating at me for weeks, although I really had no idea why, nor the difference between a Republican and a Democrat.

It was Chris’s turn to think before answering. While he was contemplating his answer, I unwrapped my baseball cards to see who I had gotten. This ritual had to be done slowly so as to be lucky enough to get at least one Cubs player. One just couldn’t rush this process or they might wind up with a bunch of Anaheim Angels. I secretly wished to get New York Yankee players too, but never told Chris, him being a closet Sox fan and all. At the time, I think I owned about five Micky Mantle cards, including the one attached to the spokes of my bicycle with a clothespin. It hurts me to write last sentence that given what a Mantle card goes for these days.

Chris finally answered in a husky voice. Chris had asthma which affected his voice some days. “Grandpa Webber said we were. He told me if the Democrat party was good enough for those Kennedy boys and that Adlai Stevenson fella, well, then it was good enough for us.”

I nodded, thinking about how to make sense of his answer. At the same time, I noticed there was a card in my pack for a Cubs pitcher I had never heard of by the name of Don Nottebart.

I was frowning about that card, because I didn’t know that player. I was sure I knew them all so where did this guy come from. I had drawn the Cub line up on the wall in my bedroom and stuck baseball card pictures where they usually played. Non-starters were lined up neatly on the lower left corner of my field, as that is where the Cubs dugout was at Wrigley.  Nowhere before or since was a card of someone named Nottebart. He must have been up briefly in time for pictures and then sent packing to the minors I reasoned.

Chris was continuing with his thoughts on politics, according to an 11 year and 7-month-old small-town boy, “Then grandpa said President Johnson was the greatest president he’s ever known.” This type of information from our grandfather made things official.

I nodded, content in the fact that me and Chris were Democrats, just like the rest of our family. We’d stay that way until Ronald Reagan came along, but grandpa never lived long enough to tell us differently. By the way, I really had no idea who that Stevenson fellow was, but since I was older than Chris, I didn’t want him to know about my lack of knowledge.

At that moment though, we were safe in the cocoon of our small town, not knowing about the eventual collapse of the Cubs season or the upcoming Watergate scandal. Life seemed simpler before the Cubs went on their August losing streak, losing the pennant to New York Mets.

I still despise the Mets, all these years later.