My Artistic Friends Over The Years: Part 3 Richard W.

 

In 1955 my dad and mom finally bought a house.  It was in Bucktown, five miles south of Pottstown. It was a village actually, population about 200.  There was the cross road of Res 100 and 23 and just above that a slaughterhouse.  Other than that there wasn't much at that time. There was a small restaurant  and a gas station.

Our property was 31/2 acres. The man next door was an auctioneer, who would practice his budding over a loudspeaker at times. In our other side was a man-made lake and springhouse that belonged to a farmer across the street.  That was the Bishops. They has a boy named Dave, but he was a couple years older than I.  

There was little to do and I spent that summer practicing pitching by throwing rubber baseball at a drawling of a home plate I drew on the back wall of the house.  One day I was pretending yo pics a game and realized someone was watching me. I looked over to our side yard and there stood a boy about my hight, although a bit more stocky of build.

      "Want to play catch", he asked, and we were soon good friends. His name was Richard Allan Wilson
and his family lived about a 1/4 miles on the other side of Rt. 100. He was in with grade and I was in tenth, but he was older than me. He had been held back in school a couple years.

   

  He had a younger brother and sister, who sometimes visited me. One time Suzy, his sister almost shot us with his rifle. We country boys all had our rifles then. Richard had a single shop .22, while I had a 16 shot bolt-action .22. Suzy had borrowed his rifle and was swinging it round wildly. We boys were all ducking until he got it away from her.

        His parents doted on his bother, who everyone thought was nice, but he was really a brat.  Once he and his sister cam eto visit without Richard along. I was taking a bath and heard them knock. I wrapped a towel about my waist to go see she was at the door. When I saw him and the girl, I let them  in.

      I said,"give me a minute to get dressed". and started across the living room to my room. Suddenly he snatched the towel off me and left me standing naked before his sister. That was the kind of guy he was.

     Sometime I obtained a Belcor reel-to reel tape recorder. It was huge. Richard and I began making up short plays we recoded, I called them the "Mike Wakrus Interviews" and we made up funny interviews with suppoedly famous people. such as "Dr. James Q. Whitemeat, famous heart surgeon"  and "Professor B. S. Dimwitt"among others.   We also wrote plays in which song lyrics played  part.  We would record these and insert lines from songs in the appropriate place.  I collected everything we write and included them in a collection I wrote several year later, called "Little Plays. 

Richard died a few years back. He was only in his fifties.  His brother had a a girl, who he got pregnant as well as the girl's mother. As
far as I know Suzy never married and still lives at home.

 Richard in 1993, not too much before his death.