Those 2 Boys

Remembering a fallen father.

Up at the end of our street lived the two Ellinger boys with their parents.  Their dad was in a tank battalion in the Marine Corps.  He served and died in Viet Nam.  I don’t remember meeting their dad and have little recollection of their mother.  I do remember the boys.  Mike was about a year younger than I, but like almost every boy near my age, he was bigger than me.  His younger brother Tim was about my brother Philip’s age.  Somewhere along the way, perhaps in the park laundry room, Mom and Mrs. Ellinger struck up a friendship that continues to this day.  Each would occasionally watch the other’s children and of course when birthdays rolled around invitations to simple celebrations were extended.  So, we would spend time with the Ellinger boys.  This was not my idea of fun.  As a kid, you have two kinds of acquaintances: those you choose, and those that are chosen for you.  Now, I wouldn’t say that Mike and Tim were bad characters.  In fact, as far as I know, they turned out all right.  It was just that when I knew them, especially Mike, they were the kind of boys that most parents marvel at due to their seemingly boundless energy matched by an equal propensity for mischief and squabbling.  Tim also had an annoying habit of leaving tooth marks in the rims of Mom’s Tupperware tumblers because he liked to gnaw on them.  In honest retrospect, they were the normal boys.  I was the one on the low end of the curve when it came to seeking adventure.  Other than feeling overwhelmed by their boisterous company, the only other experience I specifically remember involved a tandem bike ride on a non-tandem bike.  It was an adult bike that I assume belonged to the Ellingers.  It had some kind of flat rack on the back that I was sitting on while Mike was on the real seat peddling.  I had my feet perched precariously on the nuts that held the rear wheel on and was hanging on desperately to the rack.  In the trailer park, there were ‘speed bumps’ to keep cars from going too fast.  These were effective for bicycles as well.  We hit one of the bumps and the impact was enough to cause my foot to bounce up and then catch in between the frame and the spokes of the still-turning rear wheel.  The curious sensation of my skin being rubbed off my inner ankle quickly became painful and I howled for Mike to stop.  Somehow, we got my foot out from between the wheel and the frame and I hobbled home.  The large abrasion healed in time…  

What it meant for the Ellinger boys when their Dad didn't come home in 1968 became a little more real for me over 30 years later.  I visited Washington, DC with my own family and we stopped at the Vietnam Memorial - The Wall.  I found Franklin M Ellinger etched in the dark granite and thought about two red-headed, freckle-faced boys, now grown men, and wondered…