By Ron Cook and the great memory of his lifelong friend, Marty Mulder
(Or how a Man is formed in his childhood)
Winter in Louisiana can often be described as 3 months of drizzly rain.
Today it is raining and cloudy and doesn’t look as though it will let up … it’s a good day to let go of my dearest friend from childhood.
Today is a good day for letting go …
I had a dear friend once who used to repeat a phrase he liked which went something like …
“Learn to count your days so that you may grow with a heart of wisdom …”
This month we celebrate Father’s Day. I’d like to share with you the man I think was one of the great Fathers of my time on this planet.
I have let go of many people in my life including my parents, my 16 year old daughter, and many very good friends … but this has become one of the most difficult goodbyes, and it does not seem real, until I have written this for his family and for myself.
Marty Marinas Mulder was born just a little short of 3 weeks after I was brought into this world. Our parents had pictures of us on a baby blanket in front of his house; pictures of Marty and his sharp little guy suit, and pictures of me with my ambiguously, I’m not kind of sure what I had on, outfit. I’m smiling now at that one.
I’m not sure when I started calling Marty, Mole, and I’m not sure if I was maybe the only person who did call him that name but, it just came to me recently that it’s actually a form of the first part of his last name, but I never did call him Mule!
Marty would stand under the clothesline at his house and yell across the empty field, “Hey Cookie, can you come over?” Or if I was the first one up on a summer day, or on Saturday during school days, would yell from my side yard, “Hey Marty, are you up yet? Let’s ride bikes!”
Or play on the Indian trails on the Side Hill, or put playing cards on the spokes of our bikes making sounds like motorcycles, or play army, or play football in the Wright’s soft grass, or shoot our BB guns, or one of our favorite things to do … to look for fool’s gold in the white quartz that big Otis (Albert) had spread in his driveway.
There were also hours of playing basketball on teams, or four horses, or 21 or whatever we could make up to do. Marty tried for years to teach me how to whistle between my fingers but I could never get it, he could do it great, any kind of way that it could be done.
Marty was always the cool guy, and I just loved hanging out with him.
There was just something loyal and great about him when we were children that just continued throughout his whole life. We had fun together, we got in trouble together, haha. I’m sure you’ve all heard the story of how we hid in the back of the dump truck in my yard and threw rotten tomatoes from the Wrights garden on Halloween night over the top of the mulberry trees on Dilly Hill, once in a while hitting a car, until we hit the police car right in the front windshield, oh my goodness! We had a mattress in the back of the dump truck and we both got under that thing. We could hear the police drive up into my driveway and they were looking around and they said, “Wonder where those boys could be?” Then we heard them climbing up on the sides of the truck, and I was telling Marty to just lay low, but Marty sat right up, and gave up. Oh boy, I remember sitting in the backseat of the police car and the policeman saying, “Look at my windshield!!” It was covered with rotten tomato splatter. They called our parents and our parents told us to walk home, which we did amidst our fear of what was going to happen, and our joyous, hilarious recounting of the whole thing. We never did that again but it was such a great story to tell over and over again, it never grew old.
And then there was the time when the Wrights were insulating their home and we found a roll of opened insulation in the back of the house. I remember it made great looking fake beards, but then we itched with fiberglass for a day or so!
Marty and I watched Disney every weekday afternoon. There was a Western about a ranching summer camp. The main characters were called Spin and Marty. Spin was Tim Constantine, who was later in My Three Sons, and he was the cool one. So Marty was Spin and I was Marty because Mole was the cool one.
Marty had the great crew cut and always was looking sharp even when he was filthy from playing all day. He was cool, he just oozed cool.
Lots of adventures behind the Wright’s house. They had these big boulders under a mulberry tree where Marty and I first became Blood Brothers just like Spin and Marty and the Indians that we loved on Disney. And every summer we certainly gorged ourselves on Wright’s mulberries, grapes, watermelons, and cherries. We were like the birds and raccoons getting into all the fruit.
We lived for summer, but both of us took up skiing when we were older. I remember the first ski trip at Canonsburg or somewhere in upper Michigan. Marty had real bindings, snapdowns, but I just had a strap over a ski that would come off about a dozen times on the way down the hill. Marty was the cool one, hahaha, I loved that guy. During college we skied all over Michigan including Alpine Valley, Canonsburg, Boyne Mountain and Boyne Highlands. We both had proper ski equipment at that time. Skiing was done on Long skis back in those days. You had to learn to ski on ice in Michigan. We wouldn’t know the beauty of skiing on snow powder until our trips to Colorado.
We thoroughly enjoyed the Wright’s beautiful grass and flower gardens. At night we liked to listen to Dick Viandi on WLS out of Chicago while lying in the grass and just looking at the sky. Mr.Viandi played all our favorite pop hits and we loved to just look at the sky and dream. Dick Vivandi was the most popular DJ, until he got kicked off for making an inappropriate comment about mini skirts. You can imagine what that might be. It was hilariously inappropriate.
One day, while up on the second floor where the old kitchen used to be in Marty’s house, we had his telescope set up and we were sure we had seen a vehicle land on the moon and then take off and circle it! It was not a speck on the telescope, it was the real deal! We would swear to that, and never doubt it.
So many wonderful adventures of childhood with Marty, and then a couple of awesomely great ski trips to Colorado when we were both out of college and the military.
Marty, humbly, never offered too much information about his time in Vietnam, building and rebuilding a bridge that kept getting blown up. He was in the Seabees and, thank God, was not injured. I managed to serve my 6 years in the National Guard and the Naval Reserve.
Our classic adult ski trip was a drive from Michigan to Colorado in my 1971 Pinto. We skied everyday at an average of $5 or $6 for ski passes, and stayed every night at hotels cabins and hostels, and the whole trip, including gas, was $150 a piece. We skied at Loveland, Arapahoe, Keystone, Cooper, Vail, SnowMass (the year they just opened up the Big Burn and the trees were only about 3 or 4 ft high, and now they’re monsters), and Aspen mountain. On the second trip we also included Steamboat Springs and Breckenridge; the first year this ski area was open.
I was living in Colorado for the second trip, and faked a broken leg to take a week off from my teaching job to go on the trip with Marty and Calvin Cross. What a great time we had. I went back to school with a fake cast and on crutches for a few weeks just to make it look good.
There are so many stories. Marty and I continued to be friends, even though he remained in Portland and I traveled back and forth from Michigan to Colorado to Louisiana to Texas to Florida and now back in Colorado. Marty and I would talk a couple times a year, and always say we’ve got to keep in touch!
But now he’s gone. I can still hear his voice from our last conversation. I hope I never lose that memory.
Marty and I got together infrequently as adults, but each time it was just like our childhood was yesterday. We had this camaraderie, and understanding, and friendship, and beautiful lasting memories that never grew old. I pray they never will. Yet now I’m letting Marty go, and I know a part of me goes with him to wherever he is in that great next adventure.
I love you so much Marty, and I appreciate the wonderful years you had with Lucy, your children and your grandchildren. You were all blessed by a man who loved life, always retained his cool, and was probably the greatest man I’ve ever known.
I hope they have powder snow in heaven, Mole…
