Willard Delka surfaced recently in Gilbert, AZ. We'd heard he'd passed away in the back of an unheated tractor-trailer on a bitterly cold night near Gregory, SD. The official cause of death was a knife wound to the lower sternum that pierced the peritoneal cavity resulting in fatal septic shock. Or so we were told. You can only imagine our surprise when Willard ambled over and introduced himself to us at the Copper Penny Saloon in downtown Gilbert.
Willard had grown a few inches, lost some hair, a few pounds and most of his teeth, but recalled fondly his days as ruthless, desperado gang leader of the Hillcrest Purple Jets in the late 60's and early 70's in Hillcrest Motor Village in southwestern South Dakota. He'd recognized us by the unmistakable tattoos and facial hair of the former Klingbile Gang and recollected our dreaded reputation for filling our squirt guns with pickle juice or vinegar and aiming for the eyes.
Of course, we were eager to know of Willard's whereabouts and doings these past many years and he did not hold back. Working back through a lifetime of memories, Willard confirmed the stab wound and that he got it while on the receiving end of a bad carny nightmare. Willard left Hillcrest in 1972 after an incident at the public school that involved Willard punching his fourth grade teacher in the stomach after refusing to "settle down". Willard recounted, "Knowing I couldn't go home with this hanging over my head, I took to the open road and got as far as Lusk, Wyoming. In Lusk, as luck would have it, the carnival was in town".
Willard convinced the carnys that he was a down on his luck midget (you could still say that then), and was hired on the spot as a ring collector for the pop-bottle ring toss contest. The pay was next to nothing and in some towns, the head carny had to take up a collection to pay for permits and lot rent which meant Willard had to pay for the privilege of working. Willard slept wherever he could and often was subject to carny hazing which consisted of "being beaten around the head and neck with a broken bottle by a raving pack of drunken carnys singing hallelujah songs. There's only so much a little guy can take", Willard concluded, pursing his beak-like lips as a gathering darkness crossed his brow and frightened his listeners with its intensity.
Willard had lashed out at the carnys and their violent, hedonistic lifestyles. He began shaking the pop, a rude awakening for the winning ring tossers doused by the flavored eruptions. This of course lead to a building crescendo of customer complaints. The bottle-beatings increased and Willard fought back somewhere near Gregory, SD, long after the northern carnival season had ended. Eventually, Willard was subdued in the trailer carrying the Zipper and stabbed repeatedly with a small penknife. He was then tossed without ceremony into the snow-lined ditch. He barely survived the cruel winter's night, stumbling into Gregory just after 9:00 PM Central. He was a bloody mess.
It was more than a year before Willard's wounds healed but in the meantime he applied himself and completed a mail-order accounting associates degree course and eventually passed the CPA exam in Sioux Falls. He settled in Gregory, married and eventually became the senior monetary and agricultural loan control officer for the Liberty State Bank, founded in 1889. In 1997, old and frail, he retired to Gilbert where he currently lives with his wife Lolafina and two dogs, Pete and Pamela.
Now that he knows the Klingbile Gang is near, he keeps a squirt gun loaded with pickle juice on his bedside nightstand.
No comments:
Post a Comment