23 - Scott and Bob
Laura: All right, it’s February 12th, 2026.
Ready? Yeah, we’re ready. Scott came in record time. Actually, we didn’t want him yet. And I need to explain that. We didn’t have much money and no insurance. The hospital policy was that you paid for the day you came in and not for the day you left. That meant that if you came in at 2 a.m. you got that whole day food and care and everything free. But if you came at 11 p.m. you paid for a whole day even though you were only there an hour. Well we arrived at the hospital at 11 p.m. and so I sat on the couch and tried to stall. I really did. But Scott just wouldn’t wait. I almost had him in the elevator, and Dad was so excited to have a brother for Ted that he didn’t even mind paying for one full day when it was probably only 20 minutes worth of hospital care.
Scott was a friendly boy in the grocery store. You couldn’t ignore him. He would sit in the cart with those big brown eyes and the butch haircut that was the only kind that I knew how to give. And he’d say it to everyone who passed, hi. And if ignored, he’d raise his voice a few decibels and try again, hi, until they finally answer him. I always went around the towers of cereal boxes or tomato juice cans at the ends of the aisle with plenty of room to spare because he always tried to pull down the displays.
Scott ran away from kindergarten. He had a starring role in Miss Korfker’s Winnie the Pooh play. It was The Dead of Winter and Scott had learned his lines well. At the dress rehearsal, he willingly put on the shirt with the big starched collar and the little Lord Fauntleroy shorts. But when Miss Korfker pulled out the yellow matted wig, he ran. He didn’t stop to get his coat or his boots. He didn’t even look for cars as he ran across Hall Street. He came huffing and puffing in the front door just as I answered the phone. It was Gil Besselson, the principal, warning me that Scott had disappeared from school. He said he’d be right over. So I went to let Mr. Besselson in. Scott made a mad dash for the bathroom and tried to squeeze under the toilet tank.
Jonathan: That wasn’t the first time Scott balked at going to school.
Laura: I should have known it would happen often. He refused to go on the very first day of kindergarten because during the night mom had gone to the hospital to have Mimi. So Scott’s history of school antics can be blamed on me.
Jonathan: Somehow he picked friends of a different ethnic origin. In kindergarten it was a Spanish boy Later, it was a black boy named Mark. He had a contagious devilish laugh and lots of boyfriends and girlfriends. But his best pal really was Ted.
I think he still is. Ted let Scott get away with murder. He convinced Scott that he could beat up a kid twice his size. And Scott spent quite a bit of his life finding out if that was really true.
Often, Scott went to bat for an underdog. That just goes to show that he did have a tender heart. He did an oral book report for Mrs. Vanderheide about a dog named Rinty. I still have it on tape. And when I listen to it, it reminds me of the way he would talk baby talk to Mimi, who he treated as his little baby doll. I’m not sure, but it seems to me that Scott was the victim of a Twinkle thief at Oakdale. He figured out a foolproof way to catch the thief.
I think Twinkies were packaged like a cupcake and he would have them in his lunch. So he left his lunch prominently placed and opened with a Twinkie on the top just as a temptation. But the Twinkie had been injected with Tabasco sauce. Scott thought Miss Roarsma’s program was dumb. I made him go anyway. He sat in the front row. And when they sang and when they spoke, he didn’t speak one syllable of the poems or the songs.
Laura: He just sat there. He didn’t want to be there. He got one whale of a spanking that night.
Mr. Vander Moen was doing me a favor. I was going to lay tile in the small downstairs bathroom, but in order to do the job, I needed the plumber to take the toilet up in the morning and then come and put it back when I was done doing the floor.
Jonathan: He had lots of appointments to keep and he wasn’t charging for the house call because he was a friend. But just as he arrived, Scott had to drop a load in the toilet.
Laura: He was in there forever. We waited and waited. And finally, Mr. V said, can I help you? Scott was off the toilet by now and admiring his handiwork. Mr. V helped him pull up his pants and with a quick flick of the wrist, pushed down the flusher. Scott says, ah, now you lost it. He was probably three years old at the time. I have a picture in my mind of Scott at a very early age extending a hand to any man he met and shaking it heartily.
Jonathan: Little boys his age didn’t really do that.
I guess that’s why it shouldn’t surprise me that he is now the guy who donates and plants trees around the 54th Street interchange without expecting any recognition. My little gentleman has become an earth keeper.
Now Scott lives way out west and I think he is soon going to retire from the landscaping job that he’s done all his life because he’s having back trouble and considering all the heavy lifting that he’s been doing it’s not a surprise. Scott had eight children And he has a host of grandchildren already. So anyway, I expect to see him and Kelly this summer. They miss seeing their grandkids. So they’re going to come to Michigan to visit, but I don’t think to stay.
Laura: Well, now there’s Bob.
Bob gave me a hard time. First of all, He decided to come on the day when my doctor was out of town. So Dr. Roy Davis stepped in to help and I needed him this time.
Jonathan: Bob came in a posterior position and his head was pretty bashed in on one side. Of all my babies, he was the biggest snuggler. But when he was sleepy or excited, we noticed that his eyes wandered from side to side. By the time he was four, we had surgery scheduled with Dr. Boyce. Bob was a trooper, but the operation only partly solved the problem. We had to take him again. When I saw his straight, beautiful eyes today, I am grateful for skilled surgeons who did the job.
Laura: One memory I love to think of regarding Bob is all the times that he would get a bump or scrape and come to me for the cure.
Jonathan: As I would comfort him, he’d always say, it can be your fault. Bob was determined to learn to ice skate.
Laura: I have this very clear picture in my mind, Bobby pushing a children’s aluminum chair around our backyard ice pond. His inside ankle bones nearly touching, yikes.
Bob’s music gave me so much joy. I actually saw and heard that boy play the Lalo concerto twice with a full orchestra. Maybe someday I’ll hear it again.
Bobby ripped his toenails. He also tells me he threw away every Braunschweiger sandwich I ever put in his lunch.
But the greatest dishonor Bob brought to the family was the day Oakdale’s orchestra went to visit Jenison Christian. Now, you’ve got to remember that this was a kid that had a following in the music world. People would pack the room when Bob played for the judges at Soul Festival. Orchestra teachers would tell their kids to go and hear them. And considering all of that, Can you believe he actually mooned some kids at Jettison Christian School? I remember Mrs. DeYoung coming to tell me. She was laughing. She couldn’t believe it herself.
Bobby’s first vehicle was his Batmobile. He practiced crashing quite regularly. But of course, at the time, I didn’t know the significance.
Jonathan: He never could keep the covers on. His bed was hard to make. Photographers always told me he was such an easy child to photograph, that impish grin, twinkling eyes. Of all my children, he is probably the most thoughtful. He seems to sense when I’m alone, when I need to hear from him.
Now, Bob has been a wonderful help to me. For example, yesterday he first took me to a doctor. Then he took me to all these to get groceries. Then he took me to the DNW to get a prescription. Then he took me to the mail post office to get my mail. Then he came back to my house and set up a large humidifier because I have to have humidity in my house because of frequent nosebleeds. So he set that up and he also bought me a bench to sit on in the kitchen because the one that I was using all the time was wobbly and he was afraid I was going to fall sitting on it. So that’s just an example of one day in my life
Laura: that Bobby was there for me in many, many ways.
Well, shall I go on to Jody? Mom, I’m going to pause here. Hold on just a second. Okay.