Note: This is Part 2 of a 4 part series written especially for my close family.  It is pretty personal stuff, but, in retrospect, eminently shareable with this readership family. 

The summer after graduating from the 6^th grade my dad took over the sponsoring of a Little League baseball team when the original sponsor bailed.  Link’s Leopards, a terrific team of 6^th and 7^th graders went all the way to the winning of the St. Louis County District championship that summer (Read more on this story) under our 17-year old manager, Jim Link, who I shall always believe missed his calling.  He could have managed the St. Louis Cardinals had he stuck with it.  Instead he became an accountant.

I also always thought that Jim could have had a fun and successful life in show biz as a producer.  He had all the business skills and certainly the personality and leadership skills for such a job.  But it was always my impression that he got stuck in his field of accounting because that’s what Dad did and since Jim was the eldest son, he got elected.  He worked with Dad for several years, but that never quite materialized because Jim was not driven – and Dad was.

I often also thought that Jim’s modus operandi was to work as hard as he needed to and put away a nest egg for his retirement so that he could just cool out and relax in his latter years.  And he did that very well, in fact.  So well that he retired to Florida, bought his dream boat and traveled the world with his wife, Marcia.  A retired lifestyle was what he sought — and that’s what he got.

Jim was always the intelligent one in the family.  If ya’ buy into this IQ concept, well, he had a high one.  Consequently things came easy for him because of his superior intelligence.  Consequently he never had to work too hard to accomplish things.  Consequently, he had a tendency to be a bit unmotivated.  But he got what he sought, so what am I talking about …

If you’re happy in life, what more do you need?  I think Jim was a happy guy – is a happy guy – wherever he is, whatever he’s doing.

I remember the day when he was a 6^th grader that he came home with straight ‘A’s.  Mom and Dad were so proud and made a really big deal of it throughout the years.  Actually, he had all ‘A’s except one – in handwriting.  He was left handed and had the tendency to drag his hand across what had just been written consequently smearing the ink so that it looked like all his homework had been dropped in a puddle and stepped on on the way to school.  Mom and Dad didn’t seem to care so much about that and just decided to disqualify that one low grade.

Turned out they were right.  Nobody much cares about the quality of anyone’s handwriting anymore.

The one time I remember Jim going all out in any form of school was after he graduated from college and went to Officer’s Candidate School (OCS) in the Navy.  A wise Lieutenant kicked his butt right at the beginning of training and Jim put his brain in gear.  He graduated tops in his OCS class and became an Admiral’s Aide for the next 4 years.  Worked along side of the Admiral of the seventh fleet in the Pacific all the way up through the beginning of the Vietnam war.  Was always in his dress whites and actually carried a sword – impressed the hell out of his little brother!

Serving the admiral kept him safe during the war and before the action in Nam became extremely dangerous, his tour was up.  On the evening he flew from Saigon to San Francisco, my parents, knowing that the war was really heating up and that Jim was definitely in harm’s way, were nervous as cats at a dogfight.  The tension waiting for him to land in the states was tremendous in our home as Mom and Dad waited.

Jim was bounced off a couple of flights out of Saigon and it seemed like we waited for days until he got out.

But finally he called us from San Francisco.  We celebrated, and then the tension built yet again as he traveled from San Fran to St. Lou – somehow there was the fear that he just might not make it.

I went to bed that night and woke up the next morning to crying.  My mom, grandma and Dad were all in the living room hugging Jim all at once and weeping.  He, still in his dress whites, was the hero returned home from the wars.  The relief in our house was palpable for weeks.  Jim was home safe.

I’ve told you at the beginning of this that he was my protector and then gone about telling you many stories about how he mistreated me.  I’m about to tell you another, but to make a point.

We had, down in our basement, an 8’x8’ wrestling mat.  For years after dinner nearly every night, he would say to me, “Hey Pete, let’s go wrestle.”  And for years, night after night at the end of that session I would come upstairs to Mom or Dad crying because he had won.  Like most brothers do, we fought a lot because he loved to pick on me and egg me on to a fight and then beat me up.  It was never about slugging – just wrestling.  And great lessons were learned by me – lessons in how to apply a proper headlock, a good scissors hold or hammer lock and how to reverse out of a situation where you’re being pinned.

Consequently, I was the toughest kid in the 5^th grade at Osage School and actually got Mike Prime (the biggest kid in our class) to yell “ I give up!” in a fight one day after school when he was bullying my friend Dale Itchner.  The next day after school I was approached by the toughest kid in the 6^th grade, Steve Ellison, who challenged, “Hey Link, I hear you think you’re pretty tough!”  Then he jumped me right there in front of all my friends and his too.

I pinned him in about 2 minutes and he made us all laugh when he started crying and screaming, “Uncle! Uncle! Uncle!”  It was not a word we were accustomed to in our neighborhood.  We all said, “I give up”, but Steve was not used to losing, and had probably never had to give up.  He didn’t even know the right terminology.  It became a great embarrassment for Steve and a great triumph for me.

I tell this story because I owed these triumphs to my brother, Jim, who toughened me up and taught me how to defend myself night after night down in that basement.

One day when I was around 11 and he would have been 16, we got into an argument and he pushed me back.  I hauled off and popped him one good right on the jaw – probably a lucky punch, but it landed square and rocked him back.  He stood there wide-eyed and just looked at me.  I waited for his onslaught that never came.  With one punch I had won.  For the first time in oh so many years.

We never fought again.  He never chanced it.  I could brag that my fight record with him was 5487 to 1.  I, on the losing end.  But that didn’t matter to me.  There will always be that 1.

For years we laughed about that …

See Part 3 for continuation …