Rathole in Omaha (Short Story)

Rathole in Omaha
((The Omaha Gambit) (November, 1967))



“Come on,” Jerry Hino said, it was morning and we needed to get an apartment there was a light film of snow on the ground, it was November of 1967 and this was my second great trip. The anxiety and dilemma of the night driven through Milwaukee had passed, we had driven from Minnesota, to Milwaukee, onto Madison, Wisconsin, and here we were in Omaha, Nebraska. In Milwaukee we had almost got shot. Anyhow, we had hightailed it out of Milwaukee, onto Omaha.
I was a little disappointed in the city; it didn’t look like much, I spotted Dodge Street right away, and we drove up and down it looking for an apartment. Jerry was running away from his girlfriend Nancy, and I was on an adventure of my own, my second one to be exact.
I looked about at the huddled set of crude buildings, duplexes and corner grocery stores, dotted around what I called upper Dodge Street, and down an offshoot, here and there (Dodge being the main branch to the tree).
In my adventure in Seattle, I ended up with Jeff’s wife coming along, and here again I got a friend who had left a love sick woman, for adventure, and I was hoping she’d not popup into the scene, and so far so good. Anyhow, we found a Rathole of an apartment just off Dodge street, and the duplex was side by side, so our neighbors were closer than white on rice. I didn’t really have a plan ‘B’ here if things did not work out, only hoping they would between Jerry and I, and they seemed to. He, like me, liked our drinking, and he was perhaps a bit over weight, him being about my height, five-feet, eight inches talk, and two-hundred and forty pounds, I was kidding, he was way over weight.
The duplex was grey, and I expect it was built in the ’80s, and it was as I said, 1967, so I mean, 1880s. We paid for two weeks rent, that was all we could afford for the moment, it cost us $65-dollars, and that was highway robbery if you ask me, I mean it was crude and meager accommodations. It surely was not unfamiliar with me for the times, during those years anyhow.
Jerry seemed to speak for both of us, and him being the elder, I took no insult to it, I often listened attentively during those drinking days, we had our stories to tell, and we told them, and laughed half the night. We must have gotten drunk every night we were in Omaha. And in-between I looked for work, Jerry did not, he slept the day away, as I looked; I think that was one of the reasons he and Nancy got into fights; I could be wrong. Anyhow, I went to the Omaha State Employment Office, and they asked me were I had come from, and why I was up there trying to take work away from the good folks of Omaha, who needed work worse than I. I had no other answer than, “I didn’t realize this was I was stepping on forbidden ground,” he didn’t like my comments, and told me to go back where I came from, and stop taking jobs away from other good folks. I know what I wanted to tell him, but I just shook my head and left the buzzard to his fields of corn.
I did find a job across the bridge in Iowa, good folks there I felt, working for Howard Johnson, as a dishwasher. It paid well, and the work was not hard, and I got a hefty discount on food, and usually they’d give me an extra portion, and I’d bring it back for Jerry, I think they thought it would be my late night supper, but supper for me was beer, not food.

Well, a few weeks went by, and Jerry sent his mother a letter, telling her how he was, not sure why he did that at first, I mean, I never did, I kind of felt no need to, we had just been gone a few weeks, not months or years. Anyhow, our address was on it, this now took away the secret of where we were, and of course Nancy got hold of the address, as you would expect. It was now inevitable, she’d someday show up on our doorsteps, but of course I didn’t know all this at the time. But it didn’t take long, and yes, she was there one evening when I came back from work, and again I was in bewilderment, but not as shocked as I was when Jeff’s wife, showed up from nowhere wanting to go with us to Seattle. I thought at the time: what is wrong with these guys, do they not have any stemma staying away from their patsy women, the ones they are running away from, can’t live with, or deal with. I had old girlfriends also, and I was glad to get away from them, and the farther the better, and the longer the better. In fact, I never went back to one I left, or anyone that left me, what for, once the bond is broken, it is broken, like my mother used to say: get off the bus, and find another.
I was perhaps their shadow the following two weeks; I think we spent a month to six weeks in that Rathole. I went on my own, visited the museum, which had a lot of Indian artifices, and we all got drunk at night, like always.

But to make this story more interesting, and build up the plot some, not much though, because it is really the end to the story, we simply went back to Minnesota, I lived with them for six weeks, they asked me to leave after that, since they had kids, and I was sleeping on the sofa, and you know, that gets old. Anyhow, I do remember the Jewish Store, down the block in our Omaha neighborhood. I spent some time down there, talking to the old redheaded Jew. Gold teeth, not in bad shape for fifty years old she had pretty nice curves, and I of course ripe at nineteen. Her place was a Rathole also, but I suppose, it went along with the neighborhood. The store had high ceilings, you could see the wooden beams, and there was dampness in the place, clutter, and everything looked old, can goods with rust on them. Perhaps she was a dope dealer and this was her front, but I couldn’t have imagined that at the time. I liked her, and she allowed me to come in and out and not buy a thing, and hang around.

5-17-2008