The Gus Story

This is another one of my English pieces, a profile about my neighbor's grandson Gus.  I've had plenty of crazy adventures with Gus over the years, and you can read about some of them below.  I wish you all a happy Thanksgiving and if you plan on venturing out for Black Friday,  I hope you manage to snag your deals and stay safe at the same time.  Happy Reading ~ DJ Rollie D

In our lives we tend to meet a lot of interesting people.  That man who sweeps the streets and loves to go down by the baseball park when he’s not working and catch stray baseballs with his glove is a perfect example.  Another good one would be the cashier working overtime to support their new family that was created by accident or totally on purpose.  There are many more I could describe, but that’s not what I’m here to do today.   I’m going to tell you about someone else.

                Since a very young age, I’ve had this neighbor, who’s always just a bit stranger than the others.  He doesn’t enjoy dressing up nicely and making sure his hair is combed, and he doesn’t enjoy going to the gym.  Instead he enjoys working (or pretending to work) on anything that has a motor and goes “BRRAAAAP!”

                Ah yes, that would Nels Kimball III, or as everyone in the neighborhood that’s known him has called him for the past few years, Gus.  He was born on October 16^th, 1998, about a year after I was born in 1997 and 366 days before my younger sister was born in 1999.  He’s almost like that different middle child that we never had, because trust me, he’s been tied to us in a lot of ways over the years.

                When we were all quite young, we would go to Gus’ grandpa’s house down the road, because that’s where he lived.  We would ride our bicycles down the road back and forth to our house, because it wasn’t quite that far.  It would actually be Gus’ father and grandfather that taught me how to ride my bike without training wheels. 

                The three of us, combined with Gus’ two siblings and stepbrother as well as his cousin, were referred to by my mother as the bike brigade, and we really enjoyed having that name.  We would parade around the neighborhood, racing to see who could get to the mailbox first.

                One downside to Gus learning how to ride a bicycle was that he would always take off and disappear without anybody alongside him.  It would never be too long before his grandpa would come into the driveway and shout “WHERE’S GUS?!!!” at the top of his lungs.  Now Gus would always be found, but it would be at the end of our dead end road just sitting back in the grove of pine trees chilling out waiting to see if anyone would find him.  It was almost like a game to him sometimes, and there was never really anytime he was in real danger, but it was still pretty bad.

                Gus is also quite the motor head.  He’s mechanically inclined, and he enjoys working on cars, snowmobiles, or anything that will move through the use of a gas pedal.  He has broken more of our machines than he’s fixed, sometimes walking away before the job gets done, but there have been times where he’s persevered and made our stuff run again. 

                He also loves to show up at mealtimes.  We’ll be sitting there eating and then one of us will turn around or look out our giant front window and go “Oh look, there’s Gus”.  Sometimes he’ll just sit down at the table, other times he’ll eat, and eat quite a bit for that matter, but with company as sparse as it’s been for my family the last few years, he always gets welcomed warmly, er, well, most of the time at least.

                Bicycles are no longer a thing for Gus, instead its snowmobiles and four-wheelers that get him ready to rumble.   It could be 8:00am on a blustery forty below plus wind chill day in the dead of the winter, and you’ll see snow go flying out from behind the snowmobile he just buried in the fresh snow.  He doesn’t stop for anything!  Ruts in our yard and across the road act as souvenirs from him just going to town with almost anything.  To this day we’re still trying to fill in all the holes he’s made in various locations.

                A typical conversation when we’re determining whether or not to go outside and go snowmobiling in the middle of January would go something like this.

                “Do you think it’s too cold?  They’re forecasting huge wind chills, like sixty below!”

                “Eh, I think we’ll be alright”

                “Ok if you say so”

                “Sweet!  Let’s go riding!”

                Gus has showed up to some special events in my life, including my father’s funeral in 2008, being just one of the many friends to hop along in the limousine that took us out to the church and back.  He also came to Story Book Lodge with me the first year I went, but hasn’t been back since because of some scuffles he got into with the director, and after having the opportunity to be on staff and see what gets discussed at the morning Lodge meetings, I’m sure he was a hit each and every morning from our counselors Bryan and Caleb.  More recently, he came along for Prom this last spring, where he even met my date, and a band concert, where he got to see us blast the tunes.  That was one of the last times I saw him.

                It was in early June that I started to realize that Gus wasn’t randomly walking down the driveway at mealtimes anymore, nor did I ever hear him loudly pleading with his grandpa to open the garage that had been locked because stuff continued to disappear from it.  It was very strange, suddenly there was no more Gus, and while it was nice to have a brief respite as he had just got done breaking another one of our machines, it was sad to not see him around anymore.

                “Where do you think he went?” I asked my sister.

                “I don’t know, but it’s been a VERY long time since we saw him last” she retorted.

                “He might be off breaking someone else’s stuff” laughed my mother.

                A few weeks later Gus’ brother stopped by, and then we heard the whole story.

                It turned out that Gus’ mother, long since divorced from his father, had gotten back in touch with him in April, it was actually the day of Prom that it happened.   We had been moving around town getting some last minute stuff after spending a night out in his camper, and it wound up that they got a LOT closer in the past ninety days.  Then his sister had done something, I can’t quite remember what, and suddenly all three of them went to Texas, with us finding out the day before it happened.

                Since then I have yet to see Gus again in public.  He’s non-responsive to text messages and his grandpa has been relatively silent.  I’ve heard that he’s been around near Duluth again, and is still causing trouble, but I have yet to spend any time with him.  Hopefully he’s in school, because he almost dropped out halfway through his sophomore year before we heard he’d been poked and prodded back this fall.  He does make an occasional post on social media too, but I always forget to comment.

                Maybe someday I’ll see Gus again, and while things aren’t looking too bright at the moment, they could always turn around and he could be back every day again, wandering down the driveway at mealtime saying “I’m hungry”, just like we’re used to.