My Buddy Jake

   Marlin Jay Eccleston

    Marlin was born in Dodge City, Kansas on June 22, 1947 to Joseph Edwin and Alma Louisa Watt Eccleston. He died on October 28, 2024 in Baytown, Texas.    At an early age, his family  moved to the rural Genoa, Colorado area where he grew up on a family farm.

     Marlin went all twelve years to Genoa Schools.   A farming accident when Marlin was eleven nearly caused him to lose  his life in a battle with gangrene.  Recovering from that, he went on to participate in football, basketball and baseball.  He graduated with the class of 1965.

     Marlin had a “heavy foot.”  He loved driving his parents’ ‘59 Chevy over the hills on country roads.  With his dog Skeeter, sitting on the seat beside him, Marlin proved that he could defy gravity when he crested a hill at 80 miles per hour and Skeeter lifted off the seat.

     Marlin idolized his older brother Rod, who was ten years older.  Rod was a Navy veteran.  Following in Rod’s footsteps, Marlin joined the Navy in 1966.  After his four-year stint, Marlin signed on with phone companies who were putting phone lines underground.  His farm background naturally led him into the field of heavy equipment operator. 

     Marlin spent most of his career working for phone  companies.  He retired after a heart attack in 2023.

 

     Jake was my first friend.  We celebrated our 5^th birthdays together.  Somewhere I have a picture, that I can’t find,  of us on that occasion riding double on their old mare, Pet.

     We didn’t have kindergarten in those olden days, but Jake and I attended Mrs. Boils’ first and second grade class one day in the Spring of 1953.  It was the school’s version of first grade orientation.  We were the only two to attend.  Jake always remembered that when Mrs. Boils saw us entering her classroom, she said, “Oh, new students!”  Someone forgot to inform her that she would have guests on that day.  Or Superintendent Bostrom told her but she forgot.  Jake always laughed when he told that story.

      Perhaps the most vivid memory of our grade school years was the farm accident that nearly cost him his life.  I’m not sure, but I think we were in the fifth grade.

      Jake was helping his dad Ed feed cattle.  They stacked hay bales on a sled with a wooden floor.  One of the floor boards was missing and Jake accidently stepped into the gap while the tractor was pulling the sled.  Ed was driving the tractor and didn’t get stopped before Jake’s foot and ankle got drug beneath the sled.  It raked a big gash on his ankle above and below the ankle bone.

      Ed took him to Limon to Doctor Irish who cleaned and dressed the wound.  It got infected and Ed took Marlin back to Doctor Irish.  Doctor Irish took one look and told Ed to get Marlin into their car and follow him.  They followed Dr. Irish’s car all the way to Denver, probably to Colorado General Hospital.  There they began treating him for gangrene. 

     The story was that the doctors wanted to amputate the leg below the knee, but Ed refused, saying he would rather see him dead than going through life with only one leg.  The  hospital flew in a specialist from somewhere in South America, I believe, who was familiar with treating gangrene.  They used massive doses of penicillin I think, because whenever the subject of penicillin came up, Marlin would always say it was the drug that saved his life.

      They also slashed big gashes from below the knee to the ankle bone to let the wound drain freely.  He bore the scars of that operation the rest of his life.

      In those days of no cell phones, we relied on news from school to follow his progress, which was pretty bleak. His Mom Alma was teaching first and second grade then, so the reports to school were probably pretty accurate.  It must have been a Friday when the news came that Marlin was “no longer responding to treatment”.  That usually meant lights out sooner rather than later.

       I remember going to a dance with my older brothers at Walks Camp Park, a grandstand and a meeting hall in the middle of nowhere just a few miles north of where we lived.  My oldest brother insisted on having fun, saying there was nothing we could do for Marlin, now.  We needed to move on as best we could.  I tried, but I remember it wasn’t much fun.  The next morning, a Sunday morning, we got a phone call and I dreaded to hear the news, but it was good news.  Marlin had turned the corner, was awake and the wound was healing.   I’m thinking that must have been in March. 

     Marlin still had a long convalescence and an extended stay in the hospital.  I would not see him again until July.  Colleen and her girls brought him to our house for a visit.  He had a pretty sizable bandage on his ankle and leg and limped, but he was up and mobile.  When school started that Fall, he was back.  His limp gradually disappeared and he was a normal active kid.  Whenever we played basketball or wore shorts, the scars on his leg were a very visible  reminder of  his youthful ordeal.

     Perhaps the most memorable event of our high school years was our senior year when we managed to defeat Limon in the league basketball tournament.  Everything Jake threw at the basket went in, starting very early in the game.  When Limon put a man out of their zone defense to cover Jake, it freed the other four of us up to get a lot of cheap layup shots.  Somehow, we managed to eke out an overtime win, even though our tallest guy was Jake at six feet, against Limon’s two 6’4” towers.

     Our glory was short-lived, as we lost to Flagler in the tournament championship game the next night.  That weekend was the apex of our athletic careers.  We graduated in May of 1965.

      We spent a normal summer with both of us working for neighbor Glenn Garten.  We separated for the first time when I headed off to college in September of 1965. We helped his parents move from the farm to Genoa in late 1965.

      Jake would join the Navy with another classmate, Dick Andersen, in 1966.   We got together from then on when he was home on leave.  One such leave was the death of his father in June of 1967.

      He was out of the Navy when he served as a groomsman at our wedding in March of 1970.  We would get together again when he returned home for his mother’s funeral in 1981.  We were never entirely out of touch, but we didn’t see much of each other after that.

     Jake returned for our class’s 50th year celebration of our graduation in 2016.  I would never see him again. 

     We stayed in touch via phone calls and texts.  He would call me on my birthday and remind me that I was an old man, four days older than him.  It was retribution for our 18^th birthday, when I took him to the pool hall on my birthday and had a beer, while he had to settle for a coke, because he wasn’t 18 yet.

      I could tell many, many more stories, like the night we were riding down Lincoln County 109, the only paved road in our vicinity.  Jake decided he didn’t need headlights.  After a mile or so, for some reason, he decided to turn on the headlights.  A large black Angus cow stood in the exact middle of the road within the reach of the headlights.  He left rubber on the pavement, but he managed to avoid hitting the cow. 

     He confided in me that his dad Ed told him he didn’t care what Jake did as long as he didn’t hurt somebody else.  Jake said he considered me as a good buddy who wouldn’t mind sharing his fate.  So he didn’t mind taking me along in the ’59 Chevy with the 348 engine on some wild rides.

    In later years, we both wondered how we managed to survive our teen years.

    That was my pal Jake.