“Both their real names were Mark,” Tipper said.
“Well, that’s kind of boring,” I said.
“Right. So, Booger picked his nose with his pinky all the time. And Toon looked like a dirty, inbred cartoon character. So, we called him Toon… which is a horrible thing to say.”
Tipper has a knack for making friends. He had others besides Ricky, like Booger and Toon, in his teenage years. Tipper can recall countless times when they snuck out and rode their bikes to meet up with chicks. But two different tales stood out. Both were near-death experiences.
“We were 14 or so, and we were swimmin’ at my granny and pap-pa’s lake. We called it a lake, but really, it was a big pond. Granny had a camper set up on the p-” he caught himself. “On what we called a lake, and we’d stay for a whole week.
“Booger and Toon would sleep ’til noon, or two or three o’clock in the afternoon sometimes. Not me. I was like, ‘It’s six o’clock? Fuck it, I’m up.’
“Well, there’s a rope swing out there on a tree. And I was doin’ some back flips off this rope swing. Next I started tryin’ to do two flips. Well, in the process of me tryin’ to do two flips, that rope wrapped around my leg, and when I let go to hit that water, it hooked onto my leg, and I couldn’t get free. I swung back and I hit my head on a tree.”
Dazed from the blow and ensnared upside down, teenage Tipper kept his poise, sensing that panic would only sink him faster. Still, he longed for friends who woke up before noon.
“I figured I’d be fine,” Tipper said. “So, I’m holdin’ myself up, tryin’ to get at this rope, and it’s wrapped over itself. It’s tight. And it’s a nylon rope and my hands are wet. My legs hurtin’, but I’m not panicking yet. So, I kinda holler—without screaming like a girl—for Booger and Toon. They don’t come. I don’t know how long I can hang there.”
Maybe his lazy pals were having their dreams transformed into a call for help from a far-off voice that sounded nothing like a girl’s. Regardless, the pond—the lake was submerging his head and chest when he wasn’t grasping for leverage and air. He struggled against gravity, fighting with a wet rope. He got exhausted. Dead tired from the fight.
“I finally thought, ‘Well, this is my time to go.’ So, I just let go of the rope, and I’m hangin’ upside down. I was ready to meet my maker.
“All of a sudden, I don’t know how he did it, but Toon managed to pick me up, and swim to the bank with me, and help me get that rope off me.”
“Toon saved your life,” I said with wonder. “Do you still keep in contact?”
“Hell no. He pissed me off in my early 20s.”
I can recall a mysterious rumor that those who survive a near-death experience may gain a kind of sixth sense from the ordeal. In Game of Thrones, for instance, Bran Stark is granted supernatural powers of the mind after he survives a fall that wrecks his body.
In the years that followed his brush with demise, it was common for Booger and Toon to ask their friend what his gut told him whenever they thought about sneaking out of the house. With a batting average close to a thousand, when Tipper’s gut declared “Not tonight,” sure enough, on those nights his dad would defy the norm and check on them. More recently, he’s been in two car wrecks, one in which he broke his sternum. Both times, he let out a troubled sigh and reached over to buckle up shortly before impact. Not knowing but knowing, he says.
“I got this weird sixth sense,” Tipper said, and I saw cosmic trouble in his dark eyes. “It’s not easy being me. There’s lots of shit in my head.”
Proof enough for fiction writers, I suppose, so let’s leave a bookmark in page six of Tipper’s senses.
As for Booger, his tale was less heroic than Toon’s.
“Booger liked to blow shit up,” Tipper said. “He was a gun freak. Considered wealthy. Looking back, his parents were just in debt, but that’s beside the point. You’d go into his house and there were guns everywhere.”
“Assault rifles?” I said. “Shotguns?”
“Everything,” Tipper said. “Illegal shit. On Booger’s 12th birthday, his dad bought him a riot gun, a sawed-off with a pistol grip. Everything in their yard had holes in it. He’d take these 50-caliber empty shells, and he’d fill ’em full of gunpowder and we’d blow shit up. God damn, that was fun!”
Fun was in the forecast when Mr. and Mrs. Booger went away on vacation to Cancun. Young Booger threw a party. But as it turns out, deadly weapons are a delight less than 100% of the time. Worse, Booger was going through a Goth phase.
“There was probably thirty kids at Booger’s place. And he had a hot tub. But Booger was actin’ kind of weird. He was in a dark age, wearin’ trench coats, and his hair was really long. He was hilarious, but he would do the silent act. Well, he came into the living room, and we were all drinkin’ and shootin’ the shit, and he had a machine gun.”
“Everybody get the fuck out of my house,” Booger said, ice cold.
“And we all kind of giggled like he was kidding, but he didn’t smile."
Booger took aim and pulled the trigger.
“BAM BAM BAM!” Tipper narrated. “And smoke is flowing everywhere, and people are fuckin’ screamin’ and divin’.”
“Holy shit,” Ian said.
“Turns out, it’s blanks. He had like an M-16, but it was .308 bullets. He was shootin’ the whole house up with blanks. Everybody thought they were dying.”
“And that cleared the house, I’m guessing,” I said.
“Yeah, it was a party ender, pretty much,” Tipper confirmed with a wry smile. The mood got light again. “I mean, he was firin’ and he was laughin’. But nobody else was laughin’.”
Tipper has long since lost touch with Booger, who was known to get grossed-out cheers by picking his nose with his pinky. His pinky was for boogers, and his pointer was for triggers.
11. The Chicken House
“Big, scary son-of-a-bitch,” Tipper said, shaking his head. “He looked like a character you’d see on a wrestlin’ show.”
Tipper was raised to offer a ride to someone when they are in need. He’s a religious skeptic now, but if he learned about helping his fellow humans in Sunday School, it wasn’t a total waste. He’s picked up countless hitchhikers, with no horror stories to tell. He once tried to hitchhike a ride from Oklahoma to Texas. No one stopped to give him a ride. That didn’t make him bitter. It drove him to be more helpful--to show compassion, even when it comes as sort of a dare. (This is not a glowing PSA for hitchhiking, but it’s worth noting.)
He was also raised to understand The Pecking Order. This meant the reality of violence. In Booneville, one had to scrap for their spot in The Pecking Order.
“Every now and then you had to fight,” Tipper said of The Pecking Order. “You had to stand up for yourself. ’Cause if you didn’t, you’d get the shit kicked out of you. But if you stand up for yourself and you get the shit kicked out of you, they’ll remember: ‘He’ll punch you back.’ And nobody wants to get punched in the face.”
His next tale was a spicy stew of Booneville values. He helped a man in need get to work on the regular. Until that man was reminded of his place in The Pecking Order, for good or ill.
“When I was 15, I started workin’ at a chicken house. I gathered 6,000 eggs a day. There’s chicken houses down there, about 500 feet long, with like 30,000 chickens in them. And they’d pay me six cents a dozen to gather eggs.
“I’d drive myself to work,” Tipper continued. “And there was a guy my dad’s age who was a drunk—Mike, his name was—and he lived in a bus outside his mom’s house. But I would go pick him up in the morning and haul him to work. I’d be faster than him, in my chicken house, and when I got done, I’d go over to his chicken house and help him. Then I’d take him home.
“Well, one day he didn’t show up for work, and so I had to do both the chicken houses. I didn’t care, ‘cause that was double the money for me. So, I was drivin’ home, and for some reason, I got this feeling.”
That sixth sense was added to the Booneville stew.
“Two streets down was a house where my dad used to drink beer at. And something told me to go check and see if he was there. I don’t know why. I never checked on my dad. My dad don’t need me, and I had no control over him anyway. But something told me to drive down that street.
“Well, the minute I turned, I saw a crowd of people. I’m drivin’ up and I see my dad just whipping the shit out of somebody. Everyone’s screamin’, ‘cause the guy is… He looks like he’s dead. It was horrible. I bust through the crowd and I’m hollerin’ at my dad to stop, and my dad turns around. And back then, he had this crazy, perm-lookin’ hair. And he wore overalls with no shirt, and he had on sandals, which we called Jesus Shoes. He looked like a fucking idiot.”
Ian and I chuckled, but don’t expect us to ever chuckle in Bobby’s face.
“Turns out, the guy he’s whippin’ is Mike,” Tipper said. “I said, ‘Daddy, you’re gonna kill him. Stop!’”
Bobby’s lust for blood only increased at the sight of his boy.
“This son-of-a-bitch called you squirrely,” he raged. “Watch this, Cosmo!”
Cosmo was Ray’s original nickname. Before he became Tipper in Wisconsin, his dad and aunts and uncles called him Cosmo. He’s never had any notion why. Mystery of the Cosmos, I guess.
At the mention of “Cosmo,” the beating continued. Punches kept landing on Mike’s swollen and torn face. With persistence, he pried his dad from Mike’s limp body.
“To this day, when my dad starts tellin’ that story, he gets fightin’ mad. I’m sure the guy was just jokin’. And said, ‘You know, your boy’s kinda squirrely.’ And you know what? I was squirrely. Fuck!”
From Tipper’s deep well of narratives, Bobby supplied plenty of depth. Leaping back and forth on the timeline, I learned that at least one thing has changed: Bobby is finally sober. That is no easy test of mind and body to overcome.
But Bobby’s still got the temper of a barroom brawler—even if now the brew in his hand is an O’Doul’s. And his actions keep him in contact with local enforcement. That hasn’t changed. Surprisingly, though, there was one time when it was Bobby who called the cops.
12. Gay Neighbor in Shorty Shorts
“I wish my dad smoked pot, but he won’t do it,” Tipper said. “He hates anything that’s different.”
When we discussed the culture in Booneville, Tipper stated that some of the locals could be prejudiced—his dad included.
“He tolerates black people now, because my sister had black kids. Growing up? Just mad at anybody that ain’t like us.”
For confirmation of the timeline, Tipper called to Angela, seated on a couch as Miss Direction fluttered in the living room.
“This was, what? Five, six years ago, baby?”
“Yeah, about that long ago!” Angela called back.
“So, him and my mama live in town now. In the early ’90s, we moved from next to the mountains to a new house. Well, five or six years ago, a gay couple moved in, down the road from them. I wasn’t there, so my mom had to tell me this story.”
Bobby was on the front porch with watchful eyes trained on the neighborhood when he came upon a sight that shocked him. He rushed inside to phone the police.
“He thinks the guy is wearing a thong,” Tipper said. “He calls 9-1-1 and tells the cops there’s this man mowing his lawn in a thong, and that he should be arrested. And the cops laugh at him.”
“Bobby, we can’t arrest a man for wearing shorty shorts,” a Booneville cop said.
“He was only wearing shorty shorts?” I said.
“That’s what my mom and the cops said. In my dad’s mind, the guy’s weiner was hangin’ out of that thong, and he was flashin’ little kids. In his mind. To this day, my dad is appalled that that man didn’t get locked up for mowin’ his lawn in them shorty shorts.”
With Tipper in DairyLand, it was up to Barb to relay some of Bobby’s antics. Liquor may have doubled his ire at the sight of a gay man in shorty shorts mowing his lawn. It’s doubtful that Bobby would have given up the bottle without help from Barb. To Bobby’s credit, he was driven to keep her in his life—even when it was clear that she wanted him gone.
13. “I’m Home, Cosmo.”
“Our dysfunctional family wasn’t dysfunctional anymore,” Tipper said. There was sadness in his voice.
Events in Tipper’s life were told to me out of order, but I will say that this was the final account he gave, just before Ian and I returned to Fond du Lac. I had to smile about the common theme: Coming home.
Tipper’s parents had a rocky relationship when he was a boy. Two very different people staying together causes tension. One was called a roughneck as often as the other was called a saint. We listened as Tipper outlined the marriage, the breakup, and the aftermath.
“By the time she got married to him, she probably figured she could change him. But then she just—like damn-near everybody else down south, they just give the fuck up. ‘This is my life now.’ And I was at that point, too. I was literally at that point, sayin’, ‘Well, this is as good as it’s gonna get.’”
Tipper was referring to his mindset at the age of 26, when he jokes that he “finally hit puberty” and decided to get out of Booneville. His moment of clarity came not long after Valentine’s Day ’97, and shortly before he met a Wisconsin girl named Angela in an AOL chat room.
Barb and Bobby, by contrast, are eternal souls in Booneville. They tussled with problems and wrestled with demons on their home turf—and that was that. Tipper discussed their split.
“They actually got divorced when I was in fifth grade.”
“They got remarried?” Ian said.
“They got remarried.”
I asked how long the separation lasted.
“Well, I was sick for a lot of it,” Tipper began. “While all this was going on, I had mono. I missed a lot of school. I thought I was dyin’. We were building this house, and then we were livin’ in this little roach motel while it was being built. And I got sick at the motel. And the house wasn’t finished, but then we were livin’ in it anyway. Next thing you know, dad’s picking his stuff and leavin’. I’m like, ‘What the fuck happened?’”
He mimicked the sickly cough of a bewildered kid for comic effect—anything to get a laugh from it.
“So, apparently, I slept through a lot of fights!” he said, but then came a pause. His smile tightened. “No, I didn’t sleep through them. It was nonstop. And when Dad was drinkin’, he couldn’t come home. And if he did come home drunk, Mama would kick the shit out of him. She’d throw him in the truck and haul him back to jail. Many times she done that.
“I think they were separated for maybe a year. And when they split up, it was horrible. We moved in with my aunt and uncle. There were three adults—my mom, my aunt, and my uncle. And then my three sisters, plus their two kids. Nine of us, living in a two-bedroom house in the country.”
“Pets?” I said.
“Oh, yeah. Dogs, cats, cows, goats, and chickens. And we were crammed into that house.
“And Mama started dating this man, and it killed me. I don’t know why. ’Cause I never really bonded with my dad. We never played catch. We did go fishing once, but we didn’t really fish. We drank.”
When I asked if Bobby the bachelor had any luck as a free agent, Tipper’s response was swift: “Oh yeah, bar hags and skanks.” We laughed and moved on.
“Was your mom’s new guy a bad boy too?” I said.
“No, he was a good guy! Pat Weaver. She met him in church. He’s probably one of the best guys I’ve ever met. But he wasn’t my daddy.
“So, after about a year or so, Mama was gonna marry him. And every one of us kids stood up and said, ‘No. If you marry him, we are not going with this guy.’ It just didn’t seem right. Our dysfunctional family wasn’t dysfunctional anymore.
“Mama didn’t marry the guy. We moved to town, just Mama and us kids, and we lived in this old house, old as shit. Mama would haul us to go see Daddy on the weekends. Sometimes he’d be there. Sometimes he wouldn’t. That was pretty bad.
“Then one weekend, when we hadn’t seen him in weeks, Dad showed up at the house. And he drove this ugly, bright-red Ford fuckin’ Pinto—I can’t make this shit up.”
We snickered at the punchline of automobiles.
As we know from the almost-drowning story, Tipper loved rope swings as a boy. “I was like a Goddamn Tarzan out there,” he boasted. At this new house, he’d get up on the roof and make like a pendulum onto the nearby shed, for hours at a time. When he spotted his dad pulling up the driveway in his Pinto, the boy had to ponder: “What in the fuck is he doin’ here?” He said as much to Bobby, without the cuss word.
“He says, ‘I’m comin’ home.’ So, he goes into the house, and a little while later, he’s runnin’ out, and there’s a trail of shit being thrown at him. Well, he gets a tent out of his Pinto, and he starts settin’ the tent up in the backyard. He says, ‘I’m not leavin’ Barb! This is my family, and I’m comin’ home.’”
“The tent was like an insurance plan if she said no,” I said.
“Yup,” Tipper said. “He set this tent up in our backyard. A couple days went along, and every morning I’d go out to see if Dad’s tent was still there, and it was. To be honest, it was probably because he couldn’t pay his damn rent.”
“But he’d never admit that.”
“No. So, every morning, I’d get up, and I’d see if Mama was home. We got left home a lot. Mama was always at work. But I went to see if she was home, and I opened her bedroom door, and Dad’s laying in there with her.”
Picture Bobby hid beneath the sheets, pressed against Barb. He emerged from the darkness into the light to greet his kin.
“And he smiles, gives the thumbs-up, and says, ‘I’m home, Cosmo!’"
Forget about the Pinto. This was a punchline.
“So, that’s how they got back together,” Tipper said. “He charmed his way back. Mama was mortified when she saw me. In her mind, she’s thinkin’ “’Oh no, he knows what we were up to.’ But hell, I didn’t know. At that age, I didn’t picture my mom and dad bonin’ each other. I was just glad to see Daddy home.”
We stopped recording. (I never asked him about monster truck rallies. You were my better half, Ian.)
14. The Drive Home
I gazed through the window on the passenger’s side at a field of cows—those lovable, delicious fools loafing in the spotty camouflage of an expanse of white.
I turned to Ian with a question.
“Have you ever been cow tipping?”
Ian shook his head. “I can’t say that I have. You?”
“Nope,” I said. “Remember Tommy Boy? In the cow-tipping scene, I loved watching Chris Farley, but I never wanted to join him.”
“That makes sense,” Ian smiled.
I thought about Tipper and Bobby and Barb finding their homes, but finding them in different places. I wondered if there might be a secret to be answered somewhere else—like a key to a new home.
“Never been cow tipping,” I said. “... And we call this place home.”
