***(from the chronicles written in 1990) The following series, "Foothills of Childhood" is not really a creative writing, not a true embellishing flourish of words. It is merely a journalistic approach of times past which I basically 'compiled' in 1990 to entertain my boyfriend while he passed 5 plus months in jail. well, they can't prove he committed ALL those murders...kidding...he was in for a DUI...one of several. So take your relaxed time, and don't expect a Pulitzer Prize winner here. Okay?
Going back to the period when we first made the move away from Oil City to the little village of Reno, down the road, I do recall when my Uncle Wayne made his sudden disappearance. At the time, I only knew scattered details about his sudden move west. It made no sense to me whatsoever. When it all began, I was only about 9 years old, so conversations around me, were little noticed, barely catalogued, not metabolized, merely blather. Only years later, as long as 25 years later, would I be told the rest of the story.
Uncle Wayne was what I would describe as slow. He lived on the means left him by his tyrannical Dutch father, August Simon. The inheritance consisted of the farm at the top of the hill in Cornplanter Township, named after Chief Cornplanter of the Seneca tribe. On the farm were several lease lines making profits for oil companies, of which a portion of per-barrel profit would go to the land owners. Wayne and Uncle Fritz were caretakers of the property, the lines, the barrels and the pump-houses. Wayne was there a lot, and my older brother Charles always went with him to help or just to swap stories in the shade of the orchards, while practicing and learning what a back woods people do for survival.
Wayne had informed Brother Charles about a group of 'hoodlums' known as the Whistle Gang. Their story was covered at the time in the national news media, and many years later, I even found a large article about them again to my amazement. The formation of the Whistle Gang would have come out of what we know as the "Black Hand," a branch of Mafia out of Sicily that held small towns in its grip from the early 1900s through the 20s, 30s, 40s and was left to memory mostly.
As it went, they had been a group of the locals who vandalized, raped, beat up, bookied, loan sharked and stole from several of the merchants and residents of the neighborhood in the small towns of Oil City and Franklin at least. Once loaded with big oil, natural gas and other subsidiary industries, the thugs drained their portion from the bottom of the money pit, the weakest, the poor to middle class, which were barely middle.
The gang's modus included the use of whistling as warnings amongst themselves while perpetrating their deeds. After a long list of miscredits to their names, at least the leader was caught and held responsible for some actions, sent away subsequently to a federal prison somewhere far for a long time.
Then one day in the mid 1950s it came to the attention of the townsfolk that this gang leader was to be released and would be on his way back by way of the local train line. Apparently, he was going to get off the train at the local train depot, either the one downtown, or ....the one next to our homestead property. The nearest major stop before ours would be the one about 35 miles up the road to Meadville, a slightly larger dispatch.
The day of his tentative arrival, his friends and family were located casually but noticeably around the benches at the depot awaiting the man. A few news men also loitered, and possibly only a single policeman. No "hub bub" was really expected. and none there was....
At the same time, the night before, we were aware of the absence of Uncle Wayne. Figuring him to be up at the farm, we put it out of our minds. We never saw Wayne all the day that the Whistle Gang was being reunited. But then, the Whistle Gang never found their man either.....
He didn't depart the train at Oil City, so the welcome entourage drove up to the Meadville Station to see if he was possibly there instead. He wasn't there either. He had been seen on the train, that was verified, before the Oil City stop. A large dark figure of a man had boarded at the Meadville Station earlier that evening, described as being in his late forties, neither he nor the Whistle Leader was seen thereafter.
The following day, as the buzz got around and the confusion continued over this gangsters whereabouts, Uncle Wayne came to the house and took Charles aside to commiserate privately. He advised him to not do any digging at the farm anymore unless he checked with Wayne first. It was a strange request, but raised no eyebrows, as my brother agreed to the order. But I can still see my dad slightly grinning knowingly, quietly as always, cup of coffee in hand at the small old paint-worn table, a single sun ray wrapping him through a plastic yellowed kitchen curtain....
A couple of days went by with Wayne gone again, apparently cloistered at the farm. Charles went up to see what was keeping him, and Wayne explained that someone was taking "pot shots" at him on the grounds, and he felt safer just staying put than walking around like target practice for a deer poacher. I recall my Dad making a small smothered chortle and snicker at this. Then he laughed his small quiet laugh, and said that...."no deer poacher would ever mistake big old Uncle Wayne for anything but what he was, a large dark Dutchman". And it wasn't deer season, and we owned all the property in sight.
Wayne warned blind Uncle Fritz and Charles not to come up to the farm for awhile and to "lay low" as he called it. The situation didn't seem to lighten up, as I recall. One day soon thereafter, my mother announced that Wayne had come down the hill in the black of night; he waited for the night when there was no moon out, and they are the blackest nights on earth - there - in the woods. And he had gotten a train out of town that morning - destination - California. Los Angeles.
One must realize the utter desperation in a soul for him to pick up and leave his home of 40 some years with nothing in hand, no money, and no intent for his future in what would only be a futuristic land for this stranger. He was heading for L.A. after living in the stoic little countryside community of a bygone era all his totally uneducated life. Wayne with his speech impediment, his complete naiveté of anything outside the borders of a poor village was going to live with his sister, Aunt Lena.
She got him a job delivering newspapers, or vending them on street corners. He soon learned how to use the race track. He sent me five beautiful dresses after he arrived there, one for each school day of the week. And a small hand-tooled leather bag from Mexico. We never saw Wayne again. And the missing gangster...was never heard nor thought of, his name long forgotten, his whereabouts never accounted for.
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