Lawrence Hittle
05-26-2012, 01:44 AM
JIM BENNETT'S MEMORIAL SERVICE
My buddy, Jim, was only 5 foot 8 and 150 pounds, but I called him Large James. He had a silver pony tail that stuck out from the back of his railroad cap and a cookie duster on his upper lip to match. Jim died in a mining explosion but not before he had dragged his co-worker to safety.
Sweetie and I left the house 45 minutes before Jim's service was scheduled to start. We took the long way to Ward, following 4 Mile Creek rather than going up to Peak to Peak highway. Half way there, rain turned to slushy snow as we gained in altitude. Low grey clouds hung over the distant peaks. After driving for 11 miles, we bore right to head up Sawmill Road and into Ward where we could see pedestrians in the distance climbing the hill to the old white church. We looked for a place to park and when a spot was finally located along side the fire station, my car doors were locked with the flip of the remote switch, and I zipped my jacket before beginning the ascent to the church atop the hill amidst the flurry of slush and mist.
Ten wooden steps lead up off the gravel road and into the old church ... essentially one large room filled with pews and a small balcony in the rear. Barebones. No ornamentation. Non-denominational. More like an assembly hall with faded paneling, benches and an acoustic tile ceiling. It was packed!! S.R.O and more people coming. Lines of them ... coming from every direction as far as you could see. No ringing bell to call them. They just came.
It was an "unusual" crowd, at least that's what I thought at first. The last time I remember being at a service, all of the men wore a dark suit with matching shoes while the wives wore their Sunday best. Not today. All of Ward showed up. Some who had just rolled out of bed after a hard-partied Friday night.... there was a gal in a "Skeeter's Bar" jacket, a guy in a coonskin hat, another in what appeared to be a pirate's outfit (like Capt. Jack Sparrow) and still another in full biker rain gear. And of course, there were the odd balls, like me, who felt overdressed in a pair of new jeans and a clean pair of underwear. Everyone was there, and it dawned on me that this was the usual crowd. These were Jim's people. No pomp. Just folks who accepted Jim for the way he was and vice versa.
Anna, Jim's wife, was a proud mess, wearing a frumpy black hat and a face full of tears that slurred her make-up as she made the rounds, hugging everybody for showing up. Cliff and older brother, Freedom, greeted everybody at the door with tears running down their cheeks, clasping handshakes and hugging everybody who made it up the wooden steps. Cliff was trying to hold it together, to be strong for his mom, but you could tell that he was unprepared for a turnout like this. We looked at each other as I got to the top of the stairs, swapped handshakes and mouthed a teary "this sucks" to each other and nodded in agreement behind sad smiles.
The service was delayed as we all waited for Jim's mom, 91, to arrive. A lot of our crowd made it including Eric Clifford, Don McCoy, Pat Fagan, John Widerstky, John Davies, and Howard Ditzel to mention a few. There was no priest. No Reverend. Instead, there was a Navajo shaman who performed the service. He did a very nice job, amazing actually. The first thing he said was that this would not be a sad service ... Bennie would not have wanted it that way... so SHAPE UP! He insisted that we look back at the enjoyment in Jim's life ... his family, his work, his part in the community. The shaman did not mention God. Instead, he was referred to as "The Grandfather"... a guide who brought us into the world, watched over us as we passed through this life, and was there to help us exit into the timeless "beyond". He chanted in Navajo, cleared the air with the burning of sage to make a path for the guiding smoke, and then assembled the pipe in which he smoked the herb that would fill the air and provide a pathway on the winds for Jim's spirit to follow. Apparently, some of the folks in the balcony of the church liked the idea and lit up their own bowls of herb. I hope Jim's spirit did not get confused and bang his head on the rafters as his spirit got close to the ceiling. Only in Ward ...
Before the shaman finished his ceremony, he asked if anyone would like to speak. One guy who had met Jim 40 years ago rose to tell of their first meeting when Jim took him tobogganing ... on the 4th of July. They were both 24 back then. The guy was new in town and Jim was the first guy he met. They found a half sheet of plywood, then drove for an hour to the foot of a glacier where they hiked up and slid down, gouging knuckles on rocks and ice, and creating a memory that would last a lifetime and be shared years later at an unexpected gathering in an old church. Tom Hendricks rose and delivered a beautiful eulogy that brought tears to everyone's eyes. He finished by saying that the new gold vein he had just exposed in his mine would be named the Jim Bennett vein. The crowd went wild. It could have been a scene from a movie about an 1880's gold mining community. But the best was delivered by Cliff who took the shaman's advice and kept the congregation upbeat by reading a letter from an inmate who had received news of Bennett's demise. Cliff trembled and choked back tears as he read the letter from the inmate who embraced Jim and his family as his own. They had befriended him as a kid and taken him in when he had no other place to go. He made some bad decisions and was now locked up, but he found the time to write a letter that recalled the fights Cliff and Freedom had as kids, how all 3 peed in the toilet at the same time and got piss all over everything, and how he played doctor with Cliff's younger sister which embarrassed her to no end as the crowd roared with laughter. At the end of the letter, he thanked the Bennetts and most of all, Jim, for taking him in when nobody else gave him a chance.
Jim's mom finally showed up, all 91 years and 80 pounds of her. She was dressed in mourning black, bent, aided by a cane but managed a smile as she made it up all those wet wooden stairs ... unassisted by anyone. You don't have to ask where Jim got his stubbornness. She made her way up a thin aisle that had been cleared on the floor, escorted by Cliff and Freedom, found her seat next to the table that held a photo of Jim in his army uniform, then told the shaman to get on with it. He did. He chanted, spoke some more Navajo prayers, waved his eagle wing to start Jim's spirit on its' journey among the vapors from his pipe ... and then he did something unusual. He saluted Jim's remains, then placed his hand over his heart and pledged allegiance to the flag that was folded on the table as he stood at rigid attention. As if a switch had been thrown, the entire hall stood and joined him. Ya see, Bennett was in 'Nam and the shaman was also a vet. There was not a dry eye in the house.
The air in the church started getting thick from all the people who breathed it and the windows started fogging up. After standing in one place, smashed in the southeast corner of the church for 90 minutes, my legs started giving me problems, so I decided to omit the last few minutes of the ceremony and the food that would follow. I squeezed my way toward the door to find Alexis, Jim's daughter, greeting a young guy in a Tartan kilt with a set of bagpipes. I yielded space so he could enter, gave her a nod, a hug, and a sad smile, then made my way thru the drizzle to my car and waiting pup as Amazing Grace squealed to the crowd in the waning distance. I took the short cut home via Peak-to-Peak all the while thinking how strange it would be to no longer be able to pick up the phone and listen to Large James as he rambled on mining or to share a shot of Mist and a beer with him while we watched the Rockies or threw seed on the fairways. I'm gonna miss that guy.
Today would have been Jim Bennett's 63rd birthday.
Lawrence Hittle
Written: June 12, 2010
My buddy, Jim, was only 5 foot 8 and 150 pounds, but I called him Large James. He had a silver pony tail that stuck out from the back of his railroad cap and a cookie duster on his upper lip to match. Jim died in a mining explosion but not before he had dragged his co-worker to safety.
Sweetie and I left the house 45 minutes before Jim's service was scheduled to start. We took the long way to Ward, following 4 Mile Creek rather than going up to Peak to Peak highway. Half way there, rain turned to slushy snow as we gained in altitude. Low grey clouds hung over the distant peaks. After driving for 11 miles, we bore right to head up Sawmill Road and into Ward where we could see pedestrians in the distance climbing the hill to the old white church. We looked for a place to park and when a spot was finally located along side the fire station, my car doors were locked with the flip of the remote switch, and I zipped my jacket before beginning the ascent to the church atop the hill amidst the flurry of slush and mist.
Ten wooden steps lead up off the gravel road and into the old church ... essentially one large room filled with pews and a small balcony in the rear. Barebones. No ornamentation. Non-denominational. More like an assembly hall with faded paneling, benches and an acoustic tile ceiling. It was packed!! S.R.O and more people coming. Lines of them ... coming from every direction as far as you could see. No ringing bell to call them. They just came.
It was an "unusual" crowd, at least that's what I thought at first. The last time I remember being at a service, all of the men wore a dark suit with matching shoes while the wives wore their Sunday best. Not today. All of Ward showed up. Some who had just rolled out of bed after a hard-partied Friday night.... there was a gal in a "Skeeter's Bar" jacket, a guy in a coonskin hat, another in what appeared to be a pirate's outfit (like Capt. Jack Sparrow) and still another in full biker rain gear. And of course, there were the odd balls, like me, who felt overdressed in a pair of new jeans and a clean pair of underwear. Everyone was there, and it dawned on me that this was the usual crowd. These were Jim's people. No pomp. Just folks who accepted Jim for the way he was and vice versa.
Anna, Jim's wife, was a proud mess, wearing a frumpy black hat and a face full of tears that slurred her make-up as she made the rounds, hugging everybody for showing up. Cliff and older brother, Freedom, greeted everybody at the door with tears running down their cheeks, clasping handshakes and hugging everybody who made it up the wooden steps. Cliff was trying to hold it together, to be strong for his mom, but you could tell that he was unprepared for a turnout like this. We looked at each other as I got to the top of the stairs, swapped handshakes and mouthed a teary "this sucks" to each other and nodded in agreement behind sad smiles.
The service was delayed as we all waited for Jim's mom, 91, to arrive. A lot of our crowd made it including Eric Clifford, Don McCoy, Pat Fagan, John Widerstky, John Davies, and Howard Ditzel to mention a few. There was no priest. No Reverend. Instead, there was a Navajo shaman who performed the service. He did a very nice job, amazing actually. The first thing he said was that this would not be a sad service ... Bennie would not have wanted it that way... so SHAPE UP! He insisted that we look back at the enjoyment in Jim's life ... his family, his work, his part in the community. The shaman did not mention God. Instead, he was referred to as "The Grandfather"... a guide who brought us into the world, watched over us as we passed through this life, and was there to help us exit into the timeless "beyond". He chanted in Navajo, cleared the air with the burning of sage to make a path for the guiding smoke, and then assembled the pipe in which he smoked the herb that would fill the air and provide a pathway on the winds for Jim's spirit to follow. Apparently, some of the folks in the balcony of the church liked the idea and lit up their own bowls of herb. I hope Jim's spirit did not get confused and bang his head on the rafters as his spirit got close to the ceiling. Only in Ward ...
Before the shaman finished his ceremony, he asked if anyone would like to speak. One guy who had met Jim 40 years ago rose to tell of their first meeting when Jim took him tobogganing ... on the 4th of July. They were both 24 back then. The guy was new in town and Jim was the first guy he met. They found a half sheet of plywood, then drove for an hour to the foot of a glacier where they hiked up and slid down, gouging knuckles on rocks and ice, and creating a memory that would last a lifetime and be shared years later at an unexpected gathering in an old church. Tom Hendricks rose and delivered a beautiful eulogy that brought tears to everyone's eyes. He finished by saying that the new gold vein he had just exposed in his mine would be named the Jim Bennett vein. The crowd went wild. It could have been a scene from a movie about an 1880's gold mining community. But the best was delivered by Cliff who took the shaman's advice and kept the congregation upbeat by reading a letter from an inmate who had received news of Bennett's demise. Cliff trembled and choked back tears as he read the letter from the inmate who embraced Jim and his family as his own. They had befriended him as a kid and taken him in when he had no other place to go. He made some bad decisions and was now locked up, but he found the time to write a letter that recalled the fights Cliff and Freedom had as kids, how all 3 peed in the toilet at the same time and got piss all over everything, and how he played doctor with Cliff's younger sister which embarrassed her to no end as the crowd roared with laughter. At the end of the letter, he thanked the Bennetts and most of all, Jim, for taking him in when nobody else gave him a chance.
Jim's mom finally showed up, all 91 years and 80 pounds of her. She was dressed in mourning black, bent, aided by a cane but managed a smile as she made it up all those wet wooden stairs ... unassisted by anyone. You don't have to ask where Jim got his stubbornness. She made her way up a thin aisle that had been cleared on the floor, escorted by Cliff and Freedom, found her seat next to the table that held a photo of Jim in his army uniform, then told the shaman to get on with it. He did. He chanted, spoke some more Navajo prayers, waved his eagle wing to start Jim's spirit on its' journey among the vapors from his pipe ... and then he did something unusual. He saluted Jim's remains, then placed his hand over his heart and pledged allegiance to the flag that was folded on the table as he stood at rigid attention. As if a switch had been thrown, the entire hall stood and joined him. Ya see, Bennett was in 'Nam and the shaman was also a vet. There was not a dry eye in the house.
The air in the church started getting thick from all the people who breathed it and the windows started fogging up. After standing in one place, smashed in the southeast corner of the church for 90 minutes, my legs started giving me problems, so I decided to omit the last few minutes of the ceremony and the food that would follow. I squeezed my way toward the door to find Alexis, Jim's daughter, greeting a young guy in a Tartan kilt with a set of bagpipes. I yielded space so he could enter, gave her a nod, a hug, and a sad smile, then made my way thru the drizzle to my car and waiting pup as Amazing Grace squealed to the crowd in the waning distance. I took the short cut home via Peak-to-Peak all the while thinking how strange it would be to no longer be able to pick up the phone and listen to Large James as he rambled on mining or to share a shot of Mist and a beer with him while we watched the Rockies or threw seed on the fairways. I'm gonna miss that guy.
Today would have been Jim Bennett's 63rd birthday.
Lawrence Hittle
Written: June 12, 2010