Richard Houk

Note: After I graduated from high school I spent a summer in Birmingham, Alabama where I was introduced to quaaludes or 'ludes'. I really liked 'ludes' and when I came back to Niles all I could think about was getting my hands on some. I knew this guy named Dick Houk from school and  little league baseball, where we had played on the same team. I thought he was into drugs and might have some contacts so I looked him up. Much to my surprise Dick not only turned me down (very few people said no to me in those days), he actually tried to talk to me about the dangers of ludes and how he wouldn't get them for me because he cared about me. A short time after this he was killed in a car wreck. A few years later I was driving and I passed a dead black cat in the middle of the road and for some odd reason (I never know how these things work) the memories of that encounter filled me along with the realization of just how much someone cared about me to do what was right instead of what was 'cool'. This is what came out of those memories. Richard Houk will always be a hero to me. This is for him.

The morning sunshine
makes the black shadows
so crisp and clear,
old voices,
old memories,
whisper softly in my ear;
good days,
bad days,
days that come,
days that go,
dead black cats
lying in the middle of the road,
as the darkness waits
for the silence to grow.

He’s dead now;
he had a wife and young son,
her name was Phyllis,
he was the only one
who cared enough about me
to say no,
the only one
more worried about what was right,
than what was cool;

I remember hearing the news
the night he died,
smashing into a tree
at 100 miles an hour
on a dark and lonely highway,
now years later
I realize,
no one ever knew
what a hero he was,

except me.
.
.