Unhappy Birthday

Monday September 24th, 2007 - Lake Villa, IL

Today is my ex-best friend Timbo’s birthday. He’s 45. We met when we were 12. He is six months older than me and was a grade ahead of me in school. I was going into the 7th grade and he was going into 8th. It was summer and he hadn’t turned 13 yet. We played as much baseball as we could that summer and then it was football season and we kept going until it was basketball season. Then we just kept hanging out every day for years and years and we were closer to each other than our own blood brothers. We came of age together.

The memories we have with each other are permanent. He got his driver’s license first so he would get his mom’s car and we would go to the drive in hunting for chicks. Once in a while we’d even catch some. He was fun to hang out with and funny and we always had a blast whether it was at the drive in or the ball game or our favorite destination professional wrestling matches at the Milwaukee Auditorium to see our favorite wrestler The Crusher.

I got Timbo his job at the frozen custard stand on Villard Avenue and we worked for an entire summer in high school. He borrowed my car to close the deal with his first girlfriend and every Christmas we’d hang out and eat Chinese food at the Port of China restaurant in a suburb of Milwaukee because neither one of us had much of a family to hang out with at holiday time. He was the one I’d call when the car broke down at 4am and he’d call me.

Timbo was my best friend for many years until he decided to rob the bank where he used to work. Then he decided to do it again a couple of years later. This is the extremely short version of the story but the bottom line is that in the end I was forced to wear a wire under my shirt and get him to admit he did it and then I had to testify against him in court. It was THE most difficult and painful thing I’ve ever had to do and I still have nightmares today.

This is the movie script I’m working on with my writing partner and for years it’s been a source of pain and torment in my life. It’s a fantastic story for sure but it wasn’t fun to live through and all these years later it seems like it was another lifetime ago. But it won’t ever go away and the best thing I can do is finish the script and exorcise that demon for good. I still ended up losing my best friend and for a guy like me with no close family that pain has a lot deeper kick than just having it happen as a ‘normal’ person. The whole thing stinks.

He was in my corner for a lot of my worst times. When I rolled my Mustang convertible in 1993 a week after I turned 30 he was the one who took me home from the hospital. My own father and mother didn’t come to see me but Timbo was there every day with a paper to read or a treat to eat or some clean clothes or whatever I needed. He was my brother.

We shared a lot of things over the years but the strongest bond other than the wrestling matches was our love for the Green Bay Packers. We’d watch every game we could and I remember riding up to Lambeau Field in December with Timbo and my cousin Brett to see the Packers stomp the Bears 40-3 in the snow. Life doesn’t get any better for us cheesers. We always promised ourselves if they ever went to the Super Bowl we would do whatever it took to go see that game live. That was the year of the bank trial and we couldn’t do it.

I remember getting flown back to Milwaukee for the trial and seeing everyone wearing a Packer jersey or hat at the airport. I saw Jane Skinner who was at Fox 6 then and she did a news piece about Packer mania taking over the whole state. I knew her a little bit from my friend Ted Perry and she came up to me and said ‘Hi Dobie. You look tired. Are you ok?’

What was I supposed to say? ‘Hi Jane. Yes, I’m a little taxed. My best buddy robbed the bank he used to work at and I have to testify against him in a couple of weeks. Go Pack!’ I was working in radio in Reno then and I told her I was just back to drink in all the fun.

These are memories I’ve been trying to bury and I’ll be good for a while but then I’ll get a reminder somehow and it will take me right back there again. I remember standing alone in a Mexican restaurant in Albuquerque before my show watching the end of the game. I’ll never forget it because I was the only one who cared. The mariachi band was preparing to get started and everyone in there wanted that. I remember jumping up and down watching the clock tick down to zero and looking around at Mexicans staring at me like I was nuts.

I remember Reggie White holding up the trophy and there I was by myself with nobody to share what I had waited a lifetime to see. I should have been with Timbo seeing it live. I felt anger and sadness and then I started to cry right there in the restaurant. It was painful.

What hurts even now is that Timbo is LOVING it that the Packers are 3-0 just like I am. I heard from a friend we both knew from high school that he returned to Milwaukee when he got out of prison and I assume he is still living there. Wherever he is he watched all the games and was just as thrilled as I was to see them win all of them. We used to ALWAYS watch every game we could when I was in town and if I wasn’t we’d discuss it by phone.

Timbo took a big part of my childhood away with his little stunt. He put me in a spot I’ll never forget and I wouldn’t wish that on anybody. The script is coming along well actually and I have a good feeling that eventually this will be made into a movie just because it is as amazing a story as I’ve ever heard. Had I not lived it myself I might not have believed it.

People ask me if I’m going to be friends with him again. I have to say NO. He really put me in a horrible spot and I just don’t think friends do that to each other. The movie script will have all the twists and turns of the story but it took years to play out and he ended up sticking it to me in the end and I just don’t think I would be able to trust him ever again.

Forgiveness has been very difficult and over the years I always think of him at birthdays and holidays just because we spent so many together. He knows my birthday and I wonder if he ever thinks of me? I heard he was angry at me and wishes me dead for turning him in.

Sorry, I didn’t turn him in. HE did it to himself. Then he brought me along with him and I was just not going to go to prison for two bank robberies I didn’t commit. Now there are people who think I had something to do with it. If I did, would I be living in a basement in Lake Villa, IL like a spider? I hope not. But for now that’s where I am. I wish none of this would have happened at all but for the rest of this life I’ll have these thoughts on this day.