Tom Roddy

I have to set up to write this piece, because of every piece I could write about the last 4 decades, this piece defines the beginning.  So at the midnight hour I have to turn some lights out, make a hot cup of coffee. and settle in.  We changed up a bit, instead of the hot coffee we went for pumpkin pie and a glass of cold milk.

I drove up to Reba Place Fellowship in January of 1978,  actually I boarded the El at the Jackson Street Station and rode it to Howard before catching the Linden and deboarding at Main St.  This man, fresh from the United States Prison System landed on God's Promises doorsteps.  How much time I had done or what I had been in prison for never became important.  The fact that I had been a follower of Jesus Christ for 5 1/2 years also was not inquired about or cared about.  I would live in a communal household of an elder and his wife and 1 son and another single mother with 2 children and 1 other single woman and 1 single man.  I would live with this household for the better part of 6 months.  3 more single women would join the small group before I left on my own to seek fortune and fame.  Those six months of transition and error and misgivings and desperation are a story for another tale. 

I had not known Tom Roddy during those 6 months but I knew who he was.  The Fellowship of approximately 300 people was not that large that you could escape the awareness of everyone else.
In June of 78' I moved into a boarding house, 1310 Elmwood.  Tom Roddy also had a room there.  In a few short months the owner announced that he was selling the house and everybody had to fend for themselves and find another place to live.  I had a job at the time working for Pioneer Press in the bindery department from 4pm to midnight so I planned on using the early hours of the day to look for housing.  A former boyfriend of a women at the Fellowship was traveling to the south in Arkansas and told me I could stay at his place for a month.  That helped me save a little money aside for affording my own place.  I had no idea nor was it my concern just what Mr. Roddy was going to do.  We had not established a friendship at this point.

Julius Belser was an elder of Reba Place Fellowship, one of the Big Three who ran the joint in my early lexicon of terms.  He also had the knack for coming along and showing up in a person's life at just the right time.   The Fellowship had just purchased a 22 unit apartment building on the corner of Sherman and Madison.  They had some work to do in rehabbing the place and motivating the drug users to find some place else to live but in time it started to take shape.  One of the things that Julius was instrumental in doing was to send Tom and myself messages that we might consider being roommates in the new building.  I have had many cell mates before in my past experience and if it helped to hold the rent down to share a place, why not.  Tom and I had some similarities in our background.  Not exact similarities but close enough to give the other person an understanding that the other person new what time it was, without explaining it to each other.  I always said that Julius probably felt that we would either kill each other or get along fabulously.  We got along fabulously.

Tom and I would both be classified as having "shanty Irish" sensibilities.  We both smoked at the time so there was no problem there.  Not long, maybe a month later we got a call from Jim Croegaert who was the Music Minister.  He, Jim, was the contact person for a man coming to the fellowship, needing of course a place to stay.  The m. o. on Dave Beatty was that he was from Boston and attending Northwestern University as a Grad student and majoring in Accounting.  I'll skip the discourse on the differences between 'shanty Irish' and 'lace curtain Irish.'  Dave definitly leaned toward the lace curtain Irish.  Dave wasn't a bad sort, kinda friendly in fact, but he was a neat freak.  Tom and I were bachelors and lived the part.  Most of our apartment was furnished from spoils we captured from the alley, like an old crate for my night stand and a humoungous black leather couch from my family in Hazel Crest that had no legs.  And a bed that had more carvings of who had slept there than any one dare count.  There's more to Dave that needs to be included in this narrative but we will rejoin this effort tomorrow. 



Sitting at the counter in the Main Cafe where everyone knew who Tom was one frosty summer morn, Tom asks, with  that tone of voice, to a waitress "Does that hair-do have a name?"  "Yes", she says: "Lithium"  handclapping could be heard all around as a smirk surrounded Tom's jovial cheeks.