Deleski remembered by childhood friend, author

These hilarious stories are slightly revised excerpts from the book, Regina’s Record, a dark, nonfiction story of an Alexandria veteran of World War II, Regina Van Amber (Class of 1940), who suffered from schizophrenia and was hospitalized in the earliest VA psychiatric hospital for women in the U.S. (1951 to 1983) until she died at age 61.
Written by her only child, Jim Van Amber (‘64), and based on 9,000 pages of often times horrifying government (VA) records, the book was first published in England and two years later in the U.S. The following brief stories (reprinted with permission) are amusing tales of Van Amber's youthful adventures with Jerry Deleski and others from that time.
The book is available in both hardcover and soft cover formats at Barnes & Noble.com or Amazon.com. Van Amber, a disabled Army veteran, has taught creative writing and computer-assisted research writing at Minnesota State University, Mankato where he lives with his wife, Mary. Incidentally, the Van Ambers reside in the same Mankato neighborhood as Mike and Tona (Fischer) Gillespie, Class of 1965 and 1966, respectively. Enjoy the stories. -- Trailboss

Alexandria, Minnesota
Summer 1957, Night
Jerry Deleski and I are running, scrambling from behind Peter Klinkner’s (Class of ‘62) house toward the street light on the corner of Fillmore and 13th Avenue, running to hurry and identify the small bottle that both of us have just drunk from.
A few minutes earlier, behind the plush, mahogany walled bar in Peter’s well-lighted basement, Jerry and I have noted the exotic bottles rowed up below a dark mirror. Vodka, gin, Southern Comfort, Jim Beam and several more. There were small bottles too and I compulsively shoved one of those from the front row into my pants, told Jerry we should sneak out and have a couple of drinks for our first real taste of real liquor. Peter was upstairs doing something. Peter’s parents were gone. The timing seemed perfect so we went upstairs, told Peter we were leaving, ran behind his house, ducked behind the row of bushes there, unscrewed the cap, and had our first drinks.
The dark liquid didn’t come out very fast but I drank with a kind of insatiable revulsion. It made me smack my lips, singe my tongue–tasted odd, strange.
"Gawd," I said.
Jerry took a drink, shook it into his mouth like I had.
"What’s this," he whispered loud, disturbed. "Keerist!"
We are under the street light now staring at the bottle’s label.
Elvis is the king of Rock ‘n’ Roll and a thousand radio stations are playing Jailhouse Rock as the number one hit. The Bridge on the River Kwai is at the Andria theater and 12 Angry Men is showing at the State. Jerry Deleski and I have just done something no one else on this earth has done on this night or perhaps any other night – something new under the sun. In better worlds maybe this almost never happens, but tonight we have squinted under the light, read the bottle’s label out loud, slow, in unison:
"Wor-cest-shire Sauce."


A single mission of high importance
Fall, 1961
Peter Klinkner, Jerry Deleski, Jerry De France (‘64), and myself are standing near Grace Deleski’s garden back of Jerry’s house on Broadway Street. It is dark, early fall, 1961, full moon, up. The Tokens are on the radio with their number one song. A-weema-weh A-weema-weh A-weema-weh A-weema-weh.
It is important we be here, the four of us, at this hour on this night on the good earth. We have a single mission of high importance that is unfolding in the traffic on Broadway a few yards away just ahead of us between the houses in front of where we are standing, waiting, looking eastward. Each of us, it is accurate to say, has a partially rotten tomato in our right hand. Not far away, coming south near the speed limit, is a red chevy convertible. We expect it to arrive within our view soon and then we will act. We expect the driver, Frank Hammer (Class of ‘58) (name changed), to experience the sudden and unexpected wrath of four highly motivated boy demons, young men who, as it should be on this one night, understand the need to get even. So we wait as part of the night when everything seems suddenly and strangely perfect, when the dark becomes a setting for justice and revenge, holy, a night to remember in some way later
as a moment in time when nothing goes wrong as it so often can. Yes, this could be something we will tell our children and our grandchildren and the story will be repeated and passed on without exaggeration ad infinitum until the story finds its rightful place in the History of Good Moments in the museum in New York City. Yes, tonight, we will act in unison–cheerful, brave, dedicated to the idea of revenge without mercy enough so Frank Hammer will never forget what has happened, enough so that he will, we all hope, absolutely without question, shit rubber nickels.
One week earlier, by the square cement window pit on the north side of the Coke plant where Peter, the two Jerry’s and I meet almost every week day and have since we’ve known each other are sitting sipping Cokes from the nickel machine inside the plant. It is early afternoon, warm. Frank Hammer is driving by with two girls. He’s famous in town for being a Golden Gopher, a lineman who played in this year's Rose Bowl. Hammer cruises Broadway, showing off. He cranks the radio, showing off. He strokes his crew cut, laughing and showing off. Now he’s by the Coke plant where we are and we see him for perhaps the fifth or sixth time in an hour and Peter finally shouts out as he passes: "Homo!"
The red convertible screeches to a stop and Frank Hammer, muscle man, neck man, power man in a tee shirt, in jeans and cowboy boots, comes walking fast up the grassy incline to where we are, shouting wild eyed: "Who said that? Who said that?"
"I did," Peter answered, standing.
"Crack!" Hammer slapped Peter. I can still see the hand print on Peter’s left cheek. "No one talks to me that way." Hammer shouted. "I could break your god damn neck."
We all felt small, insignificant, powerless as if someone had taken all the air from where we were. Peter ran home. The two Jerry’s and I sat quiet. Hammer and his two girls had gone. Peter was our leader, soon to be a senior, struck down over a single word.
Something will have to be done.
Peter had gone toward the end of Grace Deleski’s driveway, looked north, hurried back. "Right now he’s by the funeral home I think." We moved closer up the driveway between the two houses but still safe in the dark there. There’s a frame between two trees when the red convertible would be directly in front of us, in front of the driveway. The trick is to lead the car, fire, and run.
"It’s him!" Someone said.
We waited, waited, waited then threw almost in unison: "Thunk-thunk-thunk-----thonk!"
Screeches filled the night and the car angled quickly to the curb, stopping and Hammer was out and the shock of two other hulks with him, shock because we’d only seen Hammer by himself a few minutes earlier and now we have three raging muscle maniacs coming back into the night after us.
I couldn’t run. Peter and the two Jerry’s disappeared around behind Deleski’s barn shed while I stood trying to get my legs to move, to escape, but there was lead for moments too long.
Finally, I was able to get into motion ahead of Frank Hammer and his two lugs and I beat it after my friends behind the barn shed, running now toward Ornie Lommen’s back yard where I catch a glimpse of a clothesline hung low in the moonlight and I duck, running full force, and behind me three seconds later I hear this loud whining TWANG-Thud and I turn to see the three springing back from the clothes lines, sprung on their backs like they were shot from a sling. Suddenly, in Ornie Lommen’s lilac bushes I see Deleski bolt forward with Peter and Jerry close behind and I follow and now the four of us are running full speed south behind the houses there knowing we would have to move quickly for fear of Clifford Stratton’s black lab which is collared to a log chain, the meanest dog in the block chained to a railroad tie and waiting all his life for us to come into his territory, rush after us and bite until he couldn’t bite anymore. And we come running, jumping a waist high row of bushes while behind us come our enemies unaware of the dog now alert and chasing them.
"Jesus!" One of the them screamed while the dog gnarled and barked and growled and bit. But they kept coming and we kept running, moonlight enough to see our way over bicycles, wagons,
hammocks – coming up on a short fence and another clothesline where you had to jump and duck quickly so not to catch those low metal strands and horses in a steeple chase we cleared the short fence, ducked, and ran toward the back of another shed. None of us saw the laughable noise behind us, but it was obvious the three jumped and didn’t duck because again there was a whining SNAP and they were put to the ground in gasps almost in unison and it was so
stupid that the four us, Deleski, De France, Klinkner, and I began to laugh as we crossed 12th Avenue at an angle toward the Coke plant where we ran up the grassy incline and jumped into the square cement pit where we crouched down and started laughing again, trying to control it, holding our mouths snot running, squealing without hope of stopping until it became clear that Hammer and the other two had given up and the night was clear, where each of us separately, made our way home, happy.
"In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight."

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Van Amber's book contains many other references to his hometown and classmates. We're grateful for his contribution here, particularly for reviving our fond recollections of Deleski. In a postscript to the Trailboss, Van Amber adds:

Victories, during the early stages of my own schizophrenia, were not easy to come by. But in 1966 there were still people in my life from my youth and Jerry Deleski was one of them. We both played for the Alexandria Clippers that summer. Jerry was in college and I’d heard he had a beautiful girlfriend. Already I had begun the descent into my mother’s same illness with a kaleidoscope of language and scene that was unstoppable and out of my own control. I had a screaming mind and there wasn’t anything I knew to stop it. The worst was yet to come and I would end up in a hospital for five months, but on this night, the last night I saw Jerry, my head was calm and we were in Fergus Falls and I got lucky and caught a hanging curve ball
on the fat part of my bat and the ball jumped over the left field fence in a hurry. Jerry was the next hitter and met me at the plate.
"Was that a curve ball," he asked, shaking my hand.
I said I thought it was.
I didn’t see him again after that until I saw his picture on a website for insurance in St. Paul this month–almost forty years later. It’s a good picture with his left hand on the side of his head sort of balancing out his pose. He looks happy with his salt and pepper hair and his smile. I know that smile. I’ve known that smile for a long time and it’s a good thing.

Our Jerry Deleski --
Photo lifted from Allstate Insurance web site by Greg Johnson