November 5

I’m pretty sure that Tommy Woods was the one who also talked me into attempting to break my arm.  Normally that wouldn’t appeal to me, but the carrot at the end of the stick was the idea that if you broke something you wouldn’t have to go to school for awhile.  That was enough for me, so the next thing you know we are both on top of my fence jumping off onto a large piece of cardboard, trying to land elbow-first.  The cardboard was, I guess, so we wouldn’t get too dirty, or maybe to reduce the pain.  I’m sure there was a really good reason for it but it escapes me at this time.  After several attempts we were a little sore but that’s about it.  Apparently the body’s natural reactions kept kicking in and made it rather impossible to land wrong on purpose.

We didn’t often do amazing, exciting things as a family, partially due to our location and partially due to our finances.  But occasionally we had some fun just like big city people.  Once dad took my brother and I outside of town to shoot off some fireworks.  It was great fun until we realized that the bottle rockets had started a fire in someone’s pasture.  Dad retrieved a blanket from the car and we somehow managed to stomp it out before it turned into a serious grass fire.  I also enjoyed visiting Mr. Solomon at the train depot.  I specifically remember his massive brass telegraph key.  I was rather fascinated by that.

One of our regular trips was the local steak house, especially after church.  We also had a drive-in theater.  I always remember seeing the Ten Commandments there, but mom says we actually saw that on a trip to Odessa.  Eighty miles for a movie.  That movie was visual reference material for a whole lot of the Old Testament for much of my life.

Occasionally relatives would visit from Iowa or North Carolina.  My mom’s brother Bobby stayed for awhile one time and so did her mom.  My dad’s brother Don and his wife Linda also visited at least once, and we went down to Mexico at Del Rio.  All I really remember from that trip was a ring we picked up from a street vendor, which lasted less than a week before breaking.

I only retain two specific memories from my grandmother’s visit, both involving a traumatic event.  One of them was a dream I had, where I was standing in the dining room and my grandmother was standing in the kitchen cooking something on the stove.  My dog, Patches, was clamped down on one of my feet in spite of the fact that he was missing his lower jaw.  I was standing on one foot, hopping around and trying not to fall over, and too panicked to speak, attempting to get my grandmother’s attention but failing.  The other event was most definitely not a dream, although I wish it was.

For some reason I can’t remember which friends I was playing with in my back yard, although I think it was one boy and one girl.  We were playing truth or dare and it was soon obvious that dares were just an excuse to do something you really didn’t mind doing any way (else why would you ever do it at all?)  So I was dared to take off my clothes and run into the neighbors yard, climb the clothesline pole, and run back.  Much more creative than just stripping!  So I did.  I remember dropping my pants.  I remember climbing the pole.  But I really remember when I was coming back to my yard.  I had left the neighbor’s yard and was climbing between a juniper tree and the fence to approach the wooden gate that led to my yard.  I was standing on a trimmed branch where my head was above the fence and there she was, my grandmother standing next to my clothes!  She looked a bit mad.  She had to order me to get back in the yard and get dressed, which I finally did.

The first TV we owned was probably used, but it was unusual.  It was a Japanese portable, where the handle doubled as a stand.  The black and white screen was no larger than eight inches diagonal.  It also had an AM/FM radio built in.  I remember seeing the first human landing on the moon on that TV.  I also remember watching Star Trek, although I recall that being in color.  Perhaps my memories are skewed by reruns.  But one particular episode involved this planet that was seemingly abandoned, until this small creature dislodged itself from the ceiling and floated down to Spock’s back and began sucking the ever-lovin’ Vulcan life right out of him!  Thankfully they all survived, but I almost didn’t.  That night after I turned out the lights I saw one of those evil things on my ceiling.  My mind tried to talk me out of it, that it was just an illusion, a reflection or some such.  But it took me several minutes to work up the nerve to jump out of bed and lunge for the light switch.  I scrunched my shoulders up and my head back and grimaced, expecting to feel my life being drained, but nothing happened.  I later determined that a street light was coming through a crack in the blinds and reflecting off of the ceiling light fixture.  I was temporarily banned from watching Star Trek because of that.

Sometimes my ability to entertain myself was a good thing.  When I was in little league I spent countless hours throwing a ball into a net which was on a metal frame.  The netting would bounce the ball back up in the air like a pop fly.  It was good pitching, throwing and catching practice.  But I also entertained myself in ways that were expensive.  Normally one would not think that string, a handkerchief and a plastic toy soldier would be expensive, but I was making a parachute and the toy soldier proved to be insufficient weight to properly open the chute.  So I took another handkerchief and tied it around a large steel ball, probably an inch across or slightly more.  This was almost too heavy since it fell a lot faster, so I used the principle of centrifugal force and gave it a few good spins before launching it into outer space.  As I was looking up and noticing that the parachute wasn’t traveling very far I heard a strange noise, like crunching glass.  I brought my head back down and my gaze rested on the neighbor’s car in their driveway with a small hole in the corner of the driver’s side window.  The rest of the window was full of cracks.  Safety glass.  Dad paid the bill.

The only time I escaped a spanking for which I was due was one time when I was playing at a neighbor’s house at the far end of the block we lived on (probably three doors down).  Their house was off of the main street, mostly accessed from the side street.  I was playing with their kids which I absolutely do not remember.  But when dad came around the corner looking for me (evidently I wasn’t supposed to be out) I was swinging in a rope swing in a tree that was between their driveway and the alley.  Separating the tree from the driveway was a low rock wall made of rough-cut limestone.  When I heard dad coming I attempted to bail out of the swing and managed to land wrong and clipped the back of my head on a rock.  It wasn’t a large wound, but it bled profusely and dad had a hard time being the firm disciplinarian while I was possibly bleeding to death.  I ended up at the doctor’s office and the spot where I got stitches is still visible to this day.

For reasons that I’m sure are best left to psycho-analysts I’ve always felt closer to my father than my mother.  Maybe it’s just male bonding, or maybe it is somehow related to the infamous milk incident.  My mother grew up in a very transitory and dysfunctional family situation.  They were sharecroppers.  So they made do with what they had and that included churning their own butter and cooling milk off in the stream.  It is not surprising that she retained a fondness for buttermilk, but I grew up the child of civilized city-dwellers and it was nothing but Grade A whole milk for me!  But for some reason mom thought I should like buttermilk.  The fact that I had sniffed it and tried a very small sip at some point, resulting in gagging noises and grimaces, did not deter her in her quest.  She was evidently sure that if I really tried it I would like it.  So one night near bedtime she handed me a juice glass of milk, which I of course began to drink.  But the first mouthful didn’t even make it to my esophagus before my throat clenched tight and my eyes popped open in surprise.  She had given me buttermilk!  She tried to get me to swallow it but before she could stop me I had spun around, opened the pantry door and spewed the entire mouthful into the trash can.  Maybe that would teach her a lesson.  I know it taught me one!

While it didn’t happen at the very end of our time in Big Lake, perhaps the most unusual event during our time there happened when I was around ten years old, or maybe eleven.  One of the churches in our local association was the Baptist church in Rankin, and mom and dad were friends with the pastor there.  For some reason we had their music/youth director come to our church, perhaps just to fill in, or perhaps for a revival, I’m not sure.  Benny went to dinner with us afterwards at the one and only steak house in town and at some point offered to take me to his house for the weekend.  He often had kids around and did events with them, etc.  So off I went.  I don’t remember if it was that weekend or the next, but it was pretty soon after the initial offer.

So I went to Rankin with Benny.  I don’t remember the entire weekend’s details, or even how long I was there, but I do remember that he took me outside of town, took a dirt road over the railroad tracks, and he stopped the car.  We switched places and he let me drive!  I did pretty good but started overcorrecting when we would get to a creek crossing and there were barriers on each side of the road.  We drove down the road a ways, and then I think I let him drive back.  And that is how my first time ever driving a car was in a Chevrolet Corvair!

Back at Benny’s house, things got a bit strange.  I remember two or three other boys lying around watching TV in nothing but their whitie tighties.  I was encouraged to do the same, and did so but it was definitely strange.  At one point I caught Benny in the kitchen with a needle.  He was giving himself an insulin injection (or so he said) due to being a diabetic.  And that was it, that’s all I remember.

Well, OK, there is this one more thing I remember from that weekend.  I’m pretty sure I only stayed over one night, and I was the only boy who did so.  And that’s when he touched me, and began masturbating me.  It burned a little from the friction, but it felt good too.  And he put my hand on his cock which was (to me) large and hard and wet.  I don’t think I did much for him directly, but as best I can remember I had my first orgasm that night.  As far as experiences with pedophiles go it was pretty mild.  I mean, he didn’t rape me anally, and he didn’t kill me.  And he let me drive his car.  As far as I can tell the main effect of this incident was that I now knew what an orgasm was and thus began my long and glorious relationship with masturbation.  And while I did have two more encounters with other boys it didn’t do anything for me, and all my masturbatory fantasies involved women.  One of my most frequent early fantasies involved my bed being surrounded by women, a couple of which would either do things to me or tell me what to do while the rest watched.  Considering the fact that I had absolutely NO access to or exposure to porn or erotic writing I find this fantasy interesting.  But it is obvious that I am straight, in spite of my homosexual introduction to sex.

I never made a repeat trip to Rankin, and Benny was eventually run out of town by angry parents.  Frankly, he’s lucky he didn’t just disappear and end up at the bottom of some rancher’s stock pond.  I’ve often wondered where he ended up.  Prison?  Sex offender status?  The priesthood?  Who knows.