November 10

Not counting band, some other music memories I have from junior high involve the cafeteria.  At various points there was a radio in there.  The two tunes that always take me back to that cafeteria are Boston’s “More than a Feeling” and one song by B.J. Thomas which I can’t remember right now.

Summer almost always meant two things.  Vacation and youth camp.  Our county Baptist association was large enough that they had their own property overlooking a river, and I spent one week there every summer for five or six years in a row.  It was a combination of bible studies, bible reading and memorization, prayer, and introspection galore.  Religious navel-gazing.  It was also swimming and sports.  And, of course, falling in love.  And I did my share of most of those things every year.  Generally speaking all of my memories of youth camp are positive.

The other constant summer event was vacation, and most often this was to see family.  Family was always a two-day journey away.  My earliest memories of visiting Iowa are a real hodge-podge of images.  We almost always stayed with Grandma and Grandpa.  I was a typical kid, looking for toys and other diversions.  But my two favorites were the pool table in the basement and Grandpa’s porn stash.  I remember when I found a PlayBoy in the magazine rack next to the couch.  I eventually managed to abscond with it to the bathroom so I could peruse it at my leisure.  His magazines provided me many a pleasant moment in Iowa.

The pool table was also great fun, because I had never had access to one on a regular basis.  Grandpa was an old pool hall regular and I can still remember him sitting with one hip on the table, the pool cue raised almost straight up and down, his cigarette dangling from his lips in the half-light from the fluorescent fixture hanging overhead as he executed a trick shot to spin the cue ball around another ball to hit the target.  I only wish I could have gone with him to see him play in public.  He taught me a lot, and so did my uncle and my cousins.  One night my mom woke up after hearing a noise and then heard me crying.  I had evidently gone sleep-walking and had made it part of the way down the basement stairs and fallen the rest of the way.  That’s how much I loved playing pool.

Other diversions and entertainments from Iowa included lawn bowling (a modern version of Bocci ball) and Jarts, a.k.a. Lawn Darts.  Launching large steel-tipped projectiles into the air doesn’t sound particularly safe but it was fun and I don’t think anyone was ever skewered.  My cousin Kathy was my favorite to hang out with and was a year or two older.  We shared an affinity for Grandma’s cookie jar and pastries and she taught me some cool tricks with a frisbee, which I have impressed people with ever since.  Another favorite cousin (albeit briefly) was my Aunt Normas’ daughter Kim.  She was exactly my age, had red hair and was as cute as a bug.  I spent a lot of time with her listening to 45rpm records in her bedroom.  She was also the first and only cousin that I got a crush on and also kissed, so it’s probably a good thing that we only made it up to Iowa every few years.  All of my cousins there were at least my age or older.  My dad was not the youngest but was the last to get married and start having kids, not counting Don and Linda who have remained childless.

I’ve always had a fondness for Uncle Don.  He seems a gentle soul, but unfortunately this made him a target for a controlling personality, and that is exactly what he got in Linda.  Controlling and neurotic and manipulative and nosy.  She has always been the least favorite of all of my relatives in Iowa, in spite of the fact that she gave me several 45 records one year.  She is obsessive/compulsive about the arrangement of every single piece of furniture and knick-knack in her house.  It is no wonder that Don long ago set aside his own ‘guy room’ for watching TV and getting her out of his hair.  They somehow managed to share their home for all these years without either being admitted to a mental institution (as far as I know) so perhaps there is something there I don’t know about, but I wouldn’t be shocked to get a call informing me that Don bought a new wood chipper and Linda had  disappeared.

North Carolina is another world, quite literally.  My Mom grew up sharecropping and her siblings and parents all worked in textile mills at one point or another.  My mom is the only one out of the whole bunch who graduated from college, and this includes her step-siblings and all of my cousins.  They live in very plain house or trailers.  My earliest memory is from being at my grandfather’s house and setting off fireworks with Roger and Ronnie in the back yard.  They were around my age, one older, one younger, and they were my half-uncles.  We were lighting firecrackers on a stump and one of them went off while I was still rather close and gave my ear a good ringing.  At this point Grandpa stepped in for some discipline.  He escorted the three of us into an outbuilding which was, as I recall, like a small apartment.  The punishment?  He walked us down the hall and made us stop and contemplate each and every light fixture, pointing to them with his cane.  It was at this point that I realized that Grandpa wasn’t all there.  He had, in fact, been an alcoholic for most of his life.

On a later trip I remember riding in the car with Ronnie and his girlfriend as they lit up a joint.  They seemed to somehow know that I wouldn’t tell, and I didn’t.  I wanted to be cool.  This was probably during the visit of the summer of 1976.  I had been driving on my beginner’s permit since very shortly after my fifteenth birthday and I was allowed to take a few shifts on the long stretch of I-20 from Texas.  I particularly enjoyed setting the cruise control at around 76mph and picking my own radio station.  My mom was a bit nervous but dad napped in the back seat.  He was evidently over his jitters about me driving, especially after ‘the incident.’  That was during one of our first beginner’s permit outings.  We were all three in the front seat and I was taking a right turn.  Dad was obviously not used to someone else driving because he thought I was misjudging the speed.  We’ll never know if I was or not because he yelled at me to slow down, I applied the brakes a bit and then he decided to help me.  Unfortunately he missed the brake pedal and stomped on the foot that was on the gas pedal.  I responded by slamming on the brake and we ended up stopping crossways just short of a stop sign with the back tires burning rubber and everyone yelling.  After a few seconds we finally got Dad to understand that the tires would stop smoking when he took his foot off the gas pedal.  He finally did, and I proceeded to drive just fine, thank you very much.

I spent most of my beginner’s permit year driving the big car, the 1973 Oldsmobile ‘98.  It was a land yacht, but it had a 455 Rocket V8 in it and in spite of its size it could actually move pretty damn fast.  I surprised a few people by leaving them behind, and I picked up at least one speeding ticket as I recall.  I also managed to crunch in the front end by not paying close enough attention at a stop light.  The car in front of me let off the brakes and then died.  I let off the brakes and accelerated.  Their large steel bumper was unscratched while my fiberglass body didn’t fare so well.  But when I got my driver’s license I did most of my driving in our used hand-me-down red Plymouth Valiant.  It was an unusual car.  It had wings that were more subdued than the typical 50’s auto, and a slant-six engine, but the most unusual feature was the push-button gear shifter on the left-hand side of the dash!  I logged a lot of miles in that car.  I could burn rubber by revving the engine in neutral then pushing the drive button in.  The dash was metal and sported a dent above the glove box from my brother’s head.  I think that’s when he started wearing seat belts.

I spent a lot of time in that car on the roads the skimmed the edge of Lake Worth, specifically from Jacksboro Highway to Roberts Cut-off.  There were probably a lot of people in that area who were on the lookout for that car too.  Most of my memories involve getting in trouble.  Perhaps the first time was when we gave the ‘finger’ to some people in another car, which proceeded to follow us.  I don’t remember if I was with John or another cohort of mine, Gary, but we took off on the Lake Road.  It didn’t look like we were going to be able to lose whomever was in this car, so I did a bit of off-road driving.  I drove up the dirt road to ‘look-out point’ or whatever it was called.  I then took a dirt road which was really unfit for anything less than a high-clearance 4×4 vehicle and went down the side of the hill back to the Lake Road.  But it worked, we lost them.  Fortunately they were above risking the suspension and body of their vehicle.

Another incident on that same road involved ice.  It was really more slush than ice but John and I thought it was a great excuse for a joy ride.  At one point we started sliding and I over-corrected and ended up nose-first in a ditch, but still sliding down the road sideways.  We hit a mailbox right about where John was sitting and then came to a stop.  John jumped out, drug the mailbox out from under the car and jumped back in yelling “Go, go, go!”  And I did.

But the most memorable incident involved me, John and Bruce.  Bruce’s dad was a doctor and he had all the cool toys.  In this particular case he brought a handgun, a revolver if I remember correctly.  Now I have no idea what in the world we thought we were going to do with it, but it definitely imbued us with a sense of invincibility.  We drove by a group of people playing football.  John decided it would be good to flip them the bird, so he did.  Then we drove by again, and did it again.  It was great fun and we all got a big laugh out of it.  Unfortunately we didn’t know when to quit.  The third trip by this same group we came around the corner and there they were, standing in the road.  One big one rushed the car and threw a football at the windshield.  He reached for me through the window (which I had stupidly left open) and that’s when I floored it.  We had separated ourselves by nearly one hundred feet when I heard a rock bounce off the back of the car.  I was angry and hit the brakes, and Bruce decided that was a good time to grab his gun and he jumped out and leveled it at the idiots who just kept running.  Bruce claims he fired off a shot, but I don’t remember hearing it.  I do remember that when we saw the football players weren’t stopping we yelled for him to get back in the car and we were already rolling by the time he did.

The next Monday John was mortified to discover that some of these guys were in his home room class.  They were on his school football team.  Fortunately they never recognized him, possibly because he hid behind his schoolbooks.

Shortly after I got my driver’s license I started working.  I never hesitated because we were poor.  This was driven home to me one morning as I was getting ready for school and complained to mom about not having any good pants to wear.  The only jeans I had were ripped, and had holes, and not in the stylish way.  Mom had to explain that we just didn’t have any money for clothes right now, and I could hear the sadness in her voice.  As the realization spread in my mind I was shocked.  Wow.  We’re poor!  It hit me like a ton of bricks.  So I gladly took the job of cook and dishwasher and sweeper, etc. at the snack bar at the local junior college.  I was there for at least one semester and I eventually ran the whole thing on some nights, including shutting down and locking up.  I always think of that place when I hear the Steve Miller Band as that was what I played on the tape player when one was available.  It helped me pass the time while cleaning up.