November 13

After we moved to Lake Worth we had them visit our church again.  The Cruse Family.  Their youngest son John could no longer sing the high notes on the song that used to highlight him, and the drummer was dating one daughter and the piano player was dating the oldest son.  Becky, the piano player, always did a part of a song while facing away from the keyboard.  It was a cute trick, and fairly impressive.  By this time the kids had a definite 70’s look.  I had at least one 8-track of theirs and later an album or two.

The complaint I always had throughout my high school days was this.  If evangelist-types wanted me to abandon rock for Christian music then I was going to need a Christian radio station that played the kind of music I liked.  Now that it is relatively easy to take your music with you everywhere I don’t think that argument would fly, but back then there was no guarantee that the used cars I was driving would have working cassette tape players.

After my junior high and early high school days I got into quite a pattern with dating.  Long, committed relationships where I devoted a lot of time and attention to the girl and eventually chased her off by almost smothering her, but only after nine months or so.  The first was Salli, who was cute as a bug, had a great smile and dark eyes to go with her jet black hair and dark brown skin.  Not only was she 2nd or 3rd generation Mexican American but she was Catholic.  I’m sure this caused no small amount of consternation to my parents but to their credit they never brought it up.  I had a few conversations with her regarding theology but she had been to class and I was unable to gain any sort of easy ground.  But more than that I was in love and didn’t push it out of respect.  I occasionally spent time at her house with her younger sister and brother, her older sister and parents.  I picked up some Spanish along the way but Salli wasn’t fluent.  She understood most of what she heard but was unable to explain how to speak it to someone else.  Her grandmother in Corpus Christi spoke no English whatsoever and Salli could barely communicate with her.

I was a generally chivalrous and nice person but that didn’t stop me from wanting and attempting to get sexual gratification.  One time I snuck out of the house and rode a bicycle to her house.  She nervously allowed me to crawl into her bedroom and we lay in bed for awhile but my kissing and groping was met with not only her general resistance but her nervousness at the fact that her dad was in the next room.  I eventually snuck back out and got home and we were never found out.  One night I took her home and stopped a few blocks from her house for a little necking on a road with no homes.  I seem to recall that we may have had some loose clothing but not much else going on when headlights appeared behind us.  We assumed it was a cop and started tucking things in.  I glanced in the side rearview mirror to see a hippy-looking man approaching the car with a large revolver hanging from his hand.  He was looking in the back seat and when he saw that we weren’t thugs or a rival gang he slipped the gun behind his back.  He knocked on my window and told us that they were expecting trouble and that this wasn’t a good place to hang out.  I agreed, and we left in short order.  Salli said that he was with the Bandidos, a well-known biker gang.  She said they had a house nearby.  The next time I was with her I asked her and she pointed it out.  There was an 8-ft. Chain-link fence surrounding the yard with a small gate at the bottom with an attached dog-run.  It appeared that the point was to force someone to crawl through to enter.  Spotlights faced outwards at the corners of the house.  The windows were covered.

Occasionally I would see a few of them drive through, usually shifting gears by hanging their left hand down to the transmission case and manually manipulating the shifter without using a clutch.  The more resourceful ones had installed levers and shifted at about thigh height.

Salli played clarinet in the band and at half-time of the homecoming game we went back to her house to change out of our uniforms.  She wore a dress, I had a corsage for her and we got in my car to go back to the stadium.  We drove by the Bandidos house and I noticed all the lights were on.  It was near the top of a hill so I accelerated to maintain normal speed.  Evidently this was a bad idea, because they were once again ‘expecting’ trouble and the sight of a large, dark green car accelerating up the hill was not a good sign.  That explains why I saw someone jump off of the back porch, crouch on one knee and level a shotgun at us.  He trailed us for just a second, Salli yelled, I floored it.  We took the next corner at almost full speed.  It’s good to have 455 cubic inches at your disposal.

Salli eventually broke up with me, and we talked about it for awhile.  I was upset, but not horribly surprised at the time, having sort of seen it coming.  But when I got home it was dark and ‘our’ song started playing on the radio.  “How Deep Is Your Love” by the BeeGees, and I cried like a baby.