"Learning" to drive at eight years old - part two

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       I knew this after I climbed out of the driver’s side window that busted out when we landed. When Mikey and I exited the formerly beautiful automobile, the full force of combining two separate space shows came to bear. I entered a vortex I am sure was the beginning of the end of my life as I knew it. To my amazement, neither one of the oncoming cars involved in our successful “Phase One” adventure even slowed down. They just kept on driving to whatever safe place they were headed. I wanted to go with them as I examined the crushed and battered former spaceship Mikey and I had called our own. I took five steps back and to my utter horror my Dad’s car was indeed dead and I had killed it. To begin with, the hood flew up bending it back over the roof of the car which I also noted was dented from the force of the hood smacking it. I also saw that the two doors would not open and they were seriously out of line. The two front fenders were elevated a good ten to twelve inches as evidenced by the two flat wide white wall tires having much more clearance than I remembered them having preflight. The front bumper was off the car and I could see it protruding from the underbelly of the car, twisted like a piece of used dental floss or a discarded pipe cleaner. The back bumper was pushed up so high, the trunk would more than likely not open it was so dented in. This car looked like something Picasso might have designed, a veritable modern art master piece.

As Mikey and I exited from the now destroyed former space ship and my Dad’s most prized possession, I learned an instinctive maneuver that day and one I would later utilize numerous times to include the scaffold swinging incident and when confronted by the Police at front door of the Denny’s years later during the D&D days Brian and I enjoyed together.

 I ran.

Mikey Langford and I ran as far and as fast as we could away from our homes and up Avon Avenue. We were going to join the Peace Corps or something, anything that would keep us from facing the hell that would be my dad when he found out his car was trashed and I had done it. In reality, Mikey had pulled the shifter into neutral and I could have thrown his ass under the bus but I was just as guilty and he was my friend. After all, I had put my P.F. Flyers on the Silver, yes silver, leather seats, crossed Avon Avenue AND drove (aimed) my Dad’s car without knowledge or permission, so I was dead three ways right there. We ran all the way to Mitchell’s Store, at the far end of Greymont Drive and the back gate of Ft. Mac, what seemed to be a mile or two but in reality were just over three eighths of a mile from my house. We did our usual; we walked around to the back of the store, grabbed six bottles each that had already been turned in for deposit, marched to the counter collected our thirty five cents each, and walked out with a cold Coke and Chic-a-stix each in our young, juvenile delinquent hands. The drink and candy had enough sugar to make your hair stand on end and keep you from sleeping for a good two days, which I am sure I would need if I were to be a fugitive. I am sure Mr. Mitchell was wondering what two seven-year-olds donning football helmets might be up to, but I am sure he had other things to concern himself over, and we were paying customers…sort of. Our appearances never occurred to us as we could only focus on  avoiding death, so we formulated a plan; we’d make a long walk down a side street from Mitchell’s store which was across the road from the back gate of Fort Mac, paralleling Greymont Drive, and circle all the way back around to our houses returning in the complete opposite direction from where the Riviera’s untimely death had occurred. A seven-year-old mind had decided playing innocent was the only way I would ever see the light of day that summer, as punishment back in those days was having to stay indoors and this infraction might keep me indoors for a good year or better. It is funny how times change. Punishment these days is making a kid stay outdoors, indoors was a fate worse than death to my crowd of friends. I borrowed a page from Hogan’s Heroes (a kid and adult favorite TV show from the sixties) and all the conniving antics they pulled on Commandant Clink and Shultz were going to finally pay off. And my folks were convinced that watching TV was a bad thing!

It took us a good forty five minutes to return to our houses the very long back way. When we rounded Linville Street, the street that circled into and eventually butted into Greymont Drive and Mikey’s house, we noticed there were no kids out playing. We walked next door to my house, as innocent looking as a pair of newborn babies and what we beheld was like seeing a UFO for the first time. There were cop cars with lights flashing and folks from all over our neighborhood in attendance at the show. It looked like a flying saucer or the Lost in Space ship had landed on Avon Avenue (the TV one, not the one we had piloted earlier that day) and every kid and adult was in attendance to witness the mayhem that was the crash landing of our former spacecraft. I instructed Mikey to play dumb and not whisper a word to anyone anywhere as his mom and dad would have to pay up for the damages to my dad’s car. Mikey was indeed the ships navigator and had pulled the shifter out of park causing the death and destruction to my dad’s most prized material possession. He asked me if I thought it would work and all I knew was, it had to be better than the truth. I recall all the events of that day rushing back to me when I saw the movie Animal House and the scene after Boone, Otter, Pinto and Flounder (a pledge) took Flounder’s brother’s new four door Lincoln Continental on a road trip and killed it dead by drunkenly crashing it into everything and every car on the road. It was later to be resurrected as the “EAT ME” mobile, Flounder’s older brother Fred’s former Lincoln Continental after the road trip and subsequent destruction of same vehicle. The upper class brothers instructed pledge Flounder to lie about its demise and they’d back him up. It went something like this:

“What’ll I tell Fred!!??” Flounder asked.

“We’ll tell him you were taking great care of the car. You parked it out back and in the morning…it was gone!!” says Eric Stratton, reassuringly.

“Will that work??” replies Flounder, in great distress.

“It’s gotta work better than the truth,” Stratton, says with confidence.

Mikey Langford and I grabbed a seat on our front steps and quietly watched the action from our elevated vantage point. I could see my dad, his arms raised in abject confusion, asking questions I am sure only I could competently answer concerning the fate of his car. I am sure he asked the police in attendance numerous questions they could not answer. He was asking in the direct, calm manner that always scared the shit out of me whenever he quizzed me concerning the comings and goings of any young man in need of guidance from a father that cared. Next thing you know, my mom and Mikey’s mom appear out of what seemed to be nowhere (Mom skills), and drilled us both new ones, individually and collectively, military style concerning our “where-about’s” during the destruction of my dad’s most favored automobile. I am sure their actions originated out of the excitement concerning the events at hand and the adrenaline that accompanied it. The “Where in the hell have you two been?” factor played a small role in their concern also, I assumed. We wisely stashed our space/football helmets in my crawl space to conceal evidence and to prevent any outside chance of premature death or incarceration for us both. My mom grilled us, then Mikey’s mom. Then they grilled us separately and then switched us up and grilled us again, in an obvious attempt to extract the truth if there was any truth to be extracted that day. Neither one of us broke.

Mikey did slip up and confess to going to Mitchell’s store, a crossing Avon Avenue infraction, so I got my ass busted by my mother. Three licks from her with a small belt and it never hurt, ever. Getting a whipping from her was an easy piece of time, so I just hollered a lot then she usually felt guilty and let up. She usually ended it with the “this hurts me far more than it hurts you” speech, a card most Moms played when confronted with having to whip a kid’s ass. Truth was, it actually did hurt her more than it hurt me as she was a real wimp with the rod of correction. My mom couldn’t whip her way out of a wet paper bag if her life depended on it. I would much rather have been tied to and dragged around behind her 1956 Bel-Air for punishment rather than be lectured by her for what seemed like days. She’d speak of the early grave we were digging for her with our disobedience, one shovel at a time, and crap like that, all intended to layer guilt upon us a like a carefully crafted double-decker Dagwood sandwich, usually served cold with a side of poor-poor-pitiful me soup. My brother, sister and myself knew she would live to lecture for at least one hundred plus years or better and would probably have to be gagged before we chucked her in the clay. My guess back then was if she died and was buried you could put your ear to a drinking glass above her grave and still hear the lectures she had not completed this side of the dirt. I’m not trying to be disrespectful, but I hope you have a clue to what I am saying here. I figured when parents had kids they went to birthing classes first and then had required kid-lecturing classes second. I am a world class lecturer now myself. Just ask my three kids. It’s genetic I guess. You inherit it from your own children.

I often wondered about whatever place my mom might end up in after her death, and I also wondered if God would allow me to be lectured by her if she and I both made it to heaven. If she did indeed get to lecture me there, I thought maybe I would rather go to “the bad place”, kinda like in “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” when Huck told Aunt Polly when he’d just soon go to hell rather than have to sit still and get lectured by her. For me (and Huck Finn too I guessed) the down side was that if the Devil was in charge of Hell and distributing eternal punishment, he might have my mom imported there to lecture me for eternity so I lost either way. I wasn’t sure how God worked back then, but I was sure that he would not allow one person’s heaven to be another person’s hell, if you catch my drift. I figured I’d let God sort that out as I was as close to meeting Him, or the Devil as the case may be, as I had ever been in my young life based on the events transpiring right then. If Mikey squealed or I caved in from guilt concerning the previously unwrecked car we had been occupying earlier that day, I was indeed going to meet God or Satan. It would definitely be down escalator for me that very day if the truth got out and I kicked the bucket right then. I figured it was better than having to confront my father, and an eternity of lectures by my mom, so I made peace with it.

When my dad concluded his business with the local authorities, he walked into our house with a face as red as cherry Kool-Aid. Only half mixed strong and blood red, when you just had gotten the sugar to dissolve, before filling it up to the eyebrows on the Kool-Aid pitcher. He was pissed off after he had been told by the cops that a rash of crimes similar to this had taken place a few streets over from us and in Atlanta also. My dad was insured to the hilt as he believed it was better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it when it came to proper insurance coverage.

Of course, he lectured me on never getting in the car ever without him present and of course to never put your shoes on the leather seats. It took two months to get that car fixed and he sent it back twice to General Motors for other items in need of fixing due to the accident. The insurance company had discovered that Buick and GM were having issues with transmissions slipping out of park and causing damage. My old man had his beloved Riviera fixed and never experienced a rate hike afterward as a result of my covert and still as of yet undiscovered cruise in his car. The insurance company and GM wanted to “total it out” but he asked either of them how hard it would be to locate a custom ordered Midnight Black with silver, yes silver, leather interior fully loaded with the same rare engine and dual four barrel carbs, train horn option that would wake the dead, cruise, power everything, including a ball scratcher as my Dad so lovingly put it. I always asked him where the ball scratcher button was, but he said if he told me he’d have to kill me, as ball scratching with anything other than one’s writing hand below the age of eighteen might cause premature blindness. He wore glasses on occasion, so I guessed he’d hold down the mysterious scratch button until he needed the reading spectacles, avoiding blindness altogether.

The Riviera came back to us in pristine condition and my Dad loved that car as much as any man could love an inanimate object. He would probably own it today if my mom had not given it to a towing service for the towing bill generated when my dad was out of town on business and she had unexpectedly broken down. I think the move was strategic on her behalf as I figured she might someday ask for him to choose between the two of them and she was hedging her bets. Also, my dad had Triple A and they would handle anything car related and towing was included. This fact alone furthered my dad’s theory that my mom had purposely wandered outside of the boundaries of safety my dad had carefully constructed with car insurance and Triple A. I thought he might divorce my mom over that incident and it still remains a sore topic forty plus years later. I distinctly remember my dad calling the towing service and arguing with them over a twenty dollar towing bill versus an extremely nice Buick Riviera as payment. The dudes at the towing service knew they had a jewel of a car in exchange for a minor service and never budged. It sat beside the towing company’s building until many years later the company closed and the Riviera disappeared.

Ironically, I happened upon that same Riviera in a junk yard when I was in my thirties, and I asked the owner of the junkyard’s son if I could buy it in an attempt to restore it and give it to my dad as a gift someday. The dude stated his dad had bought it new and he would never sell it. I marched him over to the car and showed him the old gas tickets in the console; still lovingly organized by my dad, the Marine, in the little folder he kept them in along with all the service records to accompany it. While I was looking through the console I spotted a small red button in the front of the console and for a brief moment thought I had located the much heralded ball scratcher button my dad had expounded upon so long ago. I figured I was over eighteen (way over) and I would not go blind at this point, and maybe I could just let it scratch until I also needed reading glasses instead of full on blindness, like my dad, but I digress.

The owner’s son insisted it was not my dad’s car and refused to sell it even after I asked him to reach his hand down beside the back seat behind the driver and see if their was a silver Mustang Hot Wheel I deposited there and played with when I as a kid. Sure enough, it was there but the butthole didn’t budge and I left empty handed, save for the Hot Wheel, leaving the receipts in case I ever crossed paths with my former spacecraft and my Dad’s most prized inanimate object again. I never saw that car after that day and I have looked through many junkyards since then in hopes of finding, restoring and taking one last ride through a major or even a minor galaxy or two with my son.

I am fifty now and I am certain my dad will someday read this account concerning his Riviera and its brush with fate. Screwing around with the time space continuum by two young boys flying a spaceship without a license proved to be a daunting task. I was glad Mikey Langford kept his mouth shut and I was sure I had saved his life by not telling. I also realize that I would just now be getting off restriction, forty three years later, if I had fessed up to the whole thing way back when. Live to tell the tale another day seemed to be the best rule of thumb.

  
It had to work better than the truth.
 

                                   

"Learning" how to drive at eight years old.

This is part one of a two-parter.

My Dad owned a 1931 A-Model Ford with an “AAAOOOGA” horn, shiny jet black with cream colored spoke wire wheels. It was a head turner every time he drove it, which was often in the hot summertimes in the South. The A-model was his fix-er-up car and he did an awesome job with it. He also saved his hard earned dough and purchased a beautiful black 1963 Buick Riviera in spring of 1965. It was the envy of every dad on our street, as it was only two years old when my Dad purchased it, trading in a crappy Falcon and a cool fifteen hundred hard earned dollars for the luxury liner. Let me tell you, this car was loaded with every option; silver (yes, silver) leather, two-plus-two bucket seats with a console that ran from the front all the way to the rear, air conditioning that would chill a 6.5 ounce Coke in the bottle and just about anything else you placed in front of the six carefully positioned vents occupying the awesome dash panel that looked like a cockpit of a fighter jet or a space craft. Ironically, it was a special ordered car by a Delta Airlines pilot named Don Jacobs, evidenced by the silver plaque mounted on the glove box door. It could outrun the word of God and radar, as it came with a 425 cubic-inch “nail-head” dual quad beast of a motor, with “465 Wildcat” painted in red on the breather lid, and it would spin the wide white-wall tires at will. It had a console shifter, and back in the day there was no such thing as a locking steering wheel or any other significant safety features other than the ones that came with a hint of common sense. Safety features like keeping your damn kid and his best buddy out of it when it was parked facing downhill towards busy Avon Avenue. My dad never left the keys in it but it was back when you could park your car on the street and nobody would even consider messing with it. He had owned the Riviera for two years keeping it immaculate, and I mean Marine Corps immaculate. A person could safely eat off any part of that car without worry; it was that clean.

Mikey and I had decided on one summer day we were to be Lost in Space, our favorite TV show other than Star Trek, the favorite of every kid in the known universe back then. Every young boy I knew loved Star Trek, and with the possible exception of the horny Captain James Tiberius Kirk’s seemingly endless quest to mate with everything that wasn’t nailed down or Klingon, it was a great show. This particular day we were Lost in Space and I was the Robot and Mikey was Will Robinson, boy genius and son to Captain John Robinson. Will Robinson always figured out a way to get himself, the evil Dr. Smith, and Robot out of trouble inside of a fifty minute show, so I figured he must have been a genius. I had postulated (I heard that word get used by every space captain on TV) it best to not do the dad/son (My being Captain John Robinson and him being Will, boy genius) thing with my best friend, so Robot would have to do for me as nobody wanted to be the evil Dr. Smith. We climbed into our black spacecraft manufactured by the Buick Motor Company, a division of General Motors, and went through pre-launch proceedings. It was a fine craft; I knew what she could do and was ready to take her out for a blast through the closest galaxy available. We had fashioned space helmets (which actually came in quite handy a few minutes later) from our football helmets (they looked the same) we owned from playing football for the Cascade Saints.

We had a smooth take off and all was going well for a few minutes when Mikey noted that Klingons were hot on our trail and we needed to make a quick escape. Mikey had committed a rather simple faux pas by combining two separate yet equally cool TV shows involving space travel, Star Trek and Lost in Space. It was an acceptable mistake, as everybody knew that Klingons (Star Trek bad guys) had a cloaking device and our sensors would not detect them until it was way too late. Plus, the Robinsons ship did not have photon torpedoes so we were goners if something did not happen fast as far as an escape was concerned. Besides, the USS Enterprise (Star Trek) was on a five year mission, to explore strange new worlds and boldly go where no man has gone before. The Robinsons, on the other hand, were just trying to get back home after the evil Dr. Smith stowed away and purposely screwed up the flight computer, thus avoiding whatever consequences awaited nasty evil doctors back on Earth.

 As a kid, I often wondered if the USS Enterprise ever crossed paths with the Robinson’s vessel would Captain Kirk steer them in the right direction back towards Earth. He’d probably have to make out with the older Robinson daughter first, I figured, an even trade. I also knew if the Robinson’s made it home, it was game over and end of the show as they’d no longer be “Lost in Space.” Maybe after they figured out where they were, they could just ride around some, but, “Happy in Space” doesn’t sound as dangerous as “Lost in Space” so I guessed they’d just stay lost and keep their jobs. There were only three channels back then in all of TV land and the Robinson’s crossing paths with the Star Trek boys seemed like a remote possibility to me. 

Anyway, I hollered for Mikey to do something quick as mixing two space shows might disturb the space-time continuum (I heard that get said a lot so it seemed appropriate) and there’d be hell to pay if that ever occurred. Besides, the Klingon ship had to de-cloak in order to fire its weapons so I, as the Robot, figured we’d make it out somehow. In the excitement Mikey reached down and pulled the Buick’s shifter from P to N, and the ship we were captains of that day was entering a strange new world. Our space craft was rolling towards Avon Avenue, and I was holding onto the steering wheel while standing up in the driver’s seat, an offense that would introduce you to the business end (that’d be the kid end) of my dad’s belt. Remember, Dad was a Marine, and let me tell you this: he quit school because of recess. He did not play, especially when he laid down the rules and you broke them. I was standing up in the front seat of my dad’s pride and joy. I was indeed holding on to the steering wheel and driving it, steering it, or just using it to hang onto, without his knowledge. Mikey and I realized we were about to travel to a place never visited by either of us at such a young age. I really needed Mikey to do the “Will Robinson, boy genius” thing as fast as he could but my greatest fears had come to pass…Mikey became an Earthling faster than Mr. Spock could mind-meld you into submission. I had been reduced to mixing space shows myself as panic quickly set in.

“Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!!” was all this Robot could muster as my hands were both glued securely to the steering wheel…

We were driving a car, or really aiming the craft more than driving, if you insist on correct nomenclature. The steering wheel was more for me to hang onto rather than a device to aid in avoiding crashing into another vehicle. We had gotten up to a decent rate of speed when we crossed Avon Avenue and my young short life passed before my eyes as we threaded between the two cars coming from either direction. I remember the color of the woman’s eyes in the car approaching from the driver’s side, just so you’ll know how close we actually were to one another. I know now that if any one of the three cars brought together by fate, Lost in Space & Star Trek and Masters Jimmy Hall and Mikey Langford, would have had an extra coat of enamel paint sprayed on their metal bodies we would have surely hit each other. It was by the thinnest of margins Mikey and I missed the two cars. Mikey and I injected ourselves into the lives of the two unsuspecting drivers so quickly that neither driver even touched the brakes on their cars as they were desperately trying to get home from a long day’s work or whatever, leading up to our brief and potentially disastrous encounter. Mikey and I had successfully passed phase one of our survival tests and that was not getting killed crossing Avon Avenue. I understood my mom’s reservation about crossing Avon Avenue now, but I am sure she meant walking, not driving, across it. Phase two was coming with a vengeance and that phase involved preventing Dad’s beautiful, cherished, immaculate, clean-as-a-fire-truck Buick Riviera from getting scratched. This would prove to be a most difficult task and the phase we failed miserably. The car was going a good thirty five miles per hour under only the power of gravity that day. Both momentum and gravity did their respective duties that day, and us two, young mavericks at best, were on a journey to what was ultimately a crash site. Truth was we would have rather been doing anything else besides what we were doing at that moment.

When the Riviera left the ground and launched itself into the abyss that was the other side of Avon Avenue things got really interesting. I said earlier that we were wearing football helmets and that would prove to be to our great advantage and I will explain that part now. I am certain that we were a good fifteen feet off the asphalt after we crossed “Don’t Ever Let Me Catch You Crossing Avon Avenue” as I had come to know it. I genuinely thought the name of the road was “Don’t Ever Let Me Catch You Crossing Avon Avenue,” but the little green street signs were too small to hold all of that. I guessed my Mom knew the origins of the streets name because that’s what she called it all the time. My initial thought was “Oh Crap! I’ve crossed Avon and I’m gonna get it now.”

That is what I was thinking as the Buick gently floated airborne towards the landing strip awaiting beneath us. Mikey and I actually had a brief encounter with weightlessness enjoyed only by spacemen, the Robinsons, and most of the crew of the Starship Enterprise, with the possible exception of the guys that wore the Red suits as they always got killed. I envisioned parachutes being deployed (I really just liked saying deployed when I was a kid) but I couldn’t find the button in time.

As a side note, I remember being a kid, taking a dump one time and telling my Mom,

“You would not believe the two Logs I just deployed. Abe Lincoln could have added a wing onto his one room cabin with those two.”

She was not impressed and wondered out loud who I might have heard such a rude and despicable thing from. Truth was, I’d heard my Dad say stuff considerably worse and regularly, but I couldn’t use my Dad as an excuse. She was looking to cast blame upon someone besides me so I gave her Dickey McGrew. Dickey was the first guy we knew that cussed and had a Playboy collection, and we instantly liked him. Moms have ESP, so mine knew right away he was trouble. His mom, on the other hand, was a full-on hottie and the only mom to wear Go-Go boots and a mini skirt to our intramural football games. Oh the shame of it all. I was sure that catching her as a wife was like the dog that actually caught the car he was chasing. She, Raquel Welch and Anne Margaret were the original reason I became and still am a boob man and she populated many a young boy’s dreams back then, namely mine. We used to call Dickey’s mom the “Dairy Queen” and for good reason. She always looked like she was shoplifting two cantaloupes in her tight shirts. She loved me for some reason and would always hug me when she saw me. I really liked it as she always smashed my face into her rack and would not let go until I got dizzy from lack of oxygen. I figured if I were going to die this would be how I wanted to go out and certainly not driving my Dad’s prized possession across Avon Avenue. I hoped my stone would read:

HERE LIES MASTER JIMMY HALL

KILLED BY BOOB HUG SUFFOCATION

That sounded a whole lot better than,

HERE LIES MASTER JIMMY HALL,

JUSTIFYABLY KILLED BY HIS DAD

FOR WRECKING HIS SWEET ASSED BLACK 63 RIVIERA

WITH SILVER, YES SILVER, LEATHER INTERIOR.

Death by boob suffocation would look good on a tombstone and the getting killed by the dad thing took up way to much space. Dickey’s mom was every young boys dream and every married man’s wife’s worst nightmare as she was a veritable Playboy bunny with kids that cussed and had Playboy books. I asked her to adopt me one time, thinking I could get away with cussin’ and I figured a whipping from her must have been like a dream. She called my mom and told her about my plans and I think my mom agreed to the adoption itself, but also told her she would more than likely bring me back after a few days. I was willing to risk it if Dickey’s Mom was willing.

I will return from my Boob Suffocation Death tangent now and tell you first that the flight in our makeshift spacecraft was wonderful but the landing was most unfortunate. Mikey and I slammed headfirst into the beautiful dash with such force that it left black and gold paint marks (The New Orleans Saints colors our helmets wore) on the steering wheel and the glove box we slammed up against during sudden deceleration. We smacked the ground with such force that when we finally stopped, we were both in the back seat, in the floor. I have no idea how we wound up there but it was my first introduction to chaos theory and one I’d not soon forget. I am sure that Mikey had ‘deployed’ in his cut off blue jeans evidenced by the smell emanating from inside the formerly lovely pride and joy of George William Hall, Sr., USMC and United States Post Office supervisor.

I was a dead man.

What happened when I told a lie. That's "MISSPOKE" to you liberals.

Well, it's been a few weeks since I have been able to throw some sentences down on the old blog. I have had an exceptionally busy forty one days, what with finally getting my book "The Train Ride" published, on the inter web, all Amazon-ed up and such. It's on Nook, iTunes and Kindle now, with folks able to get a copy of two years plus another years worth of negotiating screw ups with my publisher within seconds of parting with $4.95. Heck, for the price of a small fancy-schmancy coffee from Starbucks, you'll be laughing your butt(s) off. Truth is, you'll be whizzing out the caffeine from that high-priced swill long before you get thru a few chapters of my work...hobby...diversion, or whatever it might be called by those who read it. Ya really never know. I have considered this fact: the book could go a number of places, and that obscurity is indeed one of those places. That remains to be seen I guess.

So, we'll just see where it lands.

I've written a lot of blog stuff over the past year. Some of it-well most of it, humorous. I know there's a lot of bad crap going on in the world and I'm not in denial about any of it, but you ain't going to read about it here. Go listen to the radio. Go listen to, or watch, the hundreds of news outlets spewing who said this and that and who lied about what to whom and why and when, and how soon the sky is falling and where you can get an official guvmint approved sky is falling exemption. I guess now that the whole "Global Warming" lie has been proven to be the scam that it is, something else needs to replace it. Al Gore needs something else to scam other liberals with. Maybe the "Sky is Falling " initiative is next. It is all a big damned lie. Seems like a lot of well placed folk, who claim to be educated, get free passes to flat out lie. Later, when those same people get called out on the same lies, like the Global Warming biggie Al Gore made billions( yes-billions) on, someone, with a straight face gets to say "he/she misspoke..." And it's never the one who flat out lied. It's their paid representative, straight faced, insisting that a hunk of Skylab or a piece of a meteor hit 'em in the head and that is the reason they "misspoke".

MISSPOKE?

You can bet your sweet bippy when you hear that phrase, somebody has just lied their asses off. And got away with it. I wasn't raised that way. And I'm guessing if you are reading this, you are between 40-60, and you weren't raised that way either. I transposed a number on a tax return, by accident, concerning my daughter's social security number  and ended up with a federal tax audit! Why couldn't I "misspoke" or at least get a mulligan...(a golf term for a screw up, bad shot, etc). Getting bent over by the tax Nazis wasn't what I expected.

Lying. Story telling. Fibbing. Half-truthing. All of these terms added up to one thing; an ass whuppin.  Not a spanking, I mean a "go pick me out a hickory and don't you make me go behind you and pick another" ass whuppin too. Either that or a good old fashioned black skinny belt your dad wore with his suit on Sunday ass whuppin. If you've read my blog a time or two, you'll know I was convinced at a young age that I was the kid solely responsible for the invention of the ass-whuppin. For those of you who suffered under the ole rod of correction because of my invention, I humbly apologize.

I guess I was what folks considered a rounder back in my day, but I assume you more than likely know that by now. My 'sense' of 'reason' made no sense to my mom and dad a lot back then. I recollect "it" transporting me straight into butt-whoopin-ville on numerous occasions, most times for reasons I had no idea of just wasn't aware might deliver me there. I did eventually figure it out though. It took me a few more years to sort it out the minutiae of keeping myself morally straight as my dad interpreted it. He was now moving into the most dreaded but value-added (according to my dad) pre-lecture/post ass-whuppin territory. I do recall my poor attempts to negotiate with my dad over that particular phenomenon, the lecture then ass-whuppin thang. I asked him if he might just consider giving me a few more licks or swats, and keep the lecturing to a minimum. I told him I didn't have a choice in the whuppin part, but I assured him; I was too distracted by the upcoming licks for any lecture to be effective. For a lecture to be even remotely effective or to do any amount of good, it either had to be a stand alone effort minus the ass-whipping part, or just the ass-whipping part by itself. I did figure out that when your dad asked "if you understood what he was saying" the best answer should not include "sure thing daddio" or "Yep, got it covered!". It was one of those delicate questions, like "Do I look fat in this?" but with considerably more pain involved. I took a few tries for your author to find the right voice inflection, the right position to sit in so as to not look distracted, to not break eye contact, the right amount of time to wait to give an answer in the affirmative concerning the aforementioned lecture. It was a learning experience akin to realizing the you can't take a drink of milk then try to get a bite of cookie in your mouth afterward. Think about it. Sorting out how to avoid whuppins, receiving dad lectures and looking interested, and figuring out the correct cookie/milk order, were all building blocks of growing up and staying alive.

See what I mean?

I think now I was an independent thinker who was way ahead of my time. And I got my butt whupped a lot for it. And... it was nobodies fault but mine. Right now I'd like to circle back around to the asshats who think that "MISSPOKE" is a verb. Go ahead, do it. A lot. Just remember, if your grandma was around and guaranteed you one of those aforementioned hickory switch ass whippins, I'm sure it would stop.

As a matter of fact, every politician ought to have their grandma around when they make deals and spend other peoples money. And especially when they commit a "Misspoke". Nobody likes a damn liar anyway.

Especially Grandma.

Between Detroit, Michigan and Bremen, Georgia....

I must share a story that is Southern to the core, as told by an elderly Black Gentleman, and passed to me by my Father in Law. This is told from the perspective of a man named Buck, a Chaffuer for Warren Sewell, owner of the largest suit manufacturer in the known world located in Bremen, Georgia., and quite possibly one of the richest men in the world at the time.

Back in the forties, the automotive industry was taking off after WWII, along with housing and other textile manufacturers, and most folks with an ethic for hard work headed to Detroit for the chance to get factory work assembling automobiles in the numerous auto assembly plants that had been converted back to such after the war effort and the boom that followed. The South was still a hard place for a black man to find a good job as all the decent factory jobs went to the white men who had just ended their stint in the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines. Most Southern Blacks had jobs cleaning houses, as maids, cooks and wait staff in numerous restaurants. There was still a generous amount of cotton still being harvested in the USA and North Florida kept a generous crop to be picked, still jobs relegated to the black population as Hispanics were migratory workers and mostly in the western states like California, Arizona, Nevada and parts of Southern Texas. Transportation was scarce, and most Hispanics kept to the states bordering Mexico, I assume to be able to “escape” back if necessary. Buck, a black man in his early twenties and the subject of the short story you are reading, decided he’d give the factory work a try.

Buck was a hard worker and was also in the Army during WWII, but as a cook and general laborer, not seeing much action in battle. He was overseas for a short while but his company was afforded little opportunity to distinguish themselves in battle, other than fighting pots and pans. He received a small stipend when the war ended and a free ride back home, so he returned to Bremen, Georgia, and after returning he gave a generous percentage of his “dismiss pay” to his mother. Buck made a decision to find a way to make a good living and attempt to settle down, maybe find a wife and have children, then hopefully fulfill the American dream of home ownership. Buck knew that he was not going to be able to make much money in Bremen Georgia, and he had enough “seed” money to carefully plan what his next step might be. He thought on it for a weeks time and finally decided he’d head to the city of Detroit, Michigan. He had heard that the boom meant that every man would own a new car, and spending his remaining savings purchased a train ticket and took that train to Detroit to find his way.

Buck had never been away from home for very long, save for the time he was in the Army serving his country. He’d even promised himself that when the war ended, he would never leave the south again. It was where he was born and where he’d planned on being planted when it was all said and done. He was about to break his own promise to make a way for himself. Buck was scared and excited at the same time, and he thought “it musta benn like a sho nuff  well-trained American troop puttin the cross hairs on a Nazi for the first time.” He said his goodbyes to his momma and his brothers and sisters, and then found his way the “Blacks only” train car reserved for black men and women of means. Truth was, this was still the South, and folks just didn’t allow it. When he found his seat, he remembered the whistle blowing meant he was on his way, He waved to his family and watched Bremen disappear out of sight. He was headed North to prosperity, and hopefully a new job in the automotive industry. Surely there would be a job there for a veteran, surely. Buck arrived on schedule in Detroit, and it was indeed a boom town, and bigger and louder than any city he had seen in his whole life. He went and found a small hotel in the part of town a traveling black man might be able to find a room. He gave the man at the hotel desk his ten dollars, good for five nights in the hotel, and made his way to his room. The bathrooms were down the hall, and the bed was comfortable enough, he thought. It had a small radiator heater in the room, and for Buck, this was a sight to behold as only white affluent “in-towners” had radiant heat in their houses. He had always relied on the big black pot-bellied stove located right in the middle of the four room house he and his six brothers and sister grew up in. He was as excited as the first day he got to go to the County Fair. Just seeing the radiator in his room made him feel he was in the right place. He prayed: “Oh Lawd, woucha please have mercy on ole Buck? Would you please help ole Buck finds a decent job hea up Nawth, and wouldcha pleas look afta my fambly while I is away?” Then Buck laid down on the bed, thinking he might be a guest of the President of these United States, what him having his own bed to sleep in.

He remembered having to share one bed with his three brothers growing up, and how cold the wall was when he slept against it, the wind howling and cold coming right through in the wintertime. Buck slept right slap in the middle of the hotel bed, like he’d done in the Army, remembering how the other men in his company thought him stupid when he asked how many men had to sleep in all those beds. When he was told that the bed was just for him, he quietly thought to himself it was going to be a bad joke. He said he laid awake in his bunk for three days, waiting for someone to show up and tell him they had to share a bed, but that day never came. Buck was equally excited when he was issued a pair of boots that was just his. He also struggled with the notion that one pair of shoes, any kind of shoes, might be just for him and him alone. The only thing he had to do was polish them from rough leather to shiny black, using the shoe polish issued to him by the Army, for him to keep the boots for himself. This was according to his drill instructor, a man who Buck had grown to trust, although the man hollered alot and about everything. Buck figured that the faster he’d get them shoes polished, the better chance he had of keeping them all for himself. In one week his boots were so shiny, a man could field shave in the finish. Buck even said how his drill instructor told him to quit saying “thank you” for all the free clothes, meals, and a rifle all for just marching around and saying “Yessuh Drill Sargent and Noosuh Drill Sargent!”

Buck started out early the next day and set out for the large auto plants located near the rail lines. He guessed it was good sense to put the plants near to where the materials to build them might come in (he learned that in the Army) and then be able to load the finished cars onto the trains taking them back to all points in the USA, and his hometown of Bremen. He was a happy man, feeling like he had arrived in the big city, and he anxiously hoped he might find a job in a hurry. He walked the two miles to the plants and the long line of men waiting to apply for the jobs there. Ole Buck applied to every plant from GM to Chrysler to Ford to American Motors, but none would be hiring a black man any time soon. At all of the places he applied, the folks hiring were as nice to him as he had been treated in his whole life, but as he sat, he noticed that the white men were getting jobs almost immediately. The black men, however, were placed on a waiting list and told that jobs were tight and hard to come by. Buck got down right mad about the entire situation, even told one person in charge of hiring that he had served his country just like all the white men that were getting jobs handed to them. He said it was almost like a dark curtain had dropped on him. He spent the duration of his days looking for any kind of work, even cooking or washing dishes, but no one seemed to want to hire a southern black man, even to sweep a floor for a meal.

Buck decided he was going to go home.

Back to Bremen Georgia, where he at least knew what the rules of the game were. Where he had grown up, worked all his life, and left to go into the service. It was a hard decision to finally come to as he had spent the last of his money surviving while he looked for work, so when he left Detroit, he was flat broke. He didn’t have enough money to buy a bus or a train ticket and he thought about jumping on a train car, but Buck knew he couldn’t “Hobo” on the trains, as they were populated predominantly by whites and he would be a most unwelcomed guest. After much soul-searching, Buck decided he’d just walk back to Georgia, his home, and all thing familiar. He spent the last of his money buying beef jerky, a poor mans meal when traveling. He had on his Army issued boots that fit him like a glove and were still shiny from the months and months of polishing. He decided he’d better dirty up his boots in case he ran into some disagreeable folk who might think he stole them from a man of means. It upset him to do it, but he knew he’d be more upset if he had to walk back to Georgia barefooted. He had no maps of the area or a compass, so setting out he relied only on the position of the sun as his guide. Before he left he asked the hotel clerk how far away he thought he might be from Georgia and the man behind the desk only told him “Further than I’d care to walk”. Buck took this to mean that it must have been thousands of miles. Buck said one last prayer before he left. It was “Lawd, guide my steps“. He then set out back South with just the clothes on his back and some beef jerky.

Buck walked for two days straight taking the back roads and avoiding the highways as often as he could. He had no money, and no self-respecting white man, or woman, was going to give a black man a ride regardless of if it were the South or not. When you added fact that Buck slept outdoors or in barns, and he smelled like the livestock he slept with, it made for a picture that was most unpleasant.  Buck knew the livestock he slept near was eating better than he did, and it made him recollect the “proddiggal son, eating wiff de hogs, till he got up the currage to go back to his daddy and ax him to please make him his slave“. This thought made Buck as sad as a man could be, and he was sure that no man, not even the prodigal son, was as discouraged as Buck might be. He had been walking for a good ten days and he was tired and starving. He would go to the front doors of the houses asking for food, and sometimes he’d get a biscuit or a cookie, sometimes maybe even a sandwich and something to drink and be sent on his way. This went on for weeks, according to Buck, as the walk was long and arduous. He often feared for his safety, being raised in the South and taught by his father to be on the lookout for “rapscallions” – mean folk that would take pleasure in tormenting a black man. Buck kept to the back roads and depended on the food he would get from the front doors of strangers… he longed for a hot meal, and home. Buck thought at one point, he’d ask God to just kill him dead, thinking he might not ever see his beloved Georgia again this side of Heaven. He walked one stretch for almost three days with nothing to eat and barely seeing a car. Buck thought he might even be dead already, and walking was how he was going to spend eternity. He knew he was a good man and he believed in Jesus, going down to get saved at church and getting dunked in the river, his sins washed as white  as snow. Buck thought he was a new man when he was “baptized” but he said when he got home and looked in the mirror, it was the same old Buck staring back at him. He thought he might have upset God in some strange way, and Hell for him at least, was going to be spending eternity walking, tired and hungry.

When he finally saw a house off in the distance, he was so happy he thought “he might bust open”. He decided he was going to ask the folks living there for just a little something to eat. When he opened the gate and headed up the path to the front door he was met with: “Hey, you God Damned Nigger, what in the hell do you want?” Buck heard coming from inside the screened door, but no face to go along with the voice. Buck replied “I’m hungry sir, and I’m trying to get back home to Georgia” The same voice said “Well, Hell, son, don’t you know you need to come around back?” Buck said he cut and split wood, then stacked it neatly. He was using the very last of his energy, thinking he might go ahead and die before the job was done. After the wood splitting was done and stacked, the man and woman living there fed him like a king, and even let him take a bath in the house. They gave him clothes to wear and washed his traveling clothes. He slept in the barn like a man that had never gotten to sleep before. When he woke up the next morning, he ate breakfast with the kind people there and they sent him off with provisions for the rest of his trip. He bade them farewell and didn’t ask where he might be. He thanked the man and woman one last time for their hospitality as he headed out the back door and around the house to the road. He didn’t know for sure how close he was to Georgia, and home, when he started to walk again.

Buck said he cried when he left. He knew that someone calling him ”a God Damned Nigger” meant he was close to home. He said it was like music to his ears.