Further Frayed

Somewhere along the way in 7th or 8th grade our gym coach Murph The Surf assembled us in the gym before a movie screen and showed us filmed highlights of his gridiron career as a offensive linesman for the triple A football team the Hartford Knights. It only added to our coach's mystique. He had earlier at one point won us over with awe when we clandestinely watched him, while seated in his office, smoke a Marlboro down to the filter in less than ten drags. Was that cool or what? So when he showed us his 16mm exploits we watched with rapt attention. At one point during the screening Murph The Surf let it be known that this was the play in which his leg was shattered thus ending his career and his hopes for eventual NFL glory.

Our coach had the demeanor of a well regarded uncle. He doled out discipline sparingly and kept us in line with whistle blows and an occasional shout to cut it out. During dodge ball games, easily the highlight of my years in junior high school, he wasn't opposed to taking a throw now and then at someone squirming against the far wall with bunched up thoughts of getting hit.

In 9th grade we got a new coach and his name was spelled phonetically Man-duh-noo-doe. He had a hockey background and a stare I can only describe as icy. He quickly let it be known to one and all that he would not stand for any bullshit. He was the antipathy of Murf The Surf and I did not care for him. That year even though Man-duh-noo-doe was the new football coach I tired out for the team. I had it in mind to impress my father. There was at that time in our household a rift between the two of us that seemed irreparable. And I thought that maybe, just maybe, that my showing an interest in sports might bring us closer together.

The initial thing we had to do that first day of football practice after school was run the quarter mile track four times around. I was a laggard and Man-duh-noo-doe blew his whistle at me and told me to show a little hustle. The next day when I clocked in with a particularly fast forty yard dash he scoffed at my time with disbelief and had me run it again. I ran a second time with impressive speed and the coach regarded me then in a higher light as someone with a little potential. We spent the rest of the afternoon running sprints until the end of the practice when we once again ran four times around the track.

Also trying out that day for the team was a girl in our school named Sue who had a reputation of being a whore. She said she wanted to be a Center for the football team. Man-duh-noo-doe demonstrated how a quarterback held his football waiting hands high and tight against the crotch of the Center and asked her if she was sure that was the position she wanted to try out for. She said it was. The coach gave it some thought serious or not and told her this was no place for a girl. She seemed quite disappointed, as was I'm sure our quarterback.

At this point I should tell you that through out the the practices I joked and kidded and acted as if football was just a lark. I tell you this in order to give weight to what follows. The coach put me in the center of twelve players standing in a circle. What transpired was called if I am remembering correctly, "The bull in the middle." It was an exercise in which each of the twelve players had a number and the coach called them out in no particular order and each time he did so the player with that number charge at me, the bull in the middle. Man-duh-noo-doe called out the numbers with swift speed and did so I believe to show me a lesson. The players rushed at me from all sides some times two in the course of one breath. And I experienced in those minutes in the middle an animal fear as I stood and fought for what seemed my very survival. Each player that rushed me I slung to the ground, one after another, and I found in spite myself that I had a taste for conquest if not blood. By the time Man-duh-noo-doe called an end to the exercise I was gasping for breath and grunting and ready to take on all comers and the coach had a look on his face that said, now you are mine.

Man-duh-noo-doe had a way of getting his message across. At one point in his tenure he decided to teach a lesson to a student who had fallen out of his favor. The student was blindfolded and ordered to get on his back. One kid then held his feet down and another his shoulders. Next the coach told the student on his back to try as hard as he could to do a sit up. But the kid at his shoulders firmly held him down. As he did so the coach pulled down his pants and underwear and straddled the student with his naked buttocks in the direction of the student's face. A moment later the coach called out, now, and the kid holding down the shoulders of the student let go and the straining student completed his sit up with his face winding up imbedded in the crack of the ass of coach Man-duh-noo-doe.

By the second day of training my taste for vanquishing opponents that had been whetted in me through The bull in the middle exercise waned and I was once again goofing around between wind sprints. Coach Man-duh-noo-doe spied me doing so and blew his whistle. He told me to hit the showers. I was off the team. When I got home my father asked me how was practice and I told him I'd been kicked off the team for smiling. He was not amused and the rift between us that I'd hope to mend was further frayed. It would remain so for many years to come.

A Case Of The Blues

There I was with Ronny O. We were seated on a highway guardrail somewhere along a vast uninhabited stretch of land a hundred miles from home at three in the morning on a muggy Thursday. Nearby was Ronny O's broken down beetle. The two of us were commiserating over our vehicular misfortune and also marveling at the luck of the couple who had earlier occupied the VW's back seat. They had just moments ago thumbed a ride with the very first vehicle to come along, an eighteen wheeler. Ronny O was reluctant to abandon his bug. But we were both weary and ready for bed. We gave ourselves another half hour's wait. If rescue didn't come within that time we too would stick out our thumbs. I was eager to go for I also had hanging over my head a recent ultimatum: if I missed work again or came in late without a reasonable excuse I would be fired. And there I was with less than four hours to make it under the wire at seven AM. It didn't look good. I sighed and wondered how I managed to wind up in such a predicament.

The evening had started out with such pleasant expectations. Two hundred miles from our homes at a club in rural Rhode Island, the Fabulous Thunderbirds were appearing. It was a perfect reason for a road trip. I met up with Ronny O and he introduced me to a young and enthusiastic couple who were like us fans of the blues. The four of us hopped into Ronny O's bug and headed east. Along the way Ronny O regaled us with choice selections from his vast collection of recorded blues. We bopped to the music and talked with merriment about the show ahead at a club in the hinterlands of the tiniest state in the union.

We made it to the club with a minor hitch. We'd been given faulty directions and our two hour trip had turned into three. But we made it and we paid our way in. A short time later I got some pot from Ronny O who had no papers or pipe to go along with it. I spent a frustrating twenty minutes asking every long hair patron of the club for papers. Finally I got one and I headed outside to roll up a joint. In the parking lot I leaned against a car with my head bent down and went at it. I crimped the ends of the paper and dropped in the pot. When I had it perfectly rolled I lifted my head and stuck out my tongue to lick the glue. That's when I saw the police cruiser stopped directly in front of me some four feet away. I immediately pictured myself calling my father to tell him I was in jail. The cop who was driving frowned at me and shook his head as if to say, "You dolt." I shrugged my shoulders and crumpled the joint and let the contents fall to the ground. The cop shook his head once again, "Loser," before driving off. I went back in the club.

The Fabulous Thunderbirds were hot that night. They had the club rocking until two in the morning. Afterwards we headed out into the night completely sated.

In no time at all we were lost. We wound up driving down a bumpy dirt road that paralleled the highway we wanted to be on. But we couldn't find a way to get to it. The dirt road took us deeper into the woods. We must have been on that rutted road for close to an hour before we finally found a our way to the highway. We all sighed with relief. Finally, we were headed home.

A short while later the back seat couple were whispering urgently. "What's that smell?" "It smells like something burning." A minute or two later they spoke up. "Something's not right." Ronny O turned on the interior light and we saw that the bug was full of smoke. We were on fire. The couple screamed for their lives and before Ronny O could make it to the side of the road and stop the guy of the couple tried to climb over me and get to the door. It was pandemonium inside the bug. Ronny O hopped out while the bug was still running. The rest of us scrambled out with the sheer conviction we were escaping a death trap.

We stared at the bug. It did not meet our expectations by bursting into flames. The fire was an electrical one that merely smoked as it fried the wires and made the bug inoperable. There we were stuck in an unpopulated nowhere with no help in sight. We practically had the highway to ourselves. At the approach of the first headlights in twenty minutes the couple stuck out their thumbs. And just like that they were gone.

Ronny O suggested we try jump starting the bug. We spent the next twenty minutes pushing the car and popping the clutch to no avail. Worn out and flustered we sat on the guardrail. Morning light was dawning. A police cruiser came upon us and pulled over. The cop stepped out of his car to question the two of us. As we were explaining the situation to him a car sped by and before it got twenty feet away there was an explosion. The three of us turned that way in time to see the car strike the guardrail and come to a screeching halt. The passenger door flew open and a girl scrambled out and hopped over the guardrail and lit out for parts unknown. The cop excused himself. He drove down to the car and spoke to the occupants. Minutes later the car drove off. Then so did the cop. He did not return to offer us any assistance. As for the girl her whereabouts remained a mystery. We never saw her again.

Somewhat reluctantly we stuck out our thumbs. We didn't have to wait too long. A dark low riding sedan with a metallic gurgle pulled over for us. I sat in the back. The floorboards were littered with empty beer cans and assorted trash. The driver was disheveled and in need of a shave. He spoke ominously of the dangers of the night on the open road. He gave me the willies. At one point we hit a bump in the road and he laughed and said that it was the last hitchhiker he had picked up and killed. I searched around me for an improvised weapon. Just outside of Hartford, he dropped us off with the words, "Be careful of who you ride with."

At that point Ronny and I abandoned the highway and went looking for a pay-phone to call my brother and plead that he rescue us. After a weary interlude of searching side streets in vain we stumbled upon a phone booth. I placed the call. By then I was suppose to be at work in a half hour. But I was in no condition for an eight hour shift. By the time my brother arrived and drove us home I decided I was staying put. I called into work and spoke with the manager who had given me that final warning. She listened to my tale of woe without interjecting. She then surprised me by not telling me that I was fired. Instead she told me to make sure I was not late the following morning. And my job, though far from my liking, was safe for another day. After having something to eat I retired to my bedroom where I put a Fabulous Thunderbirds album on my turntable and got into bed. With the blues playing at soft volume I drifted off to sleep.

My Flubbing Sales Pitches

Tired of manual labor I got it into my head that I was going to be a traveling salesman. Me. The guy who was most comfortable sitting alone at home in a comfortable corner with a good book. But I reasoned. Had I not a history of gracing the stage with the band Cargo Of Despair? Couldn't I call upon that nocturnal spirit of rock and roll that allowed me to entertain audiences to also dispel my day time reluctance of speaking to strangers? Sure I could. I mean how hard could it be? I was soon to find out.

My phone call to the number listed in the newspaper ad that caught my eye led to a cup of coffee and a sales pitch in a booth at the Majestic restaurant. He was a smooth talker this business suited salesman who would, he let it be known, take me under his wing and teach me how to fly from sale to sale to sale. And what I was selling he assuredly laid out was individualized adverts that bordered a give away map of my sales territory, southeastern GA. Each business that advertised on the map would get one map to display prominently in their place of business and a couple hundred others to also hand out. And just think the clincher of the sales pitch went every other business that bought an advert on the map would also be advertising your business, too. It was win win, baby.

Truth be told I wasn't all that blown away by the pitch. The map struck me as cheesy and for the price of each advert it seemed a couple hundred copies of the map in return was far away from a bargain. In hindsight I should have begged off and opted for a product I at least believed in. But I didn't. Instead I ventured onward with what would later prove to be a succession of passionless sales pitches. But first there was my tutelage.

A couple of days later I was invited to lunch with several other would be salesmen and the CEO of the company. He was this leader of men a squat little guy with a receding hairline and a gruff and raspy voice. He had the looks of a retired drill sergeant who through his bearing instilled in his charges the willingness to die for the good of the cause. He talked up the maps with utter conviction. The product he assured us would all but sell itself. Now get out there he said and close some sales. After our lunch I noticed he left a lousy tip.

The next morning I met up once again at the Majestic with the salesman who had promised to be my mentor. We hopped into his car. As we drove along rather than telling me how to sell he instead told me about how he'd once been into music and drugs. But he had found Jesus. Our CEO he assured me was also governed by the word of God. As he was telling me this and more all centered on the greatness of our lord he slowly began slouching against his door and his foot eased off the gas until he was slumped over and we were puttering along on a thoroughfare at ten miles per hour. A bleating horn snapped him out of his trance like state. He sat upright, jammed on the gas, and asked, Now where was I? A few minutes later we pulled up to a gas station and he told me to watch how it was done. He asked for the owner and when the man appeared he turned on his smile and made his pitch. His patter was friendly and inviting but he did not make a sale. From there we went to a succession of different businesses. At each stop my mentor turned up the wattage of his smile and slipped after pleasantries into his pitch. Not once did he make a sale. The following morning he had me meet him in the lobby of a hotel in down town Decatur, for one last day of training. As I was waiting for him a bloated middle-aged man had a heart attack and keeled over in the hallway leading to a restaurant on the other side of the lobby. I watched several kneeling waiters do their best to render first-aid. The following morning I was off to fend for myself, an able body salesman with my very own territory.

Donning polished shoes, crisp pressed pants, a buttoned up shirt and tie I consulted a map and set off for the outer reaches of my sales territory. I was truth be told putting off my first attempt at making a pitch. But eventually after much driving I pulled into a motel driveway, parked, and made my way inside to give it a shot. I was far from smooth, ingratiating and articulate. In short I muffed it. I got back in my car and turned up the AC. For I was for my efforts drenched in sweat. The rest of my calls that day and the several that followed were likewise unsettling affairs. None of my pitches garnered a sale.

One morning in East Atlanta, I stepped up to a building that had no sign indicating what type of business it was. After several knocks the door opened just wide enough to reveal the face of a glaring and evil looking man. I slipped into my pitch the whole time thinking there was something wrong with this picture. "I can't help you," said the man with a sinister look that seemed borrowed from the crazed antagonist in a slasher movie. I asked if him if his boss was around. By then I was thinking that behind that door was a woman dangling from a meat hook. "I told you," he said, his eyes seeming to look right through me. "I can't help you." He closed the door. The following few days I read the newspaper religiously on the look out for a story about a gruesome discovery in the bowels of a building in East Atlanta.

Some how ten days into it I managed to close a sale at a hotel owned by an Indian man named Patel. It turned out the business was outside my sales territory. So the salesman whose territory it was chalked up the sale. Not me.

After an exceedingly bad pitch the following day I stepped out of the business and raising my arms heavenward and spinning slowly around I yelled out, "I'm the worst salesman ever." Shortly thereafter my mentor had me meet him at a nearby Shake and Steak. "I want you to turn in your clipboard," he said. "And don't take it so hard. This kind of work isn't right for everyone."

One Fall Night

It was dinner time on a Friday evening in late Fall when I was fifteen. My siblings and I were gathered around the kitchen table. The mood was buoyant and the light through the kitchen window was golden with promise. The chatter between us kids was giddy with the prospects of the weekend before us. My father stood close by manning a blender. He was whipping up a second quart of mocha flavored milkshakes. I was drinking my fill because teenage logic had me convinced that a milk coated stomach enabled me to later on drink copious amounts of beer without throwing up. My mother was flipping burgers at the stove. She cooked them medium-rare and then piled them up on a serving dish. With milkshakes and burgers my parents joined us kids at the kitchen table. For some reason the usual familial stress engendered by my under age drinking and use of illegal drugs was missing that evening. There was an unspoken truce between one and all and we were in that moment in spite of our alienating differences a happy family. I ate two cheese burgers before hitting the road.

I stuck out my thumb and hitched a ride. Hitchhiking then was common place and rarely did I have to wait long before someone stopped and gave me a lift. And never once did I have a bad experience. Although a couple times I had an irksome moment or two. For instance late one night as I hitched along a lonesome stretch of road a car stopped for me and as I stepped into it the driver asked me if I was clean. Indignantly I told him I'd had a shower the previous night. "No," he said as if I were a dunce. "I mean are you armed?" He reached over and frisked me saying, "Have you got a knife or a gun?" The subsequent ride was an unnerving one. Another time also late at night as I was walking along the road and thumbing every passing car I saw a motorcycle exit a barroom parking lot. It seemed to be wobbly and just after it passed me on the opposite side of the road I heard the bike spill. I turned to see the bike bouncing down the street and the driver sprawled on the side of the road. The accident seemed like it happened in slow motion and I was laughing and I expected the driver to rise and stagger about drunkenly. But the rider did not move. It turned out that when he fell although he wore a helmet his head hit a metal post sticking out of the ground several inches. It killed him. Not right away. He died several days later. It turned out I knew the motorcyclist's cousin. And he would later tell me in an accusatory manner that his mother had had a dream in which I killed the the motorcyclist. The withering look on his face when he told me this was that of a righteous prosecutor saying to the clearly guilty party, Confess. But getting back to that Friday evening in the fall of my fifteenth year the ride was uneventful.

The driver dropped me off where I indicated at the mouth of a dirt road leading into the woods. Several hundred yards up that tree lined road friends of mine were gathered around a bonfire. I joined them there. Soon someone announced he was making a liquor run and those of us under age handed over our money and requests for six packs of tall beer cans otherwise known as kingers.

After a few beers I had a warm glow on and when Pat W. challenged me to a game in which we sat facing one another, almost touching, and punched each other in the kneecaps until one of us called it quits I obliged him. Several punches later Pat had a crazed look in his eyes and I knew that I would be the first to capitulate. But not wanting to be called a wimp however I soldiered on for several more punches until my hand was smarting along with my right kneecap. When I gave up and said you win Pat let go with a laugh that I can only describe as maniacal.

Our bonfire that night had flames six or seven feet high and after swilling a six pack I joined several guys in taking running jumps through the blaze. Somehow, perhaps beer addled, I did not jump far enough. Instead of clearing the bonfire I landed in its center. Flames and sparks shot up around me. (The next morning I woke stinking of campfire and something else burnt. I discovered upon looking in the bathroom mirror that my hair, eyebrows, eyelashes and the peach fuzz about my chin and cheeks were all singed.)

When it neared my curfew hour that night I headed off for home. Jay C. who had less than a year to live before he was murdered was likewise going in my direction. Together we tottered and stumbled the length of the dirt road. When we cleared the woods we stuck out our thumbs. But there were hardly any cars on the road. We wound up staggering along for several challenging miles. At one point we ventured off the road and into nearby tobacco fields. Soon a car was nearing our way. As the car was about to pass by we hurled solid clumps of soil and crabgrass at it. We hit the car and the driver jammed on the brakes. We took off into the safety of the fields. The driver shouted something our way that I couldn't make out. No doubt a curse or two. Several minutes later Jay and I climbed up and got atop the tobacco netting some eight feet off the ground. We were whooping and hollering and feeling invincible. But when we attempted to run across the netting we tore right through it and plummeted to the ground. The fall knocked the wind out of me.

A short time later Jay and I were back on our way home. At a fork in the road where our paths diverged we went our separate ways. Minutes later I was at my house and swaying. I tried to rouse myself into being sober before entering. It didn't work worth a damn and I fumbled getting the key in the lock. When I finally got the door open and I stepped into the glare of the kitchen light I realized just how drunk I was. But the gods were with me. My father was not waiting up for me with a lecture and a look of disdain. He was instead in the bathroom he shared with my mother getting ready for work as a third shift corrections officer. I made my way to the other bathroom to take an urgent piss. When I stepped out of the bathroom I heard my father in the kitchen readying to step out the door. I called out good night and my father replied the same. His voice I thought was flat with disapproval. He stepped out the kitchen door locking it behind him. And I staggered into my bedroom where, if my luck held out, my bed would not spin me into nausea the moment I laid my head down.

In The Clutches Of A Company Man

I'll admit I'm a day dreamer and perhaps on occasion even delusional. Take for instance the morning I saw an ad in the Atlanta Journal Constitution for a traveling portrait photographer. Right away I drifted off and saw myself as the next Annie Leibovitz with lavish photo spreads in the pages of Vanity Fair. The fact that I was lacking in any photographic skills did not damping my revelry. For the ad even said No Experience Necessary. Perhaps that part should have tipped me off and brought me back down to earth. I was not about to embark on a future directly leading to hobnobbing with the stars. Still. You never know. Even Annie had to get a start somewhere. So I answered the ad with a dash of boldness. Three days later on a Saturday I was on the road with a pro who would show me the ropes.

He had a face that reminded me of the scarecrow's in The Wizard of Oz. His hair was thin and straw-like too and he had a vocal tic in which he was constantly vocalizing eh, eh, eh as if he were clearing his throat in order to impart something important. As we traveled to our first assignment he made it abundantly clear with uncensored babbled that he was proud southerner and everything that was wrong in the country was the direct fault of the "darkies." Ever the coward and not wanting to jeopardize my job on the very first day I said nothing in return. Instead I bided my time with the thoughts I'd soon be out of his clutches.

Our first shoot was at a Florida Big Lots a couple of miles off of highway 85. We set up our camera and strobe lights and baby blue backdrop along with a stool in a space cleared out in the children's underwear and shoe isles. There was soon a milling throng eager for their moment in front of the camera. They had been lured in by the promise of a free picture. Our job as photographers was to take six different shots of each sitter. A Salesman from the company would later do his best to convince folks that each of the six photos was so wonderful that they should buy additional pictures to go along with their free one.

My tutor was professional I'll grant him that. He treated each and all regardless of race or color with courtesy and efficiency. He kept that long line moving with a calm and welcoming demeanor. I marveled at how, racist as he was, he did not let his prejudice interfere with the business at hand. He got his six shots of every sitter.

Later that night after a soggy meal at a Picadilly we retired to our shared room. My tutor pulled down the bedspread and sprayed the entire bed with disinfectant. Then he lay down under the comforter without undressing. He went to sleep still dressed head to toe in shoes and suit and tie.

The following weekend I manned the camera and marshaled the murmuring line. It was stressful and I found myself soon feeling miserable and wanting the day to end. But I soldiered on, and try as I might to keep things moving that line was soon bellyaching, What's taking so long? As each sitter or couple or family sat for me I fumbled with the camera and also the inserts that when developed placed the sitter seemingly inside a brandy snifter, or in a celestial body of stars. The line was unrelenting. And I couldn't keep up like my tutor with a bing bang boom. Both the line and I moved haltingly and I was nearly gritting my teeth every time I said Smile.

A couple of days later I was called into the office to see the results of my shots. Hardly a one was of someone honestly smiling. In frame after frame the sitter looked grim. I was told the salesman was going to have a hell of a time selling any of my work. With a verbal pat on the back however I was told that now that I'd seen the error of my ways I would no doubt do better the coming weekend.

That Saturday we were once again in a Big Lots and I was manning the camera. But my heart was not in it. I was never one to be all that gregarious to begin with and under pressure to keep things moving I sulked and became reticent. The task at hand called for a showman with zip and a smile. In other words not me. A couple of hours into it I gave up. I turned the camera over to my tutor. The next day I left the bulk of the shooting to him. I'd decided it would be my last day as a traveling portrait photographer. I spent the next few hours wandering around Big Lots and chomping down candy-bars. At the end of the day there was one the last sitting, two teenagers in cowboy hats and western wear and their mother in a floor length dress. The first shot went off without a hitch. But on the second shot when the strobe light flashed the mother went into twitching seizure and collapsed to the floor. One of the cowboys cried out, Ma. And I yelled to a salesgirl at a nearby register to call for an ambulance.

By the time it arrived the woman had regained most of her wits but she was still obviously a bit dazed. The paramedics insisted she be transported by gurney to a nearby hospital. As they were wheeling her away my tutor stepped over to her and said, "We still have four shots left to go." I bursted out laughing. In between guffaws I told him I couldn't believe what he said. He denied he said it. When I told him I'd heard him he reluctantly shook his head and confessed, "I guess in the end I'm just a company man."

Some of the old gang

Peter S had a surname easily altered into the nickname Scribbles. Like me he was at age sixteen a high school drop out. He was also likewise bereft of any ambition beyond getting stoned each morning and watching I Love Lucy and playing air guitar along with the likes of Led Zeppelin Two and Johnny Winter And. Months into our slothful revelries however we were spurred on by parental demands to go in search of jobs. We managed in doing so to get hired together at Rail Road Salvage a retailer of carpets and goods that were in deed salvaged from fires and close outs and all manner of minor catastrophes. It was the perfect job for a couple of stoners. Management was lax. For instance one employee managed each day to take a nap in a space he'd burrowed in the stacks of carpet. Somehow he was never missed. Our duties too amounted to little more than pushing brooms, tidying shelves and going out to the parking lot to retrieve shopping carts. The latter we undertook any time we felt like smoking a joint. As little demanding as the job was we lasted only a couple of weeks. Peter was fired when he caught a football that someone tossed at him after calling out his name. The manager who canned him could not be persuaded by Peter's argument that his dismissal was a gross injustice. I got canned shortly thereafter for lollygagging too long in the parking lot.

Freddy K was swarthy with a chipped front tooth and a ready grin. He had the hairstyle of a television depicted Apache. One day while he was working on a tobacco farm two older boys stripped him bare for one reason or another. Utterly naked he covered his genitalia and butt with two of the largest tobacco leaves he could pluck and took refuge on the bus that had transported him to work. Naked but for the leaves he rode the bus back to where he'd been picked up that morning. Then doing his best to keep the leaves in place he scurried through the streets to his family's apartment. Some years later Scribbles and I dropped by to pay Freddy K a visit. He was seated at the kitchen table with his stepfather who was shucking oysters and slurping them down. Egged on by Freddy his stepfather downed an entire quart bottle of Black Label beer in something like three seconds flat. A minute or so later without warning the stepfather inexplicably hurled the shucking knife with intentions it seemed to hit Freddy in the face. The knife stuck in the kitchen door with a thwack no more than two inches to the right of Freddy K's head.

Debbie D from very early on was called Debbie Depresso and she seemed forever in a sulk. One night when she was seventeen she came to after passing out from too much to drink. When she did so she found herself naked with Paul D. atop of her. And it was in this manner that she lost her virginity.

Tom C loved drugs. He imbibed whatever was available twenty four seven. When he ran afoul of the law in his early twenties he opted to join the navy to avoid imprisonment. A couple of years into his tour of duty he came home on leave. He had with him dozens upon dozens of photos taken around the world. Every photo shared a common theme: in some he was standing among marijuana plants some eight feet high, others showed him beaming while holding ounces of hash, there were photos too of mounds of cocaine and piles of variously colored pills, also included were snapshots of Tom completely wasted. After he was out of the navy he had us read his official discharge papers. They attested to his being an enthusiastic and able bodied seaman, but, it was duly noted, due to his frequent trouble with drugs he was not recommended for reenlistment. Tom really got a charge out of that.

Steve L we called Screwy Louie. One night while exceedingly drunk he managed somehow to drive himself home where he immediately passed out in his driveway. A short time later he came to and had no idea where he was. In a panic he pulled out of his driveway and sped off. He did not get far as he promptly smashed into a car parked on the street some four or five houses away. The accident shattered his jaw. In turn he had it wired shut. A couple of days later there was a gathering of friends at my parent's house where Steve tried drinking wine through a straw. When the alcohol hit the lacerations inflicted by his accident you should have heard his clamped mouth scream.

Mark D was running full bore and looking over his left shoulder when he caught the spiraling football pass. The very next second as he turned to look in the direction he was running he smacked head first into a solid tree some some eight feet in circumference. The impact sounded like the mighty crack of a bat when a slugger puts one out of the ball park. For the next several minutes Mark lay sprawled on the ground frothing at the mouth and biting his tongue.

John W who was tall and passive and good natured to boot had a terrible car accident that altered his personality ever after. Post collision he took to carrying an eight inch long serrated steak knife that he called Little Johnny. Over the ensuing years he brandished the weapon ad nauseam without provocation. The look on his face when he did so was a fright mask of seething dementia.

Steve S was another guy who really loved drugs. One bright and sunny day I happened to see him on the opposite side of the road as I drove by. He had the look of the utterly lost with his mouth agape and his eyes bulging out. Later that night I saw him at our usual partying spot in the woods. He still looked disturbed. As best as he could in his addled state he told us how he'd gone to court that morning after swallowing enough animal tranquilizer to dope a dozen people. All he could remember of that morning's proceedings was the judge's mouth moving. He had no idea what the judge said. Some years later Steve died of exposure after passing out on downers one frigid night in those very same woods.

Working Tobacco

My adolescent peers and I rose before dawn and stepped from our homes with our brown paper bagged lunches and rallied in the parking lot of a nearby gas station. A short wait later a dull green bus arrived and the more rambunctious of us boarded while jeering one another to hurry up. The driver was a weather ruined old codger wearing a blue sweat lined baseball cap. He told everyone to settle down and we were soon on our way to the tobacco fields of a nearby town where we would with Hollywood derived antebellum visions of slavery labor away at what we called "Working Toblacko."

This was in 1969, when I was twelve and shade grown tobacco was still a viable product of New England. At that time you would see acre upon acre of tobacco plants protected from the sun by off white netting some eight feet high. (Four years later under a luminous moon while drunk and stoned two friends and I attempted to run atop the netting. Every three or four feet we fell through and smashed to the ground. Bruised and delirious we laughed it off and climbed back up to try it again.)

On the ride to the field that morning I barely spoke. I was at that time in my life not given to carousing. Instead I stared out the window as the sun rose and gave shape to the world.

The bus pulled off the paved road and ambled down a dirt one between two different fields protected by nets. We came to a halt. The driver told us to leave our lunches on our seats. As we stepped off the bus a field hand asked our names and wrote them down on a sheet of paper affixed to a clipboard. Once we were all off the bus the field hand explained that we were to remove the small leaves called suckers from the tobacco plants and put them in the baskets that each one of us was going to be outfitted with. The baskets were canvas and metal affairs three feet long by two feet wide and two feet deep. We were to pull them behind us with a four feet long wire a quarter of an inch thick. It had a hoop handle at one end and a hook at the other.

We were then led by the field hand to the rows of plants. There was a gully between each row. I was instructed by the field hand to get down on my butt in the gully I'd been led to and scoot backwards while dragging my basket behind me. I was to fill it with the suckers I pulled off of the plants on either side of me. He told me to pick all the way down to the white pole. Then he walked off. I looked at the plants at either side of me and I realized at once that I was in trouble. Every leaf looked relatively the same size to me.

All around me my cohorts went at it, hooting and hollering at one another as they advanced dutifully backwards down the rows. I did not know what to do. I sat there stymied.

After a spell I reasoned I'd pull off the the lowest two leaves on each plant. I went at it slow and deliberate while fearing at any moment the field hand would return and berate me for screwing up. As I went at it the voices of my cohorts loss their volume and seemed further and further away. I'd been at it a good half hour when I turned around to see how much further I had to go. Some fifty yards away was a pole with a white stripe around it. A hundred yards beyond that was a pole painted entirely white. I hoped the white striped pole was where I was suppose to stop. I picked on.

By the time I reached the white striped pole I couldn't hear my fellow pickers at all. There was no one near to ask if this was as far as I should go. I sat there and poked at the earth. I just couldn't figure out what to do. I don't know how much time passed but suddenly the field hand barked, "What the hell do you think you're doing?" Before I could say anything he said, "Sitting on your ass is what I see. And we ain't paying you to sit on your ass. Now get out of there and get back on the bus. You're fired."

I got on the bus and the old codger got behind the wheel and drove me back to the gas station. On the ride there I hung my head and wondered how I was going to explain to my father that on my first job outside of being a paperboy I'd gotten fired in under an hour.

When I got home my father reacted in a way that he would do so for some years to come by giving voice to an oft repeated lament. What are we going to do with you? My mother ever the comforter told me not to worry. There would be other jobs. History would prove that to be an understatement. For over the proceeding years I would quit or be fired from a seemingly unending succession of jobs. But none would end so quickly as my stint in the fields of tobacco.