This one time at band camp...

Okay, so I never went to band camp but I am loving the hell out of the book Camp Camp, which I bought a week or so ago for a buck. It's a loose collections of photos and former campers remembrances of camp. Most of the campers went to fancy camps in the northeast where they stayed for over a month and most of the campers interviewed for this book went to camp during the 1980's and early '90's, which was well after my camp years. But the thing about sleep away camp is that it's universal, those who went through it can smile and nod and appreciate the reminiscences of others because we all went through pretty much the same thing no matter if the camp we went to was for Methodist kids, Jewish kids, or what have you. And of course as I read this book I think back on my own camp experiences.

When I was in 8th grade I took Agriculture in school and since I took Ag, I was automatically enrolled in FFA, that's Future Farmers of America for those of you out of the loop. The only reason I took Ag was I was drunk with the power to finally choose my own classes and I chose it because it was a choice that I knew would make people scratch their heads and wonder what was wrong with me.

Anyhoo, after a year of barely understanding my teachers accent (I was still new to the south back then and I had a hard time understanding the slurred slow accents I was hearing), making wooden toolboxes, learning about tractors, and taking field trips to the stock yard to see cattle auctions I was finally rewarded for my troubles with a trip to FFA camp.

FFA camp was a week long affair and it was held in Virgina Beach, VA. It was the closest I would get to the Atlantic ocean for the first time in my life but oddly enough, they would not let us go to the beach. However, we did get to go to Busch Gardens which was totally cool even though I could not take advantage of the free beer they gave out on the tour of the brewery. I recall playing softball and being made captain of the team by some fucking smart ass hippie who thought he was being funny by making the skinny pale blonde kid with huge black horn rimmed glasses team captain. We also got to see some schlocky outdoor historical drama that I remember hating.

The other thing I hated about FFA camp was that I ran out of spending money on the last day. So it looked like I was not going to be able to eat anything on the long ride home because the plan was to stop and eat fast food on our 8 hour ride west back to Lee county. It was decided that our teacher and chaperon, a slack jawed hick named Cecil Clendenon, would loan me $10 so I could eat and that I would pay him back as soon as possible. Which was fine except that I had no way to pay him back because I had no job and was dependent on my crazy aunt and sorry ass uncle for cash. When he loaned me the ten bucks Clendenon told me that I would not be allowed to graduate from high school until I paid him back, which suited me fine since that gave me four years to pay his dumb ass back. He reminded me once again before I got off the bus to go home and he kept reminding me for months and months once school started back again that fall. He'd say something about that ten bucks every time I saw him in the hall. I finally paid him back after I got paid a pittance for helping someone put up hay. I saw him in the hall and as soon as he opened his yap to tell me he'd make sure I didn't graduate until I paid him back, I tossed ten one dollar bills at his feet and I said, "There you go, now we're even. I guess this means I'll get to graduate in three years, huh." We never spoke another word to one another ever again.

The above building is the kitchen/mess hall at the United Methodist Youth camp in Fort Blackmore, VA. I did a couple of summers there while in middle school. It wasn't bad except for the fact that I had to attend at the same time as my awful cousins did. And to make matters even worse, one year Cousin Smart Ass was a counselor and I was assigned to be in his group.

We did things like arts and crafts, play sports, listen to the fairy tales about Jesus and God, ate shitty food, went swimming, broke into small groups and got told how much Jesus loved us, and were forced to sing and pray around campfires.

Of course what we really did was ogle the girls, make rude jokes, accuse other male campers of being gay, tried to avoid being picked on, played pranks on each other, and come up with rude nicknames for the emotionally stunted adults who ran the place. I remember one horrible woman who had religion stuck so far up her ass it came out her mouth. She was married to some developmentally disabled man and we were all supposed to fawn over how wonderful and great she was for marrying a guy who drooled and had the social skills of a ten year old. She wore far too much make up, laughed too loud, sang too loud, loved Jesus a little too much, and she generally annoyed all us adolescent kids who wanted nothing more than to be left alone so we could figure out what was happening to our bodies as puberty struck us upside the heads. We all banded together as one in our hatred of this woman and we dubbed her Liver Lips, although I'm pretty sure I was the only one who had the guts to call her that to her face. And I recall she slapped me across my face for calling her that, in those days one could do that sort of thing and not worry about getting sued.

My crowning achievement, other than getting slapped by that horrid painted Amazon, was winning third place in the diving competition. My cousins snickered as I took to the diving board and I recall Cousin Psycho telling the preachers hot daughter, Karen Kirk, that I would surely suck at diving because I had a smaller penis than he did, which creeped me out because that meant he was looking at my young dick when we changed out of our bathing suits after swimming. I put his crazy comments out of my mind and I put all my energy and focus into that dive and lo and behold when I came up for air after I did it, other campers applauded me. I beamed when it was announced I finished third and Cousin Psycho didn't win anything. He glared at me the rest of the night and when it was lights out in the cabin later he was telling anyone who would listen to him that I was gay and a fruit for making a such a good dive.

The best times at camp were the times where my cousins weren't around and I could just be myself. I got to do that at yearbook camp and MYF (Methodist Youth Fellowship) camp, both of which were held on the campus of Emory & Henry College in Emory, VA.

MYF camp was different from the camp at Fort Blackmore in that only teens in high school got to go to MYF camp. And for some reason I got to go to MYF camp alone for two years straight, which suited me just fine.

One summer I went was also the summer I got to go to the UN in NYC. MYF camp came after the NYC trip and while at MYF camp I got not one but two letters from girls I had spent time with on the NYC trip. They were two girls from Maine who I had befriended and both sent me photos of themselves in their letters. Once word got out that I, a 98 pound weakling, a pale smart ass with huge black horned rimmed glasses had gotten not one but two letters from two super cute chicks from out of state, I became a rock star to those other kids. They laughed harder at my jokes, saved seats for me in the dining hall, and some actually looked up to me. It was mind blowing because in reality I was actually shy around girls and was probably the biggest geek in that camp.

It was in MYF camp that I met my once and future friend Mullins. He was a loud mouthed braggy kid with a a good right arm, while his left arm was a stub. It was half the size of his right arm and it had a few deformed fingers on the end of it. For some reason, the second we saw each other we hit it off. While playing cards one day during a break from having to count our blessings that we were living in the USA where we were free to praise Jesus all the live long day, I put on one of those Aussie cowboy hats that belonged to another kid. Mullins took one look at me in that hat and he said, "You look like a god damn prairie dog in that stupid hat." Everybody in the room cracked up and for the rest of the week everybody, even the girls and camp counselors, called me 'Prairie Dog.'

Flash forward to a couple of years later to when I got to King College. Imagine my shock when I run into my old MYF camp buddy Mullins. Of course we remembered each other and of course he told everyone to call me 'Prairie Dog.' King was a small school back then, it's grown considerably since I left, and my nickname spread like wildfire. I'd be willing to be there are people I went to college with who have no recollection of my real name but who would instantly remember me if you told them my nickname.

Yearbook camp was also held at Emory & Henry and I got to go for two years straight. The first year I learned the nuts and bolts of making a yearbook and I had some fun as well. The second year was much different because in between those years I had discovered that I liked to smoke pot and drink beer. I made the mistake of taking a bag of weed with me to camp and I befriended a kid from Big Stone Gap, another little town in SW VA, and he and I got stoned a lot together. Basically, he and I made it our mission to ditch the work and to get stoned as much as possible. I'm sure we both showed up at work session reeking of pot but somehow we never got caught, although I do remember hearing whispers saying that I was some kind of drug dealer/superduper pothead.

There was another camp I went to in the late '70's, I'm not sure what the real name of it was, we always called it Horse Hollow Camp. It was a religious camp run by a flock of Minnesotans who had made their way south one day when the snow melted. They brought with them a strange hybrid Pentecostal/evangelical/Lutheran faith and they did their best to ram it down our young throats.

These odd Minnesotans would rouse us at dawn, march us into the dining hall, feed us, make us clean up en mass, and then they marched us into the tiny church on the camp property. They'd harangue us all morning with their Christian fairy tales, stories about how persecuted Christians were, how the Soviet Union was the devil, how we needed to go to places like Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and the Ukraine and win souls to Jesus. After lunch we were allowed to play sports like tetherball, softball, basketball, and whatever other kind ball sport they could think of. Then after supper it was back to church so we could hear more about how much the Lord loved us but only when we obeyed him. They'd bring in preachers who would work themselves into a frenzy of salvation and the weak kids would start crying, speaking in gibberish, which led them to turn their lives over to Jesus. The devout girls would sit and dream of dating Jesus but if you broke one off from the herd she might let you feel her boob in the woods or if you got really lucky, she might give you a hand job if you promised to turn your life over to Jesus at the next altar call.

The last night at Horse Hollow Camp was the big night of the week. It was the big bonfire, or as they called it, the Fagot Fire Night. Everyone was encouraged to toss a fagot, a small log, onto the bonfire and to give your testimony as you did it. The hope was as the fire grew, the lives dedicated to Christ would grow as well. For me, it was the most embarrassing night of the week. And I wasn't embarrassed for me because there was no way in hell I was going to toss a log on that fire or stand up and claim that I was giving my life to Christ, I was embarrassed for those who did stand up and do that shit. I hated the ostentatious shows of piety and the holy roller crap, but I didn't mind the stolen kisses or the odd girl grope.

Creepy house of the week

This house is down the hill and about 150 yards from our old farm in Lee County, VA. Before we built the house we lived in from 1975 through 1980 we stored a bunch of our furniture and other stuff in this house. And yes, at that time it was occupied. An old spinster lived there with her nephew. Now that I think back about that house and about them, there was something a bit Dickensian about them and that old house. I imagine it was really something back in the days when it was first built.

A very special barn of the week

This barn is the barn on the farm in Lee County, Virginia where I lived from 1974 to 1980. We put up a lot of hay, cured a lot of tobacco, smoked a lot of marijuana and cigarettes, and drank a lot of cheap beer and Boone's Farm wine in and around that old barn in back in those days.

And now, here's a tale from my misspent youth:

Click to enlarge.

Sorry about the last panel, I'm still experimenting with adding text in the boxes.

All illustrations are copyrighted by the original artists.

For an old school nerd like me, this picture oozes awesome

Found on Boing Boing.

Picky

The fact that I love to cook is a minor miracle, but the fact that I eat as wide a variety of food as I do is an even bigger miracle. I had two strikes against me from the beginning, the first was my mother couldn't cook to save her life and my crazy Aunt Rageaholic used to use threats, intimidation, and physical violence against me to try to make me eat the foods she wanted me to eat when I was a kid.

I'm not sure why my mom was such a lousy cook but back then I didn't care. We didn't go hungry or anything, we just ate a lot of bad foods and convenience foods, it was the dawn of the convenience food era after all. Mom would cook that abomination called 'city chicken,' which was actually veal, as I've written about before, and she'd cook a lot of things like hot dogs, instant mashed potatoes, TV dinners, and lots of things that came out of tin cans. I remember eating lots of canned pudding, I used to love the lemon and butterscotch flavors, tamales in a can, salami and liver loaf sandwiches, sugar sweetened cold cereals, and store brand Twinkies, which were called 'Tiger Tails.' And of course we'd wash all that down with Coke, Kool Aid, and whatever store brand drinks were on sale. I'm guessing that having to look after five rambunctious kids and a mentally ill husband sapped her energy so much that she just took the quickest way possible to fill our always hungry bellies.

About the only fresh thing I remember eating was lettuce. Fruit, not so much. Back then I didn't know any better and I didn't care. I loved eating all that store bought crap and I loved it even more when we got to eat out at McDonald's or A&W.

Don't get me wrong I loved my mom dearly but she really didn't do me any favors in teaching me how and what to eat. She indulged us a bit too much and it was during that period of my life where I began to develop my bad eating habits.

But if my mom indulged us, my crazy aunt went in the other direction, which was just as bad if not worse. Since I went the first ten years of my life eating crap I had no idea what to make of the stuff my aunt made and forced us to eat when we moved in with her and her family after mom died. Suddenly I was confronted with a bevy of weird and strange looking foods. I had seen tomatoes in the grocery store but I had never seen one sliced up and put on my plate. I had had salad a few times at my Aunt Carol's house but when we moved out to the farm in Howell we had it every night and it was drenched in oil and vinegar, two liquids I had never seen or tasted before. Other foods I came into contact with at Aunt Rageaholic's house that I had never eaten before were easy over eggs, fritters, stuffed cabbage, stuffed peppers, fried chicken, parsnips, turnips, stewed greens, fried okra, perogies, beef tongue, liver and onions, and many more. And it was there that I was confronted with the food that made, and still makes me, gag and vomit, the cooked carrot.

What my crazy aunt should have done was let me come to these new foods on my terms and on my time, if I didn't like what she made for lunch or supper then I could have just not eaten it and gone hungry, but that wasn't her way. She lived for and loved to control people, that was her sole purpose in life, to control and dominate others, especially small children. She was one of those people who loved having a big family because having a big family gave her more people to control. And she was not shy about doing it either.

When she ran into a kid, mostly me, who did not like something she cooked she'd shriek, "You don't have to like it, you just have to eat it." My brothers and sister were old enough to appreciate all those new foods, I wasn't. I was a picky eater. I didn't want real mashed potatoes, I wanted those flake potatoes that came from a box. I didn't want fresh tomatoes, I wanted ketchup. And I especially didn't want cooked carrots because as I said before they made me vomit. But that didn't matter to my aunt. What mattered was that I bent to her will and that I did what she told me to do.

The Sunday morning ritual back then, and for many years hence, was before we all left for church, and she made sure we all went to church so everyone could see what a great Christian she was for having taken in me and my siblings, she would sear a pot roast, peel carrots and potatoes, and put all that stuff in a big pot. She'd leave it cooking on low while were in church and by the time we got home it would be done. Then she'd make a salad and we'd have a big meal around one o'clock most every Sunday. I'd eat the meat, the potatoes, and the salad but every week I would not eat the carrots. And every week she'd scream at me for not eating them. Some weeks she'd slap me for not eating them and some weeks she hit me, or get Uncle Adultery to hit me, with a belt to try to make me eat those vile fucking carrots. Some weeks I'd chop them up into tiny pieces and move them around on my plate to make it look like they were gone and some weeks I'd hide them in my napkin and toss it away before she knew what was happening. And most every week one or more of my cousins, her biological kids, would remind her that I had not eaten my carrots. They took perverse pleasure in seeing me get hit, screamed at, and abused for not eating something that made me throw up.

The Sunday meal that made me hate cooked carrots, my cousins, and my crazy aunt.

But all her bullying went for naught. I never ate those cooked carrots. No matter how loudly she screamed, no matter how many times she slapped me, no matter how many times she hit me with a belt, no matter how many times her kids snitched on me, I never ate those fucking slimy things. I still don't eat them to this day.

Back before my heart attack when I still would go around her and her family they would make references to me not eating cooked carrots. They would call those references 'carrot jokes,' as in, "Hey make sure he gets an extra helping of carrots with his meal!" And they'd all laugh uproariously, and point at me. To them it was a joke, to me it was a reminder of how I grew up a third class citizen in what was supposed to be my home. After my cardiologist told me to reduce stress levels in all areas of my life in the wake of my heart attack five years ago I cut my crazy aunt and her kids out of my life because every time I saw or was around them they'd bring up cooked carrots and other stupid stuff from my childhood. My life has been much more peaceful and good without them in it.

But happily I didn't let my bad experiences with food scar me for life. I've grown to love fresh fruit and vegetables, mostly because my girlfriend Sparky was patient with me when we got together and she introduced eating fresh tasty food to my lifeless diet. And I've also grown to love cooking with fresh ingredients.

So if you have kids who are picky eaters now, whatever you do, don't hit them or sceam at them to try to get them to eat whatever foods ghey won't eat right now. Nine time out of ten they'll grow out of being picky and they'll learn to eat and appreciate a wide variety of foods. Being the stirct unyielding parent bent on dominating them to your will will only fuck them up in the long run. Trust me on this one, even though I don't have kids I know what I'm talking about.

I was a teenage sex symbol

It's been awhile since I regaled all of you with a story from my sordid past so I thought I'd share two tales of my awesome teenage sex appeal with you.

I lived in the world's worst area to be a teenager, Lee County, VA. Lee County was, and probably still is, extremely boring. Sure, it's fine if you're a farmer, a prison guard (they recently built a federal prison there), or if you just love being stuck in a county where the big entertainment is jeering at homosexuals and going to yet another revival at yet another Christian cult church. I lived in Lee County from 1974 to 1980 and if it hadn't been for smoking pot, sneaking beers and cheap wine when we did, and reading Rolling Stone and Time magazine to find out what was going on in the outside world then I would have gone bat shit insane.

I lived on Aunt Rageholic and Uncle Adultery's farm which was located about a half hour outside of town. And when I say town I mean Jonesville. And the thing you need to know about Jonesville is that it's literally a one horse town. It's tiny. It has one stoplight and it's not even a regular traffic light, it's a flashing red light in the middle of town. There's not much to do in Jonesville if you're a rambunctious curious teenager with a zest for living. Most of my free time back then was spent on the farm, I was stuck there because I did not drive, some day I'll share that saga with you, and because Aunt Rageholic ruled things with an iron fist and most of the time I was forced to stay at home during expeditions into town. Even though we always had a station wagon or a big ol' Chevy Surburban there was no room for me in either vehicle when there was house work to be done and there was always housework to be done, he said while rolling his eyes.

On the rare occasions when I was allowed to go into town one of the places I always went was the pool hall. It was an old timey pool hall with a bunch of pool tables and pinball machines, this was pre arcade style video game era. The pool hall was managed by a mildly retarded man everyone called Bear.Bear was in his mid 40's/early 50's during this time period. He not only was mildly retarded, he had a speech impediment which stemmed from an early childhood accident. When I say Bear managed the place, what he really did was just open the doors in the morning, make change all day long, swept up the place, turned on the lights when it got dark, picked up trash, and closed the doors and locked the doors at night. He lived in a tiny room in the back of the place.

The other thing about Bear was he was gay. And for some reason I caught his fancy. Crazy, I know. He loved to smile and wink at me, well more like leer and lick his lips at me when ever I happened to catch him checking me out. In fairness to him I was pretty hot. Here's my senior year picture:Back off ladies, I'm taken.

Anyhoo, I'd be playing pinball or shooting pool and Bear would waddle, he was a shade over weight, over to me and whistle and leer at me. I used to use a lot of body English while playing those old school pinball games and he would stand behind me and say things like, "I like the way you shake your ass boy," although due to his speech impediment it would sound like he was saying, "I lak de way oo shake oor ahh bo." He'd also tell me all the time that he'd even pay me for a piece. He'd say, "I'll give you five dollars for a piece of ass boy," which actually sounded like, "Five da pi ahh bo."

It all creeped me out. I had to push him away from me several times when he invaded my personal space. He'd laugh and make kissey faces at me and I'd gag at the thought of him touching me and at the urine smell he exuded. Eventually I quit going in there because of him and his constant unwanted attention.

But it turns out that Bear wasn't the only guy in town who wanted me. There was a guy in my small high school who always wanted to be my buddy but I just didn't like him. It was one of those things where he and I didn't have much in common and we were into different things, so no matter how much he wanted it, I wasn't going to hang out with him or be his BFF.

I got a vibe off him that he wanted to be more than just my friend and on graduation night he made a clumsy move on me, which in retrospect I'm not sure why he did because even though I didn't have a girlfriend, it was screamingly obvious I was into girls. Anyway, on the night of our graduation there were four or five parties going on in town and I was determined to hang out all night and go to all of them if I could. The guy in question was at a party at someone's house, I forget who's it was now, but as the night progressed he got drunker and he became agressive towards me. Him and a few of his friends surrounded me in a dark room and he grabbed me and he began pusing his dick on me, we were all fully clothed but really really stoned and drunk. He was passing what he was doing off as being funny, but as I was telling him to stop he got rougher and at one point he had his buddies hold my arms while he gyrated on me. He was laughing and I could feel him trying to undo my pants and I finally yelled atthe top of my lungs, "Get your hands and your dick off me Mark. This isn't funny! I don't fucking like it!" He hissed in my ear, "Shut up!" I had to yell again and finally he got off me and his buddies let my arms go. As soon as they did I pushed him against the wall and I left for another party with some friends.

When I got to the other party Mark and his posse showed up about an hour later and he began telling people that I took his joke the wrong way and that I was a sissy for yelling and for not laughing and playing along. I was still pissed about what had went down and when I heard him say that shit I wanted to kick his ass but he was much bigger than I was and he would have wiped the floor with me and he would have gotten off while doing it. So when I saw him sit down near the fire, this party was outside in a field, I walked over and I "tripped" on a non existent rock which caused me to dump the two beers I was holding all over him. He jumped up and cussed at me but since there were so many people around he didn't dare hit me. He did say he was going to kick my sissy ass the next time he saw me but as luck would have it we moved out of Jonesville the next day and I never saw him or Bear again.

Hold the Mint Julep, I think I'll sit this one out

This time of year when the Kenutcky Derby and high school prom season rolls around is forever bittersweet for me.

When I was in college the end of the academic year coincided with the running of the Kentucky Derby and the end of the academic year meant that I had to go back to my crazy aunt's house because I was too poor to afford a place of my own. I didn't mind that it also meant that I'd have to find a summer job, I liked working summer jobs, I hated the rest of the shit that surrounded living with my crazy aunt.

There was one summer however when I broke from the cycle of craziness. The campus bookstore was run by a friend of mine's mom. Her next door neighbor was a ninety something year old man who was slipping into the waters of Alzheimer's disease and she thought it would be nice if I moved in with the old guy to kind of keep an eye on him and his family agreed as well. So I moved in his house the day school let out and I scored a couple of part time jobs on campus as well.

It was pretty easy livin' at Mr. Sam's house, that was what everybody called the old man. I came and went as I pleased and I looked in on him when my friend's mom couldn't. The campus jobs quickly petered but I found a killer job working in the local AAA office. I made Triptiks and answered phones all summer, I loved that job. I was also a huge pot head at that time and wacky weed was $40 an ounce back then and since I was living in Mr. Sam's pad for free you can imagine how much weed I went through that summer. And cheap beer too.

It wasn't all fun and games however. Mr. Sam got worse as the summer progressed and by the middle of July he was pretty much a danger to himself and to everyone else. He was forgetful, he'd turn on the stove and leave it. He could hardly remember who anyone was any more, and he barely knew who I was to begin with. He was also having bathroom troubles too, he'd get confused and think the toilet was behind any door he opened, one morning I woke up and he was peeing in the doorway of my bedroom. Since he was a World War 1 veteran, I told you he was old, he was on a waiting list to get into the local VA hospital and finally a spot came open for him in late July. His son was nice enough to let me stay the rest of the summer in his dad's house which was pretty freakin' keen. I was respectful about their property though, I didn't have any wild parties but I did party like a wild man while I was there if you know what I mean. That was the best summer I had while in college.

I had bad luck with proms and formals when I was in high school and college so seeing all the young fresh faced kids going out during prom season brings back some of those bad memories. I'm happy for the kids and I hope none of the guys ever had to go through what I endured in some of my proms and formals.

You think I'm being dramatic or exaggerating don't you? Here's the short run down of my shitty prom/formal experiences:

• My date dumped me for another guy at the prom when I was a junior in high school. Maybe my choice of a powder blue tuxedo drove her to it, or perhaps it was the fact that I was petrified to make a pass at her.
• I got dumped at my senior prom too even though I was the picture of 1979 hip in my white tux.
• My string of getting dumped at formal events continued on in to my college years. My date at the fall formal dumped me as soon as we hit the after party. The guy she dumped me for, a hulking basketball player, never made it past our freshman year, he flunked out. I found out a few years ago he was facing some pretty serious drug charges and he opted to commit suicide rather than serve prison time.
• I stopped going to formals while in college after my freshman year but by my senior year I gave it one last try. The fall formal went well but the the spring formal was a disaster. The girl I took was really cute and I was as charming and gentlemanly as I could be and I believed I might at least get to make out with her at the end of the night but it all went sour when the DJ played Van Halen's 'Jump' at about 11:15 PM. Everybody jumped when David Lee Roth sang, "Might as well jump!" On one of my jumps I came down on the hem of my date's dress which made the top of her strapless dress come down, her boobs were exposed for a millisecond and even though she was wearing a bra, she was mortified. She would not speak to me the rest of the night even though I apologized profusely. She sat next to me in the back seat on the ride back to the dorms, we double dated with some friends, and it was like sitting next to an iceberg being next to her. I walked her to the main door, opened it, and then she stormed through it and she slammed it in my face.

I'm glad I never have to go to another prom. And that I can finally enjoy the Kentucky Derby without worrying about where I am going to spend the summer. Ahhhhh, sometimes I love being a grown up.

The most expensive thing in the world

Growing up as poor as I did when I lived in Detroit before my Mom died I never learned much about how to handle money. We never had much of it and when we did get some it usually went out as fast as it came in. Mom handled all the money and she never said much to us about how to make it, save it, or how to spend it wisely.

Since we lived in the projects and were on welfare, got food stamps, and had Medicaid, I was pretty clueless as to how it all came in and what it went out for. All I knew was the at the first of the month we ate like kings and Mom was a little less tense than she would be at the end of the month when things were really tight. I only remember her saying something to us one about our lack of money once, when I asked why didn't we have any of the "good" cereal left, I was probably referring to the lack of sugary sweet Quisp or Cap'n Crunch, she said we were out because we kids had ate it all and she couldn't afford to buy anything but the cheap-o store brand. Somehow she ran the house and paid all the bills and took care of five rambunctious kids and my Dad, when he was not in the mental hospital that is.

When things got extra tight I remember going to eat at Grandma's house a bunch of times, she only lived a few blocks from us but to me it seemed like it was a world away because she didn't live in the projects. Also there were times when my Uncle Bob would take us kids out and also my Uncle Jerry would as well, I suspect they did it at her behest more to save her sanity than to make sure that we'd be fed. And there would be the odd time when we'd be sent off to my Aunt Carol's house for supper or to spend the night, this happened most of the time around the end of the month when the food stamps had run out and Mom's wallet was thin from lack of funds.

I didn't know I was missing out on anything, on one level I knew other people had more money and a better looking house than we did but I just figured everyone ate the same kinds of stuff we did, lots of processed foods, cheese pizzas, hot dogs wrapped in slices of white bread, store brand Twinkies, canned pudding, and other stuff that would put a scare into a modern day nutritionist. Mom kept our ship afloat but she couldn't cook worth a damn. I was almost 10 before I had a salad and I remember asking my cousins what this magical thing called "steak" was.

Mom kept our financial problems close to her vest and she kept good food out of our reach because she didn't have the knack for cooking so we ate a lot of crap food. Her one big dish was an abomination called "city chicken." Dad, when he was home and lucid, would ask, "What's for dinner?" Then I'd hear those words that chilled me to my little core, "City chicken." I hated that shit with a passion, I hated it almost as much as I hated canned asparagus, beets, cooked carrots, and Veg-All. It was many years before I found out what "city chicken" was, it turned out it was veal that was cut into chunks, rolled in bread crumbs, shoved onto skewers, and then fried with in an inch of it's life. Upon hearing that we'd be having city chicken yet again dad would say, "Ohh, goody!" And when I heard him say that I would wish that he were back in the hospital getting some Edison medicine (electro-shock treatment) or having a Coke with a Thorazine chaser. I loved my Mom and my Dad but city chicken night after night was cruel and unusual punishment for crimes I had no idea that I even committed.

But things changed all the way around for me when Mom passed away and we got sent to live with Aunt Rageaholic and Uncle Adultery.

They were more open about money but in a nutty way. They both were kids when the Great Depression hit and they both grew up dirt poor and it affected them adversely, my aunt more so than my uncle. She was, and still is, the type of person who never has enough money and there is always, always, always a financial crisis in her life. She would bitch and moan about not having enough money when I knew damn well she had cash in her purse and money in the bank, but it was never enough. She got money for being our parental guardian but she never told us about it, she would just tell us that we were one step out of the poor house and that we were lucky to have a roof over our ungrateful heads.

After my mother was killed on the operating table my mentally ill father was the only one in the family to have the presence of mind to sue the doctors and the hospital where she died. The case dragged on for years and no one knew about it until one day we got a call to come back up north, we had been moved south by this time, the mid 1970's, so we could all sign the settlement and us kids could collect our share of the malpractice settlement. We went back to Detroit, and all the way up Aunt Rageholic bitched about how much the trip was costing her, and we signed the papers and we got our money.

All of us kids, my two brothers and my sister and I, got $10,000. My Dad got the same amount as well. I was under 18 at the time and my money was supposed to be put into the bank for safekeeping. But things didn't turn out that way. My nutty angry aunt decided she needed my money to keep her failing restaurant afloat so she took it. I got to spend maybe $500 dollars of it, the rest vanished in the black hole of her soon to be belly up restaurant. Had I had that money I would not have had to take out any student loans when I got to college but alas the best laid plans oft go astray when one is related to a greedy woman who has no compunction about taking a minor's money from a malpractice suit and spending it on a failing business.

But before all that happened I learned from Aunt Rageaholic about the most expensive thing in the world. She taught me about this thing in small doses. As a way to justify not letting us eat an extra slice of bacon she'd say, "No, you can't have more bacon because pound for pound it's more expensive than fee-lay min-yon. One slice of bacon is enough for you." When we'd ask for more than a thimbleful of orange juice at breakfast she deny us by saying, "Ounce for ounce orange juice is more expensive than fee-lay min-yon." If we wanted to go to McDonald's while out and about in the city she say, "Oh no. Fast food is more expensive than fee-lay min-yon."

With the limited background I had, I had no idea what fee-lay min-yon was. I figured it was like diamonds or gold or something. I figured it had to be the most precious, most expensive thing in the world if it my aunt kept going on about it. After all she knew way more than I did about money than I did. I figured there had to be fee-lay min-yon mines somewhere and that it was traded on the stock exchange and maybe it even backed our currency like gold did at one point.

One rare night when I was a teenager I got to stay over at a friend's house and he and I were talking before we went to sleep. We chatted about girls, Spiderman comic books, girls, wrasslers, school, girls, cars, girls, and then we got onto the subject of what kind of house would we live in when we finally became rich and famous. He said he'd live in a castle like the royal family in England did and I said that I was going to live in a house made out of the most expensive thing in the world, fee-lay min-yon. My friend split his sides laughing at me and when I asked why he was laughing so much he said that only an idiot would live in a house made of meat.

I said fee-lay min-yon wasn't meat it was something rare and precious. He got up and told me to follow him. We walked to his parents kitchen and he reached in to their freezer and he pulled out a small cut of beef that was wrapped in bacon. On the package it said, "Fillet Mignon." As my face got hot with embarrassment I made a silent vow to myself to be suspicious of everything that my crazy aunt said from that day forward.

Vacation Memories-The United Nations trip (conclusion)

When the bus rolled out on the last day of my week in New York City I felt a multitude of emotions, the biggest of which was probably apprehension. I was apprehensive because I knew I had only a few days left on my trip and I was dreading leaving the first ever girl who made out with me willingly and having to go back to the cultural backwater that was (and still is) Lee County, VA. But I decided to ignore the apprehension and to try to enjoy the time I had left.

From NYC we headed to Niagara Falls. I can't say I remember the drive up through New York state much because I was spending too much time kissing Cynthia and making jokes with Jeff. The time just flew by and then bam there we were at Niagara Falls. I loved it because I like being around water and because the weather was fantastic, it didn't rain on us the entire trip as I recall. Watching all that water cascade over the cliff was quite a sight, though not quite as big a sight as the sight of a pale blonde headed boy with black horn rimmed glasses stuck in the throes of puppy love chasing after a tall North Carolina gal. I'm pretty sure I didn't let her out of my sight the entire time we were off that bus.

We spent one day on the USA side and the next day they told us we were going to go into Canada and tour around for a day and a half and we'd be spending the night across the border. There was a young gal on the trip with us who was not actually a citizen, she had been born in Korea but she'd been in the US ever since she was an infant, and they said she couldn't cross the border for whatever reason they made up, it struck me as stupid but then again most of what our national governments do strikes me as stupid. Off we went, minus the Korean gal.

The biggest thing I remember about that excursion into Canada was eating at a Canadian Oddfellows lodge. We'd been stopping at lodges all during our trip and the Oddfellows and their wives would have a covered dish supper for us wherever and whenever we stopped. So as usual they met us outside the lodge and they greeted us and invited us in for a covered dish supper and we all obediently followed the grown ups on in. The second I set foot in that lodge something came over me and it was a powerful sense of deja vu. Every step I took up the stairs was familiar to me. I knew I had been there before. I remember knowing exactly how everything was going to look when we finally got upstairs and lo and behold, it looked exactly as I knew it was going to. The whole place was just as I knew it was going to be and I was more than a little freaked out. I remember telling Cynthia that I had been there before and she kind of blew me off, and not in a good way either. The longer we sat there the more familiar things became and the more positive I became that I had been there many times in the past. This incident is one of the reasons that I believe in a form of reincarnation, I'm positive that I was a Canadian Oddfellow who belonged to that lodge or the wife of a member in a previous life. I was really happy when they finally herded us out of there and back onto the bus. I was discombobulated for the rest of that night.

The rest of the trip was uneventful for me, outside of the kissing and handholding that is. I remember seeing Gettysburg and being impressed, I was a huge Civil War buff back then and I drank in the feeling and the scenery of the place while I could. It was a bittersweet time on the trip because I was finally getting to stand and see where history had been made but all the time my mind was telling me that the trip was ending soon and that I'd have to go back to Lee County to live with my crazy aunt and my horrendous cousins.

When the time came and the trip ended with us rolling into a bus station in Roanoke I saw my aunt sitting in her car waiting impatiently and along side her was her youngest son, my cousin Sam. I fought back the tears because in those days it was very not cool to cry over such things as a trip ending and leaving a girl you had grown very fond of. I did hug Cynthia tight and I kissed her so that my aunt and cousin would see me kissing her. We exchanged addresses and we promised that we keep in touch and we'd see each other again some day. As soon as I got in the car and Aunt Rageaholic backed out of the parking lot I knew that'd be the last time I ever saw Cynthia.

I was pretty silent as we drove back to Lee County because I was too busy replaying all the great times I had just had over in my head. I was remembering sightseeing in Washington DC, going to Johns Hopkins to hear a lecture, driving through Philadelphia and eating ice cream near the Liberty Bell, being at the UN, walking the streets of NY unchaperoned, cracking jokes with Jeff, and being with Cynthia. Aunt Rageaholic tried to get me to tell her and Sam about the trip but I clammed up and just looked out the window as we drove those 5 hours back to Jonesville.

Cynthia and I exchanged a few letters and a card or two but after Halloween of that year our communication stopped. I've often wondered what became of her and I hope she has had a good life that's been chock full of people who love her. I hope she met and married a great guy and that she had a fulfilling career and kids and a happy marriage. I'll never forget her, unless I get Alzheimer's, and if that's the case then I'll forget everyone eventually, or what we shared for those few weeks during the summer I went to the United Nations.

My buddy Jeff Tyree and I never kept in touch but he did come back in to my life, kind of, later. It turns out he became a huge pothead and he and my first college roommate, who was from Lynchburg, VA, used to get stoned together all the time. But after my freshman year my pothead roommate never came back to King so I never found out what became of Jeff. I suppose he finally stopped smoking weed and he got his shit together and made something of himself.

(Read part one here and part two is here in case you missed either part.)

Vacation Memories (The United Nations trip-part 2)

(For those of you just joining this story, you can read part one here.)

When our bus rolled into New York city I could feel the city pulsing with life. I took one look at the tall buildings, the crowds, the traffic, the busy people, the sun light glinting off the thousands of windows, the signs, and I felt like I was home. For a kid who had spent the first ten years of his life in Detroit and then was forced to live in the country, first in Michigan and then in Virginia, New York was heaven to me. I was in love with everything about the place, well everything that I could see, of course they weren't about to take busloads of kids from out of state to the slums or to the rough neighborhoods of NYC, so we saw only the best parts of the city.

When we got to the hotel I found out that we were joining up with teenagers from Maine, Louisiana, and Nebraska. It was a pretty wide ranging group of kids and I remember loving that there were so many young people like me across the country. Our hotel was near the Wintergarden Theatre and I remember that this theatrical abortion was playing at the Wintergarden at the time:

I remember thinking, "Who would be dumb enough to shell out all that money to go see a bunch of guys who are not the Beatles sing Beatles songs?" But sure enough there were people dumb enough to go do that, just like in a few years people would be dumb enough to put down their hard earned cash so they could go see Starlight Express.

The people who sponsored the trip wanted us all to meet and hang out with kids from different states when we were in NYC so I had to room with a guy from Louisiana. He wasn't really my idea of a great roommate, he was a shade thick and he constantly complained about how much he hated New York and being around all those "Yankees." I finally told him that I loved the place and that if I could I'd live there all the time and could he please shut up or keep his complaints to himself.

Since I had a provincial dullard for a roommate and I had a gal who let me kiss on her and hold her hand, I ditched him when ever I could so I could hang with Cynthia and my friends Jeff and Heidi. We were an inseparable foursome that week, if we could manage it we would all eat together, sit together on the buses, sight see together, and attend all the UN functions together.

The focus of the trip was spending time in and learning about the United Nations and we spent most every day of that week in New York doing just that. We took tours of various parts of the building, heard lectures on UN related things, and we got to sit in the big conference room where they had all the names of the countries on the many desks. I got to sit at the Outer Mongolia desk, I was stoked. One day at the end of a lecture on economic theory by a Japanese diplomat they decided to let us ask questions. Some dude raised his hand and he asked if the diplomat thought that Japan and the US would ever get into another war. I could see the color drain from all the chaperone's faces when that kid asked his question and as the diplomat was laughing off the question but still trying to answer it I saw one of the chaperones leading the kid who asked the question out of the room by his ear. I took me a minute to make out who it was they were leading out, it was, wait for it, wait for it, my roommate from Louisiana. I never said anything to him about it, I figured he had suffered enough and that everyone else was going to make fun of him and I also thought that if he heard me making fun of him he might smother me or something in my sleep.

It was not all lectures and UN tours that week, we got to go on many sightseeing trips and we even went to a Broadway show. We got to see and go up in the Statue of Liberty, in those days I had no fear of heights and I remember loving the view from her crown. We got to see the Empire State building, in those days it was still a big deal. We went on trips to Macy's, Bloomingdale's, and Saks. The Broadway play they took some of us to was The Wiz, others went to see Doug Henning's magic act on Broadway, and we had the worst seats in the house but I didn't give a shit, I was seeing a Broadway musical! We also got to go to Radio City Musical Hall where we got to see the Rockettes and some shitty boxing kangaroo movie starring Elliot Gould, during which young Cynthia grabbed my hand while I was kissing her and put it inside her blouse. Needless to say I was in heaven in the dark of Radio City Music Hall for a few minutes.

All in all it was a great and glorious week. I can still remember the sounds, the sights, the weather, how the food tasted, in short most everything about that trip. I remember how cool, temperature wise that is, and dark the hotel lobby was. I remember thinking how cool it was that the hotel had a mezzanine and that the sodas in the drink machines were the outlandish price of 75 cents each, I was used to 25 cent sodas. I can remember how the elevator smelled and how funny it was to see all us kids sitcking our heads out of the windows so we could talk back and forth without the adults hearing us.

When Friday rolled around I was sad to be leaving New York and all the friends from Nebraska, Maine, and Louisiana that I had made behind but I was also excited because us kids from Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina were going to go to Niagra Falls and on into Canada and then swing back down through Gettysburg before heading back to Virginia. I still had another week of being with Cynthia and Jeff and Heidi and another week of not being around my awful cousins and crazy aunt.

To be continued...

Vacation memories (The United Nations trip-part 1)

That's me and Cynthia Holloway at Niagara Falls in 1977 or '78, I honestly can't remember the exact year any more. This photo is from a trip I won as a result of winning an essay contest. I was the southwest Virginia winner of the "What the United Nations Means to Me" essay contest that was sponsored by the Oddfellows and Rebekkah lodges of America.

I wrote some dopey essay extolling the UN and how it was going to bring peace to the world in my lifetime. While the UN does some great stuff, UNICEF, UNESCO, and other things as well, it's fallen far short of the hopes I had for it while I was still a pimply horn dog teenager. There were about four or five of us in my high school that wrote essays and I was shocked to learn that I won. I was even more shocked to find out that what I won was an all expense paid trip to the United Nations in New York City. I was over the moon excited and I was even more pumped when I found out that not only was I going to go to the Big Apple for a week, I was also going to spend three days in Washington DC sightseeing and go through Baltimore and Philadelphia on our way to NYC. I also found out that after my week in NYC was up our bus tour of pimply way too smart for our own good horn dog group of teenagers was going to go to Niagara Falls and then on our way back home we were going to stop in and tour Gettysburg. I was wild with excitement because I was going to see the places I had read and dreamed of for years. And best of all I was going on my own, that is to say no family was going with me. I was ecstatic to be escaping my asshole cousins, my domineering, crazy, rageaholic aunt, and the small hick town I was living in.

The trip started out kind of odd, I had to hook up with the tour in Roanoke, VA which was about three hours northeast of where we lived at the time. In order to save a few bucks and to make sure I got to the Oddfellows lodge in Roanoke on time Aunt Rageaholic drove me up the night before I was supposed to join the tour and we stayed in the home of some people we knew who used to live in Lee county, the Colliers. To say Bill Collier was a strange man is an understatement. He was an oddball from the word go who seemed to take an instant dislike to me from the instant he laid eyes on me, and his dislike seemed to grow more every time our paths crossed later in my life. I was convinced that he would make sure we did not get out of his wretched house in time for me to make the bus but thank goodness my fears were never realized because I woke up at the butt crack of dawn and I insisted that my nut bag aunt take me to the Oddfellows lodge right then. After she had a cup of coffee and after old Bill Collier gave me the stink eye for about 20 minutes we finally left and she dropped me at the lodge.

To be honest I was petrified at having to meet all new people but I was also glad that I was going to be doing it without any of my family around, which meant that I could be myself without having to worry about them making fun of me, mocking me, or snitching on me for having opinions and tastes different than the ones Aunt Rageaholic tried to shove on us. I kept quiet as I met some of the people I would be traveling for the next few weeks but I noticed a striking girl with a pretty smile and a nice demeanor from Elizabeth City, NC and I kind of gravitated to her. I was far too shy to make a pass at her but I think I did flash her a goofy smile and I let her see me reading Robert Graves I, Claudius, I was hoping she'd be impressed at how smart I was.

While I was dreaming about smooching the girl with the honey accent and the pretty smile, a funny looking guy from Lynchburg sat next to me. He cracked a lame joke and told me his name was Jeff Tyree. I instantly liked him and we began joking around and an instant friendship was born. We became fast friends for the duration of the trip. When they finally herded us onto the bus he and I sat together and I told him I liked the girl from North Carolina but that I was too shy to do anything about it. He said to hang tight and he'd figure out a way for me to meet to her.

Somewhere near Washington DC our bus stopped and a gaggle of girls from Maryland and northern Virginia joined our group. Jeff instantly took a liking to one of them, a pretty young brunette by the name of Heidi who hailed from Silver Spring, Maryland. We could tell she came from a rich family but she was as nice as she was pretty and Jeff made his plans to be her "trip boyfriend."

He and I roomed together that night in Washington, as we would through out the trip. In Washington we got to see some of the Smithsonian, the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington monument, the FBI HQ, we took a tour of the Treasury building, and much more. And more importantly Jeff managed to hook up with Heidi (and by hook up with I don't mean have sex, I mean sit next to, hold hands with, and kiss on, innocent teenage stuff) and he got Heidi to buddy up with the gal from NC, Cynthia Holloway.

After a few action packed days in our nations capital we began our march to NYC. Through some convoluted machinations I ended up sitting next to Cynthia and I even managed to talk to her. Whatever I said worked, it must have been my non stop cheesy jokes and inane patter because it surely wasn't my looks as you can tell from the photo above, and we hit it off. I nearly died when she said I could hold her hand and kiss her. I felt like the biggest stud in the world by the time we got to NYC a few days later, I was on top of the world.

To be continued...