National Bird Night 1974

 

I grew up watching Alfred Hitchcock films, in 1974, it seemed like I was trapped in one.

Still reeling from the deaths of my sister and mother and getting no help for that because my bipolar aunt and her adulterous husband thought that seeking mental health help for kids was a waste of their time, I was expected to suck it up and be a man. And suffering from culture shock from moving from the KKK capital of Michigan to an even smaller town in SW VA where if you were the slightest bit different you were bullied and looked upon as weirdo, I had to make do as best as I could. My aunt bullied me and her children followed her example, with her illiterate son Matthew at one point trying to murder me by shooting at me with a rifle. When the bullet hit the trailer near where I was standing, my uncle flew into a rage, not because I could have been killed, but because his property was being was in danger of being damaged. The look of disgust on his face when I told him that his son had tried to shoot me showed me he could not care less about my life and that his trailer was more important then my life. And with the bullying I had to endure for being an outsider in a small town made me feel like a target constantly.

On a national level we were finding out Nixon was a crook who put targets on anyone who disagreed with him and that the FBI was spying on anyone considered a threat, like leftists, black activists, gay folks, anyone Hoover didn't like. 

This work represents all that. And the sad thing is, not much of it has changed.

You never forget the first one

It's been a while since I posted a story from my murky past on this fine blog of mine.  This post is inspired by a new friend on Facebook who asked, "What's one thing you wish you had never seen?"

I answered truthfully by saying the one thing I wish I had never seen was my crazy Aunt Rageaholic's vagina.  And of course someone the new Facebook friend asked how did I come to see that particular vagina.  Well, here's the whole sorted tale:

I was about 14 or 15 and living with my aunt and uncle and their bullying children out in rural Lee County VA.  My aunt was a seamstress of sorts and she made many work/house dresses for herself.  She wore them inside the house when she did her housework and outside of the house when she worked in the yard or garden.  That fateful day was a hot humid one in June or July and she was working out in the yard in one of her creations, it was a shortish work dress that came down to her knees or perhaps just above them.  I was working out in the yard as well, or maybe I was working by myself and she had come out to make sure I was working and not fucking off, she hated it when we tried to slough off her assigned tasks.  Anyway, she was out there in that dress and she shouted something at me.  I turned to hear her better and when I did she was facing away from me and she bent down to pick something up or to pull a weed, I don't remember the exact details, I've tried to block out much of that day as I have grown older, and as she bent over her work dress rose up to reveal that she wasn't wearing underwear and I could clearly see her wrinkly old vagina.

I had seen many pictures of vaginas before that day, thanks to Penthouse, Hustler, and other porn mags.  And overall, I really liked those other vaginas.  I was keenly hoping to see a live one sooner rather than later but since I was very shy around girls I doubted I ever would, you know how dramatic teenagers can be.  I wanted very badly to see one up close and personal and I hoped it would be one I was about to be inside of, not one that belonged to a family member, much less the one that belonged to my crazy bipolar aunt who would later steal nearly $10,000 from me.

She bent over and her dress rode up and I saw my first vagina, and I'm pretty sure I yelped with fear, disgust, and revulsion.  I quickly looked away but what had been seen could not be unseen.  I remember praying to any god that would listen that I hoped other vaginas were more beautiful than hers.  I walked away in a daze trying forget what I had seen and ruing that fact that I had seen it.

For many years hers was the only live one I saw until I got to college and lost my virginity.  Thank goodness all the other live vaginas I've seen and had the pleasure to pleasure were exceedingly more beautiful than the one that was on my crazy old aunt.  But still, seeing her vag was shocking and sickening.  I hate that hers was the first live one I saw and I still to this day wish I could unsee it, but alas I cannot.

Barns of the week

A couple of barns in Lee County, VA.

Barn of the week

We used to live about 4 or 6 miles from this barn. I have vague memories of working in this barn during my teenage years.

Or perhaps I got stoned and just thought I worked in that barn.

Or maybe I got stoned and avoided work in the barn. Yeah, that's probably it.

Barn of the week

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.

Mortal enemies

My lovely Canadian blog friend XUP wrote on her mighty great blog the other day a post about best friends. I've been meaning to write about the opposite of that so here's my post about mortal enemies.

The way I'm defining mortal enemy is thus: a mortal enemy is someone you actually know in real life who for whatever reason hates you and who has either done you harm or would do you harm given the right circumstances. Someone you disagree politically with that you have never actually met in person can not be your mortal enemy. Some villain from history can not be your mortal enemy.

My mortal enemies are as follows:

• The late Bill Collier was my first mortal enemy. He was the father of a friend from back in Lee County. He was a nut bag who moved his family back and forth between Lee County and Roanoke, VA for some vague reason that was only known to him and him alone. I met him when I went on my UN trip, which I've written about before on here. It was during that first meeting with him that he struck me as someone who not only didn't like me but who wanted to do me harm. He was in his mid 40's when I first met his crazy ass. After our first meeting I had no run ins with him for many years because he kept moving his family back and forth between Lee County and Roanoke. But in 1988 when I moved to Roanoke I had some run ins with him once again. I moved up there with hardly a penny in my pocket and and with only the clothes I had packed in my suitcase. I got a job at Kirkland's in Valley View Mall almost as soon as I moved up there and one morning after a night of drinking with his alcoholic son we crashed out at old man Collier's house. He woke up to find me sleeping on his son's bedroom floor and he began screaming that we all had to get up and get out of his house. He then kicked me to drive his point across. He quickly decided that his alcoholic son was still too drunk to drive so he said he'd take me to the mall, he screamed for me to get in his car right that second or he'd rescind his offer. I had no time to shower, take a dump, or do anything but get in his car so I got in the car. He didn't say a word as he drove me to the mall at 5:30 in the morning. When he drove past the exit for the mall I was about to say something but as soon as I opened my mouth he pulled the car over on the shoulder of the interstate and he told me to get out. I got out and he drove off. I scaled the fence that ran between the mall and the interstate and walked the final two miles from where he dropped me off. I swore that if I ever saw that crazy old bastard again I'd ask him why he hated me so much, after I busted him upside his head that is. Luckily for both of us I never saw him again and he finally died a few years back. He was a bitter crazy old fuck who had died many years before, it just took his body all those years to catch up with his dead spirit. If I knew where he was buried I'd go piss on his grave.
• My second mortal enemy was the older brother of a friend I had in high school. He hung out with Cousin Psycho and no doubt Cousin Psycho filled his head with stories about what a weakling and what a fancy book loving nerd I was. To Cousin Psycho anyone who didn't trap and kill small animals, eschew books and education, and who didn't date rape women was a nerd who was not a real man and who deserved to be beaten up and scorned. So as I became good friends with his younger brother, the older brother, Cousin Psycho's friend, hated me more and more. He'd go out of his way to say demeaning things that were supposed to humiliate me and while he never hit me, the threat of physical violence was always there. I did my best to avoid him but sometimes it was impossible. Once we were in the park in Jonesville and My Sharona came on the radio and I said how much I liked it. My mortal enemy said, "So you think that makes you better than everybody else. Don't you?" I said, "Huh?" He said, "You think because you like that song that you're better than everybody else. I bet you listen to it when you're in that 100,000 dollar house your stupid family built don't you." I ignored him but he kept on until I finally walked away and as I was walking away he called me a pussy and said I was a disgrace to men everywhere. It was among the happiest days of my life when I moved out of Lee County because I knew then that I'd never run into that asshole again.
  
• My final mortal enemy is a mechanic I used to know named Stacey. He worked for a truck stop in White Pine that I used to sell to when I worked for Myers. He took an instant dislike to me the second he saw me for the first time. He'd always claim that they were stocked up on everything whenever I came around and then when I'd start writing an order he go tell his boss that I was over stocking them and that I should be kicked out in favor of another supplier. His boss however had no problem with me and he always bought what I recommended. A few days after I totaled my first pick up truck I was on my way to the junk yard to get the last of my personal possessions out of what used to be my work truck and I stopped off at the truck stop on my way to said junkyard. Stacey was there and when he saw me coming he said that he'd finally convinced his boss to kick me out and that they were going with one of my rivals. I was in no mood to fuck around so I said "Fine. Let's go make sure this is what your boss wants." So Stacey and I marched up the stairs to his boss's office and I said, "I nearly died the other day when my truck flipped over in the rain so I'm not in a good mood. Stacey here says you want to switch to one of my competitors and that's fine with me by the way but I want to make sure the joker you're throwing me under the bus for is going to show up, so let's call him and I'll tell him the good news myself." I then picked up the phone and I handed it to Stacey's boss while I held the receiver. I said, "You dial his number Bruce and I'll tell him he's got your business. Okay?" Bruce, Stacey's boss, let out a nervous laugh and he said, "Gimme that phone. We ain't switching." I glared triumphantly at Stacey and I swear he flinched a little, like he was gearing up to hit me. The next week I went back and they told me he quit to go to another truck stop. I ran into him again a few times but he never said another word to me even thought I knew he wanted to slap the shit out of me for calling his bluff that day.

I don't have any more mortal enemies because I refuse hold grudges since my heart attack. Don't get me wrong, there are some people who were in my life who I don't like and who would probably do me harm if the circumstances were right, but since my heart attack I just cut them loose, just like I did to most of the people on my late father's side of the family. I don't need any extra stress or bull shit in my life and that goes double for mortal enemies.

Bittersweet

As most of you regular readers know I'm hooked on Facebook as well as blogging. And for every old friend from college or high school that I've reconnected with there's been people from that part of my past that I'd rather just stay away from either because they've become intolerant Christians who look forward to going to the Creationist Museum or because I didn't like them back then and I still don't like them now. My friendship with some of my blog friends has deepened as a result of being on Facebook with them as well as reading their blogs.

Unfortunately, I've also ran into some sad and troubling news on Facebook as well. I recently friended a gal I went to high school with. I knew she would not remember me because I was a few years behind her. But I not only remembered her, I went to a very small high school, I was friends with her young brother Scott.

Scott was friends with my sister Sandy first. He and Sandy and another gal named Sheila were thick as thieves for a few years but when Sandy and Sheila graduated and went on to other things Scott was still in school with me, he was a year ahead of me. Since we both partied in high school we would often hang out together and get stoned and or drunk. Scott was a fun, funny, stand up guy. And he was gay.

In a small rural community like Lee County, VA if you were gay you had to keep it under wraps or you faced the wrath of people who hated gays and the wrath of the sanctimonious holier than thou Christians, and often they were one and the same. But for some reason this didn't apply to Scott. And I think it was because Scott was so beloved by everyone. We stoners liked him because he was one of us, the jocks liked him because he was not a threat to them, and the hicks liked him because he made them laugh. If you asked him he'd tell you he was gay but he didn't go around screaming about his sexual orientation. He wasn't a flamer, but you knew he was gay if you spent any length of time around him at all.

I liked Scott immensely because he was such a fun guy. He always was quick with a joke and to poke fun at the people and things that needed it. He reminded me of me in that regard. I also liked him because he was who he was and he didn't change for anybody. I always thought he was pretty brave to not change who he was in order to try and fit in. In a way he was a hero of mine because if a gay guy like him could be himself in that small town then I, a smart geeky bookish kid with a smart mouth, could be who he was and not worry about it. Sometimes I had to reign in who I was but Scott never did and for that I always admired him.

The day after I graduated high school I left moved out of Lee County and for the most part I never looked back. I had heard that Scott had died of HIV/AIDS but I never was sure about it, until his sister and I began emailing each other on Facebook that is. I shared with his sister that my brother Charlie, who she remembered very well by the way, had died from an HIV/AIDS related illness and so she told me that Scott had as well. But oddly enough he didn't get it from unprotected sex, he got it from a blood tranfusion. She told me that Scott was managing a restaurant in North Carolina and one night after he closed up the place he got carjacked. The carjacker slit his throat so he could not scream but the slit did not kill Scott. The carjacker tied him up and put him in the backseat of his car and then he took off. Despite having a slit throat Scott was able to undo the bonds that held him and he managed to run off when the carjacker stopped for a rest break. It was during his hospitalization that Scott was given AIDS tainted blood.

It's a sad turn of events that cost my friend Scott his life but I know that he lived that life braver than most anyone else I know. I wish I had kept in touch with him after I left high school and I wish I could have seen him before he passed so I could have told him he was one of my personal heroes. I missed the chance to do those things, so this will have to do, so long Scott, you were one hell of a guy and this world was better for you having been in it.

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.

Just What I Needed

A while back I tagged D Cup at Politits with a music meme. She graciously complied and wrote about some songs that were big when she was a high school senior. I teased her saying that she chose all sappy sugary songs. She replied that she had been handcuffed by the meme and that she had written about the soundtrack of her life already and that I should read it one day, so I did. I read it yesterday and I enjoyed it. She mentioned one song in it that played a huge part in my life so I decided to write this post about that song. Yes, I am stealing ideas for a post from D Cup, but I've found that I've gotten most of my good ideas in life when I look at women and their boobs.

The first time I experienced culture shock was when my Mother passed away and we were sent to live with my aunt and uncle. I had lived all of my young life up to that point in Detroit, but after Mom died we moved to Howell, Michigan where my aunt and uncle and their savages, oops, I mean children lived. Howell was only an hour out of Detroit but it was worlds away to me. I had known only the city life up to that point but there I was living in the country, with cows, and horses, and hay fields, and big ass gardens, and ponds, and forests, and wide open space.

I also stopped being a Roman Catholic over night and I became a United Methodist, so that meant my church no longer talked so much about Mary and Jesus and eating the actual body of said son o' God every week after we had confessed our sins, instead now we got cubes of Wonder bread and grape juice once a month and we heard oodles and oodles about how neat it was going to be when Jesus came back. It took me quite some time to get used to all those changes.

But wouldn't you know it, by the time I was just settling in and getting used to life in that racist part of the Michigan countryside, it turns out that Howell was a big hub for KKK activity in Michigan, they pulled the rug out from under my pre-teen feet and my aunt and uncle packed us all up, except for one of my older brothers who ran away so he could stay in Michigan, and moved us south to Lee County , Va.

That is Lee County in the extreme southwest tip of VA. If moving from Detroit to Howell was a culture shock, then moving from Howell to Lee County, VA was a seismic culture shock. All the images I had heard or seen about the south were negative. I had seen many documentaries in school about the south and all of them had been shot in black and white and they showed people living in tar paper shacks that were drenched in fog all the time. I actually believed for a time that the south was in black and white for real and that everyone went around barefoot while toting a rifle and a jug of moonshine. But what I found was a landscape that looked like this:

In addition to the mountains there were valleys where people lived and farmed. We lived on a 100 acre farm where we raised cattle and corn and tobacco. The area where we lived though seemed like it was about 20 years behind the times. This was the mid 1970's when we moved to Lee County but some people's attitudes and beliefs were mired in the 1950's, but I have since found that there are people who are stuck in the past no matter where you go. If one expressed an admiration for Sanford and Son, then one was a damn dirty n**ger lover. If one wasn't a rock ribbed right winger then you were a Communist. If you didn't go to church two or three times a week then you were a damn dirty Jew or a Communist or a n**ger lover or all three combined.

Other things were bizarre to me as well. The accent for one. It was in Lee County that I learned that a word like 'bell' was not one syllable but two or sometimes three. Flowers were not called flowers, they were 'flairs.' One of my new friends kept telling me about a great wrassler he loved named Ric Flair, I kept correcting him and telling him the man's name was Ric Flower. That is until one day he showed me a photo of Ric Flair and I saw the caption beneath and I saw that his name really was Ric Flair.

Ladies and gentlemen, Ric Flair!

The food was different too. I learned to eat things like pinto beans, collard greens, biscuits and gravy, and red hot dogs.

Red hot dogs freaked me out for awhile then I got used to them. Soft drinks were no longer called 'pop, they became 'soda.' We no longer shopped for groceries at IGA or A&P. We went to Piggly Wiggly or Cas Walker's. Cas Walker had two great TV ads that ran constantly, one was of some kids whacking on watermelons with sticks while someone sang in the background that Cas Walker's melons were 'thumpin' good' and the other was an ad that proclaimed to the world that 'You can beat our prices but you can't beat our meat.' I swear with all my heart I am not making that last one up, I nearly died laughing the first time I heard that commercial.

So it was into that cultural backwater that I, a young impressionable and somewhat smartassed and inquisitive lad, was tossed to live. Gradually my midwestern accent began to fade and I accepted my fate for a time. I had TV, Rolling Stone magazine, and National Lampoon magazine, to keep me abreast of what people in the civilized world were doing. So I fell into a kind of stupor. I went along with what was going on and I just plugged along.

That is until the day that I heard the first single off this album:

It was spring/summer of 1978 and I was riding around the back roads of Lee County with my cousin in his mother's baby shit brown Ford Granada and both of us were high as kites. We were listenting to the AM radio in the car and we had it tuned to the station out of Pennington Gap, which was the biggest city in Lee County. From out of nowhere a song came on called 'Just What I Needed.' It was unlike anything I had ever heard or was hearing on the radio at that time. It was catchy, sounded unique, and so, and I do not use this in a bad way, weird. It was not the typical bombastic rock song of the day, like so many of the songs by Boston, Kansas, Styx, Rush, and others were. It also was not disco or folky singery songwritery. It was so shockingly different that I almost was knocked out of my pot induced haze.

I knew that after I heard it nothing would be the same in my life. I knew on some deep level that 'Just What I Needed' represented a new path, a new direction, and that it meant that I would not be stuck in Lee County forever. It was like I had just heard the way out. I had no idea how I was going to get out but somehow then I knew that I was on my way.

It was a little later that I signed up to go into the Air Force right after I graduated high school, which thankfully I did not end up doing. The day after I graduated a little over a year after I heard that song, we packed up and moved out of Lee County. I was never so happy to see that place in the rear view mirror. Getting the hell out of there was just what I needed.

So to the guys in that incarnation of The Cars, I just want to say thanks and that your song did more for me than you will ever know. You rock Ric. Ric Ocasek lead singer of The Cars that is.