Dodging Bullets
It's 1975, Im nine years old and in the third grade. My two previous years of "education" I was being bussed to a more "inner city" school surrounded on three sides by Nashville housing projects. Those were a couple of intense years, all for another day, only to be challenged when I would start buying drugs in those said projects nine years later. Again, that's another story. Now, back to third grade at my new school.
It was only a couple miles from my grandmother's house so I could finally walk to school. This meant two things. "Adventure" and "freedom." It should've also meant "responsibility" but that sounds boring right now writing it, I can only imagine how it would've sounded then.
There were only two other kids walking as far as I was, Larry and Eddie Johnson. Two brothers that lived a couple blocks over but I'd never met them before. Larry was in my class but Eddie was a grade ahead...but three years older. Yeah, fourth grade and he's already failed twice. He was the one who taught us how to shoplift. He gave us a lot of ideas.
One day we were walking home and all three of us had a baseball bat. For some reason, that day we could bring our own bats to school for P.E. class. They were for baseball. I can't remember why that was the case because we played baseball all the time during P.E. but the school had their own bats. That wouldn't go over so well today, i'm thinking. So,we're walking home and on the way we would pass the post office. They parked the delivery cars behind the post office. In the very back there was a cinder block wall with a barbed wire fence on top and behind that an alley between two houses. Sometimes, if we were feeling adventurous we would climb on top of the first mail car and then run across the roofs all the way to the back, climb the fence then cut through the alley. Today was one of those days. And we had baseball bats. We climbed on top of the cars and almost immediately Eddie realized it was the perfect vantage point to smash all the windows. As great of an idea as it seemed to be to Eddie, it didn't seem to be a good idea at all to Larry and myself. Didn't matter. With almost no arguing, Eddie smashed the first one and said if we didn't do it also, he would just say one of us did it but if we all smashed them, we would all get in the same trouble. Made sense to me. And we proceeded in giving zero fucks to every one of those windshields.
Another day on the way home we cut through an alley behind a church. This alley wasn't hard to get though and it was right on the way home but before this day, we had never cut through here before.
Larry and I were walking ahead, talking about something and Eddie was about 20 or so feet behind us just kicking around stuff in the alley when all a sudden Larry and I heard something behind us and when we turned around there was some CRAZY looking old man standing behind us. He had the wildest look in his eyes and he was kind of crouched in an attack/ defensive stance. We were frozen stiff. This was the most absolute and purest moment of fear I had experienced at this point in my life. In the 40 years since that moment, I've experienced many more life threatening experiences but I don't think any of them affected me like that moment. and then it was over....SNAP!
While we were standing there frozen, Eddie had been walking a few feet behind and being the alpha, took a brick and smashed that old guy in the back of the head and he went down. Larry was crying, I wanted to but knew if I did, somehow I would get my ass kicked for it so I sucked it up. It turned out I was right too because pretty quickly, Eddie slapped Larry across the face and told him to stop crying. He then told us we had to hit the old man too or it would be the same as the P.O. trucks. We just started kicking the shit out of the old man. He was knocked out, he didn't feel it. Not right then anyway. A couple dozen kicks or so and we got the hell out of there. Didn't go back to that alley either.
I just assumed we killed that old man. I was kind of conflicted about it. Sometimes it really weighed on me and sometimes I didn't even give a fuck. I mean, what the hell was that old man gonna do? A lot of us kids had already seen some weird shit that we didn't quite understand but we knew it was fucked up and I just kind of put that old man in that scenario sometimes. I still went back and forth. sometimes day to day, sometimes year to year. Several years later when I was 18 years old, I was in this market near my grandmother's house, same old neighborhood, and I saw that crazy old man sacking his groceries. My car was parked out side but he was walking and I needed to see what his story might be. I followed him several blocks and then we started getting closer to the church. Nine years later and I still got a little nervous. I follow him towards the alley and while I stood just outside the two buildings, he took a key and unlocked a door to the smaller building. I had been replaying that day the whole time (along with the years since that day) and always wondered where the old man came from and how he got between Larry and I and Eddie. He came out that side door. Fuck. Everything about that day had been so intense that I couldn't put that simple piece of the puzzle together. As far as the puzzle...I guess the old man was just an an old mentally handicapped guy who lived and worked for the church. He hears a noise outside his door, jumps out then wakes up sore with some cuts and bruises. Can't say karma hasn't visited me a few times for this one.
The Johnsons and I would part ways soon over a shoplifting stand-off. We stole some football cards one morning before school and I made a hit with scoring a "Terry Bradshaw." Eddie wanted that card. NO FUCKING WAY. There was a stand-off and he said if I didn't give it to him, he would rat me out to the principal. I called his bluff. I gotta give respect where respect is due. He ratted me out. He ratted me da-fuck-out. So, I couldn't hang out with the Johnsons, I had to go apologize to the store manager where I shoplifted and at the time, I was in cub scouts and had just earned a pocket knife for some stupid shit and my den mother suggested to my mom that she not give me the knife. So that happened. That also put the nail in the little cub scout coffin as well. she wants to step in like that, I'll just quit cub scouts and start playing football. They were starting to get a little "churchy" anyway, and I had just learned that year about the big bang and evolution and realized how full of shit they were so that was an easy decision.
Eventually I started hanging with the Johnsons again since we would run into each other on the way to school from time to time. This led to some other shit. Since we weren't supposed to hang out together and we didn't want anyone to catch us, we started hitch hiking. I didn't really like this. It would always be some creepy old guy, like real old, and they would never take us where we asked or where they said they were originally going. Almost every time they would take us on some back road route until we raised so much hell they would just let us out and we would sometimes have to walk even farther. I quit hitching, they kept on. One day they asked me if I knew this person they had met and I did. He was a "friend of the family." I knew who this guy was and I didn't really care for him then. He was just some creepy old guy who never married and was kind of an asshole that a lot of the adults in my life knew. They said he picked them up hitching one morning and while asking them about school and shit, he asked them if they knew me. This was while he was driving them all over town instead of taking them to school. Eventually he dropped them off. They said he was an asshole too. I didn't know what they meant, probably the same reasons I had. I never found out why that old bastard picked up my friends. By the time I was old enough to put some of that weird shit together, that fucking weirdo died.
Seems like we might have dodged some bullets back then. It also seems there should've been a lesson there somewhere but I don't think I learned shit. I've hitch hiked a bit since then and although I haven't kicked the shit out of any knocked out old dudes, I did kick some jack-asses shit in with some friends one night but that's another story as well. Don't worry, karma got me on that on too. Like an hour later. Again, another story.
Whatta ya gonna do? Sometimes these situations just seem to create themselves.
It was only a couple miles from my grandmother's house so I could finally walk to school. This meant two things. "Adventure" and "freedom." It should've also meant "responsibility" but that sounds boring right now writing it, I can only imagine how it would've sounded then.
There were only two other kids walking as far as I was, Larry and Eddie Johnson. Two brothers that lived a couple blocks over but I'd never met them before. Larry was in my class but Eddie was a grade ahead...but three years older. Yeah, fourth grade and he's already failed twice. He was the one who taught us how to shoplift. He gave us a lot of ideas.
One day we were walking home and all three of us had a baseball bat. For some reason, that day we could bring our own bats to school for P.E. class. They were for baseball. I can't remember why that was the case because we played baseball all the time during P.E. but the school had their own bats. That wouldn't go over so well today, i'm thinking. So,we're walking home and on the way we would pass the post office. They parked the delivery cars behind the post office. In the very back there was a cinder block wall with a barbed wire fence on top and behind that an alley between two houses. Sometimes, if we were feeling adventurous we would climb on top of the first mail car and then run across the roofs all the way to the back, climb the fence then cut through the alley. Today was one of those days. And we had baseball bats. We climbed on top of the cars and almost immediately Eddie realized it was the perfect vantage point to smash all the windows. As great of an idea as it seemed to be to Eddie, it didn't seem to be a good idea at all to Larry and myself. Didn't matter. With almost no arguing, Eddie smashed the first one and said if we didn't do it also, he would just say one of us did it but if we all smashed them, we would all get in the same trouble. Made sense to me. And we proceeded in giving zero fucks to every one of those windshields.
Another day on the way home we cut through an alley behind a church. This alley wasn't hard to get though and it was right on the way home but before this day, we had never cut through here before.
Larry and I were walking ahead, talking about something and Eddie was about 20 or so feet behind us just kicking around stuff in the alley when all a sudden Larry and I heard something behind us and when we turned around there was some CRAZY looking old man standing behind us. He had the wildest look in his eyes and he was kind of crouched in an attack/ defensive stance. We were frozen stiff. This was the most absolute and purest moment of fear I had experienced at this point in my life. In the 40 years since that moment, I've experienced many more life threatening experiences but I don't think any of them affected me like that moment. and then it was over....SNAP!
While we were standing there frozen, Eddie had been walking a few feet behind and being the alpha, took a brick and smashed that old guy in the back of the head and he went down. Larry was crying, I wanted to but knew if I did, somehow I would get my ass kicked for it so I sucked it up. It turned out I was right too because pretty quickly, Eddie slapped Larry across the face and told him to stop crying. He then told us we had to hit the old man too or it would be the same as the P.O. trucks. We just started kicking the shit out of the old man. He was knocked out, he didn't feel it. Not right then anyway. A couple dozen kicks or so and we got the hell out of there. Didn't go back to that alley either.
I just assumed we killed that old man. I was kind of conflicted about it. Sometimes it really weighed on me and sometimes I didn't even give a fuck. I mean, what the hell was that old man gonna do? A lot of us kids had already seen some weird shit that we didn't quite understand but we knew it was fucked up and I just kind of put that old man in that scenario sometimes. I still went back and forth. sometimes day to day, sometimes year to year. Several years later when I was 18 years old, I was in this market near my grandmother's house, same old neighborhood, and I saw that crazy old man sacking his groceries. My car was parked out side but he was walking and I needed to see what his story might be. I followed him several blocks and then we started getting closer to the church. Nine years later and I still got a little nervous. I follow him towards the alley and while I stood just outside the two buildings, he took a key and unlocked a door to the smaller building. I had been replaying that day the whole time (along with the years since that day) and always wondered where the old man came from and how he got between Larry and I and Eddie. He came out that side door. Fuck. Everything about that day had been so intense that I couldn't put that simple piece of the puzzle together. As far as the puzzle...I guess the old man was just an an old mentally handicapped guy who lived and worked for the church. He hears a noise outside his door, jumps out then wakes up sore with some cuts and bruises. Can't say karma hasn't visited me a few times for this one.
The Johnsons and I would part ways soon over a shoplifting stand-off. We stole some football cards one morning before school and I made a hit with scoring a "Terry Bradshaw." Eddie wanted that card. NO FUCKING WAY. There was a stand-off and he said if I didn't give it to him, he would rat me out to the principal. I called his bluff. I gotta give respect where respect is due. He ratted me out. He ratted me da-fuck-out. So, I couldn't hang out with the Johnsons, I had to go apologize to the store manager where I shoplifted and at the time, I was in cub scouts and had just earned a pocket knife for some stupid shit and my den mother suggested to my mom that she not give me the knife. So that happened. That also put the nail in the little cub scout coffin as well. she wants to step in like that, I'll just quit cub scouts and start playing football. They were starting to get a little "churchy" anyway, and I had just learned that year about the big bang and evolution and realized how full of shit they were so that was an easy decision.
Eventually I started hanging with the Johnsons again since we would run into each other on the way to school from time to time. This led to some other shit. Since we weren't supposed to hang out together and we didn't want anyone to catch us, we started hitch hiking. I didn't really like this. It would always be some creepy old guy, like real old, and they would never take us where we asked or where they said they were originally going. Almost every time they would take us on some back road route until we raised so much hell they would just let us out and we would sometimes have to walk even farther. I quit hitching, they kept on. One day they asked me if I knew this person they had met and I did. He was a "friend of the family." I knew who this guy was and I didn't really care for him then. He was just some creepy old guy who never married and was kind of an asshole that a lot of the adults in my life knew. They said he picked them up hitching one morning and while asking them about school and shit, he asked them if they knew me. This was while he was driving them all over town instead of taking them to school. Eventually he dropped them off. They said he was an asshole too. I didn't know what they meant, probably the same reasons I had. I never found out why that old bastard picked up my friends. By the time I was old enough to put some of that weird shit together, that fucking weirdo died.
Seems like we might have dodged some bullets back then. It also seems there should've been a lesson there somewhere but I don't think I learned shit. I've hitch hiked a bit since then and although I haven't kicked the shit out of any knocked out old dudes, I did kick some jack-asses shit in with some friends one night but that's another story as well. Don't worry, karma got me on that on too. Like an hour later. Again, another story.
Whatta ya gonna do? Sometimes these situations just seem to create themselves.
