Autobiography: Episode 1 After High School, before College - December 10 2024
Autobiography Part 1 – after high school, before college
Many of my high school friends either went off to college or got married with children. A lot of the married guys got into immediate debt by renting big houses and filling them with furniture bought on credit. They bought new cars with little money down.
Soon, they were taking second jobs to cover mounting expenses, babies were being born like popcorn, and a majority of the married men started drinking heavily, which they felt they deserved because of all their hard work.
Soon, the divorces and trial separations began. The popcorn kids wore shabby clothes because the single moms couldn’t afford babysitters, which kept them from finding full employment. Cars were getting repossessed and replaced with clunkers donated by relatives.
My friend Terry Riley, his sister Sandy, and her baby girl died in a car collision. Hit a pothole, bounced into the on-coming lane, head-on into a coal-truck; this happened shortly after Terry’s divorce from Barbara – he proposed after their first date and she said yes. Sandy was in a miserable marriage to Mike, an abuser, which ended with a baby. Brother, sister, and baby decided to go have fun by driving to Erie to see Black Sabbath, and died.
Terry came to my house and asked me if I wanted to go with them, but I was dating Cheryl at the time, and she would have had a conniption fit if I went without her, so I declined.
Terry, Sandy, baby, and the driver were killed on the road to Erie. They hit a pothole on a curve that bounced them into the oncoming lane head-on into a coal truck.
More deaths ensued. My friend, Tim who married my friend Becky, got so depressed from crushing debt that he hung himself in the carwash across the street from my house by throwing a rope over the swivel hose.
Joe, who apparently felt unloved and depressed, stuck his head in a gas stove and went to sleep.
Happily unmarried, I worked through high school pumping gas at Clarence’s Mobil Station, washing windows at the high school, and doing road construction during election years that were created to keep the unemployment numbers low for campaigning politicians. Once elections were over, so were the construction jobs.
I also worked at the Strand Theater sweeping up popcorn in exchange for free movie tickets. I saw Jungle Book 28 times.
The little money I made went toward Slim Jims, beef jerky, Pepsis, pinball, and 9-ball at Gigalo’s pool hall where I ate 25-cent hot dogs.
I had no desire to go to college. I figured I wasn’t smart enough. My plans were to travel by thumb and find exotic semi-skilled labor, like becoming a deep-sea fisherman in Nova Scotia, or working on oil rigs in Oklahoma like my mother’s four brothers.
After high school, I used to travel around the state for fun by hitchhiking. I caught rides to Erie to see the lake, Reading to see the pagoda, and Conneaut Lake to visit the amusement park.
The people who picked me up were all good folks, no pervs or molesters. One guy did keep a tall stack of Playgirl magazines on the seat between us. He asked me if I wanted to read one, and I declined. He also had a massive herpes blister on his bottom lip that was gross and probably embarrassed him enough to not follow his dreams any further. We spoke of other things.
I landed my first full-time job at Howes Leather Shoe Soles after high school to save up and buy a car. I also landed my first full-time girlfriend, Cheryl, not because I fell in love with her, but because she fell in love with me.
One night at a house party, at my house, Cheryl abruptly got up, put her coat on, and went home. I didn’t think anything of it until my little sister Patty upbraided me. “What are you, blind?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Don’t you know that Cheryl is in love with you? She was flirting with you all night.”
“She was?” I just thought she was friendly.
“You need to catch up with and apologize,” said Patty. So, I did. I ran about five blocks until I caught up with Cheryl. “Hi,” I said. “Patty told me that you are in love with me. Is that true?”
Crying, she admitted that yes, she was. So, I asked her on a date. That’s how that calamitous saga began.
Instead of saving my leather money for a car, I instead saved up six paychecks to buy Cheryl a ½ carat diamond ring because she thought it was pretty.
Then I bought an old Simca with bald tires, leaky brake lining, and leaky clutch lining. It was so flimsy, Cheryl sat on the hood and caved it in. I loved that car, though I had to stop every 30 miles to bleed the brakes and clutch.
I got fired from Howes Leather after I bought my Simca because I chose to go joy riding instead of going to work. I recall the day I returned to work and the boss was standing in the doorway, his flat palm up. “You need to get off the property. You no longer work here.”
Naively shocked, I asked why.
“You’ve missed six days of work in your first year. Apparently, you didn’t read the contract.”
A week later, I crashed my Simca on a blistering hot highway doing 40 mph, following my friend Ron who was far ahead doing 60 mph in his Dodge Duster. I came out of a curve and the road straightened, but my car kept spinning. I saw the forest outside my windshield. Then I saw the road behind me outside my windshield.
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