Abio part 4: The great, the good, and the terrifying - January 7 2024
Abio part 4 – The great, the good, and the terrifying
An author’s aside: before I go any deeper, I’d like to answer a few questions. Also, I’m tired of spelling out the word autobiography because it is such a long word and it is in every title, so I’m officially trimming it to abio. Welcome to my abio.
Question 1: How long is this thing going to be?
Answer 1: I peeked ahead and I have 17,000 words, and I just started college.
Questions 2: Do we have to read all that? Are you going cradle-to-grave on this thing? Or just writing highlights? Will we still get holiday short stories and intermissions?
Answers 2: For myself, I’m writing it all down, cradle-to-grave. I want a tangible printed copy of my life in writing. Intermissions and short stories will remain.
With y’all, currently and cohesively, I am sharing just my survival years, seven years in the barely skilled work force before starting college. It was a time when my life could have taken a dozen wrong turns.
It starts with me as a high school senior in 1971 with no interest in college. It shows how the next three years changed my mind on that subject and I rushed off post haste to Penn State in 1974.
The experiences I had during those three years gave me a hard-knocks education that made college taste as sweet as honeydew vine water.
Question 3: What is my point?
Answer 3: I had no guidance. No one cared or suggested that I go to college. I figured it out on my own in just seven years. When I made it, after so long, I appreciated every second.
I’m curious if I would have appreciated it as much had it come easier.
During my junior and senior high school years we lived in the coolest apartment in town. It was on the second floor of a bowling alley and you could hear the pins crash from the kitchen.
It was strategically located for my kind of fun – the only apartment on the block. Below us was the bowling alley, an Italian restaurant, a car dealership, and a teenage dance hall. I could climb out any window onto any roof and look down on the town. I’d take my friends up there to hang out and be cool.
Below the bowling alley was The Daisy, a teenage dance hall with a stage, blacklights and colorful mushrooms, dwarves, and elves painted on the walls. It was cavernous with couches, beanbag chairs, pinball, and a jukebox playing the latest tunes.
Live bands played on the weekends. A tended bar sold sodas, tea, coffee, whatever was legal.
The place was popular. The jukebox was backed up for hours with requests because patrons hung around. You want to hear “Juanita Banana” you might have to pay and stay all day. I hung out there a lot, when I wasn’t bowling.
My mother and I had an unusual arrangement. After my father died in his fiery car crash a few years back, Boots and I were both single at the same time and both actively dating. Whoever brought a date home first would hang a towel over the front-door handle, which meant “Do not disturb.”
I learned to bowl. Boots bought me a ball and had Steve engraved on it for my birthday. Highest score was 237.
Directly across from our apartment on North Broad Street was a 25-acre grassy field owned by the volunteer fire department. They rented the field to circuses and our annual summer carnival and fireman’s celebration.
I always took jobs at the circus and carnival – setting up tents, hanging banners, shoveling elephant dung, all for free admission. I was their nearest local.
George, a life-long carny, was my best friend when he came to town. He owned two kiddie rides – the train and the boats, and he always hired me to run the train.
He paid me 50-cents a day and let me palm a few ride tickets to give to friends or sell at a discount over at Clarance’s Mobil gas station, half-price.
My job involved walking the train helping kids get seated and collecting their tickets. Then I would turn the power dial and the little red choo-choo would leave the station and go twice around a huge circle. I would sit on a chair and supervise.
I was a generous soul. Sometimes I’d give the dial an extra spin and lengthen the ride. When collecting tickets, sometimes I would “accidentally” forget to take certain kids’ tickets, kids that looked like they needed a free ride.
Everything was going along just fine for us. My mother went out dancing with George Blanda and they saw Frankie Yankovic. We had trails, swimming holes, fishing holes, climbing rocks, the big County Fair.
Our lives were going well.
Who needed college?
Then it all came crashing down.
My mother dated a man who would not go away. He moved in and took over our household.
I call it our Sling Blade years.
This guy, I’ll call him Bulk, was huge, mean, and text-book ugly. He looked like a tank that had gone through a crusher. Stiff porcupine hair. Stubby fingers. Pocked face. Square head. Refrigerator body.
Patty and I knew him all too well. He destroyed the lives of our neighbors – a single woman with two beautiful red-headed daughters, Roxanne and Suzie, and little Dave. Bulk moved in with them and soon revealed his true nature; he was ignorant and mean, perverted and vulgar. The mother had to sell her house and move to Arizona to escape him.
Patty and I heard the whispered horror stories.
When the neighbors ditched Bulk, he just moved one house down and knocked on our front door. He wanted to date my beautiful mother.
He got all dressed up one Friday and knocked. I opened it, and my stomach sank.
“Is your mum home?” he asked.
I gasped, “Mom! Someone to see you.” She came to the door. Bulk had cleaned up nice for his first impression, pressed slacks, stiff shirt, big and strong, a permanent laughing smile, yet nothing to laugh about.
My little sister Patty and I hid behind the door where only our mother could see us and waved “No!” to her, mouthed NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!” We clasped our hands in prayer.
“Just a date to the dance downtown,” was all he wanted, with his winning grin, exhaling a Lucky Strike. Mom corner-eyed us for two seconds, but being the polite, unassuming, tall, beautiful brunette with a great smile who looked like Jackie Kennedy to me, She said, “Yes,” to the Bulk.
Patty and I knew we were doomed. Our eyes turned black.
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