A Sunday morning childhood story.
I do not use my phone book because I look everything up online. However, instead of throwing it away when I get it, I keep it my my bathroom as "reading material".
I was in the bathroom this morning, studiously memorizing the phone book, when I came across a name of this guy I knew when I was about 9 years old. His name is unique, so I know it is him.
At that time, we lived on a street where the houses were very close together. This guy (I will call him Mike), lived with his family, 2 houses down. He was part of a very large family...I'm guessing maybe 7 brothers and sisters. We were borderline poor, but we had enough. This family was a different level of poor. They rented their house, and it was a horrible shitbox...I can still picture it. One of those old stucco jobs that was never maintained. The stucco would routinely break off in huge chunks and the landlord never repaired it. Some of the windows were either cracked or broken, the porch leaned to one side, dirt instead of grass for a yard, etc.
I never saw the father sober. He was always stumbling around talking to himself. The mother was an extremely obese woman, who was sweet as pie. She would always say hello when she walked by. She had trouble maneuvering because of her weight...and these little fucks I went to grade school with used to taunt her. They would surround her as she walked down the street, call her names, and actually throw whatever was handy at her. It was awful.
Now this was back in the 60's...I guess things were different then...but here is what also used to happen routinely. A group of maybe 10 kids would go to their house and start raising hell out front on the sidewalk, taunting the kids to come out. Well, the kids were scared shitless and wouldn't come out, so these kids actually ran into the house and dragged them out...both the girls and the boys. Then they would beat the shit out of them. My father would chase them off if he was home, or he would call the police. After awhile, the police just stopped coming. They were an easy target. They were poor and dirty. Their last name was a household word in the town. You know what I mean...every town has a poor family that is vilified.
Around this time, my parents had befriended a "hippy girl". Her husband worked at a large company in the area and she was a stay at home mom. She was beautiful...in her early 20's. She was at the house constantly. Hers was the first female breast I saw. She used to breast feed in our kitchen. She was predominantly friends with my mom, but my dad kind of took her under his wing also. Nobody in my family drank and one time my dad comes home with 2 cases of beer. I asked him what it was for, and he said that Kathy and her husband were coming for dinner, and that her husband liked to get drunk. At that time, I did not know that beer would make you drunk...I thought only things like whiskey would. My dad said...well, you're going to learn something when you see this guy. So they came for dinner, and the husband drank over a case of beer. He got shitfaced. I remember him drawing out all these equations and explaining them to me. I had no idea what the fuck he was talking about.
So my birthday was coming up, and Kathy decided to throw me a huge party at my house. She did all of the planning, and did a lot of special things to make it a real party. She insisted that I invite the poor family. I almost started crying because she would not take no for an answer. I was afraid if they were there, then I would get the shit beat out of me too on a daily basis. She insisted that things would be fine. So these kids came to the party, along with all these douchebags I went to school with.
Best time of my childhood. These 7 dirty little kids show up along with my "regular" friends (they weren't friends though, more like just classmates). 4 hours of all these little idiots running around like jerks, screaming and laughing. Everyone had fun. No one got beat up.
Back to the phone book...I see Mike's name in the book. He is still local. I looked up his address on Zillow. He lives in a very modest, but nice home, like me. Made me smile. Made me miss Kathy the hippy.
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