This is one of those stories that I really should not tell, but I will anyway... Caveats - I won't name any of the other participants - and yes, my kids have already heard it :-)
One
Saturday afternoon in early 1972 four of us young men got
bored and decided to head down to Richardson, Texas (north of Dallas) to
visit a couple of girls (Julie and Vicki - redhead and wavy blonde respectively) who had recently moved
from Argyle.
As we headed down I-35E it got a little "smoky" in
the car. Yeah - we stopped for gas and rolled the window down. The
attendant caught a whiff, yelled "Holy sh*t!" and jumped back about 3
feet... It was a Cheech and Chong moment :-)
So
we got to Richardson and hung out with the girls at a local park for a
while. And by the time we decided to head back to Argyle it was dark out
and well past dinner time... The plan was to eat when we got home but
we soon realized that we were just way too hungry to wait (I
wonder why) so we pulled off the freeway at Lewisville to "load up" at
the Jack In The Box... I seem to recall that I got a Jumbo Jack, large
fries, 3 tacos and a chocolate shake. (A light snack.)
After we got
back on the freeway I got totally engrossed in
unwrapping my burger (which was proving to be rather challenging for
some reason) - and when I glanced up I noticed that the car was
drifting onto the shoulder and was heading in the general direction of a
bridge abutment... I was thinking "Dude! Whoever is driving really should be paying attention!" ... Then I remembered that I was driving... (The steering wheel kind of gave it away.)
So
we did make it back to Argyle in one piece and I resolved that I would
never drive in that state again (toasted, not Texas) - but I did (multiple times)... Yeah - young and stupid :-)
About a month later I was cleaning out the Charger and discovered that one of the guys had
left a little bit of something with a small clip attached under the
passenger seat... I was really ticked off! People were getting major prison sentences in Texas for trace amounts and I had been running around town doing burnouts and stuff without realizing that I was "in possession" :-) ... That was not cool!
Aside: I've always considered it kind of a no-brainer that if you have something in your car that you don't want the police to find you should not blatantly violate any traffic laws. Yet it seems like hardly a week goes by without some bozo getting stopped in a border state going 20 MPH over the speed limit with a half-million dollars worth of dope in the car... I mean, I'm glad they get caught and all - but how stupid can you be??? ... I figure they pretty much have to go into "witness protection" afterward because the odds are that someone is very unhappy with them... Honestly - you'd think drug lords would do a better job of "vetting" their couriers before entrusting them with that much stuff... But I'm really drifting off topic :-)
If there's a point here it probably has something to do with the sense of invulnerability and the illusion (delusion?) of control ... I have to admit that I'm amazed I managed to survive my teen years. (I'm amazed that anyone survives their teen years - that's when natural selection seems to be at its peak.) But (unlike most teens) I never felt like I was invulnerable. On the contrary - it has always been one of my defining characteristics that I expect things to go wrong... The problem was that I just didn't care :-)
That's not to say that I threw caution to the wind. That was Steve :-) I only took risks when I felt like I was in control. And that's the illusion/delusion part... It wasn't until many years later that I finally had to admit to myself that I was never really "driving"... I was always just along for the ride...
Saturday, May 26, 2012
Monday, May 21, 2012
Draft Day
It just occurred to me that I have not said anything about the events of February 2, 1972... You see - not only was it Ground Hog Day, it was also the day of the military draft lottery for males born in 1953.
Now - for those who are unaware, the lottery was a little bit of pageantry staged by the U.S. Government each year from 1969 to 1972. As it turns out, the Army didn't need all of the country's 18 year old males for "cannon fodder" during those years (baby boom?) so they to set up a lottery system to determine the order in which they would be drafted... Basically, there was a big drum full of red capsules and blue capsules - the red ones contained birth dates and the blue ones the numbers 1 through 365. They would spin the drum and pick out a capsule of each color. The blue capsule's number was the draft order for those born on the date contained in the red capsule. And if you ended up with a low draft number there was a very good chance you would end up dodging bullets in the lovely tropical jungles of Vietnam...
Here's a picture of the lottery setup:
Aside: It is truly unfortunate that the merits of the Vietnam War are still being argued among those who served there. Some hold that we accomplished every objective we set out to (including stopping the spread of communism), while others take the position that it was a colossal waste of money and life...
Now - I'm definitely not anti-war. That is because I have no doubt that there will always be insane ego-maniacs (aka politicians) who will try to take over the world by force, hence there will always be a need for military action. However, I also believe that the willingness of a country's citizens to sacrifice their lives in its defense is its most valuable and precious resource and needs to be treated as such...
Finally - I truly believe that no soldier ever dies in vain, because each sacrifice reminds us of the horrible cost of war - a cost that must be avoided except in the most dire circumstances...
But regardless of the merits of the "police action" in Vietnam (congress never declared war) the impact on my generation was undeniable and ever-present - and not just on the nightly news. Hardly a week went by when you didn't hear of someone losing a brother, a friend, or a neighbor... So it should come as no surprise that there was a certain degree of fatalism among young men of my generation. We tended to behave like there was no tomorrow because we felt like (once we finished high school) there was a good chance that there would be no tomorrow.
And it intensified in April of 1970 when (as a matter of fairness) Nixon ended draft deferments for those who were attending college or had a family or were working at a "defense critical" job. That meant that only young men whose parents had the power and influence to get them into the National Guard (which otherwise had a 3 or 4 year waiting list) could avoid the draft... Personally, I think Nixon's executive order had more to do with ending the war than anything else... Yeah - it's funny how quickly things wound down once parents could no longer shelter their sons simply by ponying up college tuition. But I digress slightly.
So it came to pass that I found myself "sleepwalking" through my classes at North Texas on 2/2/72... My thoughts were elsewhere... In addition to my mom having just been admitted to the hospital and eviction looming on the horizon, some old farts in Washington D.C. were in the process of picking my ass out of a barrel. And given everything that had happened recently the only way I wasn't going to end up in Vietnam (or back in Canada) was if my luck changed... Needless to say, my stomach was churning and my mind was racing as I drove home to make that fateful phone call to the "hotline" the local newspaper had set up for the draft lottery results.
Aside: Once again I feel compelled to point out that as of February 2nd of 1972 there was no such thing as a cell phone or the internet. The first "usable" microprocessor was still years away and the typical computer filled an entire room. As a matter of fact, the very first handheld calculator (the HP-35) had just been announced the prior day. (Goodbye slide-rules.) The point is that the only way to get "up to the minute" news was to have access to a teletype machine. But I digress...
I distinctly recall that the young lady who answered the phone could not understand why I got so excited when she told me that my draft number was 364 (about as safe as you could get). Yeah - clueless :-)
Of course, my fears turned out to have been unfounded. Nobody born in 1953 was ever drafted. We were supposed to be called up in 1973 but Nixon started the troop "drawdown" in late 1972 which effectively ended the draft...
I also would have never guessed that one year later I would be reporting to Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio for basic training... Go figure...
Finally - I did not yet know that they take away your draft card when you enlist... I was so pissed off! ... I really wanted to keep that thing as a reminder of the times :-)
Now - for those who are unaware, the lottery was a little bit of pageantry staged by the U.S. Government each year from 1969 to 1972. As it turns out, the Army didn't need all of the country's 18 year old males for "cannon fodder" during those years (baby boom?) so they to set up a lottery system to determine the order in which they would be drafted... Basically, there was a big drum full of red capsules and blue capsules - the red ones contained birth dates and the blue ones the numbers 1 through 365. They would spin the drum and pick out a capsule of each color. The blue capsule's number was the draft order for those born on the date contained in the red capsule. And if you ended up with a low draft number there was a very good chance you would end up dodging bullets in the lovely tropical jungles of Vietnam...
Here's a picture of the lottery setup:
Aside: It is truly unfortunate that the merits of the Vietnam War are still being argued among those who served there. Some hold that we accomplished every objective we set out to (including stopping the spread of communism), while others take the position that it was a colossal waste of money and life...
Now - I'm definitely not anti-war. That is because I have no doubt that there will always be insane ego-maniacs (aka politicians) who will try to take over the world by force, hence there will always be a need for military action. However, I also believe that the willingness of a country's citizens to sacrifice their lives in its defense is its most valuable and precious resource and needs to be treated as such...
Finally - I truly believe that no soldier ever dies in vain, because each sacrifice reminds us of the horrible cost of war - a cost that must be avoided except in the most dire circumstances...
But regardless of the merits of the "police action" in Vietnam (congress never declared war) the impact on my generation was undeniable and ever-present - and not just on the nightly news. Hardly a week went by when you didn't hear of someone losing a brother, a friend, or a neighbor... So it should come as no surprise that there was a certain degree of fatalism among young men of my generation. We tended to behave like there was no tomorrow because we felt like (once we finished high school) there was a good chance that there would be no tomorrow.
And it intensified in April of 1970 when (as a matter of fairness) Nixon ended draft deferments for those who were attending college or had a family or were working at a "defense critical" job. That meant that only young men whose parents had the power and influence to get them into the National Guard (which otherwise had a 3 or 4 year waiting list) could avoid the draft... Personally, I think Nixon's executive order had more to do with ending the war than anything else... Yeah - it's funny how quickly things wound down once parents could no longer shelter their sons simply by ponying up college tuition. But I digress slightly.
So it came to pass that I found myself "sleepwalking" through my classes at North Texas on 2/2/72... My thoughts were elsewhere... In addition to my mom having just been admitted to the hospital and eviction looming on the horizon, some old farts in Washington D.C. were in the process of picking my ass out of a barrel. And given everything that had happened recently the only way I wasn't going to end up in Vietnam (or back in Canada) was if my luck changed... Needless to say, my stomach was churning and my mind was racing as I drove home to make that fateful phone call to the "hotline" the local newspaper had set up for the draft lottery results.
Aside: Once again I feel compelled to point out that as of February 2nd of 1972 there was no such thing as a cell phone or the internet. The first "usable" microprocessor was still years away and the typical computer filled an entire room. As a matter of fact, the very first handheld calculator (the HP-35) had just been announced the prior day. (Goodbye slide-rules.) The point is that the only way to get "up to the minute" news was to have access to a teletype machine. But I digress...
I distinctly recall that the young lady who answered the phone could not understand why I got so excited when she told me that my draft number was 364 (about as safe as you could get). Yeah - clueless :-)
Of course, my fears turned out to have been unfounded. Nobody born in 1953 was ever drafted. We were supposed to be called up in 1973 but Nixon started the troop "drawdown" in late 1972 which effectively ended the draft...
I also would have never guessed that one year later I would be reporting to Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio for basic training... Go figure...
Finally - I did not yet know that they take away your draft card when you enlist... I was so pissed off! ... I really wanted to keep that thing as a reminder of the times :-)
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Surreal
At this point I've devoted 263 blog posts to describing my life from birth until the spring of 1972 and if I had to sum it all up I would use words like turbulent, volatile, unstable and surreal...
To recap: My parents were both brilliant and gifted people who were greatly admired by the outside world. But in private my father was out of control - yelling and lashing out at those closest to him. There was frequent verbal abuse and (on rare occasions) physical as well... And my mother was the quintessential drama queen. She vastly overreacted to everything and required constant reassurance and praise (and unfortunately, constant change of location). Any word or action could potentially trigger one of her "I should have never been born" diatribes...Yeah - I don't think she had any idea what kind of emotional burden she placed on those around her (me in particular)... And I'm not even going to talk about my sister :-)
It would be safe to say that my life was a constant struggle to find sanity amidst chaos... That was my "normal" - until I moved in with the McDaniels.
It turns out that Stella and Dewitt were were genuinely happy people - completely at peace with themselves and each other. There was simply no anger or negativity in them... And given everything I had been through that was equally surreal :-) Here's a picture of them together not long before Dewitt passed away:
For some reason the first thing that I remember about living with them involves laundry... Now (if you recall) - during high school I got sent to the office multiple times because someone complained that I smelled bad. And it was not so much a body hygiene issue as it was the fact that my laundry only got done once every month or two (if I was lucky).
So - the first morning after I moved into that room in the McDaniels' garage I left my dirty clothes lying on my chair and headed off to classes at North Texas. And when I got home from school they were clean and neatly folded in my dresser drawer... At first I thought it was a fluke (must've been laundry day) - but it happened again the next day - and the next. And I finally said to Stella "You know - you don't have to do my laundry every day... I could do it myself for that matter." And she told me she didn't mind at all. She always did a load of laundry every morning - it was part of her routine. And since the machine was never completely full it was no trouble to add mine... Yeah - it was downright weird :-)
Then - every Sunday morning Dewitt would get up early and make biscuits and gravy... Don't know why that made such an impression on me ... Probably because I can't envision my dad ever doing that :-)
The next thing that comes to mind was the level of respect and trust. For example: When the family Oldsmobile started running rough Dewitt asked if I would rebuild the carburetor for him... I mean, who the heck asks an 18 year old kid with no mechanical training to do that? ... BTW: That was the last time I ever touched a Rochester (GM) carburetor. Those things are a nightmare compared to the Autolite (Ford) carbs I was used to... (Freaking Rube Goldberg choke linkage.)
But the most pronounced difference from anything I had ever experienced was how they dealt with their children. As I've mentioned before, Steve was a bit on the wild side. So it should come as no surprise that Dewitt got frustrated - and exasperated - and sometimes he even raise his voice a little bit. But he never really yelled or lost control... He always tried to come up with a constructive way to deal with every situation.
BTW: Dewitt once confessed to me that he had a really hard time disciplining Steve because he was secretly amused by a lot of the things Steve did.... Still - as a parent he couldn't just let it slide.
As the years passed I became a husband, a father and a grandfather. And in all that time I never gave much conscious thought to the kind of man I wanted to be (other than not wanting to be like my dad).
But after writing this post it is clear to me that Dewitt's example was always in the back of my mind...
I can't think of any other explanation for the similarities between the man he was and the man I've tried to be.
To recap: My parents were both brilliant and gifted people who were greatly admired by the outside world. But in private my father was out of control - yelling and lashing out at those closest to him. There was frequent verbal abuse and (on rare occasions) physical as well... And my mother was the quintessential drama queen. She vastly overreacted to everything and required constant reassurance and praise (and unfortunately, constant change of location). Any word or action could potentially trigger one of her "I should have never been born" diatribes...Yeah - I don't think she had any idea what kind of emotional burden she placed on those around her (me in particular)... And I'm not even going to talk about my sister :-)
It would be safe to say that my life was a constant struggle to find sanity amidst chaos... That was my "normal" - until I moved in with the McDaniels.
It turns out that Stella and Dewitt were were genuinely happy people - completely at peace with themselves and each other. There was simply no anger or negativity in them... And given everything I had been through that was equally surreal :-) Here's a picture of them together not long before Dewitt passed away:
For some reason the first thing that I remember about living with them involves laundry... Now (if you recall) - during high school I got sent to the office multiple times because someone complained that I smelled bad. And it was not so much a body hygiene issue as it was the fact that my laundry only got done once every month or two (if I was lucky).
So - the first morning after I moved into that room in the McDaniels' garage I left my dirty clothes lying on my chair and headed off to classes at North Texas. And when I got home from school they were clean and neatly folded in my dresser drawer... At first I thought it was a fluke (must've been laundry day) - but it happened again the next day - and the next. And I finally said to Stella "You know - you don't have to do my laundry every day... I could do it myself for that matter." And she told me she didn't mind at all. She always did a load of laundry every morning - it was part of her routine. And since the machine was never completely full it was no trouble to add mine... Yeah - it was downright weird :-)
Then - every Sunday morning Dewitt would get up early and make biscuits and gravy... Don't know why that made such an impression on me ... Probably because I can't envision my dad ever doing that :-)
The next thing that comes to mind was the level of respect and trust. For example: When the family Oldsmobile started running rough Dewitt asked if I would rebuild the carburetor for him... I mean, who the heck asks an 18 year old kid with no mechanical training to do that? ... BTW: That was the last time I ever touched a Rochester (GM) carburetor. Those things are a nightmare compared to the Autolite (Ford) carbs I was used to... (Freaking Rube Goldberg choke linkage.)
But the most pronounced difference from anything I had ever experienced was how they dealt with their children. As I've mentioned before, Steve was a bit on the wild side. So it should come as no surprise that Dewitt got frustrated - and exasperated - and sometimes he even raise his voice a little bit. But he never really yelled or lost control... He always tried to come up with a constructive way to deal with every situation.
BTW: Dewitt once confessed to me that he had a really hard time disciplining Steve because he was secretly amused by a lot of the things Steve did.... Still - as a parent he couldn't just let it slide.
As the years passed I became a husband, a father and a grandfather. And in all that time I never gave much conscious thought to the kind of man I wanted to be (other than not wanting to be like my dad).
But after writing this post it is clear to me that Dewitt's example was always in the back of my mind...
I can't think of any other explanation for the similarities between the man he was and the man I've tried to be.
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
An Ending and a Beginning
I guess it's probably time for me to officially identify Steve's parents: They are Stella and Dewitt McDaniel... I held off on revealing their last name for so long because I wasn't sure how much I was going to say about some of the things Steve did back in the day. Now that I've "outed" him I guess I'm going to have to take most of it to the grave with me :-)
BTW: Dewitt passed away a few years back, but Stella, Steve and his little sister Stephanie still live within a 1/4 mile of each other in Argyle.
And on to the story:
When I found out I was being evicted from the house in Denton I went through all the rooms and put everything in piles on the living room floor. I had already hauled some of it to the McDaniels' house when Dewitt offered me a place to live but there was still an awful lot left... Not much of it was Karina's - she tended to travel really light back then, but both mom and I had accumulated a fair bit of stuff during the time we'd been in Texas and there wasn't nearly enough room for all of it at the McDaniels'.
That left me in a quandary... I didn't mind leaving most of my stuff behind, but since mom wasn't there to sort through her things I had to make choices. I would've liked to have taken it all, but there really wasn't room. On the other hand, the doctors seemed quite certain she was going to die in which case I'd end up getting rid of everything that didn't hold any sentimental value anyway... So I tried to strike a balance by asking myself "How pissed off is mom going to be if she ends up surviving and this particular item is gone?"
So - I took all of her paintings (but not the frames), some of her nicer clothes, her personal mementos and most of her books. Everything else (including the unwashed dishes in the sink) I left behind... Since the landlord had taken the TV and stereo I figured he could darn well pay the cost of getting rid of everything else :-)
Aside: Unfortunately, Dewitt was allergic to cats which led to that traumatic trip to the pound I described in an earlier post.
Of course, I had to get the Fairlane out of there too and that posed a bit of a problem because it wasn't running at the time. (Probably the radiator - it was almost always the radiator.) So one evening Dewitt brought his truck over and he rigged up a kind of "tow bar" arrangement using a chain running through an 8 foot piece of pipe. (That way I wouldn't have to worry about braking when he slowed down.)
So we proceeded down Mingo, Bell and Locust, and the setup was working pretty well until we got to the intersection of the I35E frontage road and highway 377. Dewitt started to make the left turn when somebody cut him off and he had to slam on his brakes. I didn't have time to react and the sudden shock broke the chain causing the Fairlane to smack into the back of his pickup... Dewitt made sure I was OK and apologized profusely, but it really wasn't necessary. I seem to recall his back bumper got tweaked worse that the front of the Fairlane :-)
At that point we were completely blocking the intersection of Interstate 35E and highway 377 (pretty busy at that time of day) which meant we had to figure something out quick. So Dewitt just hooked the Fairlane up with a long piece of rope and gave me instructions on how to avoid leaving any slack. (Basically, I had to brake for both vehicles). And we made it back to their house on Old Justin Road without further incident.
BTW - That reminds me: There used to be a street sign at the McDaniels' driveway that said "Heart Attack Alley". It was placed there by a new minister who caught a ride with Dewitt before anyone had a chance to warn him :-)
Another aside: Of course, my mom did survive, and do you know what she was maddest about? ... Those freaking picture frames... They were big, heavy, ornate and unwieldy and my mom was like "You dummy! Do you have any idea what those were worth???" and I was like "Hey! You were supposed to die! Remember? I had to leave something behind!"... Yeah - I didn't hear the end of that one for years... Someone would be admiring her paintings and she'd say "I used to have really nice frames for them but my son threw them away." Like I was the village idiot or something... But I digress :-)
So - a part of my life ended and a new one had begun... One that was unlike anything I had ever experienced...
BTW: Dewitt passed away a few years back, but Stella, Steve and his little sister Stephanie still live within a 1/4 mile of each other in Argyle.
And on to the story:
When I found out I was being evicted from the house in Denton I went through all the rooms and put everything in piles on the living room floor. I had already hauled some of it to the McDaniels' house when Dewitt offered me a place to live but there was still an awful lot left... Not much of it was Karina's - she tended to travel really light back then, but both mom and I had accumulated a fair bit of stuff during the time we'd been in Texas and there wasn't nearly enough room for all of it at the McDaniels'.
That left me in a quandary... I didn't mind leaving most of my stuff behind, but since mom wasn't there to sort through her things I had to make choices. I would've liked to have taken it all, but there really wasn't room. On the other hand, the doctors seemed quite certain she was going to die in which case I'd end up getting rid of everything that didn't hold any sentimental value anyway... So I tried to strike a balance by asking myself "How pissed off is mom going to be if she ends up surviving and this particular item is gone?"
So - I took all of her paintings (but not the frames), some of her nicer clothes, her personal mementos and most of her books. Everything else (including the unwashed dishes in the sink) I left behind... Since the landlord had taken the TV and stereo I figured he could darn well pay the cost of getting rid of everything else :-)
Aside: Unfortunately, Dewitt was allergic to cats which led to that traumatic trip to the pound I described in an earlier post.
Of course, I had to get the Fairlane out of there too and that posed a bit of a problem because it wasn't running at the time. (Probably the radiator - it was almost always the radiator.) So one evening Dewitt brought his truck over and he rigged up a kind of "tow bar" arrangement using a chain running through an 8 foot piece of pipe. (That way I wouldn't have to worry about braking when he slowed down.)
So we proceeded down Mingo, Bell and Locust, and the setup was working pretty well until we got to the intersection of the I35E frontage road and highway 377. Dewitt started to make the left turn when somebody cut him off and he had to slam on his brakes. I didn't have time to react and the sudden shock broke the chain causing the Fairlane to smack into the back of his pickup... Dewitt made sure I was OK and apologized profusely, but it really wasn't necessary. I seem to recall his back bumper got tweaked worse that the front of the Fairlane :-)
At that point we were completely blocking the intersection of Interstate 35E and highway 377 (pretty busy at that time of day) which meant we had to figure something out quick. So Dewitt just hooked the Fairlane up with a long piece of rope and gave me instructions on how to avoid leaving any slack. (Basically, I had to brake for both vehicles). And we made it back to their house on Old Justin Road without further incident.
BTW - That reminds me: There used to be a street sign at the McDaniels' driveway that said "Heart Attack Alley". It was placed there by a new minister who caught a ride with Dewitt before anyone had a chance to warn him :-)
Another aside: Of course, my mom did survive, and do you know what she was maddest about? ... Those freaking picture frames... They were big, heavy, ornate and unwieldy and my mom was like "You dummy! Do you have any idea what those were worth???" and I was like "Hey! You were supposed to die! Remember? I had to leave something behind!"... Yeah - I didn't hear the end of that one for years... Someone would be admiring her paintings and she'd say "I used to have really nice frames for them but my son threw them away." Like I was the village idiot or something... But I digress :-)
So - a part of my life ended and a new one had begun... One that was unlike anything I had ever experienced...
Friday, May 4, 2012
Salvation
Before I get to the topic at hand I've got a quick "moral story" from my North Texas days:
Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a creature of habit - I've been that way as long as I can recall. So it should come as no surprise that on "school days" I would arrive at the local Jack-In-The-Box promptly at 10AM (opening time) for my "main" meal of the day. That left plenty of time to eat, drive to school, park and get to my 11AM English class.
Now - at that hour there were never any other customers - just me and the manager (who acted as cashier and cook until the rest of the staff got there). And since there was nobody else around we would "shoot the breeze" while he fixed my Jumbo Jack - it was all very informal... BTW: I always got my meal "to go" and ate in my Charger... I'm not quite sure why - I guess I've just always preferred to dine "a la car"... (Yeah - that was intentionally punny.)
Then one day while I was eating my burger I checked my wallet to see exactly how much money I had left and discovered that I had at least a dollar more than I should have. That's when it dawned on me that amidst all the banter I must have forgotten to pay for my lunch - so I ran back inside to take care of it... The manager (who was aware of my financial situation) was impressed by my honesty, and from that day forward he always made me a fully loaded "custom" burger (the way he liked it) - much better than a stock Jumbo Jack... And the point is that honesty does pay :-)
Now - on to the topic:
I had been hanging out at Steve's house quite a bit because he was the only one of my friends who wasn't completely "weirded out" by my mom being in the hospital. And it was around that time that Steve's father (who was a union steamfitter) decided to build a room in the garage. It didn't strike me as unusual because he was always doing projects around the house and (as he explained) it would be nice to have an extra room for when relatives came to visit...
Now - there is a "side story" involving that extra room. It doesn't have much of a point, but it is somewhat "illustrative" so I'll go ahead and tell it:
I was over at Steve's house when his dad backed the pickup into the driveway and went into the house. A while later he came back out, looked in bed of the truck and said: "OK guys. Real funny! ... Where did you hide the lumber and the rest of the paneling?" And we were like "What are you talking about?"... Steve's dad started poking around in the garage and looking around the house saying "C'mon guys - I'm serious! Where did you put it?" And we're like "Honestly! We didn't touch anything!"... It took at least 5 minutes to convince him that it wasn't a practical joke - he must have lost the load. So, at that point we all hopped in the truck to retrace the route back to the lumberyard..
Now - the interesting thing about riding with Steve's dad is that you rarely knew how fast you were going. That's because speedometers only go so high... For example, the one in his '69 Chevy C20 pickup (396 4-bbl) only went up to 100 MPH so it was incapable of indicating how fast we were going as we headed east on 1171 toward Lewisville (keeping an eye out for a pile of lumber as we drove).
When we arrived at the lumber yard without having seen a trace of the missing materials Steve's dad was somewhat despondent, but then one of the workers came out saying "It's about time you showed up! You took out of here so fast the load slid right out of the back of the truck." The yard workers had even picked it all up and restacked it on the loading dock for when he returned... And that's the end of the story... Like I said - not much of a point, except to illustrate that practical jokes and driving fast were in Steve's DNA :-)
I suppose it's fairly obvious where this is going but I certainly had no clue at the time. (I don't think Steve even knew...) When the room was finished (paneled, carpeted and air conditioned - complete with a locking door) Steve's dad handed me the keys and said "I built the room for you. You're welcome to stay as long as you want."
I was absolutely speechless... The thought that people who barely knew me would welcome me into their home was a possibility I had never even considered...
When it comes to Christianity I've met a lot of folks who talk the talk, but I have never known anyone who walked the walk the way that Steve's parents did...
And that's how Steve and I became "brothers"...
Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a creature of habit - I've been that way as long as I can recall. So it should come as no surprise that on "school days" I would arrive at the local Jack-In-The-Box promptly at 10AM (opening time) for my "main" meal of the day. That left plenty of time to eat, drive to school, park and get to my 11AM English class.
Now - at that hour there were never any other customers - just me and the manager (who acted as cashier and cook until the rest of the staff got there). And since there was nobody else around we would "shoot the breeze" while he fixed my Jumbo Jack - it was all very informal... BTW: I always got my meal "to go" and ate in my Charger... I'm not quite sure why - I guess I've just always preferred to dine "a la car"... (Yeah - that was intentionally punny.)
Then one day while I was eating my burger I checked my wallet to see exactly how much money I had left and discovered that I had at least a dollar more than I should have. That's when it dawned on me that amidst all the banter I must have forgotten to pay for my lunch - so I ran back inside to take care of it... The manager (who was aware of my financial situation) was impressed by my honesty, and from that day forward he always made me a fully loaded "custom" burger (the way he liked it) - much better than a stock Jumbo Jack... And the point is that honesty does pay :-)
Now - on to the topic:
I had been hanging out at Steve's house quite a bit because he was the only one of my friends who wasn't completely "weirded out" by my mom being in the hospital. And it was around that time that Steve's father (who was a union steamfitter) decided to build a room in the garage. It didn't strike me as unusual because he was always doing projects around the house and (as he explained) it would be nice to have an extra room for when relatives came to visit...
Now - there is a "side story" involving that extra room. It doesn't have much of a point, but it is somewhat "illustrative" so I'll go ahead and tell it:
I was over at Steve's house when his dad backed the pickup into the driveway and went into the house. A while later he came back out, looked in bed of the truck and said: "OK guys. Real funny! ... Where did you hide the lumber and the rest of the paneling?" And we were like "What are you talking about?"... Steve's dad started poking around in the garage and looking around the house saying "C'mon guys - I'm serious! Where did you put it?" And we're like "Honestly! We didn't touch anything!"... It took at least 5 minutes to convince him that it wasn't a practical joke - he must have lost the load. So, at that point we all hopped in the truck to retrace the route back to the lumberyard..
Now - the interesting thing about riding with Steve's dad is that you rarely knew how fast you were going. That's because speedometers only go so high... For example, the one in his '69 Chevy C20 pickup (396 4-bbl) only went up to 100 MPH so it was incapable of indicating how fast we were going as we headed east on 1171 toward Lewisville (keeping an eye out for a pile of lumber as we drove).
When we arrived at the lumber yard without having seen a trace of the missing materials Steve's dad was somewhat despondent, but then one of the workers came out saying "It's about time you showed up! You took out of here so fast the load slid right out of the back of the truck." The yard workers had even picked it all up and restacked it on the loading dock for when he returned... And that's the end of the story... Like I said - not much of a point, except to illustrate that practical jokes and driving fast were in Steve's DNA :-)
I suppose it's fairly obvious where this is going but I certainly had no clue at the time. (I don't think Steve even knew...) When the room was finished (paneled, carpeted and air conditioned - complete with a locking door) Steve's dad handed me the keys and said "I built the room for you. You're welcome to stay as long as you want."
I was absolutely speechless... The thought that people who barely knew me would welcome me into their home was a possibility I had never even considered...
When it comes to Christianity I've met a lot of folks who talk the talk, but I have never known anyone who walked the walk the way that Steve's parents did...
And that's how Steve and I became "brothers"...
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