Chapter 5

I was sitting here thinking about my life story. I'm sure many of you are thinking how this could be another writer finding his muse and putting pen (or pencil) to the paper. Making an outline. The main characters. The supporting characters. The plot and sub plots. But like I mentioned, I never really had a strong basis in the structure of sentences. And that would be entirely too much work for me. You have to know me. That REALLY would be too much work for me.

No, this is all real. As real as that poor family who just lost 3 generations, a total of 7 people, in a horrible automobile crash. I have no idea what happened. It may take days for the authorities to figure it out. But none of the answers of 'what happened?' in this horrible accident will bring those family members back. Just heartbreaking.

I'm rambling right now as I lost the place in my thoughts. I know I thought and wrote about my father. I think he paid us a visit every once in a while. A year here. Another year there. He actually stuck around for a couple of days when my brother graduated from High School. I graduated from 8th grade a couple days later. So he knocked off two birds with one stone on that trip.

I know he was transferred around a lot in those years. He was in Cincinnati, San Francisco, Binghamton, Wilmington, Raleigh.

This brings me back to 1973. We were in our apartment about a year. Mom arranged for dad to deliver all of our remaining possessions from New York. He had put them into storage when he sold the house. I do believe the storage was in the back of someone's yard. They must have been out in the open. They could not have had any covering at all. All these big boxes that contained our precious memories were moldy as sin. They smelled to high heaven when we opened them up.

I recall my sister and I crying our eyes out as there was nothing we could do to reclaim any of the trash this had become. All of my models. Aircraft carriers. The Enterprise, Hornet, Wasp, Yorktown and Roosevelt. Battleships Pennsylvania and New Jersey. My fleet had been decimated. My airforce scrapped in no uncertain terms. I know my mom felt bad at what needed to happen. I do not recall my dad being around for any more time than to drop and run.

I started hanging out with some of the rougher kids in the neighborhood. I can clearly see the day they tried to enlist my aid in stealing candy from the local Woolworths Department Store. I was shaking like a leaf and was so tempted to grab something and stuff it in my pocket. The boy I was with decided to push some bags of candy into his pants. Lucky for me he was watched and caught. Since I had come in with him I was also sat down in the little office in the back room. The man asked me if I had taken anything also? I said "no, sir. I didn't steal anything". He gave us a warning. The other boy had taken out his booty and given it back to the manager. The manager did take our names, our mother's names, and home phone numbers. He never did call, but I know I was scared out of my mind. I did not like that overwhelming feeling of fear and vowed to never do that again.

Funny, I remember we were walking home. The adrenaline was wearing off. The boy I was with suddenly smiled. Holding up his hand, he showed me the bag of candy that the manager had not seen him take. The little hooligan!

So 1973, 1974, 1975 and 1976. Right now the remainder of those years are sitting in my black hole. I'll sit back and let some more memories say hello to me. I know some have to be from in that time frame. Most others are further into the 80's and 90's. I'm a little drained tonight and maybe I can get more than 4 or 5 hours of sleep. A good 8 would surely feel good about now. I'll be back with more...