Damn Yankee - George S Geisinger (books for 6 year olds to read themselves .TXT) 📗

church in town.
We had arrived in Maryland in August, and I began assessing my new environment right away. I had a bicycle, which was indispensable for a kid in that semi-rural environment. The distances between places, starting at my aunt's house, were miles and miles apart. It was not practical to walk much of any place from my new home.
I found a girl who was hanging out in the above ground swimming pool of the local apartment complex, just by looking around the new town out my way. We were the same age, and I gravitated in her direction regularly on my bike, until she told me her father had gotten another job someplace else, and they moved away abruptly before school got started.
So much for her.
There was also a bunch of girls who lived close by, but riding my bike right up to the back porch where one of them lived, when they were all hanging out, and talking trash to all five of them at once, did not do any good for my popularity with any of them, whatsoever. They scarcely spoke to me again the whole time I lived there.
Then, there was a house just up the street from them that had four brothers of various ages living there with their parents. I developed all sorts of problems with them eventually, but since they lived so close by, it was difficult to avoid going over there. That house was the only place within easy walking distance, besides all those girls who didn't want to have anything to do with me, and I had associations with the Disgusting-son's brothers, as I've grown to remember them, which is a bastardization of their last name, and associated with them to varying degrees for many years.
The oldest one was several years older than me, and I found him to be greatly intimidating, but he was not much of an issue for very long. I think he got married and moved out of state when he was still a young man. I was still a kid when he left, as I recall.
His next oldest brother was just a year behind me in age, and went to the Boy Scout Troop mother got me into at our church.
I got so hopping mad at him one evening, I could have beaten him within an inch of his life, if I was like that, but I'm just not interested in hurting people. There was an announcement at Scouts one evening was that there was going to be a father's day at the meeting soon, and we should all tell our dads when it was going to be, so our dads could come to the meeting, and he turned around and said to me that I didn't have a father. I wasn't going to let him talk that way about my mother, so I started yelling and cussing him out, right in front of everybody at the Boy Scouts, and only got in a little bit of trouble for my language, and the yelling, instead of sending the guy to the hospital from beating the crap out of him, like I wanted to do. I always wished I'd whooped him good and proper, though. I wasn't any bastard, and he had no right to say that I didn't have a father. My father was just not available, having deserted us and gone to Florida.
I've never quite gotten over thinking about that. It still sticks to my craw sometimes, fifty years later.
His little brothers eventually made certain I was continually addicted to drugs, like he did by the time high school was over, and they eventually provided such important introductions in the community for me, like giving my acquaintance to the guys who robbed my folks' house while I was tricked into getting out of the away. I narc'ed on the whole bunch of them to the state police after they did it, too. But that was a long time later, after I'd lived there well into adulthood. Those youngest two brothers were quite a bit younger than me. It was the second brother that was closest to my age, but I could never quite seem to keep myself away from that house, even after the two oldest brothers moved to the southwest.
Then, at the church there were a couple of guys who hung out with me quite a bit when we first arrived in town. One of them was the preacher's kid, like I'd been when I was little.
That's right, my dad was a preacher, and deserted his family after a fit of angry violence, leaving us with no visible means of support.
The other PK at that church and school kept up with me over the years, calling, coming over, getting together, mostly for one sort of mischief or another. He as the one who was so fond of alcohol in high school, and particularly beer, that it was his idea to have the chorus director give us beer over at his place, when we were still too young to drink. It was his idea to go over to the teacher's house all the time in the first place, and he was always spoiling for the old guy's booze.
He was Joe Sports, which I could definitely not relate to, being a creative type. He'd do all the write-ups of the high school sports for the newspaper in those days. He definitely had a way with words, so he was packed off to college to major in journalism right out of high school, but dropped out after only one semester. He wanted quick money, a car and a girlfriend more than he wanted a career. He wouldn't even try to get a degree.
He ended up with a wife and two kids, (one of each), and a house in the suburbs, with a car, a van, and a motorcycle, which he and his wife paid for by their constant participation in the work-a-day world, doing whatever they could to get paid.
He loved to get drunk and yell at the TV when a game was on, as if ruining his voice and my ears was going to effect the outcome of a game through the TV set.
I was in very poor health throughout my youth, and spent a lot of time in the state hospital. The problem eventually turned out to be my drinking, as much as anything else, but my dear ole buddy was always coming to see me at the hospital, bringing me a couple of beers every time. He was doing me a favor, you see. And he was always putting me up in his house in the suburbs, when the hospital wanted to discharge me.
But I got so I couldn't handle a job.
After a while, with all that going on, he got sick and tired of my version of crazy. He didn't stop hanging out with me. He just stopped being kind to me. I didn't have too many choices of people to hang out with, except for the drinkers and the smokers. I was just about the most clueless person in the world about how to clean up my life, for the longest time. What I needed to do was quit getting drunk, and quit smoking.
Eventually, the guy who was my inseparable associate, got cancer, and mother said it was because he drank so much beer all his life. He died before he was fifty.

Chapter 5

One of my buddies I've known for several years. We have a really good time together, often enough. I know his wife, and have met his two adult kids. Now they're grandparents. They've had me over for supper parties and whatnot, from time to time, and the nice things they've done for me out of friendship are countless. I do things like give them hats and scarves when I get together with them.
We used to be hippies, way back before we met, and gave it all up a while back, which is sort of how we met, but there are some stories to tell about all that. He used to hike, fish, and camp around the great Brighton Dam. He didn't realize that I knew anything about the place. Now I live in the senior living apartments there.
He and his wife, (or is it just his wife?), are from someplace up North, up in New England or Upstate New York, or maybe she went to school someplace like that, I forget exactly, and he used to drive on up through New Jersey to see her, getting wasted in his Mustang on the way up to see her and back, tripping his brains out on mescaline and whatnot, back in the day, and there was this one Jersey cop who would always haul him over on the interstate, and bust him for the little bid of weed, or whatever he was holding at the time. He wasn't speeding or anything. That cop just like to haul him over for the heck of it. He'd spend a night in jail, now and then, over it, back when he was a young man in love. I think it was just because the cop liked his Mustang.
But he couldn't stay away from that girl, so he married her. Sounds like good reasoning to me. She's a real nice girl, too. I gave her one of the hats I made, through him one day while he was over at my place, and then forgot I'd done it. When I said something about the hat, when she was wearing it, she had to remind me it was one of mine. Talk about a senior moment...
They've known each other all their lives, anyway, and she has a whole gaggle of sisters, who are always teasing him, whenever they're around. “Tommy!” they say, in the most flirtatious voices they can muster, as if they've been practicing all their lives. He just says, “Uh, Ohhhh,” and quietly laughs, smiling, all good-naturally.
He was just like the majority of our entire generation. He partied and did his tripping and whatnot. He did Vietnam in the army, too. Not me, I stayed stateside, flipped out for your sins, and all that. He worked with addictions in Saigon, away from the worst of the trouble, talking to the GI's about heroine and other hard drugs, and made it home safe and sound. The irony of the situation is that he partied as much as any of the guys he counseled. But he was more concerned with heavy addictions on the job, than all the simple partying that was going on, where his job over there was concerned.
When he got home, he and his wife got loaded for a while, like so many Baby Boomers, but when one of them decided to sober up, the other one made the same decision. They are that much of a couple, thinking as one flesh together, as the preachers have it.
I've just known them in recent times, since we've all been sober, and he's done a lot of different stuff for me, like a little technical help with my computer, stuff to help me out here and there, getting together for fun. He's a regular, stand-up kind of guy, in my opinion. They own a house and cars, and work jobs in the