We were active as kids and as you have read, with all the
activity visiting the hospital was no big deal and just a part of life. Still,
I would not change a thing about any of it, it made me who I am today and though
not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, I’m not a bad person.
I reflect back to the times as a kid, some good, and some
bad and wonder what would have been and could have been. Let me explain why I
changed, what got me to change and why I wanted out so badly.
One summer I went to Wilmington Delaware and stayed with my
aunt and grandmother on my mom’s side. I really did not know them well at all;
my mom was not close with her family and for good reason. Her mom was all about
her. She drank, and always had the best weed. Oh ya, my grandmother smoked pot
and she has the best weed I had ever had in my life.
Now my aunt Carol was a bartender and drank a lot and was a
lot like her mother, all about her.
So they came to visit that spring and stayed for a week and
Carol had a son named Michael also, a year younger than me but a city boy so
when they asked me to come for the summer I was begging and finally my mother
decided to live on the edge and let me go and though there was a LOT of bad
shit happened while there, it made the difference that got me out of the hills.
A little history about my mother’s family, remember I’m opinionated.
They are, were, and still are, fucked! No that is NOT a typo they are fucked!
Uncle Mac, Jack, and Donnie, Aunt Carol and my grandmother, I’m forgetting one
but that’s ok, he isn’t worth remembering. Uncle Mac and Uncle Jack I met while
I was in Delaware, at the prison. Uncle Jack, habitual criminal and spent most
of his life in prison. Uncle Mac was in and out all the time too but more to
come on him shortly.
Uncle Donnie was not there, I met him later when I was
stationed in Gloucester Massachusetts but that is for another entry much later.
Carol worked 5 or 6 nights a week at a bar a few blocks
away, did I mention they lived down town
Wilmington, grandmother on the first floor, Carol on the second floor in a
corner apartment. A young hillbilly in the city, holy shit is all I can say; it
was the most eye opening time of my life. I learned there is a whole world out
there waiting to be experienced.
My cousin Mike and I were on the go all the time, we never
slowed. When the sun came up we were gone and usually stopped in to eat and
head back out. It was several blocked to the river and the dicks, and it was
just crazy how there was ALWAYS something to do, kids and people everywhere
always, never quit like I was used too. What an awesome blur of a summer.
While there uncle Mac got out of jail and came and was
sleeping on grandmothers couch and aunt Carol was working every night, grandma
was always gone either playing bingo or some sort of something but that woman
was never home.
This one particular night we weren’t really doing much, it
in the mid 70’s out so every window was open, Mike and I were upstairs watching
TV bored off our asses but it was getting late, between 11 pm and midnight, not
much we could do so, we got a hold of some bottle rockets earlier that day and
we figured what the hell.
So we would lay them on the ledge outside the window and
shoot them down the next street over, we even shot a few at cars but never hit
one. Uncle Mac was on the other street with his buddies drinking and smoking
and at one point came around the corner and yelled at us to stop before the cops
show up. We didn’t stop, we didn’t really know him and we sure as hell were not
taking orders from him.
Suddenly the door in the hallway flew open and uncle Mac
came in screaming at us and calling us names and how he should throw us out the
fucking window. That didn’t go over well with my cousin who yelled back to get
the fuck out of the house he was NOT supposed to be in Carols apartment so Mike
and he were yelling and Mike went into the bedroom in the hall and uncle Mac
slapped him and was hitting him and then when I grabbed him to stop him he
turned on me. He began punching me hard. Then it all stopped as fast as it
started BECAUSE………..
Cousin Mike pulled a shotgun from under his mattress, loaded
a round, if you have ever heard the sound of a pump shotgun, it is obvious. Mac
stopped and turned, Mike pointed the shotgun at his head and clearly said get
the fuck out or die where you stand. I lay there bleeding and terrified and
here was my cousin pointing a shotgun at our uncle’s head. He said a few choice
words and Mike simply said, leave or fucking die, your choice. He left and we
both laid on the bed, with the shotgun scared and bleeding until Carol got home
from work and we told her what happened. She went downstairs and her and
grandma went off on Mac, not that it did any good really, he didn’t care.
The rest of the summer we avoided Mac and grandma’s
apartment as much as we could and we NEVER went in there unless grandma was
home. Mac would slap us down or push us if we crossed his path and he was just a
piece of shit. At one point it got so bad with him and how he was that I ran
away. The country boy in the city ran away. My aunt found me sleeping in a bank
parking lot at about 5 am and she swore it would end and all I could say was
take me home or call my parents which they did NOT want to do, my mother would
kill them.
So a couple of weeks later, I was walking through my
grandmother kitchen, uncle Mac was sitting at the table, he says, the little
fucks going home today huh, tell your mom I will have to come visit her. I
stood there, in front of my aunt, my grandmother and my cousin and said this, “Mac,
you are NOT welcome where I am from and if you show up I promise you right now
today, I will kill you!” He laughed and said what, are you fucking threatening me?
I said “NO, see asshole at MY home, I own several guns, and ammunition, you
show your fucking face where I live and I will kill you!” That is when my aunt
rushed me out and we got in the car and left.
SO for the many, many hours driving home we ONLY talked about
the fun things we did and the fact if my mother ever found out, she would kill
Mac herself and I knew that. SO we agreed NOT to tell her and we didn’t but
simply said we were back earlier because I was homesick. Carol and Mike stayed
for 2 weeks, we had a blast and then they went home.
Several weeks went by and nothing was ever said to my
mother. Then one day she says to me, uncle Mac called, he is going to Florida
to meet up with uncle Donnie who is in the merchant marines and stopping in for
a couple of days. My mother says the look on my face of instant anger and asked
what was wrong so, I sat and told her everything, and I do mean everything.
Then we went into the kitchen where the phone was and she sat me down while she
called her brother Mac. It was short and sweet, my mother said Mac, I just had
a chat with my son and you remember the last thing he told you before he left,
you show your face on my property you won’t have to worry about him, I’ll kill
you myself and if I ever see you again I will too. She hung the phone up was
pissed that I had not told her sooner but promised as long as she was alive I
would never have to deal with uncle Mac again and I never did. I heard a few
months later he was back in Prison.
As negative as that story is, the abuse and the bullshit
that was the turning point that made me want to experience the world. I didn’t
take the bad parts away from it; I took the good, the fact that there was so
much in the world I had no idea about but wanted too. The fact that there was
the country life, the city life, what was between, what was I missing? I always
felt I was missing something till I left.
Life’s small curves make an impact, find the positives, and
learn from the negatives.
Mac died years later of a brain tumor and I never saw
him again, heard from him and to this day it has made me over protective of my
son, but in a good way!
