A Few More Stories

Previously...

Chapter One - Boring but Short.
Chapter Two - Death Cheating Maniacs.
Chapter Three - Death Cheating Maniacs Part II
Chapter Four - Sex and the City


The following are unconnected stories to get us up to date so we can move on to Death Cheating Maniacs part III in the next chapter.

My Mom tells me about these first two.

When I was two, I wandered downstairs in the middle of the night and ate a half box of rat poison. My brother Steve woke my mom up the next morning telling her 'Bobby's mouth is all green". They called the hospital, gave me everything known to man or beast to make someone throw up and none of it worked. My stomach was a science experiment by the time they were done. They took me to the hospital where the doctors pumped my stomach but didn't really get much. I simply digested it all. Mom swears there was half a box there before I got into it and there wasn't any left afterwards. I don't know either.

A year or two later, I was down in the pantry again, late at night, and climbing on the plywood racks my dad built that made the pantry. It was more like free standing bookshelves that stored an assortment of food and kitchen items. I routinely went down there in the middle of the night. Mixed up some flour, egg and milk and lots of sugar, stirred it up in a pan and made myself a huge cookie. Anyway, I pulled the rack over on myself, dumping the contents onto me and the floor. I was stuck, but not hurt so I just went to sleep apparently. The next morning, Steve wakes Mom and Dad and says I'm under the pantry covered in blood. A ketchup bottle broke and was all over me and the area I was trapped in.

So, my Dad and Mom are downstairs watching TV. It's early in the evening. Prompted by the ketchup scare of years ago, Steve and I hatch this plan where we put a board up in the back of his shirt. I take a sturdy kitchen knife and stab it into the board, and then we pour some ketchup on it and watch the fun. So, we're upstairs in our bedroom, Mom and Dad are probably watching the movie Psycho, and we execute the plan perfectly. Steve goes downstairs, stumbles into the living room, mumble-gurgles out some stuff about me stabbing him in the back, and falls face down on the floor. Ha-ha-ha, that was loads of fun...

One 4th of July, Steve and I are in the attic, which is more of a 3rd floor. My sister used it as a bedroom, and my Dad used part of it to store memento's he picked up as he walked Italy, France and Germany in the infantry during WWII. Flags, Guns, Swords, etc. Well, everyone had flags out of course. This is like 1960. Steve and I are rummaging around in the attic and we find a German red and black swastika flag from WWII and it is big - 3 feet by 5 feet at least. There was also a water cooled machine gun, made inoperable. It looked just like this but it had a wooden hand grip on the back, and there were no bullets for it of course.




Well, we hang the German flag out the attic story window and mount the machine gun in the window, pointing it at the cars going by. Mom and Dad are downstairs watching TV when a short time later 4 or 5 cop cars converge on the house lights and sirens going. That was fun....

I think we were pretty much angels from there on until I was around 16. Well, I guess there is Chapter Two, Three and Four...

My brother had a 250cc Harley, which was actually an Italian Aermacchi. Here's a picture of one.



He jazzed his up a little. His had a tear drop gas tank, a sissy bar and custom paint job.

He didn't want me riding it, period. But it had a bad charging system and you had to charge the battery every time you wanted to ride it as no one had money to fix it. He was gone one day and it hadn't been charged since he last rode it. I charged it for him and since it was really low on charge when he drove it into the garage, the spark plug was pretty fouled also. So, while it was charging, I cleaned the spark plug and topped off the fuel tank. Then I figured hey, after doing all this I deserved a ride on the thing. This would be my 2nd motorcycle ride. I was 16.

The ignition switch was a joke. You could switch it on with a penknife or screwdriver and so I did and fired it up. I wheeled it out of the garage, and started driving around the neighborhood.
The neighborhood was very hilly with cross streets and alleys in a configuration similar to what you see in movies of car chases in San Francisco only smaller in scale.

So, I blast up and down the hills, and start going across the alleys. One alley had a real nice pothole dip in it and if you hit it around 40 mph, you'd fly up in the air and jump around 20 feet. I knew the place from when my brother jumped it with me on the back. So I head down the alley for the dip full throttle. I was going about 45 when I got to it, hit it and even though I could see there was a car blocking the alley with some dude washing it not far beyond the jump, it didn't concern me until I was 3 feet in the air and heading for it. An odd feeling. A voice that didn't seem to come from me was telling me it would be all right. It was kind of an out of body experience, where you feel you're looking out of your eyes as if they are windows. Kind of a helpless feeling.

Here is the alley. (I've noticed that these street view links don't always retain perfect integrity. If you happen to be looking up hill in this view, then drag the picture around to the right to see the alley.) (This is also the hill I walked to school everyday.)

At the farthest point that you can see of the alley is where the dip was, and probably 50 yds after that was the car and no where to go.


View Larger Map


I clamped on the brakes before I even came back to ground - and at that moment I felt normal again. I slid towards the car without any hope that I could stop by the time I got there. About 10 feet away, I laid the bike down on its side but didn't pull my leg out. The bike bounced up and down in the alley as it slid toward the car and crushed my leg in two places, and broke my ankle in a couple more.

The guy washing his car asked me if I was Ok, and I said "No, my leg is broken, can you drive me to the hospital". He stood the bike up and asked if I was sure. I took my upper leg in one hand and lower in the other and bent it in a very unnatural way and said, Yea, I'm sure. There wasn't any pain for the first 4 or 5 hours, but after that I don't remember the next 3 days. They gave me morphine and I swore a lot according to accounts. I was in the hospital for 6 weeks, and got real tired of listening to Come Together by the Beatles. I got real tired of morphine shots in the butt as well. I remember counting 250 or so. I'll tell ya one thing, I had no inhibitions about showing women my butt anymore. Those nurses were Hot, but after 6 weeks of 'Ok have at it darlin', it just wasn't an issue anymore.

Afterwards, I was on crutches for another 6 weeks. I walked to school, a half mile, up a steep hill on crutches, and back down after school. Some days there was ice on the sidewalk, and I took a few spills, sliding into telephone poles to stop and get back up. Most notably, I built plywood kitchen cabinets for my Mom during this time down in the basement.

After 12 weeks of having my leg immobilized, the doctor cut off the cast and sent me on my way. My leg really felt fragile without the cast, and I was unable to flex my knee more than a couple degrees and had to work on this day after day with my Mom dousing my leg with alternating very hot and very cold water. The worst came when I was sitting on the bed in the bedroom my brother and I shared. I had my leg extended because I couldn't do anything else. My brother caught me off guard by lighting a match and holding it near my foot as a joke. I reacted naturally and brought my leg up to a full 90 degree angle. Man did that hurt. It hurt more than breaking the leg. I actually cried. But no hard feelings, he probably owed me one.

I was 17 now and they started the Army draft 'lottery' for the Vietnam war. The lottery process was that they had 366 tags in a bin, each with a day of the year printed on it. They'd pull one and people born on that day would be called first/next for the draft. For example, if they pulled April 2 first, and your birthday was April 2, you would be notified to show up for the drafting process before anyone else that year. In fact, you'd probably get a notice in the mail before the TV lottery was even over.

When I was 17, they pulled my birthday out on the 364th pull. This meant I wouldn't be called until they called everyone who had birthdays matching the first 363 tags they pulled out. When I was 18, they pulled my birthday out on the 309th pull. When I was 19 and eligible for the draft, my number was 7.

Two days after they pulled for the draft, I got a notice to show up for a physical. My dad was concerned I might not be a great choice given my leg and had gone to the doctor who performed the operation and got a letter of explanation of my condition that I took with me. My dad walked Italy, France and Germany during WWII and would have otherwise felt that I should serve. Thinking back, many of the activities he had us doing were preparing us for potential military service during wartime in my opinion. Little did he know I was already doing Spec Ops training down at the railroad tracks for years.

Well, at the time, I wasn't much interested in heading to Vietnam. I didn't understand what we were doing there. It wasn't a hippie thing, I didn't protest the war or anything like that, I just didn't understand and for me personally, I need to understand something to get behind it.

So, after they read the letter, they classified me with draft status 4F, which meant that they'd send the kitchen sink before they'd send me.

At this point I have mixed feelings about it. I understand now that it had nothing to do with understanding it, it was serving the country and more importantly, helping your neighbors and friends who went. I actually didn't know anyone very well who served. One of my friends dodged it by faking a blood condition and tossing out the prescriptions. Another 'dodged' it by joining the Air Force reserve. Without the disability, I'd have probably gone this route. Well, life is what happens to you while you're making other plans eh?