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	Join Our Mailing List: Name: E-Mail:    Sponsor Ads:				Editor's Bio: "C" Street- (A. Hamilton's Story) SOUTHWEST D.C. He was a mere shadow cast by moonlight, his white helmet, with the inscription CIVIL DEFENSE, fit snug atop his head, its leather strap pulled tightly under his chin. You could hear him bellow in the darkness, "Turn out those lights," and "pull down those shades," a flashlight gave direction to his commands. I remember the secure feeling I had when I heard this warden of the night. He walked solo on his nocturnal beat beneath a sky laced with beams from lights that scanned the darkness in search of enemy warplanes above Washington D.C. We believed the target to be the capitol building, with its repetitious columns and enigmatic Indian atop its great dome. Unfortunately, our house was only a few blocks away from this towering mound of granite and we troubled that an inaccurately dropped bomb would vaporize our thirty five-dollar a month abode. Thankfully, by dawn's early light, our house was still there and the warm sun made the shadows of World War II go away. Once again, I would be one air raid older than seven. Washington D.C. is divided into four sections, North West, North East, South East and South West with the Capital Building at it's center. Our house was on "C" Street between 6th and 7th streets in South West, the poorest street in the poorest section of Washington that was falsely stigmatized as a lowly place crawling with, "water rats, white trash and niggers." I call this "Class Confusion," The blinding truth was, we weren't white trash, just poor whites and the blacks weren't niggers, they were poor black people and yes, there were plenty of water rats and even they were poor, but they were clean water rats with attitudes and not the nasty, dirty, mindless land species that were in the other slum sections of D.C. "Slum," as defined in the early forties is not to be confused with today's version of "Ghetto." Rather then go through lengthy definitions of the two words, I'd have you say them together. "slum," "ghetto." Now, which one leaves that used cold bacon grease feeling in the roof of your mouth?" Whichever the case, I can't eat bacon to this day. The beginning one third of our side of C Street was a vacant lot. Next, an old three story Coke-Cola building that had been condemned before I was born. The rest of the street was a row of houses. OUR HOUSE The house we liven in had no bay windows, ornamental doors or shutters. Our house was connected to all the other houses on the block, one indistinguishable, inseparable from the next. All had flat fronts with four wooden steps that led from the front doors to a five-foot wide concrete sidewalk. Across the street was M. E. Hortons, a dry goods warehouse that took up that entire side of the block. Looking into my house from the front steps, I could see straight through the two rooms and out the back door. We called these two rooms the front room and the kitchen. The front room was eleven feet square with one electrical outlet and one light switch that controlled a light fixture mounted in the center of the ceiling. The walls had several layers of wallpaper as evident by exposed sub-layers. In the kitchen, there was a single light bulb that hung from the ceiling. From one wall protruded a cold water faucet, from another wall there was a natural gas line that fed a small cooking stove and next to this, a pot belly coal stove. On another wall of the kitchen was a metal lined, wooden icebox that required blocks of ice to kept our food from spoiling. A metal, porcelain-clad, eating table was partly under the staircase that led to the up stairs. The stairway to the up stairs was two and a half feet wide and dimly lighted with a single light bulb that served to illuminate holes where chunks of plaster had long since fallen from the walls. There were two rooms upstairs that we called the front room and the back room. The naming these rooms was simply a verbal reflect, as there were no closets or halls, no foyer, central heat, toilet, tub, sink or hot water. To bath, we had to heat water in a one gallon, galvanized bucket, then pour it into a larger galvanized tub that was placed, not permanently, in the middle of the kitchen. I don't ever remember walking into the kitchen when my sisters or anyone else was taking a bath, but when it was my turn the kitchen seemed to be as crowded as ten men in a two man submarine. Luckily, no one noticed a naked, skinny, hairless seven year old sitting in a tub in the middle of the kitchen. Our heat came from the potbelly stove in the kitchen. The flue from the stove went directly outside and as a result, the rest of the house did not benefit from its warmth. We burned soft coal when we could afford the thirty five cents per bag, otherwise my brother and I walked the rail road tracks just behind M. E. Hortons in search of coal that would inevitably fall off passing trains. ICE MAN We purchased ice for our icebox from Charlie, one of the few remaining venders in Washington with a horse drawn wagon. I remember Charlie, an old black man with stubby, white whiskers and his horse Stonewall. Stonewall pulled the ice wagon as Charlie's slow, tired voice proclaimed, "Ice Man, Ice Man," to those of us that still needed his service. Charley never burdened Stonewall by riding in the wagon. Instead, he walked, shuffling oversized worn out shoes as was the worn soul of his stead. I never knew what became of Charley. He and Stonewall seemed to have disappeared at the end of our street, like the trail of water from the melted ice as it steamed on the hot macadam. The most memorable of these missing commodities was a toilet. In its place was a five-gallon bucket that set in the middle of the upstairs back room that I shared with my brother and two sisters. Privacy was wrapping a blanket around yourself when you had to use the bucket. Decibels of breath holding, nose pinching anguish still resonate in my ears.. "Mom! make him empty it, it's full and he used it last." and "I haven't used it all week, it's not my turn to empty it." I never did find out how my one sister knew which of us was last to used the bucket, but when it was your turn to empty it, you had to carry it to the out-house and dump it. The out-house was part of the shed that was located directly over the city sewer system at the far end of the ten foot long, concrete yard. Inside the shed, a wood box was placed over the city sewer tap. A hole was cut in the box about which a wood toilet seat, split by rusty nails, was attached. Painfully, pro-longed sitting caused streaked, red whelps on your butt that matched every crack in the seat. Needless to say, our houses fell short of conforming to local health, safety or historical preservation guidelines. All houses on the block had the same back yard configuration. This end to end row of sheds formed an alley about five feet wide in back of the houses and exited on "C" street between the old Coke-Cola building and the first house on the block. Every Thursday a natural recycling process would unfold in the alley. It was trash day. We would usually put out two burlap bags of trash for pickup, whereas others put out three or four. No matter, it was a very crowded alley on Thursdays as we, and others, searched through neighboring bags for anything usable. Once, an item that we threw away several months earlier reappeared in a neighbor's trash, and so we again took possession of it. Some things were just hard to get rid of, as we would always return home with about as much "stuff" as we put out. Recycling was nothing new --ever. FIRST DEATH One cold, winter night the endless barking of Hortons watchdog awakened me. I poked at my sister, "Mitz, Mitz, wake up." She awakened and set up on the edge of the bed. "What? What's wrong?" She looked over my head towards the window. The sky glowed in colors of orange, red and blue. She jumped from the bed and ran to the window, rubbing her eyes in disbelief. "Oh my God! Hortons is on fire". We put blankets around us and ran out side, as did the rest of our neighbors. There, we watched all night as the fire company fought to control the fire. By morning, it was out and the workmen started cleaning up the smoldering mess. There were crates and crates of damaged foods that had to be thrown away. We saw this as a golden opportunity to scavenge some "good stuff." Two days later a friend named Donny, who lived six doors away, my brother and I went to the back loading docks of Hortons to see what they were throwing away. There was tons of stuff burned, broken open and wet from the fire. The trash bins were filled to the top with charred, unlabeled cans, bottles and several boxes of opened breakfast cereal that appeared to be the forerunner to frosted flakes. My brother and I choose not to touch them. Donny, on the other hand, ate about a half a box as we stood there. The frosting on the flakes turned out to be poison put there to kill the many rats attracted by this mess. Donny became ill that evening and before the winter sun peaked over the charred roof of Hortons the following morning, Donny was dead. I don't remember his funeral. Maybe, poor, nine-year-old kids didn't get funerals in those days. Unlike Hortons, the D.G.S. warehouse, on the next block, dealt in produce. Mom got us up early every Saturday morning to go to the D.G.S., thinking that the "Good Man," at the warehouse was giving us food, when in fact, my brother and I, dug through huge garbage containers at the back loading docks looking for produce that wasn't too badly spoiled. Frequently, the watchman would roll up the huge doors and try to catch us. We would leap from the containers and shuffle beneath the container, where we would lay breathless as the watchman would walk within inches of our peering eyes. When he would retreat inside the warehouse and close the door, we would continue our search for eatables. Another obstacle we faced on our forage was getting caught by the D.C. Police, which occurred at least fifteen times. On each occasion, they would book us for steeling garbage. When they release us, they would always let us keep what we had taken. Often, we took more then we needed as in the case of about thirty pounds of bananas that resulted in a banana fight. Bananas were squashed everywhere; in the screen door, on the windows, steps, parked cars, passing cars, in our faces and squashed in our underwear. Mom was really pissed and it took all evening for us to clean up the mess, before we got to clean out our underwear. SEX I don't think sexual behavior just pops into your life like a bolt of lighting. Rather, it sort of creeps into your tissue like the growth of your feet. The sexual creeping began with me one day in the first or second grade when I climbed up the pole structure that held up the swings. I reached the top of the cross bar and held on. Even with lags wrapped firmly around the pole, my little arms couldn't hold me up. So, I slid down a bit and then pulled myself back up. A strange feeling came over me. I didn't know what it was but it was very pleasing. So, I slid down again and pulled myself back up again. Down again, up again. Down again, up again. Down again, up again. This felt strange but very rewarding. There were dozens of other kids playing with the swings. Some of them were swinging as high off the ground as I was. But, I didn't care because I was invisible and they didn't know what I was doing. Neither did I. On one visit to the top of the pole I noticed it was very shinny as if worn thru the years. Then, I saw another kid at the top of the pole going down a bit and up again. Down again, up again. Down again, up again. Down again, up again. I realized I wasn't invisible after all. A few years later I noticed a girl in my class named Helen. Helen was in an advanced state of maturity with a physique shapelier than any teacher in Amidon Elementary School. She even told of going out on dates with older boys. Christ, the rest of us weren't even allowed to go beyond the school fence without supervision. I never got beyond the swings. Once, as the captain of patrol boys, I was assigned to escort Helen to the local bank to deposit the milk money. This was money collected for the milk and graham crackers students purchased each day. On the way back from the bank Helen turned to me and eyeingly said, "I'd like to go to bed with you." I just smiled thinking, what the hell for? Suppose I peed on her while I was sleeping. Worse than that, suppose she peed on me? For a moment my eyes blinked and when they opened I noticed those hugh hooters of hers. Suddenly, an adrenalin pumping, lip quivering, tingling came over me as I transcended to the top of the swing pole. A few years later my first real sexual encounter took place in the old Coke Cola building at the end of "C" Street. My buddies and I spent many days exploring that old building which we affectionately named the "Old Building". Its timbers had long since rotted and from the darkness of the basement, you could see beams of sunlight streaking through the roof. When it rained, water would drip from beams, rafters and pipes until it reached the soggy mound of debris in the basement. A mound caused by the successive collapses of the three floors and roof above. There was nothing left to the building inner but a skeleton and the remaining timbers shown like bare ribs. To us, these timbers were a maze of tight ropes with exposed, rusty, bent nails that dared us to walk. We walked knowing that one slip and the exposed, rusty, bent nails would shred you like coleslaw before you hit the basement. The caretakers lived in an adjacent building and it was rumored that a retarded son of theirs roamed through the old building, black cape, and mask, the whole works. The imagination of all the kids in the neighborhood ran wild with different interpretations and sightings of this "crazy man". It was a perpetual "dare" to enter the old building. The windows were huge and secured with iron bars boarded over with wood planks. Covering one window at it's top was a sign that read "Danger-Building Unsafe. Do Not Enter." We climbed up behind this sign and using it as cover removed the planks and iron bars from behind. It was a perfect point of entry. Two older friends, John and Pete, they were eleven, told me and my brother they had a girl named Marge who was going to let us experience "first" sexual favors with her if we would take her into the old building to see the crazy man with the black cape. Believe me, I didn't want any part of this but little "Dingo" over-ruled my noggin and in the building we went. Climbing first up behind the sign, through the hole in the window and down again to the floor inside. We walked carefully across single beams holding on to half fallen timers from the ceiling above, down the steps and into the dark basement. After a few minutes our whispering fears of the crazy old black-capped man turned to louder pleas and grabs for our most favorite parts of Marge's body. Marge was twelve years old and a lot stronger than we were. She really enjoyed tossing us about in that dark dirt floored basement. But then, "Eureka". I managed to get my hand up her dress and to the top of her thighs. Then, the greatest of shocks. She had no pants on. My little hand grabbed what seemed to be more hair than I had on the top of my head. I had no idea she had grown up that much faster than I had. The though that I had bit off more than I could chew flashed through my mind as I ripped my hand from between her legs screaming "Ahhhhh!!!". I scared the hell out of everyone including myself and we all scrambled for the steps, yelling, running in all directions bumping into each other. We scratched our way up the rotted steps on all fours. At one point John fell through to an uncharted part of the basement. The rest of us went across the beam and fought for first out the window. Again Marge was stronger and got to climb up ahead me. I looked straight up at her naked butt and can swear to this day I didn't see a thing. CRITIQUE IN PARK We made a flying exit from the building and headed for a patch of woods in the park by the railroad tracks. Marge ran home. We fell to the ground, laughing so hard we could hardly breath. A few seconds later John showed up mad as hell. "Man what the hell did ya'll leave me for?" Pete stood up. "Man, I don't know what happened. When Buddy let out that yell I though "Crazy" had us." My brother looked at me. "Did you see him?" I turned to lean against a tree. "No I didn't see him." John, still mad, grabbed me by the shoulder a spun me around. "Then what the hell did you yell for?" "Because, man!" "Because why?" "Because when I reached up between her legs I grabbed right hold her pussy and it scared me." "Man get the hell out of here." Pete hit me in the forehead with the butt of his hand. "That's what the fuck we went in there for, you dumb shit. Why did it scare you?" I tried to think fast. "Because I though it was a rat. That's why." John grabbed my arm by the wrist. "Man you didn't touch nothing." He forced my hand to his nose and sniffed. "God damn he did," as he quickly threw my hand to the side. Pete was next to smell my hand. He jerked his head back as though he had just sniffed ether "Gee-zee-flips, your hands going to rot off." I turned to my brother. "You want to smell Fritz?" "Hell no I don't want to smell that crap. And, you had better get it off your hand before Mama smells it ." I though to myself. What's Mom going to do? Walk into the house five hours from now and say, "Buddy come here. What's that pussy smell on your hands?" Wacko!! Mom wouldn't say that even if she did smell it, but, I wasn't taking any chances. I did the old Indian trick of rubbing my hands in dirt for about a half an hour. My brother said, "That's not going to do any good. She'll know something's wrong." He had me totally paranoid. Pete pulled out a box of cigarette butts we had collected from the sidewalks, restaurant ashtrays and our homes. We each took one and went through the motions of un-butting them. They were hard and stained yellow from being wet, but if you were good enough you could pull, squeeze, twist and spit on them, making them soft and about a half inch longer. We laid back and laughed about the old building incident as we lighted our butts. John struck one of those big wooden, country matches that could have melted it's way through twenty one inches of virgin steel and held it to my face. Instead of lighting up my cigarette butt, he lit up my face. My eyelashes singed entirely off along with half my eyebrows. By the time Mom got home I had washed my hands at least forty times. Now I was afraid she would ask me why I was so clean, but she didn't. Instead she said, "What in the world happened to your eye lashes?" Again, my sister in all her infinite wisdom said, "He burned them off smoking." How in the hell did she know? I never did find out, but what followed was "Wacko." It would have been easier to run away from home and I swore there were two things I'd never touch for a long time to come. Two years later Marge was obviously under the influence of severe pregnitious. We surmised she had finally found someone that showed her the "Crazy Man". She gave birth to her child in the front room of her house. We, including her brothers, tried to peak through the window at another sexual event. However, after witnessing this greatest of all marvels, my illusions of fun and games with sex jelled with the realization of life and I became totally confused. About two months later Marge came running from her house, jumping four steps to the side walk below. Her mother, Mrs. Clagett, weighting in at an even nine million pounds of cellulose blubber, was standing in the doorway screaming. "And take this God damn bastard with you," as she threw the baby "at" Marge. Marge caught the child by its clothing then went to her knees crying. She just as well missed, for the following week, after the argument had been patched up, Mrs. Clagett rolled over on the baby, sleeping in the same bed, and smothered it to death. The police never questioned the "accidental" status of the death. Mrs. Clagett could have rolled over on a Volkswagen and neither her nor the Volkswagen would have know the difference. I don't know where they moved to after that but I assume Mrs. Clagett exploded causing global cellulite saturation. My close friends would hang out at my house during the summer vacation months. One extremely hot day an appropriate conversation took place as a result of a typical action taken by Johnny, one of my older friends. As Johnny walked past Donald, who was sitting on the floor, he raised one leg and expelled a resounding burst of rectal gas in the direction of Donald's face. "Here's a kiss for you fart blossom," he pleasured. Donald snapped his head to one side as he scrambled to his feet. Johnny laughed loudly. "It's not funny you rotten son-of- a-bitch," Donald said through a pinched nose. The rest of us panicked as we squeezed out the front door. "Jesus Christ," we mimicked. When the odor subsided, we nervously returned into the house. I certified how rotten Johnny smelled and asked him, "What does fart blossom mean?" "It's a cuss word that means exactly what it sounds like. You're a fart blossom." "I've never heard of anyone using fart blossom as a cuss word, and I've heard them all." Johnny glared at me. "You're a dip shit Buddy. Let me hear how many cuss words you know." "I know more'n you," I doubtingly replied. "Go ahead. Let's hear-um," he demanded. "Okay" I took a deep breath since part of the challenge was to say them as rapidly as possible. "Goddamnfuckinbitchshitheadbastardwhorequeer helldamnfartpussydicksonofabitch," "Nah. No good." Fritz interrupted. "Why not?" I asked, with a breathless, blue face. "Cause you said bitch and damn two times." "Well let me hear you do it." I challenged. "All right," Fritz started "Goddamehellwhorequeers hitheadpussydickfuckbastard." He hesitated for a second. "That's it, you stopped," I shouted. Johnny pushed us aside. "Let me show you dip shits how it's done." He pumped up his chest and began. "FuckinbitchsonofabitchshitheadGoddamnhell damnfartbastardwhorequeerpussydick jerk off," "Nah, nah," I refutably waved my hands, palms facing him. "What, dip shit?" John said aggravated. "Jerk off is not a cuss word," I replied as I backed away. Of course we all knew what jerk was; Jerk (jurk)vt. [var. of archaic yerk And, if you add the word "off, it mimics definitions numbers 2 and 3. 2. a sudden muscular contraction caused by a reflex action *3. {slang} a person regarded as stupid, dull foolish, etc. The debate that ensued was characteristic of how we learned about hands on, solo sex, not to mention the vigorous, manly shaking of Mr. Diddle-woddles after we peed. Again, we were hanging out at my house in the middle of a hot summers day, bicycles parked in formation at the curb outside. We decided that we were going to ride our bikes to Shady Side Maryland, a quaint beach place on the Chesapeake Bay. It would take most of the day to get there, so I decided to go to the outhouse before we started. After peeing I must have shook Mr. Diddle-woddle one time to many, because he became aroused and totally out of my control. So, I reached around and turned the door latch, a small propeller-looking piece of wood with a nail in its center, to the locked position. Then, I sat down on the nailed toilet seat and leaned back out of the reach of several dust filled rays of sunlight that sliced through every crack in the make shift door. With this, I was sure no one could see me in the dimness of the outhouse. My thoughts quickly focused on a line up of girls that I knew. I picked Helen of years early. This time I wasn't at the top of the swing pole and her words weren't meaningless babble. Instead, she was compromisingly verbal. My eyes rolled back into my head as I envisioned our motion together, a vivid picture that looped over and over and over again. I was mindless, as my brain defiantly slipped into the body of Mr. Diddle-Woddle. Suddenly, the outhouse door ripped open. The propeller latch flew off and landed at my feet with the nail pointing upward. There, all my buddies stood hilariously laughing and pointing their fingers at me. At first I was stunned but I quickly stood, pants and underwear at my ankle, grabbed the door and pulled it shut. I could hear them harmonically cackling, "Jerk off Buddy," as they went back into the house. I stayed in that steaming, hot outhouse for another hour trying to compose my exposed self. To make things worse, I stepped on the latch nail. This made me realized the most important lesson of the day. The outhouse door definitely needed a better latch. GUNS AND RATS Once, Mom asked for public assistance and was told by a judge that not only was she not going to get assistance, but if she didn't earn a certain amount of money her children would be taken away from her and put in a home for children. She got a second job and as a result, my older sister had a major role in raising the rest of us. Mom cleaned house and washed our hand-me-downs constantly. She hung them out to dry from the up stairs back room window where four, squeaky pulley, cloths lines stretched to a "T" pole in the alley. Each house had a similar drying and on any given day, several families would have cloths hanging out to dry. For the most part, we were all clean and healthy with highly efficient immune systems. Unfortunately, rats and roaches were as strong bodied as we were and there was a constant battle, between us and them, for turf and existence. At night, roaches would emerge from every crack in the house. My brother and I would wait in the dark doorway of the kitchen in an attack stance, turn on the lights, then charge across the kitchen floor stomping on roaches as they'd scamper for cover. That was fun. Cleaning up the splattered carcass wasn't. In contrast, rats grew as big as cats and at night we could hear them gnawing on the wood floor trying to get into the house. Usually, they did. To prevent their entry, we would cut the ends out of a tin can, flatten it and nail it over the gnawed hole. Nights later we would here them gnawing another hole, and the process repeated. The small rats would run from us but the large ones would stand toe to toe and hiss. These, we would shot with our 22 caliber guns. Often, it would take eight to ten bullets to kill a big one. My brother and I both had guns when we were nine and ten years old. THE SWIMMING PLACE South West was one big, binding family. Unfortunately, the government decided to demolish South West and like many families we were forced to split up, migrating to all parts of D.C., blending with our splendid diversity and shinning personalities, proving that we were no different then any one else in D.C. I had just passed the fifth grade and was on my way to the sixth, a big time senior in elementary school. The summer had been too short and too hot. So hot in fact, the tar in the cracks of the street would melt. We would pull out chunks of it and chew it as if it were chewing gum, them we'd spend the rest of the day trying to get the black off of our teeth before Mom got home. We would often go swimming in the Potomac River on those hot summer days. After being in the water for about twenty minutes you would generate a thick film of scum in the roof of your mouth, so thick in fact, you could scrape it out with your finger nail. The fish didn't have to worry about this condition. they just lay on top of the water and died. Summer vacation was over and we were two weeks into our final year of elementary school. As I was leaving school one day I was approached by two school mates, Karl and Clay. Karl motioned to me. "Buddy come here for a minute." Clay grabbed Karl's arm and pulled him back. "No man, forget it. Let's go on up town." "Forget what? What's going on?" I asked. Karl insisted. "No I'm going to tell'um." Clay just shrugged his shoulders and leaned against a tree. "What happening?" I placed my arm over Karl's shoulder. "Me, Bates and John (one of Clay's nine brothers) were swimming down under the bridge and the flood gates opened up and took John and Bates under." Under the bridge was a favorite swimming place where the flood gates opened into the Tidal Basin, the body of water where the Cherry Blossom Festival is held in each year. Vagrants lived under this bridge and were for the most part friendly, posing no threat to us. I started walking backwards in the direction of the bridge, trying to convince my two friends. "Come on. Let's go back down. Maybe we can save them." We ran back to the bridge, my heart pounding at the thought of being a hero. We climbed down the steel structure between the bridges and jumped to the ground where John and Bates cloths still lay over an old steel barrel. I almost shit in my pants and in a horrified voice said, "Lets go get the cops or somebody." Clay, totally unconcerned replied, "No. Come on, let's just go." I couldn't believe his attitude. I grabbed him by the arm. "Hey man!, that's your brother down there." Clay snapped his arm away from me and with both palms facing up, shrugged his shoulders "I'll get all his cloths." Then he just walked away. I'll never forget it. I ran to the Bureau Of Engraving just a few blocks away and alarmed the security guards there. Within minutes D.C Police, Harbor Police and the Fire Department trucks were on the scene beneath the bridge. A harbor policeman made me holds the ropes to one of the police boats as the dragged the bottom with those big grappling hooks. They brought up bed springs, car tires, scrap iron and finally John. They pushed on his chest feverishly as the water pumped from his mouth. I remember standing there holding that rope, looking down at John's face as the detective stood and said, "It's no use, he's dead." Several minutes later they found Bates. The hooks had snagged him in the side, but it didn't mater, a white substance was coming from his mouth and nose. They just laid him down on the dirt and covered him up. Later the police came past our house to ask more questions. They wanted to know where Clay had gone. I suggested "Ninth Street" in N.W. Washington, a favorite hangout of his. He had sneaked into a movie theatre where they found him enjoying a movie. The memory of John and Bates faces that day stayed with me for many nights to come. FRANK Frank was our father, a very talented, highly intelligent Yellow Cab driver who spent most of his time on the Chesapeake Bay fishing, If not, basking in the warm sun or sailing in the crystal waters of the Florida Keys aboard one of several fishing/pleasure boats he owned. Frank lived with his parents several blocks away from C Street. Their house was in a mostly black neighborhood where the locals dropped off their nickels and dimes to play in the illegal numbers lottery. He would visit us every once in a while, mainly to give us the feeling that we were to a great degree, sub-culture in nature. Sometimes he would stay for several days in a row, long enough to hand carve a wood paddle, black sticky electrical tape on the handle for a good grip, and holes, hand whittled in neat symmetrical patterns. When we were hit with the paddle, the holes would leave matching patterns of red welts in our skin. Mom usually paid dearly when she tried to protect us from this raging fuck. I don't mean to imply that our father didn't give us lessons or assistance in life at all. That's not the case. The assistance he gave us was very basic. He said, "Here, you're going to need these," as he handed me and my brother each a real gun. With infinite wisdom and reasoning, he showed us how to load and fire them. It's the least he could do for nine and ten year old boys. He would take us to a deserted beach somewhere on the Chesapeake Bay in the dead of winter. "When you get older you can try this," he would say, as he and a few of his drinking buddies would shot the miniature whiskey bottles from the top of my head. After they had consumed the contents, of course. I wasn't allowed to use the hood of the hand-me-down mackinaw coat I was wearing. It seems the zipper in the hood caused a little bump on my head, and too much time was spent trying to stand the small bottle upright. "Lay the son-of-a-bitch on it's side, it makes a harder target," said one of his buddies. But staying in form with the most typical of "Father Knows Best," traditions, dear ole dad would say, "no, just take the hood off," as he would stand the bottle up-right on my bare head. It only took seconds for the bitter wind blowing from the Bay to absolutely freeze my entire face. The hood of the mackinaw, now hanging from the back of my neck, slowly filled with broken glass. When the day ended, we would have to take that lone, single lane ride back. I remember sitting in the back of that yellow Cab having to urinate and being too afraid to say anything. I would quietly and painfully sit there squeezing Mr. Wiggly, thinking it was the way to keep from peeing in my pants. It was just another fun outing with Dad and his friends. Once, he made me hold the spark plug wire of an outboard motor he was trying to start. As I held it, he started the motor. It bounced my butt off the fence and to the ground. He rubbed his chin. "Well there's plenty of spark. Must be something wrong with the carburetor." I got the hell out of there before he made me drink the gas. Every now and then he would visit us just to see how we were doing. If we were doing good he would throw a right hook to my Mom's face. I remember seeing her face explode, the blood flying everywhere. Then, like a drunken barbarian with nothing to do on a Friday night, he would take a sharp hatchet and chop up every thing in the house, then he would leave with a look of "a job well done." Everyone would be crying as we cleaned up the broken furniture, ripped up cloths and shattered glass. If he only knew how many trash bags my brother and I had to go through, not to mention the Kotex "Wacks" we had to take in the face to accumulate all of that good stuff. We should have known the strangeness of his visits when he would walk into our house and say, "How y'all doing?" with his shinny little hatchet in his hand. Let me see. Did he say. "WHEN you get older you can try this?" Or did he say. "IF you get older you can try this." If you enjoyed this story, and you would like to read the rest, PLEASE email the editor at editor@fromthepen.com> and URGE him to finish it. Thank you. 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