Not Quite A Hero
by
Timothy D. Tober
PUBLISHED BY:
Timothy D, Tober
Not Quite A Hero
Copyright © 2010 by Timothy D. Tober
Hello friend. The events that take place and the people you are going to read about in this book, are real and completely true. I have changed the names, including those of the respective locations that are focused on in various areas of this story. The purpose being to protect the privacy of the innocent.
Any likeness to any real person or place is strictly coincidental.
For:
Destynee & Bailey
Special thanks to “Chasn”
Not Quite A Hero
Part 1
Big things were happening in the year 1985, but not just for me. The song “We Are The World” was topping the billboard charts and “Crack Cocaine” was just beginning to hit the streets.
A beverage named “New Coke” was being introduced to the public and failed to capture the taste buds of the loyal consumers of it's world famous predecessor, “Coca Cola.” After a great deal of public outcry, “New Coke” was subsequently replaced with “Coke Classic.”
The “Rock & Roll Hall of Fame” opened it's doors that year also.
I was 16 years old that summer, and I had finally lost my virginity to an older woman. A few months later I had earned my driving privileges and was issued a drivers license. I guess you could say that big things were happening everywhere that year, and I, well I thought I was ready for anything.
Two significant events in my life, that changed the course of my destiny, happened once school resumed from summer break. One of my best friends, Byron, had accidentally shot himself with a rifle and my other best friend Adam, had tried to shoot the school principal on the exact same day.
To some, including myself, 2 shootings in a single day was not really much of a news story, if you live in a very bad part of a larger metropolitan city. However, we lived in a small Midwestern town with a population of 4611 people, where literally, not much of anything ever happened.
These two particular incidents were purely coincidental and neither were connected to the other, making it a bizarre day for many of us that remember it.
I had gone to lunch during a normal school day, like any other day, riding in the front seat of Adams car, Greg our other friend from school was in the back seat.
Adam was acting out of sorts. I had been friends with him for a year or so and I knew that when he was in one of his dark moods that it was probably best to let him work through it on his own.
We returned to the school parking lot where we sat in the car and smoked cigarettes not really saying anything.
Suddenly, Adam turned and looked at me and kind of toward Greg in the back seat and said, “I am going to shoot the school principal, Mister Haynes.”
Nobody laughed, we all just sat there.
Then, Adam started the car and drove around the lot and back onto the street. He parked his car on the street facing west, directly between the high school and the police station, that was only a half a block or less away.
Adam jumped out of the car. I quickly followed and Greg was right behind me. I was talking to Adam, trying to reason with him as he fumbled with his keys trying to open the trunk of his 1970's sedan. He was acting methodically, like he had been hypnotized or something.
He was beginning to make me nervous. Things were happening in slow motion now and by the time I reached the back of the vehicle, I saw Adam close the trunk with his left hand and then noticed he had a deer rifle in his right.
I'm not an expert on guns, however I had seen this particular model of rifle before, in a couple different places actually. Most notably were the old television westerns that were on when I was a kid.
Adam was holding a Winchester model .30 .30 in his hands.
The world famous Winchester is a bit shorter rifle that was easier for cowboys to carry on their horses. This particular rifle that Adam was currently holding, was one his Grandfather had given to him. I had seen and shot it myself, whenever we had gone shooting on Adams grandfathers property.
“Hey brother, come on the joke is over put it down!” I yelled.
We were all looking around because even though it was a small town, someone was going to see this and call the cops, I thought to myself.
Adam did not say a word. He crossed the street and quickly walked toward the front entrance to our high school.
Because tragedies like the Columbine shooting, etc. had not happened yet, most schools had no need for metal detectors or policeman in place inside their doors. Nobody was shooting anyone, not where I went to school at least.
Adam walked right into the front door of the school with Greg and I right on his heals, pleading with him to reconsider what he was about to do. My heart was beating so hard inside my chest that I wondered at that time if it was possible for a 16 year old kid who was otherwise pretty healthy, to have a heart attack.
It was too late to escape without being seen because we had walked right past the biology class and the teacher had seen Adam with a rifle and had immediately called the local police. Once he had gotten around the corner, the ladies that worked in the front office had seen the student as well.
At the point where Adam was raising the gun I sprang into action and snatched the rifle out of his hands. I had tears of shear terror flowing down my cheeks but I didn't care because, it was not the time to be macho.
I spun around and quickly handed the rifle to Greg who sprang out the doors with it. This time it was Adam and I chasing Greg in the opposite direction. It was like some relay race where the rifle had become the baton.
We got to the car and Greg threw the rifle into the trunk, immediately after Adam had opened it. Then we screamed at Adam to get out of there.
I looked around in total disbelief because the police were just starting to run to their cars at the police station. My friend got about 2 blocks away and they caught him.
Since I was one of his only friends, I ended up going to the hearing with him to be there for his parents who wondering what the hell was going on. You see, I really liked Adams mom and dad, even if he didn't.
When he would only agree to talk to me behind closed doors, Adam and I went into a conference room. He just sat there and stared off into space. I finally asked him what he wanted me to do and he spun around from the window he was looking out of and for just a moment in time, I thought I saw the devil or one of his minions in my friend.
They were putting Adam away for a while into a juvenile boys home. We didn't know when or if we would ever see Adam again.
Meanwhile, Adams parents insisted that I drive his car home so that my parents would not have to drive the 10 miles into town to pick me up at the courthouse.
I was not going to get a car from my parents, that was a fact. I rarely if ever was going to get to use my parents vehicle as well. When Adams parents wanted me to take Adams car, I was ecstatic.
I left the courthouse at dusk and began driving home. My dad was really strict when it came to his children going places or doing things. It was as if he had to be in control of everything all the time. I knew he was not going to let me drive that car as much as I wanted to drive it so I was going to take advantage of the situation and stop at my friend Daves house which was right on the way home.
“Besides.” I thought to myself, “Dad isn't going to know what time I actually left the courthouse so I can go show Dave the car, he isn't going to know shit.”
As I was approaching a small bridge just on the edge of town heading west, I decided to do what most young boys do when they have a throaty V-8 under the hood, I pushed the accelerator all the way to the floorboards.
The car snapped forward like it had been released from an enormous slingshot. My heart was racing as I watched the accelerator needle climb higher and higher.
I reached that bridge doing about 75 miles per hour and saw something in my peripheral vision out of my left eye.
A Minnesota State Trooper was right beside me, passing me on the bridge.
Thinking he was pulling in front of me to pull me over, I quickly slammed on the brakes but not hard enough to put the car into a skid and slowed down very quickly. To my bewilderment, the patrol car kept going. I thought it odd that he would be on that country back road in the first place.
With my heart racing inside my chest, I decided to maintain the posted speed limit and get my ass home before that cop finished what he was doing and came back for me. I didn't have a job so getting a ticket would have been the absolute worst case scenario at my house. My dad would have flipped out!
Part 2
When I got home the first thing my dad said to me was; “You're giving that car back.”
There was no point in arguing so I tried to reason with him as best I could. He was having none of it and that was the end of it. I had learned that he had called Adams dad back to see what time I had left also and so I thought of seeing that cop as a stroke of luck. Had I gone to Byrons on my way home like I'd planned, and visited with my friend, my dad would have been extremely angry.
About 30 minutes later the telephone hanging on our wall, rang. When my sister told me it was for me, I was surprised because I never got any phone calls. When I did, I usually made it a real short call, because we had a five minutes on the phone rule, implemented in our home by my dad.
It was Adams dad calling me. My stomach fell as if I was on a ride at the carnival. I was sure right then that the cop that had passed me must have gotten the plate number when he drove around me going 45 miles per hour over the speed limit, on the bridge.
Much to my relief that was not the reason that Adams dad was calling.
He told me there had been a shooting on the same county road on lived on. He didn't know exactly where it was because he had heard bits and pieces on a police scanner. He was asking me if I knew who the people were that lived by a driveway with some old cement pillars at the end.
Suddenly a wave of sadness washed over me. I immediately began thinking about Mister Mullein, a local farmer that I had worked for in summers past. He was an old man without very good vision. I imagined him cleaning his gun and having an accident.
I was going to have to wait and find out what happened though, because my dad was not about to let me drive my friends car down the road to check it out.
When I got to school the next day, the buzz around the lockers was not about Adam as much as I thought it was going to be. Kids were also talking a lot about what had happened to Byron, the friend who I was going to visit before seeing that cop.
It turns out, that cop was on his way to Byrons house because my friend had accidentally shot himself with a smaller caliber rifle than the Winchester that had nearly been used to kill our principal earlier in the afternoon.
Byron survived the gunshot wound to his stomach, and eventually Adam came home. But something was telling me that things were never going to be the same after that, not for anyone.
Part 3
Within a week or so of Adam going away and Byron getting hurt, I was sitting in class and my friend Alex was sitting in front of me in his desk. I was bored which was nothing new. I had a cigarette lighter because I was already addicted to nicotine and I smoked cigarettes daily.
I kept flicking the wheel on that lighter and making it spark. I was holding it a little too close to Alex's head and the next thing I knew there was a small blue flame crawling over the back of Alex's hair. I didn't know that he used hair spray in his hair and it was easily ignited.
Sadly, I didn't act as quickly as I should have because admittedly I was hypnotized by the pretty blue flame.
When I did realize what was happening right before my eyes, it was too late. His hair had begun to melt and I tried to slap at the back of his head in an effort to put out the flames I had just lit.
Alex turned around and sternly told me under his breath to “Quit Fucking around with a lighter by my hair!”
He had no idea that the damage had been done already, but he was about to find out.
The entire classroom filled up with the horrid stench of burnt hair, and the next thing I knew, my classmates were complaining about the smell.
The teacher looked up from his book and sniffed the air.
“Who is burning matches, Tober?”
I looked at him as innocent as a child caught in the cookie jar and tried to dramatically plead my case for harassment. Everyone laughed when I asked; “why when something happens am I the first person you look to Mister Smith?”
“Because, mister Tober, every time something happens it's usually you that's behind it.” He said.
The classroom laughed at what the teacher said, and I had no defense because I was a bit of a rebel without a cause, and an overall bad student.
The bell rang shortly after and when we walked past mister Smith on the way out of class, he saw Alex's hair and when he realized that he had been burned he went crazy. He kept me after class and started screaming at me about how I could have killed him and on and on.
Sadly enough, I was so immature in those days that I didn't see what the big deal was.
I was ultimately suspended from school for about a week. Worse than that was the fact that his mother called mine and after the talk those two furious mothers had, I thought for sure I was a dead man. My dad was furious also, but he had stopped physically punishing me about 2 years before so I ended up having to listen to a lecture and got yelled at by my dad but in the end it wasn't as bad as it could have been.
Part 4
School was basically a nightmare for me. Some of that was my fault and some of it wasn't. After a while, I began acting out more and more in an attempt to get attention.
There was a week during the school year that students were encouraged to participate in some crazy days fun and dress according to a different theme for every day of that week. One day was 50's day and kids could dress like they did in that era, country western day and so on. This went on like that all week until Friday, which was “Punk Day.”
The year before I had taken bar soap and used it to make my hair into a Mohawk for punk day. It was a big hit and I loved the attention. Then my dad surprised me by telling me that when he was younger he and his friends had gone to the barbershop and gotten Mohawk haircuts.
The light bulb came on above my head because coincidentally, my dad had been complaining about the length of my hair and telling me I needed a haircut. I asked him if he would pay for me to get it cut at the barbershop that Friday and he agreed, not knowing it was punk day, or what my future plans were.
That Friday came and I skipped class to run downtown and take up a chair at the local barbershop on main street. I told the barber that I wanted a Mohawk and that my dad was going to come by after school and pay for it. The barber looked me straight in the eyes and asked if I was a Tober and I said I was indeed. Then he simply shook his head back and forth and said; “no way, I know your dad and I'm not doing it.” he said.
“I will take full responsibility,” I said.
The barber looked at me and said, “full responsibility huh?”
Then he proceeded to give me a haircut that our little school, the kids going to school there and the staff had not seen before. It was different times then, things were moving at a slower pace.
I had pierced my ear in the seventh grade and had taken a lot of heat for that back then, but this stunt I was pulling as a Junior, was going to put me on the map. I became sort of famous for all the wrong reasons. However looking back on it now, I realize I was nothing more than a big fish in a tiny pond.
My picture ended up in the yearbook and I suddenly had all the attention I had craved all the years I had been going to school in that little town.
Things happened a lot faster than I expected them to after that. It seems that since I was bold enough to have a shaved head and looked like a hoodlum, that I was to be blamed for everything that was vandalized, stolen etc. from that day on. And that is exactly what happened, friend.
I was blamed for a stolen camera that the school staff and principal went as far as to have my prints taken to see if any were on the stolen camera they had mysteriously found. When they found nothing and had no evidence to pin the theft on me, it seemed like the police and the school principal were irritated, like I had gotten one over on them or something.
I was accused of several other things that I had nothing to do with over the next couple of weeks. What I didn't know was that the school wanted me gone in a bad way and they were going to see to it that I was removed from the system and would not be a problem for anyone any more.
Things continued in this fashion until I was finally accused of something that I could prove I didn't do.
I was called into the principals office from the classroom over a loudspeaker. This was the way they contacted students, in the days before email and text messaging. The worst part was, everyone knew when you were being called to the office, so it was fuel for the rumor mill and great material for the hecklers. I would slink out the door on my way down to the office to accept my fate, again and again.
The last time I was called into that office I didn't know what they wanted to see me about that particular time because I had been keeping my nose clean for quite a few days. A record for me actually!
I went into the principals office and immediately noticed his fat face was all red and he was huffing and puffing. He actually looked a great deal more angry than I ever remembered seeing him before that morning.
He starts yelling at me about calling his wife on the phone and making rude comments and threatening her the night before.
I told him that was impossible and he called me a liar.
Standing up from the chair I began yelling at him that in my house the phone was right where my dad could see it and we weren't allowed to make unauthorized calls because it was a business phone. I told him my dad was sitting on the couch that evening in plain view of the phone and I had never been on it once.
Mister Haynes was not expecting this retort and got even more angry.
He stood up and with an open palm he slammed his hand into my chest and knocked me back against the chair and the wall. What happened next set the course for the next 7 years of my life.
I completely blacked out and flew into a rage. Like some kind of animal, I climbed over his desk and put my small hands around the fat throat of Mister Haynes and I tried like hell to choke the fucking life out of that man. Good thing for him that either I was not big enough or he was simply too fat for me to choke.
Things happened in slow motion for a few minutes after.
He had this glass globe type thing that was always full of M&M candy. I threw it against the wall and was amazed at the sight of hundreds of colorful little candies spread all over his office. I screamed some obscenities at him before turning and walking out of his office and slamming the door so hard the glass window on it broke.
As you can imagine, the office secretaries were frightened. I had a “rap sheet” that was extremely long that included fighting, property damage, arson and a few other wonderful bits of information that literally made some of my teachers and other school staff, fear me.
After leaving the school property, I spent the rest of the day at a small lake in town, thinking hard about running away from home. I knew that I was in really deep trouble this time and had no idea where I was going to live because I was absolutely certain I was getting kicked out of my house now. What I didn't know then was that the police were driving around the small town looking for me.
I made the decision to face my old man straight up and take whatever consequences came along with my decisions. I was in pretty good physical condition by then, from picking rocks in fields, to chopping and stacking wood and throwing hay bales around on a wagon. I had been in enough fights and had been beaten bloody by dad enough times in the past that I was thinking I was ready to fight back now if he got physical.
When I made my way back to the school and stepped onto the bus that afternoon, I had no way of knowing right then that the police were looking for me. I was only 16 years old and I was wanted by the cops on assault charges already.
Riding the bus home I began to realize that my life was rolling down the wrong track like a runaway freight train and it was picking up speed by the minute now. I had butterflies in my stomach, not the good kind either.
Part 5
The bus dropped me off at home and as I started to walk up the short driveway I noticed a really shiny black and chrome motorcycle parked next to my mothers car and immediately the bad butterflies were replaced by good butterflies.
I immediately recognized that Honda as belonging to my eldest brother, who lived out of state. There was no way in hell I could ever forget that bike because of what my dad had done just one summer before.
Ralphie, is a nickname I like to use for my dad. He was not the worst dad in the world and was not the best either.
One thing Ralphie did enjoy in life was his over the fucking top practical jokes. I not so affectionately started to refer to these “jokes' as lessons because they never made me laugh and I would never pull some of the shit he pulled on his kids, on anyone. Not even if I didn't like someone!
The worst one for me was the motorcycle joke.
The summer before this, I had come home from school like any other day. The difference on this one particular day was that my dad was waiting for me at the crossroads just a hundred yards from our driveway where the bus let me off every day. He never ever waited for me in his vehicle because my dad was not big on laziness.
My heart started to slam against my chest. My old man had been sober for about a year now, and sometimes he just got pissed off about the littlest things. I worried that he was so pissed about something I did that he couldn't even wait for me to walk the hundred yards home before he wanted to get to me. He was always threatening me, so my paranoia was justifiable, however I could not think of anything he could be that furious about.
“What the fuck is he smiling about?” I thought. Nervousness was beginning to be replaced by terror as I thought perhaps he had lost it. My dad was never smiley and happy.
“How was school?' He asked.
“This is a trap!” I thought to myself.
I made small talk with him and we drove the short distance back to the house and as we pulled in the driveway, I could see this brand new, beautiful Honda motorcycle sitting on the grass by the worn cement sidewalk that led into our back door entrance of my parents house.
Ralphie starts telling me this wildly concocted story about how he had bought this motorcycle for me and I only had a permit but next year when I got my license I could drive it to school, and on and on.
Now listen friend, you have to understand something. I grew up poor but my dad was just beginning to get his new antique refinishing business up and running successfully. Because of that reason, I really believed him.
In those few precious moments that I looked at every inch of that beautiful brand spanking new bike with less than a thousand miles on the speedometer, I forgave Ralphie for everything bad he had ever done in the past.
Suddenly, the fact that he had dropped me off in a dark cemetery once and left me there to teach me a lesson when I was only 5 years old didn't even matter anymore. I instantly forgave him for all the unnecessary beat downs, I forgave him for telling me he bought me a go kart when I was like 10 years old and finding out it was nothing more than a little red riding lawnmower when we went to pick it up.
I forgave my dad for not coming to my football games and for the one game he did attend where he ended up passing me a note from up in the bleachers via my little brother that said, “Waterboy.” Yes friend, all was forgiven instantly, all in the name of two wheels, shiny black paint and chrome pipes!
My status at school was about to be elevated to the highest level it had ever been. This one gift from my otherwise usually hateful dad was the greatest single moment I had ever experienced in my life up to that point. As embarrassing as it sounds now, I actually cried tears of joy.
Ralphie finishes the wild story about how he bought the machine at a yard sale, I deserve it, blah blah blah.
“Go up into the house and get your helmet that I got for you and take it for a spin, but you can never ride it without a helmet” He says to me. Making really fall for the whole story.
When I walked into the back door of my parents house, I saw my brother and my Aunt from out of town sitting at the dining table visiting with my mom. They each had a motorcycle jacket hanging on the chair behind them and there were 2 black helmets sitting on the counter top.
My brother looked at me and said, “did you see my new bike?”
Just then Ralphie comes in the back door laughing like he thought it was the funniest thing he had ever seen or heard in his life.
I seriously contemplated a murder suicide plot after that. I was fucked up from the entire incident and according to several different shrinks and counselors, I was always going to be on some level.
One year later I would walk up the same driveway under much different circumstances and see the same motorcycle sitting almost in the same place, the difference this time was that I knew the bike was not mine. One other thing that immediately made feel better was that I knew my older brother was going to have my back if Ralphie lost it and tried to beat on me for getting in trouble at school again.
It was almost surreal when my dad came stomping up the back steps and into the house. I was talking to my brother when Ralphie starts screaming at me that I was kicked out of school permanently and the police were looking for me.
The following Monday, myself and Ralphie had to have a meeting with all the heads of the school departments, the police, superintendent and anybody else who was anybody was in that meeting. They all voted unanimously to have me expelled permanently and furthermore, stipulated I would be arrested for trespassing if I ever stepped foot on school property for any reason whatsoever. I was not even allowed to attend high school football games.
I am not going to assume that he was happy, but I can say with total certainty that my mother was easily a hundred times more angry with me than Ralphie was. I was told by my dad that I would not be living at home and not be in school or without a job. I didn't realize until months later why he was not as pissed off as he could have been.
My plan, like all 16 year old kids who think they know everything, was to go and just get me one of those job thingy's that other people had and talked about. Yep, I was pretty much that naive in those days, friend.
Part 6
I didn't own a vehicle and we lived 10 miles from town. I failed to take these facts into consideration when attempting to find a job. My mom worked and my dad was busy with his own business. He told me he would give me a job working in his brand new shop, helping him refinish antique furniture.
For almost a year I worked in that shop busting my ass for 45 dollars a week because in all fairness, he was deducting rent, food, utilities etc. from my check. The main advantage that I gained while working for my father was the connections I made in the small town.
There was a bank president from one of the local banks in town, the same bank where my parents had maintained accounts for several years. He and his wife loved antiques and they had several of them. They started coming to my dads refinishing shop that was located next to our house, to deliver the antiques they wanted re-done.
His wife was usually with him and they were extremely kind people who always treated me with respect whenever I had occasion to deal with them, usually when my dad was away from the shop. He saw me working hard every time he came to the shop and he told me that it was going to make me successful.
I didn't know if they realized I was supposed to be in school and that I had gotten expelled or not, but I was not about to tell them voluntarily if they didn't.
Working for Ralphie taught me a great many things. The biggest and most important lesson I learned was that my dad was never going to pat me on the back or say “hey great job,” no matter how much I did, or hard I worked to try and please him. For better or worse, I learned how to work hard and keep my mouth shut most of the time. I also learned how to be punctual, because if you were ever late for work in Ralphie's shop, God help you!
Things had settled into a nightmare routine for me for a few months before something bad happened again. I had been 16 years old and had my license for about 3 months when I accidentally ran over our little cocker-poo. We had a family dog named Charlie and he was pretty much my best friend in life.
He was about 2 years old and I had taken my moms car, with permission of course, to the bar that was only a few miles away, to get toilet paper of all things. I pulled out of the driveway and thought I had hit a chunk of snow and drove off. I had seen Charlie in the rear view, but he was sitting on his haunches looking at me as I drove away.
Charlie was such an awesome dog but he had a bad habit of chasing the car down the driveway. We thought we had broken him of it by keeping him in the house, but that particular night he was outside when we left.
I got back from the bar and went back into the house to visit with our Aunt who had been visiting from out of state and after a while I realized something was not right. I asked if Charlie was in the house and no one had seen him. He would always bark and let you know if he got left outside, but we had not heard a peep out of him. My Aunt opened the back door and there he was, laying on the back porch.
Something was wrong with him, he couldn't walk. When I tried to pick him up he screamed, but there was no blood on his fur anywhere. I thought of the image of him staring at me from the rear view mirror and me thinking I had run over a chunk of ice that had fallen off the car and I almost vomited.
I told everyone that I was sure I had hit him with the car on my way to get toilet paper. Then I brought the little guy downstairs into my room in the basement and made him as comfortable as I possibly could. I sat with him and softly stroked his head and cried. I just kept telling Charlie I was sorry and sobbed all night.
The next day, my dad shocked the family by taking the little dog to the vet. When they returned they had news I was not ready for. His hip was broken.
They told my parents that he could possibly heal on his own or he could have surgery, but either way, there was no guarantee that Charlie would ever walk right again. They got him antibiotics and we nursed him back to health as a family because we all loved that little dog.
He healed better than you can imagine, until he got really old, then his arthritis would bother him and he would limp a little bit when he walked. That little dog was as tough as a horse and became an inspiration to me in many things.
Part 7
Spring came not long after and I was still making 45 bucks a week after deductions in my dads shop. One thing I probably should have exploited more was the fact that if was kicking in on the rent and the bills, which I was, then a few things should have been a little different around my house, but they weren't.
One night, while my parents were out of town, I was thinking about what my dad had said about want ting to sell his pickup truck when he got back. He had said he wanted 1800 dollars for it.
I wanted a vehicle really bad, I really hated asking my mom for her car because Ralphie would complain so much to her that it was just easier for her to say no.
That particular night, my older sister had gotten me a six pack of beer as per my request and I was all buzzed up from it. I just picked up the phone and dialed the president of the bank. It was 9 pm and he answered right away.
Within minutes he told me to be at the bank in the morning and he would draw up the paperwork. No co-signer, no money down or financial statements needed. He was doing based on what he had seen every time he had been to the shop.
I called a guy I worked for doing some wood cutting in the past, he was an insurance agent also. In minutes I had full coverage insurance on my truck that I didn't even own yet. I went to the bank and got a loan for 3 thousand dollars to cover the additional expenses of insurance and a car stereo.
When my dad got home from the trip out of state he had taken, I handed him an envelope with a stack of cash, loan papers on his Chevy and insurance papers drawn up in my name. This, I was convinced, would be the proudest day of his life. I was wrong.
The opposite happened. He got absolutely bitter and really angry with me and at the bank because he had struggled and been turned down so many times before at the same bank for a loan. He never once took into consideration that I had earned it. Instead, he accused me of riding on his coattails of hard work and I resented him for it.
I got the truck though, and along with it a lecture about how I was not going to be able to afford it and so on. I thought I was somehow going to manage and so I never gave much thought to the fact that when my savings ran out, I was not going to have enough money every month to pay my new bills.
Reminiscent of a few other things in my life, I decided I would just deal with that waterfall of shit as soon as I was about to go over it, so to speak. Besides, all that mattered now was that I had some wheels of my own. Ralphie was losing control and oh how he did not like that.
The snow was melted, the rivers were running wild and so was the rebel blood in my veins. I was going to be a big party guy now that I had some wheels that could take me to said parties. I had not gotten to do much of anything before I had my own vehicle so I was excited to spread my wings.
One party was the span of my partying for that spring and summer.
I had gone to a party that some old classmates who were still in school were throwing. I had not seen people since getting kicked out some months before so people were asking me questions and I was showing off my truck, etc., I had not seen Adam since he nearly shot the principal and he was at the party I was attending that fateful night.
We started talking about stuff and I realized he was even more bummed out about something than he had been before. I went to chase him into the woods at that party after getting really drunk and that's when the trouble began.
Max, another mutual friend of mine and Adams was calling out to Adam from behind me. Max and I always fought, physically punching each other sometimes. That night he was slurring and screaming for Adam who just needed to be alone. I turned around and told Max not to worry about it and said some other choice words.
When I turned back around to look for Adam, that was when Max attacked me from behind. He punched me in the back of my skull and we went to the ground in a scuffle.
I was so drunk but I clearly remember going to my truck and reaching under the front seat for the iron bar that was used to take the lug nuts off the wheels of a flat tire. My intention was to hit Max square in the back of his skull with it, and the only reason I didn't was because my friend Mike saw what was happening and stopped it.
The next thing I remember was being beaten bloody with that same tire wrench by some bikers that were friends of Adams mom. It seemed I had fucked with the wrong kid at the wrong party that night. They threw me into my truck and poured liquor and beer all over me and sent me on my way.
I drove back to town, on my way to my eldest sisters house to get help. I didn't make it.
What happened next was, I ended up driving through and subsequently tearing up this mans yard and ruining his beautifully manicured lawn. Then, I tried to find my way out of his yard and eventually backed up into the steep ditch on the other side of the road, backwards and facing the wrong direction.
I got out, bloody and beaten to a pulp and flagged a car down. I made it to my sisters house in town against the advice of the passing motorist who rescued me, to go to the hospital and once I got there I passed out.
When I woke up, my mom was standing over me and she was yelling that I was in so much trouble and so on. She said the sheriff was looking for me and I thought to myself, “Jesus Christ, again?”
The police had found my truck and impounded it as well as phoning my mom and dad to tell them I was not with the vehicle and it looked like I had fled the scene. The cops were about to charge me with a DUI, criminal trespass and destruction of private property, leaving the scene of an accident, open bottle charges for all the empty alcohol containers, destruction of federal property for the mailbox and probably some other charges.
Because of the ass beating I had received at the party, biker style, the police let me off. They wanted me to go to the hospital but I told them I deserved what I got for being so irresponsible and so on. By telling them exactly what they wanted to hear, they took pity upon me that night.
The cop told me to make it right with the owner of the yard the next day.
I never went back to the guys place and resumed things back at home. My truck was damaged but not nearly as bad as my ego. The broken ribs and collarbone were healing, the bruises went away but the incident was still fresh in my mind when I got a phone call a few weeks later.
Apparently the guy had been waiting for me to call him about the landscaping charges he wanted reimbursed for and to pay for his mailbox. The guys voice was all gravelly and I couldn't understand what he was saying. I seriously thought it was one of my friends who had heard about it and was messing with me. I scolded him on the phone, told him it was real funny and hung up.
Again, the phone rings. It's that guy again, he is screaming in some sick guttural sounding attempt to get my attention on the phone. It worked because all the sudden I realized who this guy was, it was the man whose yard I had driven through.
We set up a time to meet and I drove to his house the next day.
I arrive at the guys house and start to see the damage I had done to his grass. Then a man rolls out the door in a wheelchair. He was scarred all over his shirtless torso, he had one eye and could barely talk.
“You have to fucking be shitting me!” I say to myself. I could not ever remember feeling more like an asshole than I did in that moment!
To really drive the knife of guilt in deeper, his wife comes outside carrying a small child who she informs me is their Grandchild and I woke the baby that night and so on and her husband is a war vet and by this point I want to fucking kill myself because I feel so damn bad about everything.
We settled on an amount of money that was going to wipe my savings account just about completely clean. I figured that it was a small price to pay considering the list of criminal charges I was facing if I didn't pay him.
I was still working for Ralphie and was thinking about how my older brother had made it out. I decided I was going to follow in brothers footsteps and join the Army Reserves. I figured I could handle one weekend of every month. So, I drove down to Cambridge and walked into an Army recruiting office in a small strip mall.
They saw me coming and one of the recruiters almost tripped over himself to greet me at the door. He spun tall tales of how exciting life in the military was and how it was a new army and blah blah fucking blah. It was lies, all of it. I got fooled, like so many others do into thinking that recruiter was my friend and wanted what was best for me.
He got me tested in, signed up and all that was left was to get my parents to sign the emancipation proclamation and on my 17th birthday I was going to be a legal adult in the military. I met some resistance with my folks but they had seen how it helped my brother and so they signed. I think Ralphie was sad to be losing his 45 hour per week slave.
Part 8
The only other event worth noting that took place before I left for boot camp was a guy scaring me worse than any horror picture at the theater ever could, and a car accident I was involved in with my younger brother.
He was visiting a friend of his less than 2 miles away and I was working in Ralphie's shop one day with my mom when he called and asked if someone could pick him up.
Knowing I could use a break, because my mom is really awesome like that, she asked me if I wanted to run over to his friends house and pick him up. I was delighted to do so just for the chance to get out of the shop, even if it was only for less than half an hour.
Mom had asked me how much gas I had in my truck and I laughed because I never had gas in my tank. She told me I could take her car to go and retrieve little brother.
When I got to my brothers friends house, the kids moms boyfriend, Kevin, started asking me all kinds of questions about my impending military career. He was a real fucking jerkoff about it as well. He began telling me that if that drill sergeant told me I had to suck his dick then I would have to. He told me all kinds of stories but I was too horrified at the thought of having a penis in my mouth to really care about anything else he said.
I'm not going to sit here and sugar coat it for my book, friend. I am here to tell you that I was so homophobic that I felt like I was going to throw up. As that man talked I was beginning to feel more fear and anxiety in myself than I ever felt in my life before. He started telling me that it was a big military secret and how everyone knew about it and he kept going and made the story even more colorful as he could visibly see how bad it was bothering me.
He told me that because I was so young, I was basically fucked. After he was finished terrifying me and making me re-think every moment of the past few months, I was seriously considering making a call to my recruiter and telling him the deal was off and I was not going anywhere. I never made the call because frankly, t was too fuckin late, my parents had signed the paperwork and whether I liked it or not, I belonged to the government of the United States.
I ended up hating that fucking asshole, Kevin, and so did everyone else after a while. Go figure.
When I went to pull out of there, I spun the tires on the dirt road for a couple of different reasons. The biggest reason being that I was only 16 years old and that was how I drove sometimes, but the second reason was because I wanted to get away from Kevin really bad. I wasn't even sure if my brother should be hanging out over there with a guy like that hanging around, but that's about as far as I ever thought about it.
I had of been making a mental list of sorts, like a wannabe Santa Clause, keeping tabs on who was naughty and who was nice to me. My plan was to come back from basic training and deal with each and every one of them personally, and Kevin was going to the top of the list.
Little brother and I were driving down the dirt road towards my parents house when we came to a crossroads where there was too much vegetation growing up to see around the corner. I crept forward a bit more trying to see if anyone was coming, but it was a dirt road in the country so I was not too concerned about there being any other traffic.
I whipped the car around the corner and barely had time to scream like my brother did when we saw the Chevrolet pickup truck coming straight at us in the wrong lane.
Everything happened as you would expect in a head on collision. The car was completely totaled, my brother and I were hurt but not life threatening. I looked up at the guy who had hit us and realized it was the same guy who run my sisters favorite dog in the world over with the same truck just a couple years before.
I still think because of the state of mind that I was in right then, that some lady who arrived on the scene, a lady had I never met before, probably saved my life. It was not because she gave medical attention however, it was because she stopped me from doing something I was going to regret for the rest of my life.
The thing of it is, I wanted blood when I saw who had hit our vehicle.
It was almost as if bells were being rung in my skull every time I made a realization about the man standing before me. He had killed my sisters dog, he had tried to get my young friend and I to spend the night at his house with him one night when we were at a small bar., he was buying us games of pool and dinner and so on, then I found out later he was a child molester.
Yes I think it would be fair to say that there was quite a history between this guy and me. I wanted him dead and I had to do it before Ralphie saw what I had done to moms car because Ralphie was going to kill me and well, shit rolls downhill as they say.
He tried to run around his vehicle and get away from me. He threatened to call the sheriff and all that did was do more to enrage me than I was before. It was that stranger, a nice lady who was able to reason with me and convince me I was in shock and bleeding from the head. She told me I was possibly doing more damage to myself if I didn't sit down and wait for the ambulance. I ended up listening to her advice and never saw the man again after that. Probably a good thing, I strongly believe in my heart that if I had caught him my life would be a whole different right now than it turned out.
Things sort of began a downhill fall after that. Because I had full coverage insurance, my insurance company was trying to settle with me for a ridiculous amount of money. I believe their initial offer was 500 dollars and my medical bills paid. The car was worth 10 times that amount, so my dad got on the phone and dealt with all of that.
Silly me, I had somehow gotten the idea in my head that since he was responsible for the crack in my kneecap, that I was entitled to some compensation. Well that may have been true, but let's not forget that little Timmy had signed his life away to the Army and so there was going to be no court date, no settlement check or compensation. Nothing.
Because I was so afraid that the military would not let me in, I decided to drop any possibility of a lawsuit and just focus on my new career. I didn't want the Army to know I had a busted knee 45 days or so before I was supposed to ship out to basic training because they may have denied me entry.
In the end, I got a broken knee, a busted open head, and little brother got a couple fat lips. There was no compensation checks, no physical therapy or medical follow up. They cut my dad a check for the car and as far as that asshole that hit us, I never did see him again. Probably divine intervention when you think about it.
Part 9
My recruiter was pulling into our driveway to pick me up right on time. I had been standing at the big picture window looking out at the road when I saw him pull into the driveway. This was going to be mt second trip to the “MEPPS” center. A place where they process all kinds of military personnel from every branch of armed services.
I went down into the dining area of the hotel to eat dinner and that was when I met some other guys who were shipping out too. They were all going into a different branch so when the Army was represented we pretty had them all covered from Marines to Air Force.
They found out it was my 17th birthday and they insisted on taking me out to a strip club. I payed my hotel roommate approximately 20 bucks for use of his papers so I could get into the bar. He was not going out so he didn't need them, I just needed to make absolutely sure I still had them when I returned.
We got into a skanky little strip club and started getting wasted. It was a little easier back then, because the drinking age was only 19 so even though I looked all of 17 the server didn't argue with military papers saying I was older.
That's about all I remember of that. Somehow we made it back to the hotel and kept on partying. When I got up the next morning, I was nearly broke and my head hurt worse than anything. I was sure I was still drunk when I went down and tried like hell to eat breakfast.
The buzz around the table that I had chosen to sit down to that morning, was about the crazy fucks that had been partying the night before and had somehow caught the canopy over the entrance to the hotel on fire, but I don't remember that. Sure enough, when I went out to the front of the hotel to look, I noticed that the canopy indeed had a huge burn hole in the center of it.
When they finished with all the medical stuff, vaccines, physical, blood work and so on, I finally boarded a plane en route to Columbus, Georgia. It was my first time flying on a plane, I pretty scared, but I was in the Army now and I had to be a tough guy now, even though I had only been 17 for one day.
Part 10
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