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"Thanks Frank, I could'a have spent some time in jail" - Fate Fairies - book version
This entry was posted on 11/14/2011 2:00 AM and is filed under Fate Fairies:Fate Fairies - book version.
I had not been out of the Army more than a month. The college town of Whitewater, Wisconsin - it is my high school town, my post office town, and my general home area of record for the first 18 years of my life. There is a unique blending of the rural farm culture and the college culture - "the students" and, "the locals." Ol' Whitewater had some dandy taverns and bars to accomodate eclectic relationship - still does. A couple of schleps I used to hang around with back in high school rounded me up and off we went - to hit some of those bars.
I don't want to say I had a chip on my shoulder about the Army experience. I had more of a chip on my shoulder regarding the banal idiots I had to return to back in Wisconsin. Talk about a clueless society. It was, in retrospect, a society so tired and beat down by the Viet Nam era, they were poster children for the neo-disco / yuppie era that was festering on the immediate horizon at that time. It was late 1977. The Viet Nam War / Cold War era might as well have been a thousand years prior. And, that of course, was the very era I still related to - was locked at the hip to.
As three, twenty-year-old mooks might present (the drinking age was 18 back then), it did not take us long to find some potential trouble. I don't know if my two idiot friends or the college crowd pissed me off more. Perhaps it was the synchronicity of the two. The binary of the local mixed with the out-of-towners. The sum of the parts was greater than the whole. Anyway, we started a shouting match with some very drunk college dudes outside of a bar. My friends seemed to be pushing the issue. And in fact, perhaps they even held me up as some kind of tough former Army guy. I was anything but. The whole Army gig had made me tired. The experience had made me cynical about nearly every aspect of life. And for a time after I got out, I had trouble giving a fuck about the simplest things in life.
I seem to remember one of my friends goading me into, figuratively speaking, going ahead and kicking the shit out of one of the drunk college idiots. I paused a second in the dim sidewalk light and took a step forward toward said college idiot.
Yes, I thought to myself, a good pummeling of a fool might be just what the doctor ordered for me to work off some bitterness.
From nowhere, and now in retrospect, perhaps from some heaven, came a large hand on my shoulder.
"Don't do it Bob," a voice attached to the hand said. "You are smarter than that."
I turned to identify the somewhat familiar voice. It was a guy from high school. He was a guy mostly ostracized as a pariah in his class - a year ahead of mine. He was a big kid in high school and was bigger that night. Yet other kids tormented him at nauseam. Ol' Frank was the kind of guy who could snap someone's neck if he was so inclined, yet never did. Perhaps this added to his dilemma. People knew he was a big puff ball.
I believe I remember my mom saying Ol' Frank had been separated from his dad in some manner and his mom had to work. That was a thing people whispered about back then. Nowadays, people wear that kind of shit on their shoulders like a badge of honor. Hell, half the people I know these days, never had a real mom and dad. Anyway, there was Frank.
He had an old-guy demeanor in high school. Perhaps it was a defense mechanism. He liked to tell what seemed to be tall tales - like some old farmer leaning on a wood fence. Poor Ol' Frank had joined the Air Force not too long before I joined the Army. After he came back from overseas, the tall tales got....taller.
I was not above making fun of people in school. But, one guy I never went after was Frank. There was just something about him; something always made me stand down while others went after him with a vengeance. Perhaps it was the timbre of my mom's description of Frank's plight in life. My Irish mom could make you shed a tear for just about anyone.
"Take your ass back in the bar, son," Frank said to the college kid and pointed at the door. Then he glowered at the gaggle of other drunk college kids that had gathered for the show.
Then Frank looked at my two idiot friends and said, "You two should be ashamed of yourselves. Bob needs time to get back to living again. He saw more bullshit in one day in the Army than you two fools will ever see in a lifetime."
All parties seemed to look at Frank as if he may have lost his aversions to snapping stupid people's necks. The college kid stumbled back in the bar. His posse of drunks stumbled close behind. My friends shrugged and left me with Frank. They all scampered away like cockroaches.
"Go find an old girlfriend or something, Bob," Frank said.
He put his big hand back on my shoulder again, gave me a serious look and a crooked nod, then he turned and headed down the sidewalk talking to himself. He had the stagger of a man in his sixties with bad knees; Frank was probably all of 21. I never saw him again.
I don't know where you are now Frank, but you may very well have saved me from a miserable life. A few years in jail for beating up some drunk college kid would of course, have been a nightmare way to return to "home" after the Army. We military guys called it returning to "The World."
I hope if you are still alive life has cut you some breaks Frank; and, I hope too, the world has treated you better than your classmates ever did.
Peace, Veteran brother.
Note: This blog "Fate Fairies" book version Category is a work in progress. The original vignettes are being edited for book form. Go to the Cooldadiomedia Web site and the Fate Fairies Page for an ordered chronology of the book vignettes (chapters).
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