Boy am I glad to see you. Your the one I've been waiting for to talk to for a long long time. First of all please forgive me for not calling or contacting you about all the shit that has been happening to me lately cause I don't want to sound like some kind of whiner. You know how I hate whiners so sounding like one really gives me the creeps. But I'm sure you've heard em all so what difference would mine make. Opps there I go. Sorry.
I remember when I was about nine back when they used to sweep the isles at the grocery store every few hours to get the cigerette butts out of the way. My mom would buy food for a week for six for $25 or $30 bucks. It was then that I got my first public beating. In retrospect I find it amusing for some reason.
My friends Clay, Johnny, Mike and myself were out in my frontyard on Degarmo St in Sun Valley California on a hot and smoggy summer afternoon practacing some baseball hitting and fielding. Well it was my turn to field some hits off of Clay. Well Clay smacked one over my head and into our neighbors yard. Now the Wards where a nice Christian family. (We were not Christian, Jewish, Catholic, Lutheran or anything) and the Wards had a perfect little house with a perfect little yard and they had just re-planted some perfect little grass in their freshly turned and treated soil. This was before turf. Well I had to get the ball, no one was home so I carefully climbed over the white string with white cotton sheet strips hanging off of it and stepped onto the rich black loam with it's baby grasslings popping to the surface I walked along the very boundaries of the yard until I had no choice but to cut across to where the ball was. I then doubled back the way I came, as I was genuinely concerned about damaging the grass. As soon as I got back to the guys my mother called out to her children "DINNERS READY!" Well my buddies scattered on their Sting Rays and I went in for supper.
Hamburger patties, lots of worechester sauce on mine, a side of green beans some cottage cheese and a big glass of milk. We were all at the table together my little brother Guy my younger sister Linda, the baby two year old Gail and myself. There was a window right on the other side of the dinning table where no one sat and the table was butt up to the base of that window which looked out to our driveway. There was a knock on the front door so my mother got up to answer. My mother started answering some questions that I could not make out and soon her voice went balistic and believe me my mother had a hell of a temper. The only thing I could make out from all the cussing and screaming was the tail end of the discussion.
"If you ever come over hear again you fuckin bitch and accuse one of my kids of doing something to your property without any proof I'll fucking poison your God Damn dog!!!
Shit! I thought to myself she's stickin up for me, sorta. Well if I don't say I did it I'm in the clear because Mrs. Ward had no proof. Right?
My mother walked into the kitchen with all of us wide eyed and our mouths agape no one said a thing. She looked right at me with the red still flushing her face her eyes filled with anger her mouth some what foamy "DID YOU WALK ON PATTYS NEW FRONT LAWN!" she directed it to me because she knew my buds and I where playing ball. "NOPE! no way she's just picken on us, they always think it's one of us over here, they just don't like us for some reason." "ARE YOU SURE" "Yep"
After the outburst we were all just about done eating when one of my buddy's rode up to the window by the dinning table and said "hey Keith can you come back out and go for a bike ride"? I looked at my mom and she said sure, be careful. Then just as I was about to get up from the table my buddy says "Hey Keith did Mrs. Ward ever find out that you walk on their new grass?
My mother looked at me and that same face that had looked at Patricia Ward was now manifesting itself as she grabbed me by the hair, a nice big fist of it and dragged me to the back door of the house out through the service porch where she grabbed a toilet plunger, as she took me outside by the hair a few more buddy's had arrived on their bikes
and she began to beat the shit out of me. The first whack broke the plunger off so now she had a nice little makeshift billy club. I was trying to get her hands off my hair but she kept smacking my ribs, when I let go of her hands in my hair to protect my ribs I'd be getting hit in my forearms, hands and elbows. She just kept beating me and telling me to tell my buddy's what a fuckin lyer I was. "TELL THEM YOUR A FUCKIN LYER, TELL EM NOW!!!!
