Memories...Part V.

I went looking for Steve or Grunt or both and spent a LONG time that day not finding them. Most of the time back then, I couldn’t turn around without running into one of those guys but now that I needed them….nope.

Usually, walking around Myrtle Beach for me back then was one of those magic experiences that only a young person can experience. In those days, I would stroll around aimlessly in search of whatever cool thing might happen next. No plans, no schedule, no cares and of course, looking back on it now…..

No freakin’ CLUE!

HOWEVER

It was a wonderful time in my life.

SIDE NOTE:

I would love to think that EVERY young person could experience such a carefree time..at least for a year or two anyway. Life gets really serious after a certain age. I think everyone should be a _________ (fill in your description of such a person…hippy, derelict, bum, bohemian, etc.) for a year or so.

It nourishes the soul, defies barriers and reveals character.

I can remember getting up in the morning, eating half of a left over sandwich procured from a cooler full of cheap beer, smoking a joint and wandering off down the beach with absolutely NO plans. I remember running into friends and acquaintances and total strangers and getting caught up in one adventure after another.

Hell, I met a girl one morning at a breakfast buffet joint with whom I struck up a conversation. I was doing what any starving artist did in a cheap restaurant which advertised an ‘All You Can Eat Breakfast Bar’ at the time….I was filling my second or third plate and several pockets of a winter Army coat in the middle of July with mass quantities of food to feed my voracious youthful appetite.

She was probably nineteen years old and wearing as little as was allowed in a public place. A thin yellow halter top and a white bikini bottom. Not to mention a ‘please make love to me’ grin.

I can’t say that this is a verbatim account of the conversation but…it’s damned close.

“Hey there……I saw you play a couple of nights ago.” She cooed. “I really enjoyed it.”

I grinned and basked in the praise while piling food on my overburdened plate.

“What are you doing today?” she asked. “Maybe we could make love.”

Maybe?

Before the reverberation of her words on my ear drums had subsided, I was on my way to jump into her Corvette! It was a ridiculous orange color but DAMN! It was a brand new ‘Vette’ with side pipes and much to my delight…

She tossed me the keys!

Her name was Debbie Shook. Go sue me…that was her name and I’ve never seen her again but…she was HOT!

I remember spending the entire day cruising Ocean Boulevard occasionally stopping at one bar, beach, restaurant or the other.

The memory is etched in my mind for a couple of reasons.

Back then, the premier social activity was joining the mass of traffic on the two laned Ocean Boulevard and traveling at a blistering two miles per hour while hollering at the pedestrian traffic and sharing joints with perfect strangers. Several times during the day, we returned to her motel room, made love and headed back out onto the town.

While that IS a great memory……..the ONE dominant memory is that, at least twice that day, while exiting the ‘Vette', I accidentally laid the back side of my left calf onto the red hot side pipes of that damned car!!

MAN that shit HURT!! I had a HUGE blister for a week or two.

Of course, we made love on the beach that night as well and…by that time…I had a few blisters elsewhere!

Ah to be young and incredibly horny!

Another great memory is playing at a place called ‘The Upper Room’ and being invited to play at a private party the next day. Before I knew it, I was on a private plane flying to Key West where I spent one hell of week and arrived back in Myrtle Beach $500.00 richer! Dear God…that was BIG bucks back ‘in the day’!

Okay….back to the story.

I finally found Grunt at an Arcade in Ocean City. He was half stoned/drunk and in no mood to be pulled away from his quest of the record on the SuperBoy pinball machine.

“Give me a minute dude…..I’m almost there!” He shouted.

I can recall going over to the snack stand and grabbing a hot dog and a beer while I waited for him to tilt the machine. While I munched on the dog and drank the beer, damned if Steve didn’t come boppin’ in!

Damn was I glad to see him!!

I walked over to him urgently and our eyes met.

I’ll never forget the look on his face.

Looking behind him, I could see three county sheriff officers and of course…I knew we were busted!

Oddly enough, I couldn’t get mad at Steve for giving us up. As I later found out, one of the ‘victims’ of our alleged crime spree knew Steve’s name but, even before I knew that…I couldn’t get mad at him.

Hell, we were all caught up in a situation that had careened WAY out of control!

Sure, he had given us up but DAMN….we were being accused of some SERIOUS shit!

As I was beginning to accept the fact that I was about to be arrested, Steve and I discovered that Grunt had no intention of being so forgiving toward Steve.

He took one look at Steve and the constabulary and went absolutely crazy!

Before I knew what was happening, he lunged at Steve and delivered a horrendous right hand to his unsuspecting face. Steve went down and Grunt went after the first cop with a fury I had never seen!

He kicked him in the groin and headed toward the second and third officer. I watched as he grabbed the next officer by the arm and slung him onto a SkeeBall alley as though he were a rag doll. By then, the third much older officer had pulled his pistol but, he wasn’t nearly quick enough. Grunt rushed him head on and they went down in a heap as the cop’s pistol went off.

Holy shit!! People went scurrying and screaming everywhere!

To this day, I don’t know what possessed me to do it but I ran over to where the officer and Grunt had landed. I jumped on Grunt’s back and did my best to subdue him as he was wrestling with the older cop. Between the two of us, we managed to get him under control and before I knew what was happening, the three of us were handcuffed and on our way to jail in three separate vehicles!

I remember thinking of what my Grandaddy Rock used to say….

“Boy…..no good turn goes unpunished!”

In my mind, I had saved a cop from getting his ass kicked and here I was going to jail on a bunch of trumped up charges!

Oh well….such is life.

To Be Continued…..

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I’ve Been Thinkin’…..

You know, sometimes I feel a little apprehensive about all the stuff I write in this blog. I mean really….think about it.

All bloggers open up their lives up to all kinds of crazy stuff because, by the very nature of the internet, this stuff is out there virtually well…forever!

Thank God for the statute of limitations AND the fact that I’m not younger!

Can you imagine ME trying to get a job these days and having an employer catch wind of this blog? Hell, I’d be relegated to most menial jobs imaginable. I can almost see the 17 yr old assistant manager of the local Long John Silver trying to let my 53 yr old sorry ass down easy.

"Sorry Ron.....you're simply not up to LJS's standards for the 'mop boy' position."

God has been SO good to me ya’ll. Trust me on this one. Better than I deserve.

Many times as I’m writing this stuff, I wonder if people doubt the voracity of my weird stories but I assure you……it’s ALL true.

Unfortunate but true.

Sometimes, I wonder if some of those same people think that I was or AM a horrible person.

Thankfully, all of the people who are important to me already know about my life and love me just the same. My precious wife lived through some of it and has been told about the rest. It makes no sense but…she thinks I’m THE MAN! Go figure.

My Mom lived through almost ALL of it and says that I’m the only hell she ever raised but amazingly…she thinks I’m close to wonderful.

My Dad thinks I’m a freak of nature and even though I have irritated him for the majority of my life…he loves me too. To be honest though....I sometimes feel as though his love is the kind of love a father would bestow up a ‘special’ child. Not a great child but rather, more of a short bus ridin’, helmet wearin’, name and address tag pinned to his jacket kind of child.

My brother loves me and has rescued me so many times that he should be a certified life guard! He says that I have shown him what his life could have been like if he too had been born with an insatiable desire to have fun, horrible judgement, and the heart of a poet. He swears that he’s gonna make sure that my head stone reads….

He Just Came To Play

Hell…I LIKE that!

Oh yeah…..my little sisters love me too but hell...they love everybody!

My point in all this rambling is simply THIS….

For all the strange and really troubling stuff that I’ve done, experienced or witnessed….I never was a really bad guy. Stupid maybe but not really bad.

As I said before...I've been truly blessed and lucky.

I’m just glad that I’m not writing this blog from a prison library computer!

I’ll be back tomorrow to continue the tale.

Thanks for dropping by.

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Memories...Part IV.

I hope ya'll had a great Thanksgiving. We had a BUNCH of friends and family up for the day and we are just now getting back to normal from the experience!

Back To The Story....

Even though I had already received a measure of revenge, part of me wanted MORE. I really wanted to stay and do more damage to those assholes but, what with all the gunfire and screaming, I decided that it was time to promptly haul our asses out of there.

We headed out the door and were running for the car when quite unexpectedly, several shots were fired behind us! We had just reached the car when Steve swung around and unleashed lord knows how many rounds from his pistol. The guy who had fired the shots from the house, ducked back inside and we took off like the proverbial bats out of hell!

All three of us were speechless for several miles as Grunt drove steadily away from the crime scene. I can’t really describe what happened next other than to say that we took turns making strange noises. Not much in the way of communication….just sounds. Whoops, hollers, heavy expulsions of breath, ‘Oh mans’, ‘holy shits’.

No real discussion for quite awhile.

We made it back to downtown Myrtle Beach and Grunt pulled into the parking lot of a little bar we used to hang out at called “The Place”. As he switched off the engine and the car continued to vapor lock and chug awhile, Steve reached out and clapped me on the shoulder from the rear seat.

“Well…..what are we gonna do next man?” He laughed. “Gonna be hard to outdo THAT shit dude!”

We looked at each other for a bit and finally began laughing.

Minutes later we were sitting at a table in the darkened bar congradulating ourselves over how we had handled the whole situation. Oh yeah.....we were BAD! Nobody could mess with us and get away with it!!

Is there any animal on the face of God's green earth dumber than a young man?

I don't think so.

Anyway.....

As we spoke, we agreed that no one at the redneck house knew who we were. No one knew our names. We were pretty sure that no one had gotten the tag number of the car. Hell…no one had been hurt any worse than I had been beaten up by THEM so…what the hell? It was strictly a case of ‘tit for tat’ so, even though we were still jacked up by the experience, we weren’t anticipating any real trouble. Of course we expected the possibility of more trouble from the rednecks if we crossed trails with them again but, other than that…we figured we were free to laugh, kid and joke about the event.

For anyone experienced in real life in general or MY LIFE in particular….well, you know that it just wasn’t THAT simple!

The remainder of the night passed uneventfully.

The next day, I was sitting beside the pool at the Firebird motel visiting a few friends who were staying there. I remember that someone had a radio cranked up and we were listening to the music.

A storm was said to be approaching and everyone was keyed up about how bad the weather was going to be in the next few days. Hurricanes have always been closely followed by east coast beach goers and we were hungry for weather updates. So….. that was my mindset when the music stopped and the DJ began talking.

“We’ll have the latest on the rough weather heading our way but first…….a shockingly brutal armed robbery last night on the Grand Strand"

I can still remember thinking, “Damn man! That kind of crap doesn’t happen around here. That’s horrible!”

The announcer continued

Three heavily armed men broke into a rental house on Terrace Street last night and wounded several people in the home. A yet to be determined amount of money and personal items were stolen before the gunmen fled leaving behind an unbelievable scene of carnage.” He intoned.

Well damn! We were all shocked to hear of such a thing happening in Myrtle Beach! What the hell was this world coming to?

The DJ went on to give a description of the assailants as well details about the getaway vehicle. By the time he got around to describing the rusted door on Grunts old clunker car, I was almost physically ill!

Dear God!

THEY was US!!

Never before or since have I felt so completely terrified. Armed robbery? Wounded people? Carnage?

What the HELL was going on?

I don’t recall what happened next in any great detail but I DO remember thinking that everyone at the pool knew EXACTLY who the announcer was speaking of!

I slinked away from the scene like a scared cat.

Back in those days, news of an armed robbery in Myrtle Beach was closely akin to the Manson Murders in L.A. or, at least it seemed so to me at the time. Everyone seemed to be talking about it and it was all over the tv, radio and newspaper. Thank God there was no internet back then!

I felt like the most wanted man in America even though I was certain that only two other people knew that I was connected to the heinous crime we had supposedly committed.

I HAD to find Grunt and Steve so that we could get put our mostly empty heads together and figure out what we were going to do!

To Be Continued………..

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