Next week I’ll shift to UPLIFT!-11 while I write more chapters of FLAWED. Appreciate you reading my posts and your comments. Mahalo, BC
Chapter 21 (first draft)
Tim-2
Kim was at Dad's most evenings. Occasionally, she and her daughter, Chris, would join us for bowling or miniature golf. The rest of the time, Chris stayed at Kim's mother's house. I began emptying and washing ashtrays. There were no dishes to wash since Dad ate out every meal. Soon, I graduated to making Kim's gin and ginger ale evening drinks. She showed me how to start with two fingers of gin, add ice cubes to the top of the glass, then pour in the ginger ale. Dad didn't drink alcohol. Except for an iced tea once in a while, he rarely drank anything at home.
One evening, Kim whispered to me how to make orange champagne. Not sure that Dad would approve, I kept it a secret.
The next week at Grandma's, while Tim and I were burning ant hills, I told him about my conversation with Kim. "Fresh squeezed orange juice, rainwater, and sugar. That's all it takes to make orange champagne."
"We can do that. Can we use your basement?"
"Sure, no one goes down there anymore. But we have to keep it secret. Grandma won't even allow playing cards in the house."
"I thought there was a pack..."
"Shhh. She doesn't know about them. But if she found out we were brewin' booze down there, she'd have a cat. Maybe three or four."
"That's no problem. I can get oranges and sugar from Dad's store."
"Cool. There's a hand crank juicer in the kitchen. And I can start collecting Kim's empty bottles."
I already had a dozen Gordon's Gin bottles with the labels soaked off at Dad's. Had no idea what I was going to do with them. I just liked the process and the bottles when they were clean. I began spiriting them to Mt. Carmel in my little brown suitcase, a few at a time, filled with rainwater captured under the porch overhang back by the high fence dividing the property from the alley and slummy apartments in back.
Tim stopped by with a big bag of grapes one day, fresh from his Dad's IGA store. We headed down to the basement. "Let's make wine while we wait for you to collect enough gin bottles," he said.
"Great idea." Of course, I agreed.
We found an old baby bathtub made out of corrugated metal. In went the grapes. Off came our shoes and socks. "Damn, these grapes are cold," Tim said when his feet hit the fruit.
"Wonder if we should have washed out this tub first."
"Nah, when the grapes turn to booze, it will sterilize everything." Half an hour later, we stopped stomping, washed off our wrinkled feet in the sink, put our socks and shoes back on, tucked away the mashed grapes under some boxes, and headed upstairs to get a snack, excited by our winemaking. To what end, we had no idea.
We sampled our brew every few days. The taste gradually became sour. "I like root beer better," I said. Tim agreed.
Six weeks later, on a weekday afternoon, Tim and I met in the basement. "I think I can trade this wine for oranges. Mentioned it to one of the produce guys at the store. That's what these bottles are for. If you want to." He showed me two cider jugs.
"Sounds good." We poured our batch of wine into the large glass bottles.
Tim put the bottles into sacks with straps. "I'll let you know tomorrow at school how this goes."
The next afternoon, we again met in the basement with our clandestine booty.
"Who knows what we are doing?" I asked Tim.
"Only my Dad. Mom would have a hissy." JR was a cool dude. His mother, Freda, not so much. She was wrapped up in churchy correctness, much like my grandmother. "Your Dad knows?" Tim asked me.
"No, not unless Kim told him. He never asked what I was doing with her empty bottles."
"Let's get this going. Did you find a bucket we could use?"
"Yeah, it's right here." I pulled out an old five gallon steel bucket.
"Think we ought to wash it?"
"I rinsed it out yesterday. Besides, our hooch should kill any germs once it gets going, just like the wine did." We emptied the bottles into the bucket. Tim began cutting the oranges into halves, while I squeezed the juice out of them.
"Think we should have added the water last? What happens if we run out of oranges before the brew is right? I only brought five pounds of sugar."
"How would we know if the brew is right?"
"Didn't your dad's girlfriend tell you?"
"No, just gave me the ingredients."
"I guess we will just make do with what we have."
After we juiced and stirred for an hour, I said, "We need a ladle or something to fill these bottles. I'll go look upstairs."
"How about a funnel, too?"
"Natch. I know where one is."
Upstairs in the kitchen, I found what we needed. As I was heading for the door to the basement, Mrs. Leipold walked in from the back porch carrying groceries. "What are you doing, Bobby? You're a mess."
"Oh, nothing. Tim and I are just making some OJ in the basement."
"Well, you got it all over you."
"I'll clean up in a bit," I said and disappeared down the stairs.
"Find the stuff?" Tim asked.
"Right here. Almost got caught by Mrs. Lightpole."
"Let's do this. The bucket is almost full." We filled thirty-five fifth and pint bottles, then capped and tucked them away in a white porcelain cabinet that had seen better days.
"Now what?"
"We wait a while. Three months, maybe."
"Think we ought to clean up this stuff?"
"Good idea." Cleaning up consisted of rinsing out the bucket, funnel, knife, and orange squeezer. We left them in the sink to dry.
*****
Tim and two other eighth graders from our class lip-synced Beatles songs on the stage of Mt. Carmel's North Grade School auditorium before a school assembly in March 1964. These guys were ahead of their time. The Beatles had exploded onto The Ed Sullivan Show the month before, but no one was lip-syncing them that we knew of.
The Apollos, with Tim, Craig, Smitty, Dave, and Rick, evolved from this fledgling start. Practice began in Tim's garage. Before the end of high school, the band was playing all over the tri-state area, had gained and lost bandmates, and had bought a bus.
ABOVE: The original Apollos sporting their almost matching Madras jackets.
BELOW: Junior year of high school with new band members and their 1949 Flxible Transit bus.
I might have been part of the grade school performance, except I spent weekends and summers with Dad in Evansville. I seriously considered trying out for the eighth grade basketball team until I realized how many weekends I would need to stay in Mt. Carmel. I missed out on a lot of buddy time, but I didn't want to be away from Dad and his adult world for a moment more than necessary. I would have chosen to live with Dad full time in a heartbeat if given the chance.
My lack of musicality would have been a poor fit even with the group lip syncing the Beatles. The first time I stopped by Tim's during one of their band practices, he stopped everyone and said, "Watch this." To me, he said, "Ready?" and hit a note on the guitar. I tried to match it, failed spectacularly, and joined in the laughter afterward. I had never experienced making music, let alone the joy of it, so I had no expectation of doing so, which took the sting out of being laughed at. My lack of ability killed my desire to sing anything at all. I could not keep a steady beat either. Having a very talented musician for a father did not save me from being musically useless.
*****
Tim and I hunted nudie magazines. Playboys of that era were tantalizing, but we wanted more. I remember finding a nudist magazine only to be disappointed that women's pubic hair covered "everything."
*****
I turned sixteen in Spring 1966. Our high school provided driver's training. I easily passed, driving the school's lumbering Buick with an automatic transmission. Doing so qualified me for the state written and driving tests. But Dad's 1964 1/2 Mustang was the only car I could use for the test. It had a three speed stick shift. I needed to practice. Dad drove us around to the next street over in our neighborhood and parked the car. We switched positions. He explained how the clutch worked and that I would need to be able to shift smoothly for the driving instructor. "The key is to give the engine enough gas to keep it from stalling as you release the clutch pedal."
I kept killing the engine. Finally, Dad said, "Let's call it a day, Son. We'll try again, though I can't understand how a world champion could have this much trouble." He drove us home. I felt like a total failure.
Later that evening, sitting in my room, it occurred to me to try something different. I went out to the dining room where Dad was working on the first designs for Formula Five Cars. "Hey, Pop, how about I try driving again on a level road? I think the hill was my problem."
"Sure, we can do that," Dad said, not looking up. The tone of his voice made me feel like I was looking for an easy way out. The next day, I shifted with ease on level pavement. I did learn to start the car on a hill, but I made a vow to myself that I would never teach my son how to shift on a slope. Dad never apologized, but the experience added some steam to my boiler.
That fall, Dad took Kim to Chicago for a short vacation. He said he was trying to "...make a go of his marriage." I did not ask what he meant. Jan was married by then, Chris went to her grandmother's, and I took the bus to Mt. Carmel to stay with Aunt Ruth and/or Tim. With a teacher's convention added onto a long weekend, I had five days off from school.
Walking up to Mulberry Street from the bus stop at the Tavern felt different than the couple hundred times I had done it before. I was free of Dad for a long weekend of fun with my friends.
I made it to Aunt Ruthie's in time for an early dinner of hamburgers, hot dogs, and baked beans. Her house was a zoo: eight kids from seventeen down to five, plus two gigantic Great Danes and assorted guinea pigs and hamsters. Carol was number three in the troop. We were in the same grade at school, but now in high school in different towns.
I blended into the brood easily, having spent many afternoons there during grade school. I asked David, one of the twins, if anyone was heading in Tim's direction on the other side of town. Before he could answer, Aunt Ruth said, "We can loan you Carol's car tomorrow. She will not get her license until next month."
"Really," I said, looking at Carol with eyebrows raised.
"Fine by me, Cuz," she said, smiling. My heart always trilled a little around her. If we had not been cousins, we might have been sweethearts. "It's just sitting up at the store collecting dust."
The next morning, I hoofed the half mile up Market Street to The Cowling Company and pushed through the front doors into sixty years of family history. The furniture was newer, but the layout and appointment of the store were unchanged over the ten years I had seen it. I suspected it had changed little from the store's early days.
Pushing away the ghosts of my father, grandfather, and great-uncles, I found Uncle Jay sitting in the back office reading the paper. He looked up. "Hi, Bob. What brings you here? Your dad with you?"
"No, he's in Chicago. I'm visiting for a few days." Uncle Jay looked at me with one eyebrow raised. I added, "Aunt Ruth said I could borrow Carol's car since she's not using it."
"Oh, she did, did she?" Uncle Jay dialed the phone on the desk in front of him. "Ruth, Bobby's here..." he paused, "She said it was okay?" He listened some more. "You know, we have completely restored that VW for her birthday. "Yes, I know it's not until next month." Finally, Jay said, "Well, he's your nephew," hung up the phone, reached into a desk drawer, and tossed me two keys on a key ring. "The car's in the basement. Don't have a wreck. We put a lot of money into it."
I hurried away with the keys in my hand. The men in the basement were friendly. One of them drove the car from its spot in the back out the large doors to the parking lot behind the building. "Thanks," I said, hopping into the light blue VW Bug. I drove away, thinking my uncle had disowned me.
#
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