by Sposs, Mike
Pat was just as busy, commuting from the neighborhood to classes at the University. She had scholarships, but she had to work for pocket money, and to be able to afford the music she loved so much. She spent hours playing sax, and violin. She hoped to eventually play in the string section of an orchestra and to teach music. What neither one knew at the time was that you could get out of the neighborhood, but the neighborhood never got out of you completely.
4. The Riots
Kevin and Pat loved music and talked about it a lot when they were together. They both had eclectic tastes. They loved the Motown Sound, Jazz, and Classical music. They even had inside music jokes that not everyone would follow. Does Herbert Von Karajan know any Beethoven? Did Darlene Love know how to sing backup? Does Lonnie Mack know how to play a Gibson Flying Vee Guitar? They would laughingly ask each other when stating the obvious. It turned out that the answer to all those questions was an emphatic Hell Yes!
Their eclectic tastes were not so strange. Part of the Motown Sound was directly attributable to them using the Detroit Symphony in conjunction with the Funk Brothers’ flourishes and touches on their albums. The Delfonics used the Philadelphia Orchestra for some of their incredible music and for creating what became the Philadelphia sound.
Since Patrica didn't seem to want Kevin, he was free to date other girls. He did on several occasions, but still couldn't get Pat off his mind. In high school, his friendship with Pat messed up potential relationships with other girls. More than one gal dumped him when he refused to give up his friendship with Pat for an exclusive with her. He tried to work up Pat with some of his other female relationships, but frankly she didn't seem to care. No signs of jealousy or anything; just an occasional sad look that made Kevin feel like a real jerk.
He had one other girlfriend, Brenda Johnson. She turned him into a puddle, whenever she wanted to. She would push her copious chest into his arm or chest whenever she wanted his attention. Game over for Kevin whenever that happened. She was still Kevin's secret standard for kissing. The girl had a lip lock never to be forgotten, especially when she was also pushing her bosom into you. Pat openly detested the girl. Brenda eventually attracted the attention of an older boy in the neighborhood, and drifted from Kevin since he didn't yet quite yet know what to do with her affection, or body.
As the sixties wore on, the old Avenue drifted away too. Some of the commerce died off. Worse than that was everyone seemed to be getting increasingly tense. You could feel it in the air. The shopkeepers were increasingly tense too. These were guys who had soldiered all over Europe as young men. They say there are no atheists in a foxhole. Kevin didn't know about that; he bet there wasn't much inequality in a foxhole either.
The shopkeepers hated dictators, loved America, and believed to the core that they fought a war for democracy and equality. They were the kind of guys that would give you the shirt off their back if you needed it. As a kid, Kevin saw them do it all the time, for people. How do you put a value on that? Now, they were being looked at by some in the neighborhood as though they were parasites preying on the neighborhood residents. Little did they know that these little guys were soon to be replaced by empty lots, abandoned buildings and corporations that would fire people for giving away anything unauthorized or deviating from operating procedures.
In August 1966, a three day riot broke out on the Avenue. This was going on all over the country at the time. One brick, much rage, some gasoline, and instant flames. Kevin's birthday was coming up in September; in days he would be 15, old enough to quit the paperboy business and get a real job that paid better. He delivered papers right through the riot, burning, and looting. He still got a free pass for being a kid. He moved down the burned blocks with impunity. There was a hell of a lot of places that were not there to get a paper any more. The afternoon of the second day he stopped at the grocery store that Sylvia lived above; they were still in business, and had not been touched. He assumed that they had been left alone because everyone knew and liked the owners. They were farther down on the Avenue, and not really in the heart of things too. Sylvia was standing in the store. She talked to Kevin. She said she had dropped Marcy off at her mother's for safety reasons. But, she said she would stay in the apartment, to protect her stuff. That night, the store, and the apartment were torched. Kevin never saw Sylvia again. All that was left the next day was a smoldering pile of bricks. By then, the National Guard had been called out. The Avenue he knew was gone. He was so distracted by all the events that he never really gave much thought to Sylvia or Marcy. He just presumed that she went back to her family. It nagged at him just a little, that the store was burned at all. One of the other adjacent buildings that got hit was a funeral home actually owned by black people. Kevin could never figure that one out. He didn't think about it that hard either.
Kevin did have thoughts and feelings about the riot. The only words that could describe the riot were the words tragedy, and disaster. It was a tragedy for everyone involved, and a disaster as well. Burning the commercial zone meant people were more inconvenienced when they wanted or needed anything. The mostly small business owners on the Avenue lost entire livelihoods.
They had lived right where the rubber meets the road ever since WWII. They were people chronically in the trenches, day in and day out. They put long days and lots of sweat into making a living for themselves and their families. Burning them out was like kicking your dog when you’re mad at someone else. It didn’t make a lot of sense; and it didn’t solve anything either.
5. Mr. Sharpe
Kevin's parents lived on the far end of things in a quiet residential neighborhood, just off the Avenue. Some of the people that lived there were the same hard working merchants that owned the little shops that were burnt out. They felt bitch slapped by what had happened. There was no way they would rebuild. If they weren't wanted, they would go away. Kevin couldn't live around these people and not feel their plight.
Kevin's dad, like everyone else was a veteran. He never talked about the war, not once, ever. Kevin knew his dad could speak German so well the shopkeepers in the neighborhood that were German speaking practically bowed to him when he went into their stores. They said he spoke the German of a highly educated man, without a trace of an accent. He knew that his dad had worked for military intelligence interviewing captured German POWs.
He also knew that his dad had seen an inordinate amount of blood on an ongoing basis during the war. He worked initially as a field hospital surgeon's assistant. When that job started to get to him, they put him in as a POW interviewer. His dad had gone into the service at 160 lbs, and come out at 120. When a guy needed an x-ray, he just jumped in beside the x-ray machine and held the soldier's broken bones in position to get the best picture he could for the surgeon. Kevin came to suspect that he was suffering from radiation poisoning, and that was what caused him to lose weight. Years later, he died of prostate cancer. Kevin thought that was related to the exposure. All the gurneys and tables were all about prostate level high. Dad had tried to go to medical school on the GI bill when he got out of the service. By then, besides being sick, he had become a raging alcoholic. He was quickly asked to leave the program. Kevin's next door neighbor had a similar story.
His name was Joe Sharpe and he spent at least 20 years in a bottle before sobering up in the sixties. He did talk about his experiences, though. One of which he visited with Kevin about at least a couple times a year as Kevin grew up. He had been at Iwo Jima and shot a Japanese soldier one morning right off a latrine he was sitting on. Kevin got big eyes and chills every time Mr. Sharpe told the story. Kevin knew enough about war stories to tell the real from the fake. He knew this one was gospel truth from the way Mr. Sharpe told it. He also knew that you couldn't have been on Iwo Jima and not seen enough killing to kill you, too. According to the accounts he read, there were 21,000 Japanese on this little island. There were 19000 of them killed and only about 1000 taken prisoners.
That Mr. Sharpe brought it up re
peatedly meant that it always bothered him. He always ended the story by telling Kevin the soldier was so young that when he had him in his sights, he could see the soldier was a boy not much older than 15 or 16, but he pulled the trigger anyway.
Kevin loved Mr. Sharpe. His own dad finally took the cure about the time Kevin joined the Navy and left home, thanks to Mr. Sharpe. Kevin just never had much of a relationship with his dad. Kevin's dad died just before Kevin got his degree and license. Now, his mom who was a South Carolina girl originally, lived in Hilton Head. That was why Kevin sailed out of Savannah whenever he could. He could sit at the union hall in Savannah during the day, and stay with his mom in the evenings. Kevin always wondered if she ran away too after Dad died. Maybe running away was a genetic thing.
Another thanks Kevin owed Mr. Sharpe was for urging him on in math and science, and being a surrogate Dad when he really needed one. Kevin never told any of his friends Mr. Sharpe's story because he felt it had been shared with him in confidence, and Kevin valued that trust. One thing you could say about Kevin was that he was loyal in the extreme, and blind to his friends’ faults. He never failed to visit Mr. Sharpe when he came back to town to resume his studies. It was Mr. Sharpe that had talked Kevin into going into the Navy instead of the Marine Corps. In retrospect, this was a decision that Kevin was eternally thankful to him for.
The city, village, and neighborhood elders went to work getting everybody settled down after the disturbance. Nobody wanted to call it a riot, but that is what it was. Despite a lot of rhetoric, the Avenue was never rebuilt as a commercial area. Like a long drawn out Greek tragedy, things just degenerated into a sad, rapidly declining status. Slowly, over the ensuing 10 years, the land was taken up mostly for public housing.
Within the week, Kevin quit the paper route. He was never the same after that, either. He became more cynical, and pessimistic. That chip implanted on his shoulder started to grow and fester, too. The Vietnam war escalated. Sometimes, kids from classes ahead of his would stop by the school to visit while they were rehabbing from injuries in Vietnam. Some of the formerly healthy 18 year old boys came back and pulled off shirts to reveal red ugly big scars. It was sobering stuff to see. King and Robert Kennedy were assassinated. Maybe it was hormones, the era, or Kevin himself. Kevin was drifting. His grades were nowhere close to what he was capable of, and he didn't care much.
Patrica helped him through the roughest patches. He felt a huge debt of gratitude to her, and the same loyalty in this case proved to be a vice, rather than a virtue. Or, so he thought when he finally gave up on their relationship in 1973.
6. Foxholes
A lot of the old time paperboys used to carry a three cell flashlight in their paper bags. In theory, it was supposed to help to find addresses and see in the dark. You could even win one from the paper if you sold enough new subscriptions. A lot of the boys used them as weapons to fend off unfriendly dogs. The three cells from the paper were cheap made in Japan flashlights. The correct way to grip it was by choking down on the bulb part, and striking with the handle part. Once, Kevin walloped a dog with one and had the batteries fly out of the end of the flashlight. You don't want to be a one-hit wonder around a Doberman, a big Shepherd, or a Rottweiler. People in the neighborhoods along the Avenue didn't have little lap dogs for pets.
Kevin switched to a weighted roller from an old typewriter for his weapon of choice. The roller of a typewriter was a little heavier and much better constructed; he never had it fail him. He sometimes used the roller as his weapon of choice on older kids he got in scrapes with. It never failed him then, either. It had the advantage of bruising rather than causing stitches to the victim. Willie had showed him how to use the roller, initially.
Then there was the one time instead of taking the fight out of the guy, it made the guy more fighting mad. Kevin ended up being the one with stitches that time. He used to joke with Willie about "Overhand with the Olivetti", "Upside with the Underwood", or "Crowned with the Corona." Until that happened.
In those days, there were kids up to age 21 going to high school. They could actually get deferred from the draft if they were working toward their high school diploma up to age 21. It seemed only fair, as they were giving deferments to plenty of affluent white boys to go to college at the time. There was a world of difference between a 16 year old boy and a 20, or almost 21 year old man. These guys used their alpha male status to get 16-and 17 year old girls at school. Sure, the girls were under age; but these guys went by the maturity of the bodies and not age maturity. Kevin, sure as hell, wouldn't back down from these guys if they got in his face. He would grip whatever was handy and go after them.
One time, he used a folding chair like a television pro wrestler would, on a bigger, older guy. The guy called Pat a fucking bitch when she ignored his efforts to charm her. That could have turned into a go to jail offense for Kevin. It didn't help that the other guy was not the same race, either. Kevin quickly became unwelcome with a lot of the brothers he formerly ran the streets with. They left him alone after that, too. Everyone seemed to know that Kelly kid might be crazier than most.
Willie and Kevin were on their way to becoming minor league thugs by then. After that incident, a little racial divide grew between them; and Kevin knew it wasn't a bad thing if it got him away from the path he was proceeding on.
One time after the divide started to develop, Kevin came upon Willie having words out in a parking lot in the far corner of a liquor store with someone Kevin had never seen before. The man pulled a knife on Willie and looked like he knew how to use it. Willie pulled his roller out of the sleeve of his winter jacket. He always wore a big Navy Surplus Pea Coat in the winter.
Fearing for Willie, Kevin charged the guy and tackled him. Willie destroyed the guy with the roller when he and Kevin went down in a heap. "The motherfucker beat my sister up," Willie said. Then they both proceeded to beat the daylights out of this guy since he messed with what both considered to be family. Later, Kevin showed Willie that he was packing a 9mm when he tackled the guy; he could have shot him if he wanted to because he was armed. Willie was the one with the bug eyes that time.
Willie probably told the other brothers that Kevin packed. After that, they definitely left him alone having been duly warned that the crazy Irish white boy also packed. Kevin knew that Willie still felt some affection for him, and appreciated what he had done. They just couldn't be seen in public together.
Willie on the other hand, could get a grip on his roller, but not on his roller coaster life. He quit school, kept on with the assaults. Willie got the option of jail or the military once he landed in front of a judge. Willie took the Marine Corps option and Kevin lost track of him.
Kevin seemed to come out of his funk during his junior year in high school. All of a sudden, his grades came up. He surprised a hell of a lot of the school counselors with his test scores too. They couldn't believe the rough edged kid tested as well as he did. Regardless of tests, Kevin wanted to get away from home. Just as he avoided his house by running the streets, he wanted to avoid everything by going away. The best option for him was to volunteer for the Navy.
Within a week after he graduated, he left for boot camp. By January 1971, he found himself off the coast of Vung Tau, Vietnam, on an old Liberty ship loaded to the Plimsoll Mark with all kinds of bad shit. It had been pressed into service as a munitions ship. They always loaded the old buckets with the explosives right in front of the engine room bulkheads. They didn't put them in the bow; just in case you struck something. They didn't want to put them in the stern because an explosion could mess up your steering equipment. If you got hit in the mid-ship section, the whole ship was going down. It was an easy decision in that the ship was at the end of its useful life anyway.
Kevin never felt endangered despite the explosives literally right next to his sorry ass. He was too stupid to know the risks. Once in a while, someone would launch a mortar at the ships sitting in anchorage, waiting to be unloaded. It wa
s a little spooky especially if you were in the engine room. You could feel the mortar, hear it, but not see anything.
At times like that, Kevin would look at the old steam pipes on the ship and think about what a Lobster he would be if they burst open. They were always under a minimum manning situation when in Vietnamese waters. That meant that there was just the fireman and him down there. In a case like that, each was responsible for the other. They would look at each other full in the eyes. The unspoken belief was, "We ain't leaving this engine room unless we leave it together." The foxhole issue all over again.
7. A Chance Encounter
Kevin had woken up that morning in August 1977 to hear that Elvis Presley had just died. He thought about all the good music Elvis created, and bad movies. He rolled over and went back to sleep. It all just seemed to be part of a long descent that just would not stop. He thought of the saying summing up the history of the world. Something to the effect that things started out bad and kept getting worse. Finally, he dragged his butt out of bed and got moving. He had spent the last several years sailing half the year and going to graduate school during the other half. He had just about finished his MBA.
Kevin had to see his graduate adviser and round up a book he needed. There he was at a campus bookstore picking up the textbook he needed; when he looked up, he saw Pat Washington standing in front of him. He hadn’t seen her in years. She was tall, about 5-10, and had filled out a little more since he had last seen her; she looked fabulous. She had big blue eyes, dark brown long hair, a slight olive complexion, and a great shape in her snug jeans and sweater.
"Pat, you look terrific," was all Kevin could stammer out. He was so mesmerized by those big eyes of hers; he just stood there staring. She was taken aback by the encounter, too. Slowly, she smiled and her eyes lit up. One thing that Kevin always loved about her was the light that came from behind those eyes. It was radiant light; Kevin could literally see the mind behind it, and the high wattage it contained was blatantly obvious.