I went out to Northern California to visit my aunt who is working through cancer treatments. The gentlemen (Dave) that she lives with gave a book to me called "The Risk Pool" and let me know when he read it he thought about my childhood. Dave's a nice guy and I thanked him for the book adding it to the stack.
I finally pulled the book out and read it this month. The story is about a boy who grows up in the late 40's and 50's in upstate New York. His father comes back from the war and decides he is going to focus on himself, eventually leaving wife and son. The mother goes into a shell and the boy eventually goes to live with his father for a few years before going back to live with his mother. While the connection with specific facts does not match up to my childhood several of the general themes do.
The main thing that does not match up is that I never new my father. My mother did not marry him and I have never had contact with him. However, my mother did marry a man, Walt, who I spent time with from eight to fourteen. All young men want a father and I thought Walt would be the person that stepped in. There was one problem, Walt was an alcoholic. Walt's primary hang out was a bar. When I was younger the pattern was I would go with Walt somewhere with anticipation of a Father and Son outing and he would end up at a bar, at first it was the Villa. He would hand me all the change in his pocket and head in. I would go buy some candy and sit in the car, for hours. He would eventually come out. On Sundays, he played bar league softball and would take me with him - quality time. They all drank beer and I was supplied with an unlimited supply of Coke. After the game, he would go to the bar and I would sit in the car.
Eventually Mom and Walt became serious and decided to live together. We moved to Union City (East SF Bay Area) into an apartment. His bar in Union City was the Eight Ball. This is where my relationship with Walt, his friends and time at the bar begin to match up with the Risk Pool. I was allowed to go into the Eight Ball and hang out. Since Walt was there all day it worked for me. Similar to Ned in the book, I learned to play pool and could pretty much clean up all players and have an endless supply of Coke and free pool. The owner of the bar, Stan, would eventually come back to the pool room and let me know the adults were ready for me to go home and have dinner.
Similar to Ned, I was "Walt's kid" - he was "Sam's Kid". Walt did things that in relation to me that his friends did not approve of as did Sam. I grew up with, by default, this large group of characters at the bar. None of the people were "healthy" role models, let me see if I can remember some names. There was "Wild Bill", a guy that drank like crazy at night and the weekends but put together steel frames for skyscrapers in San Francisco during the day. He was a 49's fan by the way. There was "Hawiian Pete", allegedly from Hawaii he would bury a pig in a fire pit on occasion and they would all eat it. "Big Dan" was a huge guy with a handlebar mustache, he was married to another alcoholic that drove us down the wrong side of the road on several occasions. "Lucky" was a merchant marine that was in and out. He took us up in a plane once, not for sure how much drinking was going on there but I suspect anyone named Lucky didn't drink and fly. "Don the muffler man" worked at a muffler shop. This guy deserves a whole paragraph.
Don lived in the same apartments as us for some time. I spent time with the kids of some of these characters if they were close to my age. His son was Donnie (of course). Don's drink of choice was rum and coke and I don't believe I ever saw him without said drink in hand - even when driving. He had a AMC Javelin that was built for speed at all times. If Don went from one four way stop to another he would reach 100mph between each one and maybe would only stop at selected ones. I thought I was dead on multiple occasions in his car. As to his parenting style, his wife had a piece of paper on the wall titled "Donnie's Sh#% List". Anything Donnie did during the day that was inappropriate was written on the sheet. When Don came home, first thing Donnie received a spanking for each item. At the muffler shop, the entire bathroom was covered with Penthouse centerfolds - every square inch. But my favorite story is when Don became angry with the apartment manager one day. The apartment manager was on the bottom floor of the apartments with only a sidewalk separating his door from the parking lot. Don backs his Javelin all the way up to the door of the apartment to block it. He then proceeds to knock on the door, scream at the guy then get into the Javelin and absolutely smoke the tires all the way out of the parking lot. I believe that was the last month that family was there.
So these are the people that Walt introduced me to. In the book, Ned and Sam reconnect as Ned matures and there is an ongoing relationship. Sam continues his alcoholic ways and is in and out of Ned's life until he dies of lung cancer. Unfortunately, or at least I thought at the time, Walt left us when I was 14 and that was the last I saw of him. Drinking and the "bar" was the most important thing to Walt - always was.
So Dave put me back in touch with that part of my life. It's something I have always put behind me and never really considered it as a life that I would want to live. However, it is part of the fabric that weaved me. When I was younger there were many times it embarrassed me but as an adult I can look back and see it was really something that I was placed into. It's a sad life for the people that see their drinking friends as their true friends - regardless of the sophistication of the atmosphere. The real friend is the drink - the people are just there to make them feel better about themselves.
