Sunday, December 11, 2005

one beginning

Life as the youngest son of four boys, you would think that with just two years between each of us, we would be inseparable. Growing up this was true, but as we got older this changed very fast and was very confusing to me. Because I could not see them any other way then as my older brothers, that I wanted to be like. I could not understand why they did not want me around anymore. Why they would chose to go with their friends and leave me alone.
It started with my oldest brother, we will call him Blaine. He was strange even to me, when he was young he liked pain and fascinated with death; all sorts of death. While we were growing up he broke my nose and finger and gave me several contusions, of course he was just playing. I believe he was, because with him playing did involve causing pain He enjoyed to slowly kill small animals. I thought this was odd, but accepted it because I didn’t know any better. When I saw it I could not imagine myself doing that to animals, so I collected them and saved them from him. I liked different kinds of small animals, my favorite were two horn toads. I kept them for years, they lived in a large glass jar filled with sand, and we lived in the Mojave Desert. They were my pets until on one of the moves to Texas. During the trip my brother Hyme, the second to the oldest, turned them loose at one of the pit stops some where in New Mexico. I didn’t know it until it was time to feed them. Of course Dad would not go back, not that we would have ever found them again, but Dad was not the type to ever stop much anyway. You know pee in a bottle if you couldn’t hold it, but that’s another story. We had a lot of trips back and forth between California and Texas. I was born in between those states in New Mexico, a small town on the old Route 66. It was still a well used road back then, just a memory now.
Now my brother Hyme and I were close, he was always trying to the peace maker, never on one side or the other. The shinning star, he played football, was in Who’s Who and got scholarships, one of which was to Princeton, he turned it down and joined the army, the day after our grand mother’s funeral. I think because Blaine has already moved out, to go to college and road bulls on the Rodeo Circuit. He was very good, but of course it did involve a lot of pain. He enjoyed the life he picked until a bad fall ended his career as a bull rider. He had fallen and landed on his shoulder. The doctors had to reconstruct it. From that time on he just kind of stayed in that era, not moving, just reliving those times. Now in his fifties, he is a recluse and severe alcoholic.
Hyme was fun, always taking me to the movies when I was a teenager. When we were young we played hard and I would inevitably get hurt. Like the time he put me in the washing machine and turned it on. That hurts, but what the hell it was fun for a few minutes. Then there was the time we were playing chicken, he threw a spear and hit me in the foot, I could not move, my mom had to come and pull it out, it went all the way through my foot and into the ground. I learned at a young age how to get even with older brothers, hit them when they sleep, or are not looking. Hey I Know it was kind of wrong, but it got them to think twice before they hurt me again.
Hyme was a Green Beret and became a military policeman. He hated the army so when his time came to re-enlist, he got out and married a woman spawned by the devil. No it’s not what you think, it’s not that I didn’t like her, she was evil and her main goal was to end the relationship between him and his family. She turned a once 250 pound 6 foot 2 ex-Green Beret into a 6 foot 150 pound P-whipped eunuch, more on this at a latter time. Now my brother Lloyd, third of us four, was a hippie by all the rules of that time; long hair, drugs and rock and roll. I leaned towards the long hair and just marijuana, never the hard stuff like Lloyd. He lived by his rules, he saw thing very different then any one else. I knew he did not start trouble but he didn’t run away from it either. He and I fought a lot, about what, it didn’t matter, he never wanted me to come along with him, never run with his friends, He did not have a lot do with me for a long time. I thought he didn’t like me, but as I got older and asked him these questions, it became clear to me that he didn’t want me around the dope and bad influences. He had a lot of bad friends that made it on the news for killing, big drug bust whatever, but he always seemed to escape the trouble some how. He ran away from home for a short time when he was about fifteen, but his money and friends ran out. So he came home and stayed until about eighteen. He and his girlfriend moved in and after a little while got married, but of course the life style stayed the same; beer, drugs and fair weather friends. You know the kind, as long as you are paying the bill they are there, but when you need them, they are gone. Lloyd and his wife, Angelina had 4 children, 3 girls and 1 boy. That did seem to slow down the drugs but not all. Angelina drank hard whiskey or wine never beer, she was a very quiet person. Half American Indian, dark hair and dark eyes, only spoke when she really had something to say. I will talk more later about that because twenty years later this life style ended their lives way too early. She died at 38 and he at 41, two years after her, hepatitis C and liver failure. The saddest time of my life, Lloyd had quit drinking after Angelina died but it was too late, he was to far advanced in this disease that was just beginning to being found. We had never heard or it before, the last two years was a good time for mine and Lloyd’s relationship. We got to see more of each other than ever before. We went on a few trips, he had to walk with a cane but that was alright, we had fun. I had taken him to the casinos in Louisiana the weekend before he died, and all the details still run through my mind slowly even to this day. He had told me of being scared to die and how much he missed Angelina. We got to say we loved one another, then I took him home not knowing those were my last words to him. I still miss him. I adopted his three youngest children, by this time his oldest was grown.

2 comments:

Sandy Hatcher-Wallace said...

Why don't you write anymore? You write very well and your autobiography is very interesting, but very sad also.

Your brother did die too young and it was so nice that you adopted his children.

Red said...

i will write more I have cancer and have spent a lot of time in and out of hospitals but i love to write thank you for your comments