When I was first there, one kid stood behind me, and as others engaged me in conversation, I was pushed over. Second grade started like that. I was born in White Plains New York. It was Elon College NC.
I heard that Mom told them off at the voter registration office. She was not a racist like those otherwise in the town. She told us about how she had told them all off for the poll tax and Literacy Test.
Dad was gay. I didn’t find that out till about 1968 when my mother told me she was divorcing Dad for having affairs with men. That is much how she put it. I asked her if she was going to tell my younger brother and sisters. I told her not to.
The many fights from over the years were more explainable, though they had not been that much a mystery. I’d not needed really to know that Dad was gay to know we were hated.
The last psychologist I saw said I had been raised with combat fatigue. She was saying that I had grown up infected with combat fatigue.
The Perry father ran over our dog and didn’t stop. He killed our dog in front of us. In neighborhood football I had been hard kicked in the head in a pile up and suffered a concussion that set me back for a long time. I’d had then for a year migraines and learning difficulties.
The fights had continued.
We did not report fights. They just happened, going on and on so many that I wonder if they were like the battles of the New Guinea over little birds. I am glad I won the great majority. I never remember losing a fight till I was 36. Then it took three in the bar to beat me till I had double vision.
I went to NYC and got work.
There was the time the brother had his brother attack me with a brick. If they had both attacked me I would have been brain bashed in. All that happened was I knocked the brick out of the kid’s hand and then slapped him. The kid was cuffed and taken home in shame for not beating me even with the brick.
My father and I cried burying Duffy, our dog, in our vacant lot. We had significant property really. There is an apartment building where our garden used to be. The fine 4 bedroom home is there, though made ugly with the two shade maples cut down out of the front yard, and a concrete pad for parking.
My father had the Mauser pistol that was all brass finished but shaped like a .45. He probably got it from a dead German. it was likely a .9 mm. It would have been mine but Mom made him sell it worried about suicide or murder.
So it was always okay to hate Dad.
I am glad he got to kill people.
The kid that kicked me in the head became the next town over Sheriff.
That must have been the plan for him. My life was never seen in advance.
I wanted to be a pilot and Dad wanted me to be writer like him teaching I guess but there were no TV living room conversations after 13 or 14, so i really don’t know.
We saw some Viet Nam on CBS and that was that.
Dad got sent to the mental hospital. Mom got the house and sold it and moved us to the town over.
She had a much better job than we knew.
Dad taught some at the same University and then the other one for Black people. His teaching career was then on with the Black Universities. Mom’s was for the women.
She said the Lesbians, a couple at the women’s university got her fired for her affair and then mom did financial planning for rich people.
I kept on and found out writing was of no pay for most. All that is for teachers.