This Is Your Life.

[CWO3ROBBIE]

Kat, or maybe it was akabukowski, once said to me that everyone thinks their life would make a good book.

She is probably right. What do you think?

Here is your chance.

Let's all tell stories from our experiences as we traveled through time.

 

Ahh, but there has to be rules. They will be pretty loose, but rules there must be.

RULES:

1. It can be any experience that you want to tell us about.

2. It can be as short as one line. Or as long as fifty. Anything over thirty will be deleted.

3.You do not have to end the story at fiftyy lines, but you have to quit writing at the end of fiftyy lines. You can not post again until at least one other person  has posted something.

This ensures that everyone gets a chance.

4.You can continue on the same subject or jump to a new one.

5. Nothing is required to be in chronological order.

6. Very Graphic Sexual discriptions should be posted in the sex talk group. You can direct us to go there if we want to read about it.

7. No one will be checking the facts 

8. Additional rules will be posted and implemented as I see fit.

Step right up and post. who knows, the next knock on your door may be Spielberg asking for the movie rights.

[willie]

I used it on my facebook :)

[Stir Young]

Well I'm not gonna go right over to the Q & A and guess the latest one Deez posted there....I got in trouble the last time I did that!  LOL!

BTW, please to meetcha Willie...I'm Stir.   I've seen ya around...

[CWO3ROBBIE]

Yeh, Willie, He used to be Gary, but since his parents spelled Garry wrong, he decided to change to stir. (:>)

[d's girl]

I used it on my facebook :)

 

awesome - I'm glad you like it! '-)

[CWO3ROBBIE]

It's the first week of June 1953. I'm 15 years old. I have been out with a couple of my older friends who live near me. We've been to a carnaval in the next town over. I made arraingements with one of my other School buddies to spend the night at his place.

He lives in the "Colored" part of town. It is before "Brown vs The Board of Education".

The civil rights movement among whites has not yet started. A few poor white families live in that area of town. My friends Mother and Sister, his dad died a few years before, are out of town so I was going to do some drinking with my older buddies and then have them drop me off at Bob's house. That was what we did, except I told them to just drop me off at the end of his street and I would walk to his house.

I got out of the car and started down the street. I remember a group of Black guys coming up the other side of the street. There was a skating rink further down the street and I assume that was where they had been. I remember hearing "What you doing down here, white boy?

Things are pretty patchy after that.

I'm on my hands and knees cursing and trying to get up when the world explodes.

I'm on my back with somebody sitting on my chest pounding my head from side to side.

I come too. I'm laying in a yard behind a house. I try to get up but can't. I roll over and start to crawl. All I remember is thinking that I had to get the hell out of there before they came back. I also remember thinking that I was dieing.  

Where I lived, each area or neighborhood had it's own character. I was one of "The Coal River Boys". I kept telling myself that I was from Coal River and too damn tough to die.

I found an abandoned car beside the road. I crawled into it to hide.  I drifted in and out of consciousness. It started to get light. I pulled myself out of the car and wobbled down the street to Bob's house. I pounded on the door. Nobody answered. I went to a window on the porch. I wouldn't come open. I'm thinking "I've got to get into the house. I yanked on the window. It was nailed shut but the wood was rotten and I was able to break it free. I crawled through it into the house. By this time I was too weak to do anything so I found a bed and passed out.

I woke up. I couldn't get my eyes to open enough to see. My head above the right eye was really hurting, I felt my forhead, something was hanging down over my eye. Ifelt my way into the kitchen. I had been here before and it was a very small house and I knew my way around it. I found a pan and ran some hot water in it. I tried washing my eyes. Finely Icould see a little bit. I fumbled my way to the phone. In those days the phone did not have a dial, you told the operator who you wanted to call. I told my Mother not to worry but I needed her or dad to come get me. That I had been beat up a little. My dad showed up. Put me in the car and made the 10 mile run to the hospital. The ER doc Shot me full of Morphine and they started shaving around the cuts before it took effect. The cuts were so ragged that they just shaved flesh,hair, whatever, to get the cuts to the point that they could sew them up. I had a flap of skin including my right eyebrow hanging down over the eye. One of the cuts on the back of my head took 30 some stitches. In all, I had something like 70 stitches.  I had a skull fracture of the left temple.

The surgeon told my dad that the reason they gave me so much morphine was that he did not think that I had much chance of surviving. Guess no one told him that I was from Coal River.

Turns out that the cuts were from a piece of 2X4 with a nail sticking out that they used to beat me. The covers on the bed were so blood soaked that they had to be thrown away. I was told that they could follow the bloody trail from the yard where they beat me all the way to the house.

I was released from the hospital three days later but had to stay in my bedroom with blinds pulled and lights off for two weeks until it was determined that there was no lasting damage to my eyes. Which of course were full of blood clots.

There was a meeting of a group of people who wanted to go down and burn the whole place to the ground. Get rid of those people. My dad and the State Police defused the situation. The man was a clear thinker.

The Police were never able to catch who did it.

Thus started the summer of my 15th year.

 

[Bob Stepp]

Mob mentality often leads to excessive, unnecessary, unpunished violence that requires no justification by the perpertraters.

[CWO3ROBBIE]

What happens to us over our lifetime shapes us into who we are today. I didn't spend too long dwelling on what happened, but I am sure that it effected my approach to life long after.  That however, was just the start of my adventures that summer.  

[CWO3ROBBIE]

Kooner, I too would like to believe what you just said. But, I doubt it. I know some of the people who lived in that area at that time. It was a lot like the song about "You don't mess around with Jim". there were lots of knife fights, gambling, bootlegging, and other such activities in that neighborhood. The friend whose house I crawled into was later a Golden Gloves boxing champ, a Highschool AllState football player who was given a college Football scholarship and had a successful career with FMC. A couple of the other white boys who survived growing up there became successful business men. So, who knows?

[CWO3ROBBIE]

Boy, I sure trashed the rules with that one didn't I? (:>)

[Bob Stepp]

Hey, Robbie....

It's your thread. You can trash the rules all you want to.

*They've already been trashed a few times anyway*

[CWO3ROBBIE]

in July of 1953 my dad and I finished building me an outboard racing pram. It was only 8'6'' long and with a 10 horse power motor it would outrun most boats on the river.  I had a ball. In late June after I was allowed out of my room, the days were spent running up and down the river. Fishing, Swimming, boating and of course trying to make out with the girls.  Somewhere near the end of July I let one of my friends take a ride in my boat. I was in another fast boat with another river rat and we were running along side by side at about 30 mph when, for some unknown reason, the guy in my boat turned right in front of us. We broadsided him. Well we missed him but sure smashed in the side of my pram. Luckly no one was hurt, but the boat was a total loss. My dad was not a happy father at that time.

So since I no longer had a boat to run, I took a job at the local beach. It was a fun job. And when we weren't working we were hanging out. They had a restaurant with a juke box and a large dance floor.

It was the happening place to be on summer weekends, and only about a mile from where we lived.  

The owners had two very good looking daughters. One my age. I had a huge crush on her. Unfortunately she did not feel the same way. She just wanted to be friends. There were other girls and I was able to explore relationships with the oppisite sex. However, I was not yet old enough to drive so my oportunities were somewhat limited. I did become a pretty good dancer though. And we still spent the major part of each day like we were on vacation . Swimming, boating, fishing, playing a little poker and sometimes  making out. It was the ideal teenage summer.

[larry kremis]

A great thread! Huge kudos to all of you who have overcome. Your strength is inspiring.