1968 - The Hoochie Coochie Tent -CR99

I was 17 years old at the Acton Fair. I was determined to gain access to the Hoochie Coochie tent. Last year, the hawker out front laughed and sent me packing.

How could I get in? Security was tight. Without an ID, it seemed destined to be a failed effort. It was no longer about ogling naked women. It was now me against the rules.

As I walked away, it came to me out of the blue.

I would come back in my military school uniform. They might let me in then.

It worked. 

Oddly, I left totally unimpressed.

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Challenge was "In a Flash". Write about a Eureka moment, sudden realization, etc.

True story. I compacted it into 99 words so I could enter it in this weekly Carrot Ranch Flash Challenge. It has been awhile since I tried any Flash Fiction. I really enjoy Flash challenges. They force me to focus on the essence of the story, without all the trimmings that so often are just that, trimmings.

I have a much longer piece about this incident from my teen age years. It has languished now for at least a decade.

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I had a song picked out for this story before I even wrote it. I heard the song for the first time in college, several years after I sneaked into that Hoochie Coochie tent. Please enjoy "Sharon", by David Bromberg.

Two fingers of Sweet Sour Mash 9.0

Two  fingers of Sweet Sour Mash

Two ice cubes in a short glass

Smokin small tokes from

My last chunk of hash

 

Punching up the playlist

Punching it up to WOW

In the mood to relive, retell

Some blasts from my checkered past

 

The here and now fades

A fog rolls in from my earliest edges

My feet begin their tap

My fingers begin to type

I shut my eyes remembering

Sleepy eyed LSD memories 

I hoped would awaken 

My mescaline infused soul

 

“Good times, bad times”

“I never know for sure”

Rockin Blues were the tunes

 shuffle your feet, juke joint funkin

Superslab shit kicking Cotton Eye Joe

Blasting loud and proud from my radio

 

Passing through the where

To nail down the when

I continue to write

Hoping my strolls down tired lanes

My moments of misspent youth

Will find my deepest darkest truths

Not the memories I usually carry

Pointing out just rose colored views

 

Two more fingers of that sweet sour mash.

Close my eyes and open my mind

My head can’t hold it all 

I need some relief, a respite of sorts

Or more of that tasty sativa green

 

Finally, the rushes begin to roll

Traveling finger to finger, nose to toe.

My hair stands on end, I raise my paws.

Butt dancin in my chair

The music washes over me

The music humbles me

As my past 

Comes back to life

The Boardwalk

The truck slammed into the loading dock behind Thrasher's Fries with a bang.  "Here ya go fellas, Ocean City."   

Porko and Phil grinned.  They had really lucked out.  One ride from the DC Beltway all the way to OC was as good as it got.  All they had to do now was help the driver unload 40,000 pounds of potatoes.

Just over three hours later, Phil finally located the one hundred pound bag of Idaho's finest they had been looking for.  Of course it was the last one on the truck.  Phil muscled that last bag out to the pallet sitting on the dock.  Porko was busy trying to figure how many bags it took to total 40,000 pounds.

"Let's see.........10 bags is ...uh .... 1000 pounds..... 20 bags would....................."

"Jesus Porko, you are such a dumb ass.  400 bags, you bonehead.  And since you are lazy to boot, that would mean you carried maybe 50.  I carried the rest."

Porko sat on the last skid of potatoes and lit a cigarette.  He tipped his head back and blew a large plume into the air.  "Yeah, I'm a lazy bastard.  Good thing I brought you along."  He grinned at Phil.

The driver came through the dock doors with his pallet jack.  "Last one guys."  He jacked up the pallet and swung it around.  "Give me a few minutes and I'll be back with fries and some pop.  Thrasher's fries are the best there is you know.  You guys did a great job.  I'll make it back to B-more by dark."  He yanked hard on the pallet jack and disappeared through the doors.

~*~

"You know the kid working the peeling machine at Thrashers told me he and his buddy usually get $40 each to help unload.  We got $15.  What a rip off."

Sitting on the boardwalk at Ninth Street with his bare feet in the sand, Phil looked at Porko and shook his head.

"The man gave us a ride.  He paid us, fed us, and you complain?  You aren’t just lazy, you're an inconsiderate whiner to boot."

"But $15 each?  Slave wages.   The sooner I find a rich woman ........."

"Can it Porko.   You are so full of shit."

"Yeah well........at least I'm not still a cherry like you."

"Screwin your sister don't count."

Porko shoved Phil off the boardwalk onto the soft sand.

"You take that back.  It was her buddy I nailed.  You know that."

Phil was not smiling.   His virginity hung heavy on his mind.  Jeez, he was 17 and still seducing his hand.  Phil stopped thinking about it.  He was resigned to the notion of dying at age 80 un-laid and grumpy. 

"You fellows want some weed?"

Porko jumped.  "What the Hell man?  Don't sneak up on us like that."

Still on the sand and on his back, Phil strained to see over the edge of the boardwalk. A scruffy hippy wearing blue tinted granny glasses was standing behind Porko.  Phil hopped up on the boardwalk

"Uh, sure man, we’re always looking for weed.  How much and what kind?" .

"Hold it Phil.  We don't know this guy.  He could be a narc."

"Porko, shut up.  So what if he's a narc.  It's just weed."

The hippy grimaced.  “Man, if I was a narc, would I be selling weed?

Porko considered this.  “Uh, I guess not man.  Whatja got?”

“ Nickel bags of Commercial or Sinse.  Mersh is $10, $15 for the Sinse.”

Phil and Porko huddled.  Pockets were checked.  Mumbled words exchanged.

“Look fellas, I ain’t got all day.  You want some weed or not?”

Phil turned.  “ Two nickels of Sinse.”  He reached in his pocket.

“Jesus guy, not here.  Let’s take it over there.”  The hippy nodded towards a narrow alley separating a couple of souvenir shops.

~*~

“Where the Hell did you get $50?”  Porko studied Phil’s face.

“The truck driver gave it to me.”

“He gave you $50?  What the Hell man?  He gave me….”

Phil smiled.  “Yeah, he gave you $15.  Told me you weren’t worth even that much.  But who cares anyway?  We have weed, we’re baked and we can still eat tonight.  This trip to OC without the parents is working out just great.” 

Phil passed the joint to Porko and laid back on the sand.  A wave broke over his legs, creating a rush that slowly worked its way up his spine, ending in a full body shiver.  Who cared if school started in a couple of weeks?  Who cared what happened tomorrow?  Tonight he was free and stoned.  Life did not get any better than this.

Phil turned his head toward Porko. Porko was holding the joint and staring at it. He was not smoking it.

“Damn Porko, if you ain’t gonna smoke that doob, don’t Bogart it. Pass it back over to me asshole."

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The Boardwalk – fictionalized memoir from 1969 - @ 800 words

A tale that is mostly true. Expect "Part 2" at some point. Those 6 days were full of seminal moments.

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Of course I can't forget some music to help set the tone - The Drifters',  "Under the Boardwalk"  will do just fine. Enjoy!

My First Trip

My First Trip - MMMC #184


It was a beautiful spring Sunday in 1969. I was in my junior year at Charlotte Hall Military Academy. Newt said he would have some LSD for us to try. He promised to be back early Sunday AM. We would have the whole day to trip.

Other than morning mess and church formation, cadets pretty much had Sundays to themselves. Sundays at Charlotte Hall were some of my fondest memories of high school.

A popular activity for the cadets still on campus was to take a blanket from their footlocker and spread them at the fringes of the pucker brush behind the New Barracks. Someone would throw up a window and turn their stereo up to wow. Good times. Other than some tight ass Officer of the Day pulling a recon and sneaking up on us from behind to break our balls, we could get away with almost anything.

Stuck on campus on a Sunday lent itself to all manner of rule breaking. We smoked cigarettes. We blasphemed. We smoked pot. We blasphemed some more. We drank what alcohol was available and blasphemed a lot. We huffed Carbona, a spot remover we bought at the campus PX.

Today four of us would experience LSD for the first time.

After collecting payment, Newt handed each of us a hit of Strawberry Fields. They were small little red pills. He called them “microdots”. I remember a heated discussion over the size of them. Snake claimed his cousin had Orange Sunshine for cheaper and the pills were much bigger.

Newt said nothing except, “Drop the pills boys. You’ll be fine in forty-five.”

It was all very ritualistic. Each of us lifted the pills like glasses ready to toast. Newt spewed some hippie mumbo jumbo and we each swallowed our pills.

Newt was wrong. I was fine in 30 minutes. I remember lying on my back and studying the various cumulous constructions being erected in the brilliantly blue sky over me when I suddenly burst out laughing. I did not stop laughing until I ran out of tears. When I did manage to collect myself, through my spent tears I noticed everything around me was distorted dramatically or moving in very mysterious ways or both. I had gotten off and it was glorious. There was nothing finer in the whole of Existence than LSD. Of that I was sure.

That day I watched ants with my head inches off the ground. I scrutinized the crusty, rusty metal dinosaurs from wars long past that were scattered around campus. I was stung by a wasp when I held it near my ear to listen. Damn ear swelled up and hurt for a week. There were other adventures that day and none of them were anything but wonderful.

I had a grand time and vowed when I was lying awake in bed two hours after Taps that night; there was no doubt in my mind that I would drop LSD again.

I stopped counting 185 trips later.

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A Gun in His Ear

Sunday Writing Prompt,
SWP, MLMM, Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie.

A Gun in His Ear

Final Exams were over. The boys were celebrating. Mike had just sparked a third joint when the three of them heard Bill up on the third floor. If they could hear Bill on the third floor, it meant Bill was probably having self-control issues again.

Bob looked at Mike, shrugged and motioned him to pass that joint. Tom sat between them on the couch and snickered. He was always useless when he mixed pot and beer.

The boys were not unsympathetic to Bill and his struggles. The guy had just come back from Nam ferchrisakes. They knew he had seen some shit, done some shit and he had night terrors regularly. But tonight was a celebration two extra semesters coming. Two of them finally snagged enough credits to graduate and they wanted to party. Damn Bill and his personal demons. They turned up the stereo.

Sometime later, loud banging on their door broke through their drunken fog. Mike was the first to crack an eye. He wiped the spittle off his chin and rubbed his eyes. He stood and found his footing. Barely awake, he staggered to the door and opened it. It was Bill’s girlfriend wide eyed frantic and incoherent.

“Bill’s threatening to shoot himself.”

Mike leaned into the edge of the door. “What? Bill has a gun? When did he get a gun?” Mike’s return to Reality picked up its pace. He turned and yelled, “Hey assholes, Bill has a gun.”

Mike, with girlfriend in tow, began the trek up to Bill’s apartment.

“I have never seen him this bad. I only wanted to use your phone …… Please, don’t go.” She continued her warnings right up to the moment Mike pounded on Bill’s door.

The door opened. Bill’s six-five, 250 pound body filled the doorway. Mike looked up into his neighbor’s face.

“What are you doing Bill?”

Bill stuck his .45 in Mike’s ear. “I will blow you away.”

Really pissed now, Mike grabbed the gun and pushed it down.

“Meet me in the alley asshole. And leave the gun.”

Mike turned around. With Bill on his heels, they tromped back down the stairs. Bill’s girlfriend followed, her weeping eyes bulging and wondering which one was the craziest.

The drunken warriors passed Mike’s open door. He shouts, “No one sticks a gun in my ear.”

In the alley Mike and Bill faced off. Before Bill could focus, Mike knocked him down, rendered him helpless and pushed his face into the gravel. “Never, ever stick a gun in my face again. Got it asshole?”

Bill mumbled. Mark lifted Bill’s head and said, “What was that? You give up?”

“Yeah”.

Just like that the fight was over. The two of them staggered back to their respective apartments and life returned to normal. The next morning Mike’s roommates asked how it was possible he was able to best Bill. The man was a scary monster ferchriskes. Mike took a moment to answer.

“He was drunker than I was.”

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Mindovermisery - Sunday writing prompt - "Not My Circus, Not My Monkeys 

        Is sticking one's nose in other people's affairs wise?  In this real situation 

        from my college days in th eearly 1970s, I must have thought so.

I whittled this story down from 763 words initially to the 500 you see now.

BTW - As I wrote this I kept wondering if I was mis-remembering some of the details.  The big moments happened as I wrote them , but now in retrospect, I did mis-remember some things worthy of note and maybe should have been part of the story.  Bill had gone to Nam, but his most recent issues stemmed from his three years as an inmate at a state prison in Jessup, MD. He was on parole when this happened and he was definitely not allowed to own a gun.  No one called the cops and Bill was not put back in jail.  Not sure if that lasted as we were out of that apartment within the next year.

Keep it 'tween the ditches ..........................

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Cross posted at the BoZone

Four Eyes

MemoirPrompt for 11/8/20: Flash! Write a true “flash” (100-300 words) story about a flash - literal or metaphorical- from your own life.

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"Four Eyes" - 300 words

My fourth grade teacher finally figured it out. One day she held up two fingers and asked the class how many was she holding up. She skipped past the know it all, perfectly dressed future homecoming queen and past the up and coming nerd who already sported one of his dad's pencil pocket protectors. She continued to scan the room. One by one all the raised hands were bypassed and I saw her turn towards me.

"Michael, how many fingers I am holding up?"

I was mortified. Not because I was singled out. I was embarrassed because I had no clue. My confidence stopped at three or less. But a quick answer was needed as I had learned that drawing out awkward silences in class only drove the humiliation deeper.

Swiftly I answered, "One big one?

Again my routine clownish behavior was rewarded with snickers from my classmates which died immediately as stern teacher eyes behind winged glasses caught them in their cross hairs. She swiveled back to me and gave me her patented grin of pursed red lips whose corners only flirted with the notion of lift off.

“So, you don’t know then?”

Parents were called, eye appointments were kept and in ten days or so I was in the optometrist’s office picking up my first pair of glasses. As the optometrist fitted them, I watched in the mirror. Yeah, I could see better, but would it be worth all the ridicule that would inevitably follow? I was sure it would not.

I was hating Life as we left the doc’s office. Stepping outside, I looked up at the Tampa skyline that surrounded us. In an instant, my world had become a wondrous and beautiful land I never knew existed.

I never again worried about being a “Four Eyes”.

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Daily Flash Writing Prompts - Facebook 

Rainbow Night at Club Venus

James always looked sharp. His bell-bottoms always wore a sharp crease and his platform shoes never went out in public sporting scuff marks or cigarette butts stuck to their heels.

One day James convinced me to accompany him to Club Venus over at Perring Plaza to pick up women who were amenable to dancing under the big glass ball.

"But”, said James, “we gotta take you shopping for some new threads.  I have seen your wardrobe man and frankly it sucks. Might work for those big Mother Earth, Ms Natural types I see dragging you around, but the women over to the Venus need you to step up your game. They have some class.  They actually shave their armpits and use lipstick.”

He could tell I was a tad miffed.  He turned me to face the big glass doors on the front of the Towson State University library.  “Look at yourself fool.  You’re a schlub, what with all that tye dyed hippie shit cut off jeans flip flop look you are sporting. Really Bro, time to pick up your game.  No sulking, we are hoofing uptown to Hutzler’s. Besides, what are you going to spend that paycheck on anyway, more weed?” 

So we began the hike up York Road.  James strutting in his everyday best and me flip flopping beside him in my everyday worst.  After a short stop at the bank to cash my check, we crossed the street and entered the department store.

Forty five minutes or so later we strode out of Hutzlers looking like twin brothers of different mothers.  I had transformed from an ugly ducking into an imagined swan. Tucked into a pair of baby blue bell bottoms was the classic “Fever” shirt with the big collar and puffy sleeves opened of course to show off the authentic fake gold chain. Toss in those outrageous 3” platform Disco shoes and Jack, I was ready to kill me some ladies.  Least ways, Jack said I was gonna knock em dead.

Thursday night came.  James called me.  Something about being jammed up and he would meet me at Club Venus around eight.   Bummed a ride with some other folks from the dorm and walked in the club.  A banner over the entrance to the ball room claimed in three foot letters, that this night was the first annual “Rainbow Night”. 

Not placing any special importance to the notion of “Rainbow Night”, I walked onto the massive dance floor.  Disco Jacks and Disco Jills were getting their grooves on.  I was maybe halfway across the floor when it dawned on me that I was seeing mostly bucks dancing with bucks and does dancing with does. ……………

“That goddamned James, …..I’ll kill the bastard", I thought. I smiled instead.  James thought he had been safely living in the closet.  He had no clue most of his friends knew he was gay and didn’t care.  …… “But yeah where is that little bastard?”  I finished crossing the dance floor and found the 50 foot bar.  Ordered a shot and a beer, I settled onto a bar stool and watched the light in the loafer folks do their thing.

Into my second shot and second beer, I noticed a woman heading in my general location.  She was taking disco to an ultimate height, fashion wise.  She was wearing a one piece silver hot pants outfit, thigh high silver platform boots, and topped off with an albino afro, two and a half feet across.  Woah, she wanted everyone’s attention.  She would not be ignored.  She smiled at me and………..  Damned, if it wasn’t James, doing his best tranny act and pulling it off to boot.  He looked perfect.  But then James always looked sharp. 

All I could do was grin and head out to meet him on the dance floor for his first coming out dance.  Had a blast that night with him and all the friends he used to keep in his closet.

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 660 words -more or less

First written in Fall of 2018 for a writing class I was in.

Cross Published in the original "Lost in the Bozone"

Summer 1963

Times Past Challenge – 6/16/18

Reflect on a big change in my lifetime.

560 or so words ( originally over 1200 )

Links posted at 

~ Reflections and Nightmares

~ Carrot Ranch

Summer 1963

The State Theater was located on the north side of College Avenue between Monroe and Adams Streets in Tallahassee, Florida.  It was just four blocks down from the Travelodge motel my father (G1) had taken over after retiring from the US Air Force a couple of years earlier. It was the summer of 1963.  I (Boomer) remember it well.

Being from a military family who moved at the drop of a hat, exploration was first on my agenda.  Knowing the layout of the land was an imperative first step in acclimating to new surroundings.  Having a movie theater just down the street seemed  a good place to begin.  I would start there. 

The family's military lifestyle did not prepare any of us for the  nastier aspects of the world we would now exist in.  My parents had become used to the protective bubble a military life offered.  I was born on base and knew nothing else.  There was no such thing as segregation in my world up to that time.

I stepped up to the ticket window and bought a ticket. I remember the black woman inside the ticket booth asking me not once, but twice if I was sure I wanted to go into the theater.  I was adamant.  I was 12.  It was Saturday and I was burning daylight while the matinee was well into its first serial.  She handed me a ticket.  I went in, bought some popcorn and a coke and went into the theater.  Not long after I had settled into my seat, I sensed someone big sit down in the seat behind me.  They leaned over the back of the seat next to me and said, "Boy, are you sure you are in the right theater?"  

I turned and there was a very unfriendly looking black man staring at me hard.  I told him yes, I was in the right theater.  I lived just down the street at the Travelodge and my name was Mike.  I ended with "we just moved here."

"Son," his voice became friendlier, "you really are in the wrong theater. ....  You need to leave.  We don't want any trouble here."

I stood up and looked around.  It finally dawned on me there was not one white face there other than mine.  And it seemed to me all eyes were focused on me and not the screen.

I left and walked the four blocks back to the Travelodge.  When I got home, I told my dad I had been kicked out of the theater by a very scary black guy.  He looked at me.  He did not ask what I might have done to deserve getting the boot.  He just sighed and told me to blow it off, we would talk later.  I think he knew but had forgotten how the real world worked.

Thus began my exposure to the very real and ugly world of segregation in the US South in the early 1960's.  That summer I witnessed white people beating on black people while white police leaned on their cruisers and sucked on toothpicks.  I was shamed by a public librarian for drinking out of the wrong fountain.  I was told in no uncertain terms that my kind was not allowed to sit in the back of the bus.  And at a nearby rib joint, I was refused service again because I was white. It was an eye opening coming of age summer.  One I have never forgotten.

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The years 1962 and 1963 were absolutely crammed with more seminal moments than the rest of my life combined.  The above is the one I revisit most often I think.

To attempt some structure to my memoir here, I decided to try just focusing on one event while offering just enough background to give the reader perspective.  I am not sold on my effort, but it is different than some of my other stream of consciousness posts or my based on facts fictional narratives.

Any criticism, comment or hey der's welcome.

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Image from this site - and is not a copyrighted image

The Mugging

Flash! Friday – Vol 3-9  -- 209 words – written prompt – “A Fleeting Moment” – Image prompt – man w/ umbrella on a bare square

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Mark slid his hand truck under the stack of burger buns.  Tipping the stack, he walked it down the ramp of the trailer.  At the backdoor of the restaurant, the previous two stacks were still waiting to be taken inside by his co-driver.  There was no room for this one.

“Division of labor …… Right,” he said to himself.  “George is probably munching on a Whopper.  What a Loser.”

There was nothing he could do.  George was lead driver.  Mark tipped his stack back up and lit a cigarette.  He considered this new driving gig.  A full weeks pay for a 36 hour run delivering buns to Burger Kings in New York City and Long Island.  Leave Thursday night, back in Lewiston, Maine dark thirty AM, Saturday.

He noticed a man with an umbrella walking in his direction.  The back door opened and the first stack disappeared inside.  Mark tipped his stack.  Something poked him in the back.

“Give me your wallet.”  Mark turned to face umbrella man.

Oddly, Mark felt no panic.  “No wallet. I have ten dollars in my front pocket though.”

“Ten dollars?  That’s all?”

“We eat for free.  I don’t need money.”

The mugger snatched the ten spot.  “Cheap ass truck drivers.”   He walked away.

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Back story – This incident actually happened to me.  However, the guy was not carrying an umbrella.

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Image courtesy of NannyDaddy