And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
Married a girl like her once, all dark eyed and troubled. She wanted to be a Rockette but she was too short.
This is a scene almost right out of my memory. I'm sitting next to a steel trestle drinking beer with my hiking buddy somewhere up San Gregornio when suddenly the clouds roll in and a cold deep evil chill fell on us both.
I looked up to see my wife standing outside the car, hair blowing in the wind and looking like a star in a Hitchcock film after she had repeatedly refused to join us by the stream because it was too cold.
My malamute Shasta was barking at her like she was Frankenstein's bride, and my buddy's eyes were as wide as his face was pale!
Maybe someday I'll tell the whole story, but let's just say leaving her was the best part of leaving California!
So I met her in school. She was a Tall Flag, the girls that twirl flags in parades and on our sidelines, and I was the right outside linebacker/defensive captain on our football team. We met in a “metaphysical precision collision” (St Elmo’s Fire..that quote, was it?), I suppose.
I swear every game I played in High School started out with basically the same three defensive plays, stop run, stop the opposing QB, and stop the screen. I kept thinking one of the opposing coaches would catch on that I played wide receiver all through elementary and middle but it never did.
First down, they’d double or triple team me depending on their line, but I’d still either stuff the running back on my side or run him down on the other side and drop him for a loss. 2cd down I’d blitz and either dump the QB for a loss or cause him to toss away the ball.
Time out now, QB goes to the sideline, and coach tells him something like this. “Hey this guy is a linebacker, burn him with a screen pass and he’ll stop blitzing!”…..seriously you’d think they would have watched at least one training film on a defense that outscored its offense by 21 points a game, but no!
Time in, 3rd down and long, QB steps back and fires a screen pass to my side, and one of two things happened each and every time. 1), if you happened to be quick and got a step on me you got hit so hard paint flecks came off your helmet, so that for the rest of the game you were a half second off looking back over your shoulder at me.
Seriously, my old man had me down in a two point stance throwing a shoulder block without pads into a 30 ft Royal Palm in our front yard since I was seven! The happiest day of my childhood was the day I came home from school after a thunder storm and saw that thing laying on our front lawn! By High School I could plant my foot, bury my shoulder and hit you so hard there was a good chance your great grand children would be born cross-eyed and simple.
Or, 2 would happen, and it happened a lot, I’d get a step on the receiver, one hand the catch right from his hands and take it straight down the sideline for the six points! And I do mean straight. I was no black guy smooth, duck and jive runner like Payton or Dorsett, I was a chin forward, elbows out, knees up white dude runner like Riggins (well I was High School fast, not saying I was NFL legend fast.), straight down the sideline!
Anyway in our case it was the former not the latter. I slammed into a wide receiver that was right on the sideline. I tackled him, some kid from our school newspaper and her, all at once. The opposing wide out, rolled off on his own, and somebody reached in and grabbed the reporter boy who looked like he’d been fish-smacked across the forehead. So it was just the two of us left.
It’s weird how your world can stop, even as the world around you continues unabated even in the middle of so much chaos. I offered her my hand as I looked into her eyes. They were like nothing I’d ever seen before or since. Her eyes were the color of dark molten chocolate, with little yellow flecks spinning around her pupils like burning golden sunbursts. They were deep, troubled, terribly sad, profoundly beautiful, and absolutely smoldering.
She did not take my hand, in fact she said nothing, just stared at me in a dazed, uncomprehending look as her friends, the other tall flags, dragged her away. That was it, we never spoke again in school. She graduated a while later (she was a senior, I was a junior) and just disappeared from my existence. With all the drama in my home and life, I forgot all about her and it was years later before we met again.
See I had two big problems. First, I was clueless. I remember this cheerleader, another senior and our flyer I think, a hot red-head before red-heads were hot. Everyone knew her, but I did not hang in her circle. She was popular, I was anti-popular. Everyone knew who I was, but for different reasons. I was the bully-beater, the patron saint of nerds and the guardian of all the dorks the popular kids looked down on.
Everyone knew me yes. Nobody invited me to anywhere, but they all said hi to me! Anyway, not being in her circle, we never talked (this red-head,) and then during field day ( Field Day, dating myself now) I’m walking back from an event I just won, standing broad jump or the hundred yard dash, whatever, she stops me and it is just the two of us mid-field.
She tells me that I remind her of David Cassidy.….Yeah, she said that, I had no clue. Now I’m not shy, nor was I a virgin at that time. (That actually happened way too young for me, but that is another story) never have been, just clueless. I have no freaking Idea who this Cassidy is because I’m not even allowed to watch regular tv. I lived at that time in the caretaker’s cottage on our farm. I basically was not allowed in our house, from probably ten onwards. My brother and I had an old beater set that got UHF, basically creature feature and little else. So very cleverly I said something like “really, I don’t see it.” Yeah, I don’t have to write it you can feel the awkward silence through your screen that ended that conversation.
Anyway so I don’t pursue Miss tall pale and smoldering, because it never occurred to me that as a senior she’d be interested in me with another year of school to go, and responsibilities that kept me tied to the ranch pretty much every waking hour that I wasn’t at school or being arbitrarily punished for whatever crazy nonsense my father could dream up.
And that of course leads me to problem two, my old man. My old man. So he was first generation American, I’m the second. My great-grandfather was a Prussian cav scout that was supposedly involved in a duel were he and the man he was dueling both missed and both his innocent bystanders. Don’t know if it is true or not, just know that he was a junker, a young nobleman and an officer who suddenly felt like another country would be better for him than Germany. Now he did not flee the law, he just had responsibilities he did not care to honor, I’m told. I think he, himself a widower by the way, was expected to marry the now suitor-less lady whose fiancée had met his accidental end at his hands. In any case the story is that he was less than taken with her, skipped town, met a girl in London, married her and came to America with his new bride and my young grandfather in 1927.
I’m named after both these men and my great-great grandfather. I was supposed to be the fourth, but my grand-fathers name was misspelled by immigration when he came here and so I am the second.
These were honorable and brave men. My father on the other hand was a cowardly shit who felt the only way he could see himself in the mirror was to stand on the broken bones of his wife and children.
I had no social life. That was not permitted. Staying alive at my house for my brother and I was a full time job. Anyway the man is long gone, and life goes on, no need to dwell on the past. But he was a big reason I did not see this woman I started the story about until later.
I was back home, on Home Town Recruiting Duty, (TDY) from the ‘Mean Green’ when in she walks. This slight, movie star looking ex-tall flag, socialite wants me to put her in the Army? My Army?! Yeah, she makes Private Benjamin look like stone cold bad ass. No, her mother, step-father and little sister formed this perfect blonde family, and she stuck out like a brunette sore thumb. They ignored her. It’s like they were not even aware of her existence most of the time.
So this trying to enlist was her hoping to do something outrageous enough to get her parents attention. Well I had a plan. It was pretty devious I’ll admit, but I was not about to see her make a mistake this big just on principle.
So this was Florida, at this time the Military Entrancing and Processing Station was changing. The old place if I remember was Jacksonville and the new one was Tampa. They had not fully switched so, you went up to J-Town and took the physical and then we bundled up your paperwork and sent you to Tampa for career counseling (getting your MOS). Now you do it straight through with no time to mess about with the paperwork.
Yeah, you guessed it. I fudged her paperwork. I got her physical back from Jacksonville and where it listed her as 5-7, I made the 7 a 9 making her underweight. She got to Tampa, they rejected her paperwork, she came back and never tried to sign up again. She never even questioned it. If she had I would have fixed it, but it proved to me she did not want it enough to make it through boot.
We started dating, and eventually we got married. I came clean before I proposed though, in case you are wondering. In the middle of wedding ceremony her real dad pops up. She had not seen him in years and now he wants to take her back to California (where her whole family was from) and make her his corporate hood ornament. So we went off to Cali-effing-fornia as they say.
If that enormous wall of text even remotely interests you I can tell you more about my time with her. She was deeply scarred and trouble, weirdness and even evil, haunted her the entire time I knew her.
Appreciate your comments, but I should probably not hijack this thread any further. It happens some time that a pic or a comment will dislodge a barnacle or two from this rusty old brain of mine, and I ramble on like the mad old pirate that I have become.
But this is not my forum, and the lady I have been talking about is probably still around. The stories surrounding her 'spiritual oppression' ,because that is what her troubles were, are far too specific and I don't want to be hurtful.
I'm just going to leave the conversation here, someday I might say more if the thread were more appropriate. Right now I'm just spoiling a decent pic that has nothing to do with me.
Double trouble on the horizon.
ReplyDeleteMarried a girl like her once, all dark eyed and troubled. She wanted to be a Rockette but she was too short.
ReplyDeleteThis is a scene almost right out of my memory. I'm sitting next to a steel trestle drinking beer with my hiking buddy somewhere up San Gregornio when suddenly the clouds roll in and a cold deep evil chill fell on us both.
I looked up to see my wife standing outside the car, hair blowing in the wind and looking like a star in a Hitchcock film after she had repeatedly refused to join us by the stream because it was too cold.
My malamute Shasta was barking at her like she was Frankenstein's bride, and my buddy's eyes were as wide as his face was pale!
Maybe someday I'll tell the whole story, but let's just say leaving her was the best part of leaving California!
Oh my!
DeleteI enjoy a good story.
DeleteA really good read to accompany a stunningly gorgeous lady's photo. Thank you!!!
DeleteYeah, not a story, it’s my past.
DeleteSo I met her in school. She was a Tall Flag, the girls that twirl flags in parades and on our sidelines, and I was the right outside linebacker/defensive captain on our football team. We met in a “metaphysical precision collision” (St Elmo’s Fire..that quote, was it?), I suppose.
I swear every game I played in High School started out with basically the same three defensive plays, stop run, stop the opposing QB, and stop the screen. I kept thinking one of the opposing coaches would catch on that I played wide receiver all through elementary and middle but it never did.
First down, they’d double or triple team me depending on their line, but I’d still either stuff the running back on my side or run him down on the other side and drop him for a loss. 2cd down I’d blitz and either dump the QB for a loss or cause him to toss away the ball.
Time out now, QB goes to the sideline, and coach tells him something like this. “Hey this guy is a linebacker, burn him with a screen pass and he’ll stop blitzing!”…..seriously you’d think they would have watched at least one training film on a defense that outscored its offense by 21 points a game, but no!
Time in, 3rd down and long, QB steps back and fires a screen pass to my side, and one of two things happened each and every time.
1), if you happened to be quick and got a step on me you got hit so hard paint flecks came off your helmet, so that for the rest of the game you were a half second off looking back over your shoulder at me.
Seriously, my old man had me down in a two point stance throwing a shoulder block without pads into a 30 ft Royal Palm in our front yard since I was seven! The happiest day of my childhood was the day I came home from school after a thunder storm and saw that thing laying on our front lawn! By High School I could plant my foot, bury my shoulder and hit you so hard there was a good chance your great grand children would be born cross-eyed and simple.
Or, 2 would happen, and it happened a lot, I’d get a step on the receiver, one hand the catch right from his hands and take it straight down the sideline for the six points! And I do mean straight. I was no black guy smooth, duck and jive runner like Payton or Dorsett, I was a chin forward, elbows out, knees up white dude runner like Riggins (well I was High School fast, not saying I was NFL legend fast.), straight down the sideline!
Anyway in our case it was the former not the latter. I slammed into a wide receiver that was right on the sideline. I tackled him, some kid from our school newspaper and her, all at once. The opposing wide out, rolled off on his own, and somebody reached in and grabbed the reporter boy who looked like he’d been fish-smacked across the forehead. So it was just the two of us left.
Continued
DeleteIt’s weird how your world can stop, even as the world around you continues unabated even in the middle of so much chaos. I offered her my hand as I looked into her eyes. They were like nothing I’d ever seen before or since. Her eyes were the color of dark molten chocolate, with little yellow flecks spinning around her pupils like burning golden sunbursts. They were deep, troubled, terribly sad, profoundly beautiful, and absolutely smoldering.
She did not take my hand, in fact she said nothing, just stared at me in a dazed, uncomprehending look as her friends, the other tall flags, dragged her away. That was it, we never spoke again in school. She graduated a while later (she was a senior, I was a junior) and just disappeared from my existence. With all the drama in my home and life, I forgot all about her and it was years later before we met again.
See I had two big problems. First, I was clueless. I remember this cheerleader, another senior and our flyer I think, a hot red-head before red-heads were hot. Everyone knew her, but I did not hang in her circle. She was popular, I was anti-popular. Everyone knew who I was, but for different reasons. I was the bully-beater, the patron saint of nerds and the guardian of all the dorks the popular kids looked down on.
Everyone knew me yes. Nobody invited me to anywhere, but they all said hi to me! Anyway, not being in her circle, we never talked (this red-head,) and then during field day ( Field Day, dating myself now) I’m walking back from an event I just won, standing broad jump or the hundred yard dash, whatever, she stops me and it is just the two of us mid-field.
She tells me that I remind her of David Cassidy.….Yeah, she said that, I had no clue. Now I’m not shy, nor was I a virgin at that time. (That actually happened way too young for me, but that is another story) never have been, just clueless. I have no freaking Idea who this Cassidy is because I’m not even allowed to watch regular tv. I lived at that time in the caretaker’s cottage on our farm. I basically was not allowed in our house, from probably ten onwards. My brother and I had an old beater set that got UHF, basically creature feature and little else. So very cleverly I said something like “really, I don’t see it.” Yeah, I don’t have to write it you can feel the awkward silence through your screen that ended that conversation.
Anyway so I don’t pursue Miss tall pale and smoldering, because it never occurred to me that as a senior she’d be interested in me with another year of school to go, and responsibilities that kept me tied to the ranch pretty much every waking hour that I wasn’t at school or being arbitrarily punished for whatever crazy nonsense my father could dream up.
Part III
DeleteAnd that of course leads me to problem two, my old man. My old man. So he was first generation American, I’m the second. My great-grandfather was a Prussian cav scout that was supposedly involved in a duel were he and the man he was dueling both missed and both his innocent bystanders. Don’t know if it is true or not, just know that he was a junker, a young nobleman and an officer who suddenly felt like another country would be better for him than Germany. Now he did not flee the law, he just had responsibilities he did not care to honor, I’m told. I think he, himself a widower by the way, was expected to marry the now suitor-less lady whose fiancée had met his accidental end at his hands. In any case the story is that he was less than taken with her, skipped town, met a girl in London, married her and came to America with his new bride and my young grandfather in 1927.
I’m named after both these men and my great-great grandfather. I was supposed to be the fourth, but my grand-fathers name was misspelled by immigration when he came here and so I am the second.
These were honorable and brave men. My father on the other hand was a cowardly shit who felt the only way he could see himself in the mirror was to stand on the broken bones of his wife and children.
I had no social life. That was not permitted. Staying alive at my house for my brother and I was a full time job. Anyway the man is long gone, and life goes on, no need to dwell on the past. But he was a big reason I did not see this woman I started the story about until later.
I was back home, on Home Town Recruiting Duty, (TDY) from the ‘Mean Green’ when in she walks. This slight, movie star looking ex-tall flag, socialite wants me to put her in the Army? My Army?! Yeah, she makes Private Benjamin look like stone cold bad ass. No, her mother, step-father and little sister formed this perfect blonde family, and she stuck out like a brunette sore thumb. They ignored her. It’s like they were not even aware of her existence most of the time.
So this trying to enlist was her hoping to do something outrageous enough to get her parents attention.
Well I had a plan. It was pretty devious I’ll admit, but I was not about to see her make a mistake this big just on principle.
So this was Florida, at this time the Military Entrancing and Processing Station was changing. The old place if I remember was Jacksonville and the new one was Tampa. They had not fully switched so, you went up to J-Town and took the physical and then we bundled up your paperwork and sent you to Tampa for career counseling (getting your MOS). Now you do it straight through with no time to mess about with the paperwork.
Yeah, you guessed it. I fudged her paperwork. I got her physical back from Jacksonville and where it listed her as 5-7, I made the 7 a 9 making her underweight. She got to Tampa, they rejected her paperwork, she came back and never tried to sign up again. She never even questioned it. If she had I would have fixed it, but it proved to me she did not want it enough to make it through boot.
We started dating, and eventually we got married. I came clean before I proposed though, in case you are wondering. In the middle of wedding ceremony her real dad pops up. She had not seen him in years and now he wants to take her back to California (where her whole family was from) and make her his corporate hood ornament. So we went off to Cali-effing-fornia as they say.
If that enormous wall of text even remotely interests you I can tell you more about my time with her. She was deeply scarred and trouble, weirdness and even evil, haunted her the entire time I knew her.
Oh my, Anon, what a story! Astounding, and really well told. You both had your battles to contend with, growing up. Amazing story!
DeleteVery well written!
DeleteGood story! Feel free to lay some more on us!!
DeleteAppreciate your comments, but I should probably not hijack this thread any further. It happens some time that a pic or a comment will dislodge a barnacle or two from this rusty old brain of mine, and I ramble on like
Deletethe mad old pirate that I have become.
But this is not my forum, and the lady I have been talking about is probably still around. The stories surrounding her 'spiritual oppression'
,because that is what her troubles were, are far too specific and I don't want to be hurtful.
I'm just going to leave the conversation here, someday I might say more if the thread were more appropriate. Right now I'm just spoiling a decent pic that has nothing to do with me.
That time of the month is on the horizon. Lock up the sharp objects.
ReplyDelete"She's a witch!"
ReplyDeleteFit, feminine and no crazy ink, hair color or piercings. Looks nice to me.
ReplyDeleteNone that you can see.
DeleteAlbert and Stevie Ray will tell you
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KphVMfNO18M
Oh, yeah. serious about,,,,, things.
ReplyDeleteThat lady has a soul.
ReplyDeletePhwoar
ReplyDeleteYou should put that story to print. Let's hear the rest of it.
ReplyDelete