THE GOOD OLD DAYS

Folks like to talk about how dangerous it is these days, how you can't walk down the street anymore without fearing for your life, and they long for the good old days where every evening Dad took you down to A&W for Burgers and a Frostie.
But it just wasn't that way.
It wasn't that way at all.


Hell, when I was a kid I had to watch out for about three dozen different bad-asses that would give me a thorough ass whuppin anytime I might stray off my particular block. And it wasn't too safe at school either.
Remember the "Swirlie" hair-do? That's where they stick your head in the toilet and flush. Ever get one of those?

Dan Jensonowski was one of the most misogynic and sadistic Safety Patrol Guards you would ever want to meet. If he is not incarcerated now, then he is surely a Prison Guard, and kickin' some poor innocent Con's ass somewhere. Dan used to give me nuks when ever I had to cross the street at his corner which was twice a day. Some days, if I was feeling particularly puny, I would go two blocks out of my way to avoid being brutalized by Dan Jensonowski.

Then there was James Glowers. He was a fat kid that would sit on you and blow cigarette smoke into your face. He had bad hair, bad breath and bad acne. He was like some kind of villain out of a Batman episode, with weird henchmen and everything. Put poor asthmatic Bill Spencer in the hospital one day, he did. Bill didn't breathe right for years.

I grew up in Detroit during the riots, and there was smoke blowing through our windows every night. Dad woke me up and took me down to Jefferson Avenue at 3:00AM to watch the National Guard* move in.
Don't give me any shit about how its "dangerous" these days....Downtown Detroit was 3 miles away, you could hear the Rat-a-tat-a-tat of gunfire and the whole city was on fire. The result was forty-three dead, 467 injured, over 7,200 arrests and more than 2,000 buildings burned down inside of five days.
Hell, even in my rich-kid Mafioso neighborhood, Grosse Pointe Park, the Mob told the cops to stand down and black limos patrolled the streets for the duration of the riots.
Its all true, my own  mother will testify to it.

So will the mother of Tanya Blanding, a 4 year old girl, who died as a result of a gunfire from a National Guard tank stationed in front of her house.

Every time I hear the Ice-Cream truck coming down the street, I shudder and say a prayer for little Georgie, Georgie Duke, who was run over and paralyzed from the waist down while he was eating his Strawberry Shortcake Good Humor Ice Cream Bar at the ripe old age of 10 in the summer of 1967.

Yeah baby, those were the good old days.


* 8,000 Troops with Tanks. Yes, Tanks, two blocks from my house.

Jefferson Avenue, July 1967




And it wasn’t much different when I moved back to Texas .
I made friends with the guy up the block, Jeff Bargren. He was my first friend here in Texas .

We were friends for all of two weeks when he got hit by a car on the 121 access road coming off the pedestrian bridge on his way to Shady Oaks Elementary. Nearly killed him, and left him with a fair amount of brain damage.
With a Herculean effort and a year of intense therapy, he learned to walk and talk again and was able to join us mates in school.

School, where he was mocked, teased and bullied quite a bit, even by myself though not directly to his face.
In the end the metal shop Hoodlums and car repair guys took him in.
I think of Jeff and those Metal Shop Hoods whenever I start feeling a little judgmental, a little abrasive to other people, and try to remember that just a little kindness can go a long, long way and that kindness can come from some unlikely places.
Meanness too.