.25 CALIBER NIGHTMARES

When Judy and I married she had a little chrome-plated .25 automatic pistol that I often carried back in the days before permits. I suppose it gave me some comfort in knowing it was discreetly stuffed down in my right hip pocket with my handkerchief pushed down around it.

The truth is, I rarely thought about it even if a situation got “hairy”. I was always a fair hand at fisticuffs, at least the school yard discipline, and could also talk my way out of most situations. This story is about two of those situations and the nightmares that little weapon caused me.

When Judy and I first married we were both pretty strapped for cash, so we spent the first couple of years working our way out of the debt I created by maxing out a credit card on fuel for my ’78 Trans Am and other bad habits. The little .25 was one of my few luxuries and I spent a lot of time plinking cans and punching cardboard targets in the field next to the house.

I learned right away that the little caliber was not very effective at a distance of more than 10 to 15 yards. I learned to hold high on the target in order to punch the 10-ring! Basically, a .25 automatic is a “belly gun!” In other words, you use the gun as a last resort during a struggle and you stick the gun into the opponent’s gut and squeeze off a couple of rounds.

Even at that, you may just make him very mad!

I once had a friend who played drums in a rock band in local bars. He had gone out with a little gal he met there a time or two, but knew very little about her. One night on a “pause for a cause” for the band, he went out back for a smoke. That’s when the girl’s husband walked up to him and asked his name.

After telling the stranger his name, the man pulled a .25 and shot my friend in the groin area. My friend was 5’ 7” and only weighed 150 pounds soaking wet, but his upper body strength was tremendous for his size. I used to spot him on the bench while he pushed up 350 pounds!

The shock of the gunshot filled him with adrenaline and immediate rage. My friend beat his attacker so badly that even with a gunshot he got out of the hospital first!

It was along about this time that I began having a recurring dream where some “bad guy” was approaching me with a knife and I would start shooting at him, but the rounds kept hitting the ground in front of him. The best I could do was to put a round in the ground between his feet! I would wake up sweating and thinking about the little pea shooter of a gun I had.

I once went to the Tennessee Valley Fair in Knoxville with a friend one day instead of going to work, so we were among just a few people who were on the grounds. We ate hotdogs, cotton candy, and rode just about everything they had there except for Dumbo the Flying Elephant!

The last ride of the day was on the “Bullet” which was a contraption that had two rocket-like cones mounted on the ends of two long arms that went around very fast while the rocket-like tubes rotated in the opposite direction. It was a “sick puppy” of a ride and if you stayed on too long you would soon lose your hotdogs!

Since we were among the few at the fair, the operator closed us in, turned on the rig, popped open his morning paper, and kicked back. It was not long before we wanted off but the guy was not paying us any attention.

I soon began yelling as we would fly by, only reaching him with about two words a pass. “H e y y o u!”

“T u r n t h is …d a m n t hi….h ey!

We were not communicating and I was getting sicker by the revolution! “I…have…a…gun…stop…this thing!” I yelled “gun” a few more revolutions and he finally looked up and stopped us just before I lost everything I had previously enjoyed.

I don’t know if the word “gun” did the trick or not, but I was too drunk and dizzy to have hit the broad side of a barn anyway!

Then there was a time I managed a country-rock band called “Chaparral!” I booked the band at “Rick’s” which was located near the Bayside Boat Dock in Roane County, Tennessee. We had never played at Rick’s before and knew nothing about the place or the area, except that it is in an area respectfully called “South the River”. Typically, there were, and still are, some tough nuts living in that area, and apparently Rick’s was their headquarters!

There had also been a “Bass” sponsored fishing tournament that day and as we soon found out, our dates (wives) were the only women coming to Rick’s that night!

Since I don’t play anything except a mean class-ring against a table top, it was my job to “protect” the women folk!

Not long into the first set a very large man, probably about the size of Jeff (FHB), approached the table where I sat with the women belonging to the band and asked my sister-in-law Linda, one of the Dragons, to dance. She shook her head no, and I noticed Noel, one of the Knights, look directly at me, still singing “Amanda,” and telling me with his eyes not to let that happen.

The big dude continued to insist Linda or someone dance with him. Obviously he was very drunk, and wanted to “cut a rug!”

I finally stood up and walked up to him and shouted over the band, “These ladies are with the band, and they don’t dance!”

“Well then,” he slurred, “By God, you’ll dance with me,” and immediately palmed my whole head with one hand! I noticed Noel out of the corner of my eye and he was getting very antsy and almost forgot a couple of words, but he stood his ground and waited to see what I would do.

A very calm, purely brilliant, thought came to me from somewhere. “Hey, did’ya catch any fish today?”

“Aw man, you should have seen it,” the man said, dropping his hand down to help the other one illustrate the length of the bass he had caught that day. “It was that long and weighed in at 8.7 pounds!”

“No kiddin’? Wha’ja use to catch it?”

“Aw man, you know, a big ol’ jelly worm, a big red’en!”

“That’s cool man, congratulations,” and we shook hands.

Thank God he forgot all about dancing as he stood and talked a little longer about “bass fishing,” then he just walked away and sat down at his table.

As I sat down, I felt the .25 in my pocket and that was the first time I had even thought about it. However, there is no doubt that as we danced into a struggle, I would have protected myself.

That night I had the .25 caliber nightmare again. The next Saturday I sold the gun at a gun show in Knoxville. I have never had that dream again!

HOME SWEET HOME

I love rummaging through my drawers! They’re actually getting big enough that you could get in them with me and walk around!

Seriously, I was fumbling through stacks of papers in my bedroom dresser and came across, yet another masterpiece, this old doodle at the top of some notes I took years ago, probably about 1978, while just beginning my communications career.

I know it was 1978 because that is my Trans Am sitting in the driveway with red fire coming out of the exhaust, and black marks running up the drive. That’s also the little bungalow I bought after my divorce. It was a great little 2-bedroom house, with gas logs, carpet, and much peace and quiet. Note the CB antenna (on the house and car) the “Black Max” used to broadcast hot tunes from the turntable, and check out the female CBer’s on the weekends! I suppose that was the beginning of “Friday Night Blues!” I’m sure the FCC tried many a night to triangulate my “twenty.”

Ah…what a time I had there! Truthfully, it began lonely, but with music, women, pen and paper, I worked out my issues and grief and got on with my life. I think you could say I grew there – yeah, you can say that!

I apparently thought more about home and things to do outdoors than I ever did about the job, from the looks of my notebooks. However, I somehow survived, even got promoted regularly, even if I doodled instead of focusing on work problems. But, who is to say I was not thinking about solutions when I did my scribbling? I think I probably did, otherwise, I would not have had the opportunity to sit, think, and doodle quite as long as I did!

It’s been said that doodling, an unfocused drawing, can help you to think more creatively, unlock a mental block, and brainstorm ideas. Damn, I must have been good!

WHERE THEY’VE GONE

There is that day that occurs at the end of each summer, when a cool breeze slices the summer heat sending a slow crawling chill over your flesh, and pushes a painted leaf cheerfully rattling across your path. It is the unmistakable omen of the pending changes to come. It is a day that reminds me once a year of things that I could have changed but didn’t and things I did change but shouldn’t have. (Huh...maybe I'll use this opening paragraph in my next book.)

Regardless of the changes made or not, the fall of life is upon me. Sixty years now, where’d they go (to quote a Bob Seger song)?

Twenty years now

Where’d they go?

Twenty years

I don’t know

Sit and I wonder sometimes

Where they’ve gone

And sometimes late at night

When I’m bathed in the firelight

The moon comes callin’ a ghostly white

And I recall

I know quite well where they went; I just didn’t take note of their passing as closely as I should have. Oh, as a child I held on to summer bliss as hard as I could trying to hold back the inevitable day school would begin again, but all the while longing to be grown up and own a fast car and have a nice girl.

I spent my adolescence wishing school would end so I could own a fast car so I could have a beautiful girl; never noticing that some of the greatest days of my life were “slip sliding away”.

I passed my early manhood and the prime of my health wishing my time in the Air Force and in Vietnam would end so I could own a fast car and get a beautiful girl. I never realized the historical significance of the experience until twenty years later. I took few significant photos and even fewer names. It was an experience of a life time; one you would never want to do again but one you would not trade for brand new fast car.

I spent my twenties playing house and wishing I had made other choices; wishing I had bought the Shelby instead of the plain 302 automatic, the 396 instead of the 350, the Hurst instead of the plain 442, asking someone to marry me instead of accepting an offer.

Nonetheless, I have arrived where I am through more divine intervention than personal judgment. If things had been left to me, I’d probably be living in some rundown trailer park with a fat old “used to be” blonde with no ambition, and no hopes of ever retiring.

I sit and wonder sometime about what would have been had just one decision in life had been different.

What if had married that little blonde that adored me and that I treated like dirt? There would have been no higher education, no higher ambition, but who really knows, maybe I would have still had the fastest old primered hot-rod with four of the slickest tires in the park!

More than anything I wanted to get a job in “big time” advertising in Atlanta. Once I was intrigued by Doyle Dane Bernbach, on a field trip sponsored by the College of Communications at the University of Tennessee. It was 1972, just prior to graduation, and DDB had the Coca-Cola account and was running at the top of the AD game after hitting the country with the '60s Coke anthem: "I'd like to teach the world to sing/in perfect harmony . . . “! A group of us on mock interviews visited the brain trust hard at work in a large open room on the second floor of a downtown Atlanta building. They were just young kids, really, not much older than me at the time. I envied them and the freedom of creation they seemed to have. Their work seemed to consist of sitting around playing with little things colored Coke red and white waiting for the next big idea to be born.

What if I had been free to pursue a job like that in “the big time”? I say free, because my wife at the time would not hear of leaving her family and moving to a “big” town, and maybe down deep inside I didn’t want to leave either. After all, I had just returned from Vietnam where I vowed never to leave home again.

Truthfully, I’d probably have been a workaholic (or something that ended in “aholic”) with more than 3 broken marriages and children from all 3 that never got to see their father. I would have loved the big time, even worshiped it, and there’s probably a Clio (http://www.clioawards.com/home/) or two that would have almost been mine, but I’ll never know and divine intervention probably saved a lot of people heartache; and particularly me.

In my heart-of-hearts I know it would not have been the best move for me. I heard the horror stories of accounts lost and accounts swapped and how advertising folks moved from agency to agency following the accounts. I would probably have been miserable and insecure if I’m really honest with myself. However, I would have had the fastest car in the parking garage!

So, anyway, like I said, I have arrived at 60 having been married to 3 pretty gals, got 2 beautiful granddaughters, 1 pretty daughter, 1 handsome son, and having had at least 6 fast cars (including 3 Mustangs, a 442, and a Trans Am). So, I know where the years went “And I recall”, and it’s been a ball. I’ve had it all and it ain’t over yet – actually, I am contemplating another fast car soon! After all, like the blog title says, I AM A CHILD OF THE SIXTIES!