That resembles my own brilliantly misspent yoot... The difference, perhaps, is in what happened if I got busted.
I would happily spend the weekend in County Jail... Just don't call my old man. ....
@roamer_1I probably started paying attention to this stuff earlier than most because I basically raised myself. I was going out by myself and staying out until midnight or so when I was 8 years old. My parents both told me to do anything I wanted to do,but to know that I was on my own if I got caught because they weren't going to bail me out. That was the year I built a 22 caliber zip gun out of a broken car antenna,straps of inner tube,a door hook,and a block of wood. I also carried a gravity knife,and sometimes a Boy Scout hatchet on my belt sharp enough you could shave with it. I may have been young and little,but I wasn't exactly helpless.
AFAIK,the only time I was ever in any real danger was due to my father not thinking. He used to get paid by check every Friday night,and send me to the grocery store 4 or 5 blocks away to cash the checks and bring the money home. He was pulling in maybe 130 bucks a week in the 50's,and that was big money back in those days. We lived on the edges of the black community in that city,and here I was a 8 year old white boy on a bicycle with more than 100 bucks in cash in his pocket. What could have possibly gone wrong there?
Had two black teens jump out from behind some bushes one evening to rob me,but instead of trying to get away and being caught,beaten (or worse),and robbed,I just dumped the bike on it's side,pulled the hatchet out of my belt,and went at them. I smacked the closest one in the head with the blunt end of the hatchet,he fell like a rock,and the other one just hauled ass. I know I didn't kill him because there was no report in the local paper the next day about anyone being killed in my area,but he was damn sure laying on the sidewalk bleeding hard when I got back on the bike and went home. Never had any more problems after that and never even told my parents it happened.
By the time I was 12 I was telling him to go cash his own damn check because by 5 PM Friday night I was out and about. I had discovered girls. Didn't quite know what it was I liked or how to go about discovering it,but I was out looking and hanging out with high school drop outs. The guys called "greasers" now. They had cars and they had girls,and I wanted to know about ALL that stuff. Smoked pot for the first time in when I was around 12-13 years old and hanging around guys that were driving tail-dragging 50 Mercs and Model A coupes with hot V-8's in them and no fenders.
By the time I was 14 I was leaving home on Friday and not coming back again until Monday in warm weather. Never even bothered to tell them where I was going or when I would be back because I didn't know myself.
By the time I was 17 I was in army basic training,pursuing my dream of becoming a US Paratrooper. I had quit school when I was 16 because it bored me,and had been working whatever labor jobs I could find while waiting to get old enough to enlist.
That must have suited them because when I got home from basic training my mother had already given all my civilian clothes away. Don't remember even getting a letter from them while I was in basic,either. My father couldn't read and write because he had to quit school in the 3rd grade to go to work to help support his family after his father died,and my mother had a hard time writing because she had to quit school in the 5th grade after both her parents died. When I would get a letter from them while in Asia,it would be because someone that could read and write had stopped by to visit,and my mother got them to write the letter for her after reading my last letter to her.
Which I guess pretty much explains their approach to child-rearing. They had to become adults before they were 10,so they expected the same from me. It was what they knew.
Sounds a little harsh reading it in these modern times where the state is always there to raise the children as well as the parents,but the reality is I knew from a very early age that if I was going to get ahead in life it was up to me to do it on my own or suffer the consequences. Seems like most people these days are in their 20's before they learn that lesson. Even then it seems to be only the lucky ones that learn it that young.
