Let's go for a Ride- on Golf Carts

My job was to Caddy. I was groomed to Caddy since I was able to hold the pin. Some of my memories are of a golf course we lived on and ran. There was a guy on the corner of the property who lived in a trailer and had a couple pigs. I remember it being a bit of an issue to my stepfather. We had a pet rabbit that would bring it’s dish to your hand. I always thought that was pretty cool. One time my dad let me help put carts away. I jumped into one and grabbed the wheel, hitting the accelerator pedal and mowing down a fairly good length of plastic chain-link path marker. Yeah, I didn’t get to help for a while after that. We had an orange whip machine in the Pro Shop. I can’t recall if I liked them or not. I couldn’t stand Kit-Kat or M and M’s.

The inside of the house alluded me, maybe a stairwell railing. We were in Georgia. There were some bad storms sometimes. It could be that we were near the coast. There was always rain but we would be out there anyway, playing golf. There was once a preacher who was there, playing in a bit if a rain shower. He was struck by lightning and killed. It wasn’t long after that when we moved from there. I am not sure what happened to the golf course. Bank maybe got it. The year isn’t clear. Whether it was after we had the pizza place, I don’t know. But there were always golf courses. We lived near them and went to them often. I hated it. The bag of clubs was heavy and I was almost always cold.

Before I could go to the course, I was steeped in golf. It was always on television or around the house. He would chip balls in the house. I would be placed at the end of the house in a chair with a roll of tape between my knees. He would hit them through it.

We moved around a great deal. There were so many different places that I can’t get them straight. From what I can tell I was born in Norfolk Virginia. We went from Virginia beach to Pennsylvania, then to Oklahoma, Tennessee, Georgia repeatedly, then back to Michigan where we moved from Bay City to Kalamazoo to Hudsonville, and finally to Marne where I spent ten years mostly until moving to various Grand rapids locations as an adult.

 Jim Zemiatis was my only friend for the most part. We were always seen together and were much like brothers. As it was everyone thought we were both brothers. The area wood’s was our home. We knew every inch of it like it was our kingdom. We had shotguns and fishing gear and used it daily. We never had an accident of any type with any of it. The one time Jim was injured in a freak Roman candle explosion was the only time anything serious had happened. He went through various stages of shock and swore to never play with fireworks again. Of course he got over that in a few days. We always had bottle rockets and firecrackers. Jumping jacks were the best entertainment because they would zip right up off the ground and shoot off. We would hock all the empty beer cans in his house to get money for fireworks. The shop was a few miles away. We would ride our bicycles every couple days. We were crazed with them for a while but it soon changed to something else. That was dirt bikes and the local boys at Chips house where we started hanging out.

It was beer and cigarettes, weed and laughs. They would stand around Chip in his shop where he cut and welded steel up into weight equipment that he sold for cash. He makes a cut and they would drink, spray a bit of paint and light a smoke. He drank a beer, and laugh his laugh, then go to making another cut. He would fire up the arc welder and throw a spray of sparks high into the air as he laid a bead and cackled his laugh. The wood stove would steady kick out heat into the room.

We would bring our motorcycle to him with questions about repairs. He’d say, “Well, use your better Judgement.” If it sounded like there was pieces flying around broken inside, that meant you had to crack the case opened. He was a pretty smart guy and a great mechanic. He could do anything. But then again, we were fourteen or fifteen. He had an old Chevy pick-up truck that ended up parked for one reason or another but got an el Camino from Dale McKinnon. It wasn’t long before Chip took the tranny from the truck and had it bolted to the el Camino motor- mostly. The only thing about the el Camino was the frame was broken on one side just in front of the rear axle. Every time you hit the gas the back end of the car would flex out and try to fold in half. Chip put a tack wed on it and ran it down the road. It wasn’t long before we realized that the gas tank was no good. We ended up with a five-gallon plastic can in the rear with the fuel line running to it. Every weekend that he got his unemployment check we would load the bicycles in the back and head out to Grand Haven to camp out and hang. The routine was to score some acid from… damn some guy with a gator in his basement. We would set up camp in Duncan’s woods and cruise the piers and strips tripping balls and drinking beers. But drinking ber wasn’t enough. We had to do beer bongs with a funnel. We were all the way at the end, where it’s windy as hell but Chip wants to roll a joint and smoke so I go up behind the wall in the tower while he is standing there funneling another beer into himself. That’s when he say’s, “I think that Coast Guard saw us.” I lick and twist the joint in time to look up and see the boat getting up on its hydrofoils, coming right at us. We jump on our bikes and peddle in to the shore and all the people. I was scared shitless. Later that evening I would get frightened again when a cop tackles a guy who is sitting right near me smoking a joint. The musical fountain was beginning to display. Chip was passed out in the grass next to me. We would duck in and out of “Tip a Few Tavern” through out the day. Wet burritos and beer. Chip almost pissed on a pot plant that was growing outside. We pulled it and took it back up towards our camp, stopping at the park of the YMCA compound. Chip just started eating it. I managed to dry some near our fire later.

There was a guy with a dog who was talking to us on the stairs descending from the hills to the beach. A woman walked by as we talked and his dog bit her. She screamed and threatened him with a comment about dog bites being fifteen hundred dollars. We ended going back to his place and smoking. I don’t know what became of the dog bite. I never saw the guy again. This had to be around 86. I had no idea that Chip was struggling with cocaine addiction. He was using needles. The guy upstairs was selling. That was Al. This was part of Chips going to the lake when he gets paid, to keep away from Al. Chip made up for it in alcohol, which had a heyday with Chip’s already warped mind. He had a thing for young girls. There were always girls coming around to have him buy booze for them. The girls from 9mile Auto were over one night, drinking. I started blowing in one of their ears and the next thing I know I am in the basement sitting on a bench press kissing. Somehow I was taped to the bench with duct tape. She was riding me however she pleased herself to. I was helpless. Chip laughed when he came down to find me as she had left me. They were trying to get him to give them a ride home but he wouldn’t do it.

Not long after that Chip had two girls over, Tina Wheeler, and a Seadorf girl. It was knowing these girls that got me out of a jamb when Chip went to jail for drunk driving. Tina’s mom and dad liked me enough to have me stay at their place. I soon got a job a Florentine’s, where their son John worked. I was seventeen. My mom was happy with that, seems she knew these people somehow. I started hanging out at the Pool hall with Tina and soon was regularly there. I had worked at Pizza Hut for a week but quit. I worked at Bill Knapp’s for several months but quit. Then I got in at Florentines where I washed dishes at night and bussed tables during the day. I was making a ton of money. The waitresses tipped me out big. Eventually there was a blowout fight about me between them. That was not a comfortable setting. The icing on the cake was when Mary doyle, the salad girl, got into a fist fight with our Deluxe sized breast waitress in a jealous rage. It was then that they asked me to quit. I did but continued to see Mary. It was mostly in an attempt to get laid. Chief concern it was, being that I was just turning eighteen. I was so concerned with getting my own desires that I failed to see the signs that this was not a good idea. I just thought that they called her crazy as a general term. I didn’t realize it was clinical. Still, I was game. She had a child so I knew she gave up the goods. She offered the booze and that was it. I didn’t think nothing of her driving by every old boyfriend she knew existed, driving by their houses lamenting some sick thought. The car is still novel to her. Her apartment was a clutter of attempts at decorating with accumulated junk. The laundry spilled from a separate room meant for handling large capacities. Having space in the living room to sit was in order. What did I care, that her laundry was backed up? “Where‘s the drinks?” All I cared about was getting into her clothing, I’d pay for it later. After swearing upon everything that I was not trying to trick her to get her kid taken away from her, she finally gave in, and telling me of all the things her daddy did to her. It came out in buckets that this woman was close to gone. She became more and more paranoid. I was with her for a week before the fits of rage came out. I couldn’t go anywhere without being drilled for who what where’s. She began to demand that I pull my pants down to smell of my genital area. She was insistent on my behavior constantly. She had told me of how she tried to masturbate her child when he was an infant and of how she has her nephew, Kenny suckle her breasts from time to time. She insisted that everyone thought she was crazy because of a letter she had written where she claimed to have had sex with the devil. She said it was just a story she was writing and that it meant nothing.

Her father was very ill with cancer. He insisted on dying at home, which he did. I was there that day. They had been taking turns swabbing his lips with wet lip mops. He turned to Mary and told her that I was a good one, to hold onto me. Then his face was awash with a smile and he was gone.

Not long into living with Mary, my mother introduced me to a plumber she knew,  from the American Legion. She said he needed an apprentice so next thing I knew I was working for this old guy, Bob Bolthouse. He was a plumber with two sons- one was unaware that he was about to get a new apprentice. Bill was quickly saddled with finding me things to do when Bob didn’t need to have me drive him around. He always said the same thing, “this guy owes me some money.” He started off at the Wolf’s Den, then to the Legion, on and on until he was done or had a woman to take back to the hotel room he kept on Division and Fiftieth. I’ll never forget the girl he brought back there. I think her name was Jan, she was hit by a train on Homecoming night. Her boyfriend died along with her child…? She needs an operation to be able to talk that costs something like five grand. It was very sad to sit with her while she communicated. She was prostituting herself and drinking her life away.

Bill and I became good friends pretty quickly. He was like a brother to me. I enjoyed hanging out at his place. Beers were a plenty and tunes were blasting. Little did I know that Bill had a cocaine and alcohol addiction and that he had just gotten out of rehab. I would have never guessed that, ever. In fact, I didn’t see a problem at all. Outside of the things bill would tell me, I only saw the bachelor lifestyle. He said something that I never forgot; “I graduated high school and went to a party. Then I went to another and another until I got here where I am today, with the things I have to show for myself. My buddy Mike got out went to work, bought a house. Now his house is paid for, he has a boat and toys, jet skis, motorcycles, and he’s married. All I got is what’s in the fridge. Is that the girl of your dreams? You’ve got to go out there and find the girl of your dreams. Live and work toward something big!”

It was soon after that that Mary became pregnant. I was so stupid to think I couldn’t have kids because of an injury to my scrotum. Just because we had been having unprotected sex for months and nothing would happen I thought, Hmm. Boy was I wrong. I should have taken it as a sign that I was to not become tied to this woman. But I am dense. It would take a pretty big sign. The night she went into labor, I was working with Bill. Mary had spoke to me on the phone saying that she didn’t want me to come up to the hospital because she wanted to claim not knowing who the father is- influenced by her sister, Julie. Julie seemed to have an angle for working the state. She had several kids all from different fathers, though she was married to a man the entire time who thought the kids were all his. Ken got the sit end of the stick eventually from that woman. Little did I know, the hospital thing would later haunt me when she claimed how I refused to show up to sign the Birth Certificate. A bit more damage to my relationship with Sarah.

Mary started in with her delusions and paranoia about six months in to sarah’s life and tormented the home for coming months until I had no choice but to leave. She had accused me of having sex with the homosexual couple down the street, pulling a large knife from behind her- just like in the movies. After she lunged at me with the knife, I wrestled her to the ground, causing her to lose grip of the knife. I kicked it down the steps and got up from her to clamber back a good distance. Seeing the opening to the staircase, I dodged for it and never went back that night. Instead, I went to meet a woman I had met at lunch, Mindy.

I had already decided that I was leaving Mary as soon as possible. The main issue was transportation, and was solved this particular day because I had Paul’s truck. Earlier that day I had set it up to go out with Mindy. I hadn’t yet had a new place to live in mind or that I would need to find it tonight. Somehow being attacked with the knife changed all of that. When I left to go to Mindy’s house I had no idea what I would encounter, so I brought beer, wine, liquor, weed- and condoms.

That would not be enough, because when I got there I found out about mushrooms.  We jumped right in the truck to get some. When I got back to their house, Mindy was laying in bed after having taken a Percocet, while listening to Soundgarden- “I know what to do”. In my head was, “Day Tripper” by the Beatles. I figured she was a pill head because of the Percocet. Either way, she put her moves on me and we did it. She acted like she knew what she was doing. I would never believe she was just recently a virgin. By the time I realized we were finished I noticed my boots were still on. I never did figure out if I meant to leave them on or if it was the hypnosis.

Mariah’s little girl, Alexis, claimed that she saw a little boy sleeping on Mindy’s tummy. She said the boy lives in the house. It was understood that Alexis saw a ghost. Mindy was soon to discover that she was pregnant. I had asked her if it was all good even though I did have condoms. She was calculating by rhythm and miscounted. I was a bit relieved since she was now more or less acquired. I went right to work setting money aside to get our own place even though her aunt offered to get her an abortion and relocate her. Her father assumed the condom broke, sarcastically implying that no one really breaks a condom. What ever story they were told, didn’t change the reaction from Judith, Mindy’s mom. She went on a tirade about this type of thing happening to other families, and that this family should never be having this sort of thing let alone with a Hick for the father that she has nothing in common with.

They had no idea that I was a skilled trade or anything of any value. Before too long Mindy’s dad would have his hands in my financial affairs by way of doing my taxes. He was helping us get into a real home as well. It was not understood what the dynamic was between him and I where this home was involved. I later found out that we had been renting the house from him, that he had bought it, not us. Then he turns around and does the same thing to us at the second house in East Grand Rapids. I really was shocked when I found out that the house was his, especially since I was going through the divorce with Mindy, and had thought if nothing else I have the house. Not so. I had lost my business, my wife and kids, and my house. That was before Thanksgiving. By Christmas I had quit my job at Permalife. It was the only place in Grand Rapids that would hire me. Coincidentally, it was Randy Bouma, Doug’s cousin. My theory is that I was blackballed. I couldn’t take coming home to an empty house. When Christmas bonuses came, it was like twenty five dollars or something like that. It was the last blow I could take. I went all out on a drinking binge and road the alleys with the crack scrounges. I had given up but I am not there yet.