Category: 1990s

Rush Limbaugh

I always picture him as fatter and uglier.

In 1982, Slick Willie Clinton won the Arkansas Governor’s race as a “New Democrat.” He was as devoted a convert to Voodoo Economics as George H.W. Bush and just as hard right conservative. Clinton’s second tenure as Arkansas Governor was as full of trickle-down economics, austerity, and social program-cutting as any Republican administration. Yet, in the 1992 presidential elections, Slick Willie presented himself to a broader public as the second coming of Edmund Muskie. And a demented hobgoblin by the name of Rush Limbaugh started accusing him of being a communist.

That made about as much sense as calling Juan Peron a humanitarian or Frederick Douglas a White Supremacist. It was absurd. Yet, the more Clinton gave the Republicans everything they wanted, the harder Limbaugh accused him of being a bleeding-heart liberal. And rather than being ignored as the crank he was, it caught on. To this day, there are Democrats who insist that Bill Clinton was impeached over a blow-job when he was actually impeached and disbarred for life because he lied about it to a grand jury. That was Limbaugh’s purpose; to create such a smoke screen that both the Democrats and Republicans could ignore the facts and do whatever they wanted.

One of the most significant questions of the 1990s was how that fat, cigar-chewing bastard became so influential. Well, he was obviously born into it. The Limbaughs were part of the Missouri oligarchy. Both sides of his family were heavily involved in the John Birch Society. He had the family connections to have made it big in politics. Still, he wanted to be a radio broadcaster instead.

Initially, he crashed and burned. America has had shock jocks and abrasive personalities going back to the days of Will Rogers. But Limbaugh was so unhinged that he kept getting fired over his statements. He used the alias “Bachelor Ken” for some reason. I think it was so his on-air life didn’t interfere with his day job. He never kept a radio job for more than a year. Sometimes, he didn’t even survive for a month. Those were the days of the Fairness Doctrine, when broadcasting stations were required to air opposing views and were held accountable for misstating facts. Everybody from the Black Panthers to the DNC lined up to publicly refute Limbaugh’s bullshit with facts. He even initiated a few lawsuits, which is why “Bachelor Ken” always got canned.

Nepotism saved his butt. His family ensured he had a steady sales job for the Kansas City Royals. Otherwise, he would have had to find an honest job on his own, and finding a high-paying job with his credentials and work history was impossible even in those days. Eventually, he took a full-time position in the Royals’ marketing department. Due to his family’s political prominence, Rush quickly rose to the position of director of marketing. One might even quip that he was “rushed.” But the Limbaughs were a one-percent family, and they took care of their own.

Suddenly, the broadcaster who couldn’t hold a job was a VP and marketing director of a national sports team. He was playing golf and making deals with the people who fired him in the past. Rush, the stand-up guy, didn’t hold any grudges. He even started selling them universal life insurance policies for the old A.E. Williams company. He was introduced to some Washington insiders as a financial advisor. And he slowly wormed his way into the higher echelons of the RNC. His corporate lifestyle provided him plenty of leisure time, and he was already helping shape public policy. So when the fairness doctrine was eliminated, and radio stations didn’t have to worry about giving equal time to other views, Rush turned his talents to Talk Radio.

For those who don’t remember, Talk Radio was the social media of the late 20th Century. It was bad enough when it was just Howard Stern and the Whack Pack. But things started to go way south after the fairness doctrine ended. The insanity got worse and worse since the broadcasters could say anything with little or no consequences. Ed McLaughlin, CEO of ABC Radio, desperately sought somebody to knock Howard Stern from his throne as King of the Airwaves. History may never know if McLaughlin pitched a new radio show to his golf buddy Limbaugh or if Limbaugh went to McLaughlin. But Limbaugh returned to radio, and America may never recover from it.

Only this time, Rush sloughed off his “Bachelor Ken” persona like a viper sheds his skin, and it became the Rush Limbaugh Show. And the host was the real Rush Limbaugh. He spouted the same racist John Bircher shit he grew up with and believed with the fervency of a Jehovah’s Witness knocking on your door. That very sincerity was the cornerstone of his success. My neighbors in Blair House were ready for Rush. They were angrier than hell at Clinton and the Democrats, and Rush was calling Slick Willy a socialist. My neighbors didn’t have the education to know what a socialist was, except it was something terrible. And, of course, since Rush could be racist on the radio, they stopped believing that racism was wrong. And it was impossible to correct them. I count Rush Limbaugh and his shitty example to be the biggest step backward in social progress since the McCarthy Hearings.

I found it extremely easy to ignore Rush Limbaugh. I think it was because I went to public school in Florida. My Saint Augustine High School gym coach was just as bad as Limbaugh. I learned to tune racists out to preserve my sanity. For the life of me, I can’t remember hearing Limbaugh’s radio show at all. He came into my life as slowly as a cancer diagnosis. He was quoted everywhere; even if you didn’t listen to his show, you knew what he was. There wasn’t a comedian out there who wasn’t ready to make fun of him. But even ridicule is good publicity. His word and reputation kept growing. He became part of the environment. Rush Limbaugh was here to stay.

My luck ran out after my mother started watching his syndicated television show. It was on the air for about two or three years and was produced by Roger Ailes of FOX News fame. I distinctly remember sitting through three episodes but couldn’t hear anything Rush said. My mother would march up and down the room, yelling back at the hobgoblin on the TV screen. She would even throw small objects at the television screen. It was very entertaining, as you can imagine.

Then Mom left the room for a few minutes, and I was left alone to experience directly the southern fried hell, which was Rush Limbaugh. He was just like my old gym coach in Saint Augustine High School, only he had a salesman’s command of language. Limbaugh was being racist and ablest towards Rodney King and his disabilities. And he did it so wittily with puns and clever similes. I found myself trembling in outrage. When my mother returned, we were both yelling at the screen. Then I’d walk Mom outside so she could catch the hospital bus to dialysis and start fights with the elderly Dittoeheads.

That was another part of Rush’s appeal; he brought the bratty thirteen-year-old out in everybody. Rules of civility didn’t exist around him. He was a compassion-free zone where people could publicly release their bile without guilt or inhibition. It was an easy step from cursing out Rush on the TV screen to cursing out his fans in public. It started with lunatics like my mother fighting over whatever the idiocy the bloated cancer cell said that day. It slowly spread to the rest of the country. When I moved to California in 1996, Rush Limbaugh dominated political discourse.

Who was there to stop him? There was no more fairness doctrine. No requirements to air opposing views. And around 1996, courts ruled that news was entertainment. All journalistic standards had been stripped from the airwaves. And in the rare cases when somebody sued for defamation, Rush’s backers and allies had better lawyers. And nobody in broadcasting wanted to stop him.

It came down to Rush being good for business. As long as he was in the studio, neither Democrats nor Republicans ever had to worry about facts. The media became the battle of the strawmen. How many people fell off the unemployment rolls without finding employment didn’t matter. Bill Clinton was a liberal socialist because Rush Limbaugh said so. Nor did it matter how many taxes Clinton eliminated; Clinton was a socialist because Limbaugh said so. Rush Limbaugh defined the discussion. He had an incredible stage presence that kept every eye on him. And his drunken uncle politics struck a nerve in everybody. The nation was split between pro-Rush and Anti-Rush. And politics revolved around whatever he said.

The worst thing Rush and his media enablers did was normalize racism on the left. Never mind the right-wing, “minorities-are-subhuman” Ku-Klux-Klan-type racism. That’s going to be with us as long as we tolerate our regressive public school system. I’m talking about the “minorities-are-going-to-be oppressed-until-we-force-them-into-middle-class-white-culture racism.” It’s easy to forget that you’re infantilizing dark-skinned people when you can hide behind the outrageous statements coming out of the idiot factions of the Republican party. But Black People don’t need White liberals telling them what to do. Their time would be better served fixing the education system and health care systems they keep screwing up.

Black people in inner cities create their own systems. Public schools no longer teach critical thinking, so it’s taught in private homework clubs or church-sponsored after-school programs. The kids in these private, neighborhood-run programs get better educations than White kids in the suburbs. So, if you think kids in inner-city schools are badly educated, you’re sadly mistaken as well as racist. Limbaugh occasionally made valid criticisms of America’s failed education system and social programs, but they got lost in all his racist idiocy. And because Limbaugh made the criticism, the anti-Rush faction felt free to ignore the obvious fact that their education and social programs were badly failing.

Today, we’re still divided into the pro-Rush and Anti-Rush factions. Both sides are convinced that their politics is the only correct politics. Each faction is madly bent on destroying the other, to the point where they can’t focus on anything else. Any and all other views, suggestions, or wants are ignored because the only thing that matters is destroying the other side. Limbaugh was such a toxic bully that he made bullying acceptable in American society.

It’s only getting worse. Rush has long since taken over Hell’s Marketing Department, but the country is still how he left it; two cult-like political factions that can’t play well with others. And both the neoconservative and neoliberal news sources stole his act. Every talking head, from Tucker Carlson to Jon Stewart, uses Rush Limbaugh’s formula. Adopt a rigid political position that tolerates no criticism. Make cheap jokes at the expense of the other faction and mock all the critics, especially critics who avoid both factions. It’s easy, low-investment entertainment. And it keeps the money rolling in. That’s the only reason they do it; it brings in the money. It doesn’t matter that many Black families tune out the networks because they don’t want their kids learning to be bullies from the media. It’s profitable.

Thank god we only get one Antichrist per generation, and ours was Rush Limbaugh. Donald Trump is only a cheap black market knock-off of Rush. He may have stolen Limbaugh’s act, but he isn’t the unifying presence of the real Limbaugh. Limbaugh was a real mover-shaker and behind-the-scenes troublemaker. He could hold the Republican Party together because he was one of them. By 2008, he was the RNC’s spokesperson and de facto party head. Without him, the Republicans are falling into the same factionalism Rush started. And the Republicans are now being savaged by the cretins Limbaugh enabled during his rise to power. Ain’t karma a bitch?

Remembering the Bill Clinton Years

 

The Bill Clinton Years.

Since it’s an election year, I think it’s appropriate to look back at Bill Clinton, his totally dysfunctional wife, the 1990s version of Donald Trump, Elizabeth Warren (who most definitely passed for Cherokee during the Clinton years.), and let us not forget America’s favorite Howler Monkey, Segregation Joe Biden, who was Clinton’s drug czar, and Reagan’s boy in the Democratic Party before that. And as we go through memory lane, ask yourself why these incredible buffoons are still inflicting themselves on us? When are we going to have enough?

Any attempt to describe the disaster that was Bill Clinton would look like “The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire.” Since this is an autobiography, I can only report how it affected me personally. That limits it to a volume the size of “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.” Nobody could slog through that much muck. I’m keeping it down to the highlights. From NAFTA to Lewinsky, the hits just kept on coming! So, if I miss one of your favorite Clinton memories, drop me a line or mention it in the comments. I’ll be sure to add it to future revisions or even do a blog post if there’s enough material.

Bill Clinton taught me a fundamental lesson. Never trust a Democrat. And that was after Nixon taught me to never trust a Republican. I was a member of the Green Party back then because I was unsatisfied with both corporate parties and totally disenchanted with the DSA. But this was the early days of the Greens when they added their support to the Democrats. And I voted Democrat out of solidarity with the Greens. In reality, the Democrats were just the neo-liberal faction of the Reagan camp. And nobody was more of a neo-liberal than William Jefferson Clinton.

Back in the 1990s, there was some sort of liberal glamour surrounding the Democrats. They certainly didn’t earn it.  Under Reagan, the Democrats purged themselves of all their liberals. Reagan had made being centrist cool again, and Clinton had the support of a party that believed in Trickle Down Economics as fervently as their Republican neighbors. They resented social programs as badly as the Republicans. In fact, the only thing that separated the Republicans from the Democrats was their irrational hatred of each other, which has grown to insane levels today.

Clinton promised not to sign NAFTA. He signed NAFTA. And today, we have young men hanging out on street corners because all the manufacturing has been sent overseas. He ran on the promise of universal health. What a joke! He sent Hillary on a “fact-finding” junket to Paris. Then said, “Sorry, universal health isn’t happening.” Then, he commenced handing Medicaid over to the HMOs, making Medicaid more expensive to the taxpayer and providing fewer services for the patients.

Clinton waged a very deceptive campaign. And I wasn’t the only one who got caught up in it. I was living in Hillbilly Heaven during the 1992 election. Many of my neighbors were disabled on welfare or disabled and working a minimum wage job without medical benefits. If Clinton had followed through on his healthcare promise, my neighbors would have rallied against the Twenty-Second Amendment, so Clinton could have had a fifth term. And I would have been one of them. Instead, we now have an entire class of people more suspicious of the Democrats than they are of the Republicans. We can thank Bill Clinton for that.

We voted for Clinton because Reaganomics was killing us. Then, Bill Fucking Clinton gave us more Reaganomics. Homelessness peaked during the Clinton Administration. And it wasn’t just Clinton. Democratic Mayor Jerry Brown eliminated Oakland, CA. Rent control and a day never went by when I wasn’t watching another eviction. But they were just Black people, so the white racist media didn’t care. And neither did the Democrats. The fear of homelessness is what I remember most clearly about the Clinton administration. Every day was terror.

Please note that anybody who dares to claim there was a treasury surplus when Clinton left office will be publicly shamed and subjected to a stern accounting lecture. That so-called surplus was in inflated internet stocks. It was entirely paper profits with nothing to back them. And they lost all value when the stock market crashed. There was never an actual treasury surplus. It was all deceptive accounting. I think Trump learned how to overvalue things from Clinton.

What amazes me more than anything else is the Democrats think poor people are so stupid we’d forget all about this. People died due to the Welfare reform. Folks aren’t going to forget that. I cannot believe the narcissism of a political party that thinks poor people would vote for them because we’d be afraid of the Republicans. And I can’t believe the ego of those who are shocked when we’re not. We have already lived through the Democrats lying and promising us they would change. All it takes is an evening with the Congressional Record to see both parties vote as a block. But unfortunately, neither the left nor the right will put in the effort.

They say hindsight is 20/20.  I keep reminding myself of that to keep from being furious at myself for voting for Clinton. But if I let myself be angry about Slick Willy, I should also be angrier at myself for falling for Jerry Brown’s campaign in 1976, or for that matter, voting for Carter. It was Carter, not Reagan, who first started slashing welfare and education budgets. He laid off the entire federal Department of Vocational Rehabilitation in 1978. He was also the one who flooded social services with Southern Baptists and other Born Again Christians, so they were comfortably in place when Ronald Reagan took over.

Reagan begat Bush the Elder, and Bush the Elder begat Slick Willie. And it was all the same steady process of dismantling the New Deal and restoring militarization to 1950 levels. Democrats and Republicans are working on a con that’s still in process today. They do a Punch and Judy show for the cameras, and then they work for Wall Street when they think we’re not looking. It shouldn’t have surprised anybody when Clinton shredded the social safety net. Both parties had been working towards it since Carter. But as I said before, hindsight is 20/20. And quite often, hope blinds us worse than heroin.

Beyond Welfare Reform and the NAFTA betrayal, the one thing Clinton can never be forgiven for is helping to inflict Donald Trump on an unsuspecting world.

That loud, glitzy failure made himself a national figure by exploiting his friendship with the President of the United States. In return, Trump shared his real estate contacts with the Clintons. And the Clintons loved themselves some real estate. Remember Whitewater?

I suspect Trump got away with so much for so long due to his financial support of Senator Hillary Clinton. And New York was selected as her district because that was where Trump was headquartered. I don’t believe Trump and Hillary Clinton were serious when they dissed each other during the 2016 campaign. They were just mugging for the crowd.

See what I mean about Clinton? He’s just as big a crook as his buddy Trump. I’ve written thirteen hundred words so far and haven’t scratched the surface. From Whitewater to Monica Lewinsky, barely a month went by without some sort of outrage. Clinton and the Democrats trashed our refugee programs, eliminated most of the legal ways to enter the United States, and generally, out did Reagan in destroying the economy.

I could go on for another hundred thousand words and still have more to say. So, we have to take this one slow. One bite at a time. And if you follow me long enough, you’ll understand just why poor people vote for Trump. The Democrats released the Kraken on us with Clinton. After that, we laugh at the Democrats threatening us with Trump.

Further Blair House Dramas

Me in my kitchen at Blair House. The Deer-in-the-headlight expression is from my brother sneaking up on me with a camera.

What can be said about Blair House that hasn’t been told about any other slum? Except it was prettier. Blair House was a four-building garden apartment built sometime in the early 1950s. It sat on the top of a hill and was surrounded by trees. One summer, we were inundated by Scarlet Tanagers. These birds tended to avoid inhabited places, but the olive-green females were bopping around, too. There were also deer, rabbits, and our share of mice and rats.
The place was falling apart. The decorative pillars had rotted inside, becoming homes for wasps and those damned yellow jackets. Blair House was lousy with yellow jackets. Our air conditioner had been a condo for yellow jackets since before we moved in. I don’t remember ever using it. One day a neighbor took a swig of soda and swallowed a yellow jacket. The surgeons had to open him up to get it out. I don’t think he was the same since.
Inside wasn’t much better. The water pressure was so low we had to flush the toilet by pouring a bucket of water into the bowl. The bathroom had a nasty mold problem. I tried scrubbing the walls with chlorine, but it didn’t do any good. We had to live with it for over a year before the drywall got replaced. Our last Thanksgiving there was ruined because the oven broke while I was cooking a goose.
Blair House was privately owned by a rather nice but dotty fellow with a colostomy bag. He inherited the complex from his parents and turned it into section 8 housing for maximum financial security with minimum management and maintenance effort. But at least he sprang for an exterminator to rid us of wasps and yellow jackets when they grew too thick. And when I showed him the mold, he did fix the bathroom. But two years into our tenancy, it was sold to a bank, and yuppie vermin took over the ownership.
Our four years in Blair House were divided into two parts, before and after Bill Clinton. Poppa-Doc Bush was still president during part one. I moved in late September or early October of 1991. By my next birthday in November, the American voters chose Slick Willy Clinton to continue Reagan’s trickle-down policies. It was still your father’s poverty when I got there. Rents were increasing, but welfare, food stamps, AFDC, and Section 8 were still fully funded. I could afford out-of-pocket medical care if I really needed it. Or I could get treated in an emergency room for free.
I have a friend who keeps saying she never voted for Clinton because she knew he wasn’t a liberal. Maybe I could say the same thing if I lived somebody else’s life. If you’ve read “Countdown to Blair House,” you’d know I was up to my ass in alligators. Without evidence, I hoped Slick Willy would try to keep his promises and improve things. I even phone banked for him in the evenings. Did I ever get that wrong!
In my defense, I wasn’t the only person desperate enough to fall for Clinton’s shit. All my neighbors at Blair House believed it. Most of all, they loved the idea of universal health. There was the dizzying prospect of upward mobility without worrying about medical care. If people didn’t have to limit their incomes to stay on Medicaid, there wouldn’t be anything keeping them from looking for better jobs. Better jobs meant getting off Section 8 housing. It meant no more food stamps. Best of all, it meant no more social workers intruding into our lives.
Clinton’s campaign and election brought optimism to poor people, and that optimism embraced everybody at Blair House. Even the residents at the developmentally disabled group home were happy because everybody around them was happy. A few, like The Biker, didn’t care one way or another, but he was genuinely pleased to see the rest of us excited.
Blair House was a never-ending kaleidoscope of drama. Such as the newlywed couple who lived behind us. The husband was a farmhand, and the wife was a waitress. (Yes, there were still farmhands in Warren County back then.) His father had been a live-in farm laborer for over thirty years. The son took over the job and moved to Blair House. But the parents couldn’t adjust to life in Boca Raton and tried to move back to their old house, which had been turned into a grain shed. So they moved in with their son and daughter-in-law without notice. And They brought their Australian shepherd with them.
Nobody had any trouble with the dog except Manager. You see, the poor pooch was trained to herd sheep. And there weren’t any sheep in Blair House. So what’s an industrious canine to do but improvise? Since there were no sheep around, he decided to herd toddlers instead. I was alone in the living when our oldest came running in, yelling, “Dad, Dad, a dog’s holding my brother hostage!” Believe it or not, that was not the weirdest thing that ever came out of the kid’s mouth.
I followed him into the courtyard, and five toddlers, two or three cats, and the odd squirrel were standing in a knot under a big tree. And the dog circled them and stopped any of the cats from darting off. And if a child tried to leave, the dog would take the kid by the pant leg and gently pull him back. That was one of the funniest things I ever saw, and I wish I had taken a picture. The dog trotted up to me, tail wagging high and proud, just bursting to be praised for doing such a craftsman-like job. And I was all, “who’s the good boy?”
That mutt was the best thing that happened since the invention of the babysitter. A watchful four-footed nanny was the answer to a parent’s prayer. He was gentle, diligent, and loyal. His daddy, the retired farmhand, said god help the person who tried to hurt any of the kids or cats. And that was something I wanted to hear. We were getting reports of a suspicious van at the elementary school. That dog was worth his weight in diamonds!
Of course, Manager had to ruin it. I swear, if Jesus was bringing us all into heaven, she would find a way to ruin the moment. Manager came out having a tantrum over the “horrible” animal. Then she looked at me. My arms were crossed, and I tapped my foot. “There was no harm done,” I said quietly. So far, my partner and I were the only people who stood up to her, and she was getting scared of us. She stopped dead in mid-tirade while I stared her down.
Most of my neighbors had been cowed by years of pandering to social workers. They deferred to Manager because they assumed she had the power she claimed to have. But the winds were changing. I had been living in Blair House for nearly two years, and there wasn’t a damn thing Manager could do about it. People were learning she was not all-powerful. A couple of other parents even came outside to support the dog and weren’t backing down! Mothers were asking Manager not to be such an (in so many words.) bitch. It was turning into a rebellion Manager couldn’t win.
If she succeeded in making the old guy get rid of the dog, people would hate her more than ever, which could lead to a revolution. If she tried and failed, the revolution would happen immediately. People would start treating her like my partner, and I treated her. So Manager retreated while threatening reprisals if her son was ever tormented by the dog again. She pulled the kid away, who was crying for more doggy time. Did I mention how much I hated that woman?
I knew that Manager wouldn’t let the matter drop. She was a sneak, and you always had to watch out for the knife to the back. I expected her to call animal control behind our backs. So I worked to head that off. I helped the old guy get his dog vaccinated and licensed. That earned me brownie points with his son and daughter-in-law. They spent most of their free time looking for a new place to live.
I would have hated to see the old couple separated from their dog. They had a tough enough time adjusting to retirement. There was a herd of about a dozen sheep nearby, so I spoke to the owners, and as luck would have it, the owners needed a well-trained dog. So I got them together with the dog’s owner, and the pup’s life became a Loony-Toons script. Each morning he would leave the house and cut through the woods to herd sheep. After a hard day of bossing sheep, he would come home to dinner and tummy rubs from his humans. The old folks got to keep their doggy, and Manager was foiled again. It got to the point where my neighbors were coming to me with their Manager problems.
Too much energy was wasted on dealing with Manager’s antics. My partner made a hobby of foiling her. This would result in screaming matches where Manager would yell threats, and my partner would laugh in her face. I always used a more indirect method of foiling her, but if it did lead to an argument, I never raised my voice. I would smile and say, “go ahead; I have a lawyer on standby.” That was purely a bluff on my part, but it always sent her packing.
Not long after our second New Year at Blair House, we hit a deer. Our car was totaled. I was a prisoner at Blair House for nine entire months. That meant I had nine months of constant Manager drama. Not having transportation, I was limited to odd jobs and getting to them by bicycle. And there is nothing I loved more after a day of Alzheimer’s respite work or mowing lawns than to come home to more Manager drama.
Not that Manager was always a bad thing to have around. We got behind on the rent during those nine months, and we were sick with worry. One night, the anxiety was so bad that I couldn’t sleep. I was waiting for the eviction notice and didn’t have a game plan. It was early morning, a time when nobody expected to see me. I was at my bedroom window and overheard a conversation between Manager and The Biker. It went down something like this.
“The Landlord lost the building for taxes, and it’s being auctioned,” Manager said to The Biker.
“That sucks,” The Biker replied. “What happens to us?”
“We’ve got leases, so they can’t evict us right away,” Manager replied. “But I destroyed the ledgers, so they won’t know how much rent we’ve been taking.”
At that point, I had to tiptoe away so they wouldn’t hear me laughing. No wonder the original landlord lost the building with friends like that. But I slept easier that night knowing that Manager’s greed worked in my favor. We stopped worrying about our portion of the rent until I got working again. We were also a lot more civil to Manager. Which was a mistake.
Chris and Debbie had become the biggest Blair House soap opera. I talked about them in The Night Carlos Died. We never saw them sober anymore. Chris had lost his maintenance position, and his free rent went with it. He moved into Debbie’s apartment, and they spent their days drinking themselves stupid. In their defense, their housemate had just been shot by the cops. But that was no excuse to pick a fight with The Biker.
Those two were the meanest drunks I had ever met. They took to downing a quart of cheap vodka between them and getting into screaming matches. Chris would come downstairs to stay away from Debbie. Usually, he’d wait until Debbie had passed out and go back upstairs, where he’d join her in the Land of Nod. But this time, The Biker came out to ask him to please keep it down. It was a reasonable request, and The Biker was careful to mind his manners.
He did nothing to deserve Chris turning around and giving him the same verbal abuse he had just given his girlfriend. Chris was such an asshole when drunk that he inspired me to quit what little drinking I did do. And I wouldn’t have blamed The Biker for tossing him across the lawn again. Instead, The Biker destroyed all the outlaw stereotypes by calling the cops. Chris stayed where he was and kept screaming at The Biker’s door. I had come out to see what all the noise was about and stayed to watch things unfold.
I was thrilled to see Officer Clark (not his real name) arrive to de-escalate the problem. I wasn’t as friendly with Clark as I was with a few other officers, but I respected the hell out of him. Officer Clark was the hardest-working cop in Belvidere. He was hell on speeders, hunters, and deer spotters. Not only did he bust them, but he also reported arrests to professional groups like the medical licensing board or the Bar Association. You would be amazed how many doctors and lawyers went to Belvidere to get cross-eyed drunk and shoot at anything that moved. And Clark also confiscated tons of Saturday Night Specials and other illegal handguns from deer spotters. Clark was focused on keeping people safe and did an outstanding job.
So this was the officer dispatched to get Chris back under control. Clark had an edge to him that made even drunks cautious, and he was usually able to get Chris under control. But not this time. Clark got out of his vehicle and confronted Chris, and Chris kept getting more out of control, yelling and screaming in Clark’s face. Finally, Clark put a warning hand on Chris’s shoulder, and Chris tore the glasses off Clark’s face and threw them against the wall. I could hear the lenses crack. Clark had his back to me, but I could see Chris, and he wore the same expression my stepson had while testing the limits.
Belvidere, NJ, did not deserve its police force. I was positive that Clark was going to lose his shit. I felt sick from anticipating the violence. Instead, Clark took Chris down with a non-violent Aikido move. Chris was face down on the ground but not hurt. Clark should have taken Chris in, and that was that.
As bad luck would have it, Debbie had woken up and followed Chris outside so they could continue their screaming session on the front lawn. Instead, she saw Officer Clark handcuffing Chris’s hands behind his back. She forgot she was mad at Chris and focused all her drunken rage on Clark. Debbie ran up behind Clark and kicked him in the ass. Hard! I could hear Clark cry out! He stumbled forward, pulling Chris’s arms in directions they weren’t supposed to go. Chris screamed in agony, and Debbie tried to kick Clark a second time. Only he dodged, and she fell on her ass. At that point, I laughed so hard that I didn’t see the second patrol car arrive.
My partner and our kids came out in time to see two more officers arrive to help Clark. Chris had his face in the grass, his arms cuffed behind him. Debbie was on her back, windmilling her limbs so Clark couldn’t get the cuffs on her. The other two cops had to hold her down while Clark cuffed her.
“Don’t get involved,” my partner advised.
“Like I’m going to walk into that debacle?” I responded. “I’m just going to help Clark find his glasses.”
The kids watched Chris and Debbie get dragged into separate police cars. A third patrol car arrived to drive Clark back to the station. He couldn’t drive without his glasses. I found them for him, but there wasn’t any good news. One arm had been bent in half, and a lens had crazed.
“I’m sorry, Clark,” I said.
“I paid 200 dollars for shatterproof lenses,” he mourned.
“I’d be looking to get my money back,” I replied lightly, trying to improve his mood. Officer Clark had a very difficult day. His glasses got broken, there was a nasty streak on his temple, and a drunk kicked him in the ass. I should not have tried to wise-ass a laugh out of him…
“Chris is paying for my new pair,” Clark replied, giving me the stink-eye.
“I think that’s fair,” I said. “And I’m going to talk to Chris about this. He usually listens to me, and….”
“Chris and Debbie are going to jail,” Officer Clark interrupted with such finality that I stopped trying. And truth be told, I didn’t blame him. Those two had been out of control since Carlos was shot. And all Clark wanted to do was calm the situation. It was entirely Chris and Debbie’s fault they ended up doing 60 days in Warren County Prison. And it did them some good to be in jail. They were going to kill themselves if they didn’t dry out.
Officer Clark could have had Chris and Debbie put away for a few years. But he didn’t see the point. He dropped the assault on a police officer charge on a plea deal. They spent two months in jail with two years probation and addiction counseling. And those two months were the most surreal I can remember because Manager decided we were friends. I still shudder when I look back at this and blame myself for being civil to her. I should have known it was a bad idea.
It started during deer season when drunks with guns descended on Belvidere like an invading army. Chris and Debbie had just started their sentences. It was a warm September day, and I was reading on the front stoop, where I was least likely to be hit by a stray bullet. Manager came running past me and yelled, “come on, get up!” Please don’t ask me why I got up and followed her. I must have been curious as to what flew up her ass. And I was also very bored. I followed her behind the dumpster, and she stopped in a clearing and started looking around.
“What are we looking for?” I asked her, not seeing anything.
“There were hunters here, and it’s illegal for them to be this close to the building,” she replied.
That gave me a split moment of brain freeze. Then the words “What. THE. FUCK!!!” echoed through my mind, and I started looking around more carefully. I may not be Daniel Boone, but my father taught me a few things about tracking. And there was a long trail of broken saplings and weeds heading towards the road. The hunters must have already been on their way to a deer processor.
I wanted to grab her by the neck, shake her, and scream, “are you trying to get us killed?” But I refrained. Mostly because I felt like an idiot for following her. And having been raised by dangerous lunatics, I had learned to be moderate in my responses. “What were you going to do if there were hunters here?” I asked her patiently.
A blank look crossed her face. She had to think hard about that one. Then she said, “go back to the house and call the police.”
“Why didn’t you just call the police?” I asked.
“They told me not to call them unless I saw the hunters,” she said. “I heard the gunshot, so I ran out to look.”
What could I do except go home? Then I had to face my partner’s reaction. “Why the hell did you follow her? Are you nuts? You could have been shot!”
How does one answer those questions, except with the truth? “I was wondering what she was panicking over, and how long did it take you to figure out I’m nuts?”
“Don’t let Manager mess with you like this,” they told me.
“I don’t understand why she’s even talking to me,” I replied. This was before Manager played stupid games with the social workers. I was still trying to keep it civil and professional whenever possible.
“Chris is in jail, and she’s looking for somebody to boss around,” my partner explained.
I saw the light. I often noticed how Manager bullied Chris as if they were still in a relationship. She would have told Chris to follow her as she called out to me. And for the same stupid shit. “And I’m walking into it,” I said.
“Don’t do her any more favors,” my partner suggested.
“Do I look stupid?” I asked them.
“Do I have to answer that?” my partner replied.
Of course, my partner was right. The next day she asked me to haul some trash out, just like she would with Chris.
“I’m sorry,” I told her. “But you know I have a bad back and knees. I’d hurt myself.”
She soon learned to ask The Biker to do the odd jobs, which was actually the right guy to go to. The Biker had taken over as maintenance man, and he got the free rent. So why go to me? I think it’s because I’m flypaper for freaks. For the next few weeks, Manager kept coming to me to discuss all her evil thoughts and illegal plans. As if I were her partner in crime. I never invited it. I didn’t want it. And I felt no remorse about going to my neighbors and telling them about the underhanded trick Manager was about to pull on them.
Another thing Manager kept doing was asking me about Chris and Debbie’s apartment. Debbie had two elderly and obese cats, and my partner and I were caring for them. We checked on the kitties two or three times a day, and I managed to make friends with one of them. His brother was so timid he hid in a closet, and I had to look inside to ensure he was still breathing.
Manager kept asking me what condition the apartment was in. And it was very well maintained. The only sign of alcoholism was the open quart of vodka on the kitchen counter. I was tempted to pour it down the sink and eliminate the bottle. But I knew I would hate it if anybody did that to me. So I contented myself with not capping the bottle and letting the contents evaporate.
The questions escalated. Manager started to ask about the furniture. What furniture did they have in the living room? Of course, I only gave the vaguest of answers. We sealed Debbie’s door with scotch tape, and the seal hadn’t been broken. She could have used her pass key to get in. In fact, I was amazed she hadn’t already.
One day, the tape had been pulled from the door frame. I wasn’t surprised. The day before, she tried to thrust a Polaroid camera into my hands and demanded I take pictures. I explained that it was illegal and refused. Manager couldn’t contain herself any further and had to look. She used her passkey and broke the seal. As soon as my partner saw the break-in, they reported it to Warren County Legal Aid, who acted as Chris and Debbie’s attorneys.
The next day, I returned from riding my bike in the Poconos, and Manager finally came to the point. Chris had an antique china cabinet that belonged to his mother. Manager wanted it. She figured that as the ex-wife, she was entitled to it, and it didn’t matter that Chris’s mother passed after the divorce. She tried to bully my partner into opening the door, so The Biker could carry it out for her. But you don’t even think about bullying my partner, and The Biker would have no part in it. I have no idea why she wouldn’t use her passkey. I guess she wanted to blame my partner if the police got involved.
Undaunted, Manager came to me and told me she was planning to illegally evict Chris and Debbie for being in arrears. She hired a couple of guys to go in and bring all of Chris and Debbie’s stuff put on the curb and the china cabinet in her apartment. She told me I could take the cats in if I wanted to. Otherwise, she was going to have them put down. That woman was so evil even Cruella Deville wouldn’t associate with her.
Chris and Debbie had already been in the process of being legally evicted. But Blair House was in legal limbo. There needed to be an owner or agent authorized to sign the papers and take legal possession of the apartment. Chris and Debbie could only be removed from their apartment once Blair House was sold. And that took months. Once again, only the gods of madness know why Manager came to me. Maybe she thought I would be scared into letting her into Chris and Debbie’s apartment.
I didn’t like Warren County Legal Aid in the least, and I had damn good reason not to trust them. But they were the only game in town and a five-minute walk from my front door. I explained the situation to the secretary and was pleasantly surprised when they made themselves useful.
The next day, Manager got a court order hand delivered by Officer Clark. There would be no illegal eviction. Chris and Debbie’s property stayed right where it was. When Debbie got out of jail, her cats were waiting for her. By then, the timidest cat would let me pet him a little. Chris came home to his beloved mother’s china cabinet. And Manager never said a civil word to me again. Soon the building was auctioned to a bank, and it was outright war between us.
Maybe a week after Chris was released, he came to the house and dropped his car’s registration on the table. “It’s your problem now,” he said. Thanks to my partner’s wonderful mother, we could pay all the fees to get back on the road. I was working again. But Clinton’s welfare reform was going into effect, and life was never the same again.

Hillbilly Heaven

Major Hoop’s House. One of the oldest houses in New Jersey.

My partner and I had a minor disagreement over how I should title this post. They wanted me to call it “Hillbilly Hell.” And they sure had a point! It was hell for us! In 1992, Belvidere, NJ, was one of the most isolated places in northwestern New Jersey. It was a rural backwater surrounded by cornfields. There was a little strip mall with a supermarket, a Chinese restaurant, and small retail shops. And, of course, there was a laundromat. It was close enough to walk to, which was a mercy. Otherwise, you were stuck with the shops in town. 

There was a tiny grocery store in the town center, a pet shop, an excellent deli, a little bookshop, and two libraries. Belvidere was the country seat, so we got the county and town library. At least I always had reading material. The grocery store had a very nice meat counter, but it was a little on the expensive side. Sounds absolutely idyllic, doesn’t it? We hated every second we had to live there. We were utterly isolated. We only got to see or catch up with our old friends on the Third Sunday in May Picnic in Sheep’s Meadow in Central Park. We never missed a picnic. It was the only time we felt any connection with our old lives.

Belvidere was one of the oldest bergs in New Jersey. Maybe one of the first cities in that part of the state. It was founded by Major Hoops and once home to Robert “Bob” Miller, who was famous for embezzling the Continental Congress into insolvency. There were a few revolutionary war-era buildings in the area. My mother-in-law nearly burned one of them down. She had her oil pan replaced, and the mechanics didn’t put a new cap on it. So oil splashed on the engine as she drove, and black smoke rose from under the hood.

Of course, MIL called the garage and asked about it. But the mechanic assured her that oil had spilled on the engine during the replacement. She shouldn’t worry about it, and it would burn away on its own. MIL took him at his word and decided to drive the 70 miles to our house. She figured the oil would burn off by the time she got to us. Things went fine on the highway, where there weren’t many twists, turns, and bumps. But once she turned onto Alternate 22, the oil splashed out of her engine in buckets. Her whole car was surrounded by black smoke, but the mechanic had assured her that it was supposed to do that, so she kept driving. 

So there she was, driving down Mauch Chunk Road with a solid thunderhead of black smoke pouring out from under her hood. MIL was a mile from our place and decided to pull into a diner to use the bathroom. The restaurant was a log cabin built a little after the constitution was ratified and a county landmark. MIL parked up against the 200-year-old wooden building and ran into the bathroom.

She was no sooner in the restroom when the car burst into flames. Fire shot out from under the hood and kissed the cabin’s well-seasoned logs. A pair of Belvidere cops and a few volunteer firefighters were having lunch. They jumped into action. One of the cops burned both his palms pushing the car away from the diner. While a firefighter grabbed an extinguisher. The second firefighter called for a truck while the second cop banged on the lady’s room door and shouted, “Hey, Lady, your car’s on fire.”

MIL yells back, “don’t worry, it’s supposed to do that!”

MIL came back outside, and her car had been pushed to the middle of the lot while firefighters doused it with a high-pressure hose. The entire front end was blackened and cracked, and the tires exploded. To this day, my partner and I crack up if one of us says, “it’s supposed to do that.” 

I went into town the following Monday and saw one of the town cops in civvies, whose hands were bandaged. “Hi, Bob; what happened to your hands?” I asked

“You’re not going to believe this, Bill, but this ditzy redhead was driving with black smoke pouring out of the hood. Kent and I were having lunch at the Log Cabin, and we were putting our food down to get in the car to stop her. But she drove into the lot and parked right next to us. Then her car caught fire!”

“I heard it was supposed to do that,” I said, my face flushed. “That was my mother-in-law.”

“You poor son of a bitch,” Bob said sympathetically.

I can’t blame my mother-in-law, really. Not only is she one of the kindest and most generous people I have ever met, but she is also the least mechanically inclined. Besides, she was heading for Blair House. I’m convinced we lived on top of a cursed burial ground, like in that movie. I never saw any paranormal events, like floating toys or dead preachers. Still, the place seemed to attract misery and bad luck. And who needed dead preachers when we had the apartment manager? That woman was misery on two legs.

I was outside late one evening, and I saw Manager lumbering around in her bedclothes. She looked like a bear in a pink nightgown. I still shudder at the memory. When I first moved in, a volleyball net was set up, and we’d go outside on the weekends and play. Manager decided that she wanted to manage a Blair House softball team. Nobody was interested. Half the players were Sikhs who didn’t know baseball from Jujitsu. And we weren’t playing by any rules. We were drinking beer and hitting the ball back and forth.

Two days later, we got a letter written on Blair House Stationary forbidding the playing of volleyball. Manager took our refusal personally. The nut thought she was Nurse Ratchet and the rest of us were her inmates. Then she wondered why we all gave her the fish eye when she tried to sign us up for her softball team. Only Chris, her ex-husband, joined. But poor Chris couldn’t get himself to stand up to her. 

My poor partner had moved in several months before I did. And Manager tried to dictate my partner’s life. They put up with it because they hoped management would let me move in. Then we found out that Manager had been lying, and did the gloves come off! I didn’t announce I was moving in. I just showed up with all my stuff. A few days later, Manager was at the door, threatening to have my family evicted if I didn’t leave immediately. Then my partner showed her all the papers, all legal and proper, and told her to take a long walk off a short pier. That woman spent the next three and a half years trying to me kicked out. 

As luck would have it, Manager had a kid the same age as our youngest boy. Our apartments adjoined, and the kids became fast friends. We let our guard down enough to let our toddler into Manager’s apartment to play. We figured it would be alright if her ex-husband, the maintenance man, was around. But one day, Chris wasn’t there, and Manager burst into the bathroom while our son was peeing. Our youngest is autistic, and that moron traumatized him so severely that he still can’t go to the toilet unless the door is locked.

Manager found what she was looking for, though. There was a ring of contact dermatitis on both legs. I also get the same type of rash from many artificial fibers. His mom and I had already spotted it and treated it. But Manager reported it to DYFS.  

Now the Division of Youth and Family Services gets crank calls twice an hour. And god knows my parents had phoned in their own share. But when Manager called in her crank report, they had crank reports from two unrelated cranks and had to send an investigator.

The local DYFS office had its share of problems. They were notorious for having snatched a kid from a loving home because the kid had the same name as an abused child. And instead of admitting to the problem, they doubled down and insisted they were right. And the poor abused child was left in hell. DYFS sent us an investigator who must have been a significant problem. She violated our 5th, 6th, and 14th amendment rights by staring through our window without announcing herself. This caused further trauma to my youngest, a teen, before we could open the shades. 

Madam Stormtrooper then pounded on the door like a cop. Mom was in the bathroom, so my ten-year-old answered the door and physically blocked her from storming inside. Our four-year-old was in the middle of a full-scale meltdown over the nasty person who stared through our windows. My partner heard our oldest yelling that a business card wasn’t legal identification. The woman tried to force her way in without legal identification, and our oldest kid kept blocking her. 

Stymied by a ten-year-old. My partner went to the phone and started calling the cops while the idiot yelled she was from DYFS, waving her card over her head. I don’t think that ever happened to her before. 

My partner put down the phone to demand her business, and do you know what the first question was out of that idiot social worker’s mouth? She pointed to my youngest and asked, “Is his father Black?”

My partner slammed the door in that racist bitch’s face and told her to come back with the cops. Then they called the local NAACP chapter to ask for advice for reporting racism from a state social worker. Then they called DYFS and made a phone complaint. Later, I found the direct number of the president of the NAACP and gave him a call. I can’t remember his name, but he was a Baptist preacher and very supportive. He called DYFS on our behalf. We got a very conciliatory call from DYFS while I was at work, and they scheduled a legal interview.

“I want to see a copy of the complaint and a legal warrant before she steps foot in here,” My partner demanded. “I also want to know why she thought it was appropriate or legal to ask if my husband is Black.”

 My partner got a stammering apology and promised everything would be legal and proper. The same social worker returned the next day before I went to work; she was all smiles and reconciliation. We didn’t get a copy of the complaint. But we did get a letter of apology for the “misunderstanding” on county stationery, and she presented a county photo ID. I also showed the woman my contact dermatitis and how it was treated.

Then I told her exactly who had been making the reports and why. She hemmed and hawed and told me she couldn’t say who it was. I replied, “that’s okay; I know who has been making those reports and why.”

“I guess we can put this down to welfare wars,” she said with a smile.

“By the way,” I added as she headed out the door. “We Dunlaps are from Scotland.” I can never resist a final dig. Out of my many bad qualities, that one is the worst. But I will never regret that one last needle.

That Social Worker’s casual racism saved us from any more visits from social services. Like all the other Warren County Social Services, DYFS was racist and afraid of being called out. Which was a relief because siccing the authorities on neighbors was a popular pastime at Blair House. That was what the social worker meant by “Welfare Wars.”

We were frequently harassed by false police reports. The residents literally didn’t have anything better to do than call the cops on each other. My partner and I always responded to this by not responding. The cops would come, we spoke to the cops, the cops left, and we went on with our lives. We never called the cops on anybody unless it was something serious like child abuse and domestic violence. We never responded to harassment with more harassment. People stopped messing with us after a few months. It was no fun when we didn’t play too.

There was one guy nobody dared to call the cops on. He was a full brother in the Pagans MC. He lived in the corner apartment. We along great. I ran with YIP in my younger days and learned the care and feeding of bikers. I knew how not to offend, which was more than some other people I could mention, like Chris.

As I mentioned in The Night Carlos Died, Chris was a raging alcoholic. And when he drank, he became the biggest asshole on the planet. He and Debbie lived above the biker, and sparks frequently flew. Chris was in a lawn chair on the shared porch one day. He was so drunk he mouthed off at the biker, who picked him up, lawn chair and all, and tossed him about ten feet. Chris landed on the pavement, and I was the one who went to the hospital with him. 

I managed to broker peace and convinced Chris to keep his mouth shut when the biker was around. But of course, it didn’t last more than a week. The Biker started accusing Chris and Debby of making a thumping sound all night. They denied doing it, and the thumping didn’t stop. It looked like The Biker would take his lost sleep out on them with a tire iron.

The problem was the baby upstairs. He was banging his head on his crib from the moment his mom left to work until she got home. The poor thing’s father was a piece of work. We used to hear the child crying, and the father would respond by screaming at him. Then we listened to the baby being spanked and the child crying in pain and panic. That was when we called the police.

The cops played it cool and said it was an anonymous welfare check. The next day the father tried to blast the television to keep people from hearing him screaming, which annoyed The Biker. I have no idea how that creep kept his baby from crying, but it resulted in head-banging that kept The Biker up all night. It got to the point where The Biker called the cops and invited them into his apartment to hear the banging. Then the cops went upstairs to investigate. 

Once in Chris and Debbie’s apartment, the cops could hear the banging coming from the apartment next to Chris and Debbie. That poor baby was hitting his head with considerable force. The police contacted the mom, who came home, found out what was happening, and sparks flew. She moved out the next day. I still remember her exit. She was dressed for work, and her hair coiled in a perfect French braid. She carried a suitcase in one hand and had the baby on their hip. My partner even helped her get the baby in the car seat. That was the last I saw of them. I hope they had a happily ever after.

Relations were strained between the father and me, by the way. Lucky for me, the full wrath of The Biker was now focused on him. The father left a few days later, and The Biker seemed to have a sense of accomplishment about it. He was so glad to get things resolved that he made peace with Chris and Debbie. 

Of course, it was too much to ask that Blair House become peaceful. Perish the thought! The drama with Chris and Debbie was over, and the baby was in a safer place, but The Biker still had his girlfriend. Much of The Biker’s problems with Chris and Debbie stemmed from living with his girlfriend. She was a one-woman riot. She was the craziest, meanest, and nastiest drunk I had ever met. Like many alcoholics, she was pleasant when she was sober, but she wasn’t pleasant very often. And, of course, she was totally unpleasant to her boyfriend.

The biker was a very even-tempered person, not at all the stereotype. I haven’t met any outlaw bikers who I consider crazy or nuts. And they’re rarely violent without a sound financial reason. My main rule for dealing with bikers is to never do business with them and always buy a round. If The Biker was any stereotype, he would have been violent to his girlfriend. But he refrained from defending himself when she punched, kicked, and bit him. 

I remember them returning from a bar at about two in the morning. They were both drunk, but The Biker was steadier than his chick. She was yelling and screaming at his back. But he just ignored her and headed for the door. Biker Chick was way too drunk to watch where she was going, and she hit her head on a tree branch and landed on her ass. Anybody else would have been concussed, but Biker Chick jumped to her feet and screamed, “hit me again, motherfucker,” and started to punch out the tree. She hit that tree until her knuckles were bloody. Biker lifted her under his arm and carried her inside. Her limbs thrashed, and she screamed like a cat in heat.

Of course, it was hell for the Biker Chick’s daughter. The poor kid acted out her mother’s violence. She was the same age as my stepson, who tried to play nicely with her. But it always devolved into violence. I always put it down to the girl having to grow up seeing her mother’s drunken rages. Watching her mother’s rages was traumatic, and I was in my 30s. God knows how bad it must have been for a kid.

My stepson was raised to never raise his hand to a female. He ended up taking a couple of bad beatings from the kid, and I would have to intervene. To give Biker Chick credit, she tried to be an involved parent when she wasn’t shit-faced. She laid down the law and forbade her daughter from playing with my stepson. None of us were happy about it, but we agreed it was the only way to prevent violence.

The Biker finally kicked his girlfriend out of the apartment, and Blair House became quieter without them screaming at each other. The Biker had a boy my stepson’s age. He came over a lot more since Biker Chick and her daughter moved out. Some afternoons Biker and I would sit on the porch, drink beer and listen to The Grateful Dead and Neil Young. The Biker also had a son with his ex-wife, who lived near the river. He and my stepson got along well enough. It’s a shame that years later, he and his father got busted for distributing meth and are both serving life sentences.

Maybe I should call this post “Hillbilly Hell.” I don’t think anybody was happy there. Not me, not Chris or Debbie, and The Manager was the most miserable of all. The Managers’ kids had it worse. She had two. One my toddler’s age and a girl a few years older. That woman had Munchhausen’s by Proxy. She was constantly diagnosing her children with the most amazingly mysterious ailments. Worse, She found a doctor feelgood in Philadelphia willing to give the kids heavy drugs for any disorder Manager-mama could think up.

I remember talking to Chris and begging him to do something. Manager had those kids on Ritalin for imaginary ADHD. I had watched them nodding out like dockside junkies. I begged Chris to intervene, but, of course, he wouldn’t do anything. He didn’t have the backbone. I understand the kids grew up alright, but all those pharmaceuticals couldn’t have been good for them.

Soon after the baby incident, a young couple with several terrariums of snakes moved in right next to us. I’m phobic of snakes. I’m also phobic of loud, aggressive assholes who abuse their girlfriends. And this guy was the abusive bastard from hell. On the first night there, he beat his girlfriend so severely that I was the one who called the cops. 

I never call the police if I can help it. Not even a mellow bunch of cops like the BPD, but there was no way I could ignore that. I could hear him striking her. And her screams were terrifying. The cops came, but the girl was too scared to press charges. The next day, the boyfriend took the girl’s battery out of her car to ensure she didn’t leave him. That was alright, we had an automobile, and the battery was charged and ready. My partner helped the girl pack her things and return home to her parents.

Things were tense for a while. The boyfriend kept threatening to kill us, only to have The Biker pick him up by the collar and told to behave. Two days later, the boyfriend was arrested for stealing a car battery and beating his girlfriend black and blue. She got braver once she was no longer in physical danger, and I understand the creep went to jail. But that left an apartment full of snakes in the apartment.

Clearing out that apartment was not Chris’s finest moment. He managed to break a terrarium holding a seven-foot python. Chris freaked and ran from the snake who disappeared. Nobody wanted a seven-foot python wandering around Blair House. Chris and The Biker dropped their animosity and searched that apartment from stem to stern. They even chain-sawed the sofa in case the snake was hiding there. But there was no sign of the snake. 

Eventually, fall moved aside for winter, and the temperatures fell under twenty degrees. We figured that Mr. Snake had frozen to death, and we stopped worrying about him. Then after winter turned to spring, Mr. Snake decided to venture out of the basement for some evening air. Unknown to anybody, the snake found its way into the Blair House Basement, which was nice, toasty warm, and filled with yummy rats. And it was such a perfect environment that the snake grew another two feet.

Of course, that was the evening my youngest was running barefoot through the grass. My son met Mr. Snake near a hole in the foundation. The snake poked his head out, and my kid froze in terror. The head moved, and my kid kicked at it reflexively. Then the snake bit him on the foot, and my kid finally screamed.

“That can’t be a snakebite,” My partner said, looking at the puncture marks on his foot.

“I looks like a snakebite,” I replied.

“When was the last time you saw a snakebite?” my partner demanded. Today we could have called up a picture on the internet. Back in 1995, we had to find help. Several Sikhs were living in one of the upstairs apartments. I found myself asking one of them for help, and being some of the nicest people on Earth, my neighbor came to see my son’s foot.

The poor kid became nonverbal during stress and couldn’t tell us what had happened. Our Sikh neighbor came and looked at the foot, and he turned ashen gray and told us to take him to the emergency room immediately.

Who knew that boa constrictors left a similar bite mark pattern as some venomous snakes in Punjab? Not us and not our neighbor. We got the kid in the car and high-tailed it for Warren Hospital. The fact that we had a possible venomous snakebite won us an immediate room and a doctor. The doctor looked at the bite and said there weren’t any venomous snakes that big in the Northeast, and if he had to guess, our kid had been bit by a pet boa constrictor.

That was when we remembered the lost snake. It was still alive. “No, it can’t be,” was Chris’s reaction when we woke him up to tell him the fucking boa was still alive.

“My dad found one in a cellar once,” Debbie said. Debbie’s late father had been a professional exterminator specializing in larger pests like raccoons and snakes. 

Chris didn’t want to hear that. I felt terrible for telling him, but he was the maintenance man. The next day, he and The Biker were in the basement with flashlights, looking for the snake. As Debbie observed, this was a job for a professional exterminator. Still, the owner wasn’t going to spring for a professional, not when Chris got free rent. Needless to say, the snake was never found. For all I know, it’s still in the bowels of Blair House, growing fat on river rats and growing until it’s big enough to crush and eat residents. And if anybody is still living in those apartments, I hope they sleep well tonight.

I don’t think anybody could have found that snake because the evil forces of Blair House protected it with dark and ancient magic born of opiates and madness. Maybe my partner is right. Perhaps I should call this Hillbilly Hell. But there were so many good times as well. My partner and I joined Chris with our instruments on a summer evening. There was hitting the volleyball over the next with one hand while drinking Budweiser with the other. And I got to grill every nice evening. I learned to grill corn on the cob at Blair House.

It wasn’t all that bad during the first two years. And much of what we were going through was more due to work than when we lived. It wasn’t until the last two years that it became Hillbilly Hell.