Tocky on 22/12/2017 at 04:45
Well alrighty then. After dinner would be great. That's when the good scotch comes out.
So I'm going to avoid Laurie for a little while longer to tell you how you get into the FFA. You aren't going to believe people used to do this to each other and it was school sanctioned... well until that last year. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Future Farmers doesn't sound like a club most guys would like to join right? What do y'all do churn each others butter? Har har. But it was actually a great club. Everybody was in it. You got to go to all the fairs and get slant eyed with the stoners and sometimes win a ribbon for something. Plus you got to learn welding. All you had to do was make sure some ass wasn't lighting your pants leg on fire while you were concentrating on keeping the arc weld to a steady ripple in the dark of that welders helmet and you had a trailer for hauling crap before long. I'm serious though, you had to watch those guys. Lighting pants on fire was a thing for awhile.
Getting in was tough. It scared everybody. I'm not lying when I say some guys broke down and cried. Some had to give up at the start and maybe try again next year. You felt a combination of sympathy and disgust for those guys. I mean Jesus, it's just pain right? It's fleeting. But holy crap what a belt line. Every guy in school was in this club and they all lined up a gauntlet of over two hundred guys right and left wielding belts. Some really mean bastards would swing the buckle end at you. But if you just listened to the shop teacher he told you how to come out with minimal damage. You jam close to one side and that side doesn't get a full hit and the other misses completely. Some guys could not get that into their heads from fear I guess.
Some guys just lost their minds running. After the first few licks they ran blind full out straight down the middle like a lamb to slaughter. God the raised red welts all over them. Sometimes on their faces even. It was great fun. I got maybe four or five good welts. I was jamming them so good I was getting hit with a few fists so I over compensated too much when I got those.
Then there was a huge wash tub full of cow manure. If you found the one bolt hidden in it you got to skip the rest of the initiation. Me and a handful of others just hung back as about thirty guys fought through shit for that bolt. Shit everywhere. But we were the smart ones. We were clean. The next thing they did was blindfold you. Just after that they shoved your face in cow shit. There were lots of fake outs but that shit was real.
They did the one where they have you step onto a board and it feels like they are lifting you over their heads but really they are squatting and they tell you to jump off and you look like an idiot when you hit too soon. I didn't fall for that one. I had heard of it already but some guys busted their asses. They had you drink a raw egg in vinegar with Tabasco. They put a lump of axle grease in your hair that took a month of washing to get out. They let you catch a glimpse of them putting a cow patty between two pieces of bread then handed you the bread to eat but they had swapped it with mustard and slaw mixture sandwich already made. I caught a glimpse of that one before I got to it out of a corner of my blindfold so I just chowed down with relish and grossed them out.
I wish I could recall them all. They were pretty inventive. The last was you sat in a fifty five gallon drum of ice water and spelled the shop teachers last name backwards. Easy right? His name was Rottenberry. That's hard to spell when you are shivering. The more you mess up the more you shiver. Eh. We survived. Then we got to do it to the next crew next year.
They had the damn line bent around a corner of the hurricane fence which led to the field house. It was a bad idea. Some kids running blind with fear broke through the line at that point and had to be urged back into line and through the gate. When I say urged I mean beaten and shouted at. Most got it in a few licks and headed the way they were supposed to. Not Bruce. He was full on fear blind. He hunkered in the corner and they were beating him senseless. I got there and smacked him one but saw it was no use. I stopped the other guys swinging and just started shouting at him. "It's right fucking there! Just a few feet over and you are through the gate and not much farther to go! Go! Go now! We are going to start beating you again if you don't! Move it! What the hell is wrong with you? Go!" Shit he was crying and snotting and I was at a loss.
That's when Stacy came through the crowd and put his arm around him and led him away. Well shit. I should have done that. Bruce and me were friends. One of the few black guys who always had a smile of greeting and some cool shit to lay on me. A black guy. We were beating him. I was a Nazi. A plantation boss. Fuck. I just dropped my belt and watched the rest go by after that catching and herding the few I saw thinking of heading for the corner.
Warts and all folks.
I saw Stacy about five years ago and we were always the shortest guys on the team when we played sports. He had shot up a foot after high school he said. I didn't even know that was possible. Karma folks. You will never convince me otherwise. Y'all think I'm making this shit up? Every damn thing I've said in this whole thread is true. I usually tone shit down just to make it believable but I'm done doing that.
I'm supposed to learn some stuff from this life. I get that. Some of it eludes hell out of me. Not this one.
They ended initiation after that.
Queue on 22/12/2017 at 04:56
Quote Posted by zacharias
Just to say thank you Tocky, starker etc. this has been the best thread on ttlg for absolutely ages. You should go on an after dinner speaking tour with these stories..
I kinda like the one where we all got into a fight over something or another.
...and these are wonderful, Tocky!
Tocky on 22/12/2017 at 06:15
You know how Bruce and me became friends? There was this stupid shit in the early seventies we called the black and white wars. In the south there was still a vestige of the sixties going on and it mirrored in the playground. I would look around and notice nobody was around me on the swings or whatever and everybody would be lined up like red rover only blacks on one side and whites on the other. I would go over to the white side and listen to the two main tough guys shout at each other and nobody pass a lick.
I don't know. I was kind of messed up. If you get used to fighting then your blood lust gets up when you hear shouting and I felt that. But then I knew this was bullshit too. Race fighting was stupid. My teachers were good people and I felt every patriotic reverb when they spoke of John Wilkes Booth breaking his ankle when he jumped from the balcony and hung it on the flag. That shit meant a lot to me. More than fighting. My wife and I stood at the spot Booth shot Lincoln at Fords Theater and really you just hate that deluded fucker. Anyway I listened and walked away same as everybody else. Bunch of bullshit. It happened for about a week the same way.
Anyway in class before it started one period Bruce slugged me hard in the arm out of nowhere. What the hell was that for? You know he said. No. I didn't. You were out there he said. Yeah, so were you I said, but I figure you were doing same as me. We couldn't stand in the other line could we? We both thought about that. It might be kind of funny. It never happened because that stupid shit ended soon after. But me and Bruce were friends after.
And then I failed him in high school. Hung up on that macho bullshit. He still liked me after. Mores the pity for my character.
Edit: John Wilkes Booth? Sorry folks I'm still trying to find the perfect number of drinks to loosen me up without causing me to conflate stories. It's not an exact science. Anyway, as Bruce used to say, gimmie five- on the white side- in the hole- you got soul.
Tocky on 23/12/2017 at 06:22
My buddy Kevin called me today. It's always instant happiness to hear from him. He had a stroke last year about this time. It did the funniest thing to him. He isn't sure what is gone from his memory anymore so I try to fill him in with stuff I recall about the past. Most of it he recalls and I can't tell it affected his personality at all. He is still just funny as shit out of nowhere and we know each other so well we play off each other. That isn't the weird thing though. He lost his truth filter.
It used to be he was like the rest of us and held stuff back in social situations that might not be appropriate. Not anymore. He won't come on facebook anymore because of it. I hate that. I use that to keep up with a lot of my friends lately. But I kind of have to agree. When I'm talking about something with my daughter and he brings up a mushroom trip we took together forty years ago then yeah. Time to post less. Not that I haven't told her about a lot of my checkered past but EVERYBODY does not need to know that shit. I absolutely love his hippy ass though.
Anyway we got to talking about his sister Lisa. I loved her too. All his friends loved Lisa in high school. Everybody had a crush on her. She wasn't gorgeous or anything it's just that she was spectacular. Animated and funny and full of impish drama. Huge eyes and a wide smile bubbling over with wicked playfulness. She used to jump out at me as soon as I entered his house hissing like a Christopher Lee minion and baring her teeth and we would fall into our usual roles. I would throw my fingers into a cross saying, "back foul demon from hell! who knows where those lips have been!" and she would withdraw with something like "I know where they are going to be! You can't escape me forever young one!" She knew I loved horror. And honestly I wanted nothing more than to throw down my cross and bare my throat to her.
She was two years older and so sophisticated I knew it could never be. But she was so wonderful inventive and played with me so well I stayed hopeful. Hell, his sister Cathy came home from college one weekend and woke me up from a dead sleep kissing me. She was so drunk. I could taste the wine on her lips and she held her forehead to mine in a drunken wobble and told me to arise fair prince because she had a dragon to slay. Her friends were in the background saying "Cathy stop it! He's just a boy!" I didn't mind. I wished it was Lisa though.
I spent about as many weekends at Kevin's as I did at home and when I wasn't there he was at my house. Our voices sounded exactly alike even. I would call his house and Lisa would answer and say "Kevin! Where are you? I just saw you! How are you doing this?" and I would have to convince her it was me. I always told Kev we would rule the world with our voices. When he asked me how I would say I hadn't figured that far yet. We did make a few tapes of skits we did and I still listen to them when I'm feeling nostalgic.
Anyway the closest I got was when we were sleeping on mats in the living room after a movie one night. She sat up and took off her bra beneath her shirt and I caught a glimpse of side boob. She lay on her front and asked me to massage her naked back. She enjoyed it for a long time telling me where to rub and with what pressure and when to turn my fingers to feathers. I was respectful to keep my hands well back from the boobage area but my touch must have conveyed my feelings. She told me "you haven't been with many girls have you?" I figured I had done okay but it chastised me. I was embarrassed. "That's okay", she told me, "I like that about you." We just went to sleep then.
So all these years later I'm talking to Kev and we are going over all the horrible things that happened to her in her life and how she has finally got it together now after three failed marriages and after severely wrong choices in men she now has a good one and I'm just so heartbroken for her because she was so wonderful and did not deserve any of that shit and he mentions she was raped by three guys in high school. What? I never told you that? NO you never told me. Oh. Shit dude, what the fuck? Mygod it's a damn wonder she even talked to guys.
I wanted to go back in time and beat the shit out of those guys. I didn't just want that. I wanted their names now. Kevin said he didn't know but could ask her. No no man, you don't have your filter anymore and you can't do that. I can give her your number and y'all could talk then. Yeah. Do that, I would love to hear from her after all these years and let her know I remember everything about her. That's likely better than going to prison anyway.
I've been so very lucky. I've gotten more than I deserve at every turn. It's just not fair. It's beyond not fair. One day I may break and give some asshole exactly what they deserve but I've got to remember I have kids and grands to protect. That's always the thing to consider and that's a damn shame too.
I hope Lisa calls.
Harvester on 23/12/2017 at 23:18
I like all your stories, Tocky, but that last one was oddly touching and really struck a nerve with me. Maybe it's because I too had some girls I had a connection with and eventually lost contact with, and from time to time they enter my thoughts, and I just hope life has treated them well or at least remotely fairly. In some cases, I get a general gist from Facebook or something, but with some other girls, who are now women, I have no idea at all how they're doing. I just know they were great people and I hope they've received the happiness I wish for them...
Tocky on 24/12/2017 at 03:37
Who reads a blog? Even the ones who did me wrong I want to find love and be happy.
Okay, let's get this straight, Laurie was the best looking girl in high school. No way was I in her league. A true blue eyed blonde with an absolutely perfect body. She had the Farrah Fawcett hair and the stuck up girlfriends and would have been a mean girl type if there were others like her to hang with. She had one friend, Toni, that I spoke to regular before I knew Laurie. I enjoyed coming into homeroom early and flirting. She was giggly and easy to talk to, a pretty red head. I played the suppose game with her. Just any outrageous supposition I could think of. Suppose cows had wings and you had to watch out lest they dump a load on you from above sometime? Stuff like that. Okay, maybe not that, but stuff like that.
Other than that and Lynn who I dated I had no connection to her. So when she called I was a little stunned. We talked for two hours and I'll be damned if I can recall a thing we said. She didn't seem to want to let me go. Here was this homecoming queen majorette hottie that I would have trouble forming a word in person with and we got on great right away. She called me the next night. I had been to a friends house and was high and was honest about it. It didn't matter. She was seriously into me. Right away we were talking for up to four hours every night. Then sometimes calling back to talk another hour saying goodnight. I don't know what I said or did on that double date she filled in for last moment but whatever it was impressed her. I fell instantly. She did too.
We were finding ways to see each other between classes, places to meet, places to kiss. Hungry kisses that caused me to stumble backward. She admitted she was pressing her hips against me to feel my bulge. Well damn. She was constantly arranging to meet me somewhere, someones party, at a store, at a friends, she was a whiz at that. We dated Friday and Saturday night but that just wasn't enough. I had never had any girl come at me that strong and she was drop dead gorgeous.
Every date beyond the first two was us skipping dinner and movie and just finding a place to park. She had her friends tell her the plot to movies just so she could lie about what we had done to her mom and we could touch and kiss those few hours. One night when it was time to leave our parking spot on Bell River road, which was a turn off to a farmers field that crested a knoll enough to hide my car, my lights would not turn on and I had a moment of panic. They would find out now for sure. Oh baby the emergency lights still worked. I drove all the way to the Cinema (about five miles) just catching the road in amber flashes. Why, we just came out of the theater and they would not come on Mr. Laurie's dad.
I was in art and she in theater. I had given up football by that time due to my knee and just being not good enough. It gave us even more time together. The art students built the sets for theater productions. She arranged a cast party at her friends house and they talked her mother into being somewhere else during it. After the teacher left it became a couples party. We had a kissing contest and out of about eight couples we won. 39 minuets of constant tongue dancing. Our mouths felt like rubber. Did it stop us from going back to her friends room to be alone on a bed with only the moon through the window? Some images stay with you forever and I'll never forget her bare skin in the moonlight.
Billy Joel's "Only The Good Die Young", Rod Stewarts "Tonights The Night", Bad Company's "Feel Like Making Love", every song on the radio was urging us to do it. I won't give details of our first time only that it was magical. She told me she had never and would never but I was unlike any boy she had ever known. Oh god. I was so nervous I dropped my handful of quarters before I could get one in a condom machine of the Kream Kup bathroom. They went everywhere.
She smelled so good. She looked so good. She tasted so good. Cinnamon lip gloss and White Shoulders and she slid over against me as soon as we left her folks. Just the drive to a place we could be alone was torture after that first time.
Some funny and not so funny stuff to come.
Craeftig on 24/12/2017 at 10:55
Quote Posted by Tocky
Who reads a blog? Even the ones who did me wrong I want to find love and be happy.
People interested in your content I guess. Nothing wrong with a blog per se.
Craeftig on 24/12/2017 at 13:59
Also, you can moderate comments on it. ;)
Tocky on 24/12/2017 at 18:07
Eh. I tell things to friends in social settings. A blog really does seem like a vanity press. Thanks though.
My old buddy Dit (Dwight) came by yesterday to exchange presents and yack over old stories and laugh. This is sort of the same. I like some of you guys a lot and I just want to share and try to figure things out before I croak. You don't bring weird craft beers that taste like somebody drank a beer, ate an orange, and then puked into a bottle but you will do.
He gave me one present I was overjoyed about. He has finished his novel. He had written half of it and I had gotten really into it when it just abruptly ended so I hounded him about it for months until he got back on it. I've read a lot of works and I know good when I read it. This is good.
Merry Christmas everyone! Oh and LOL my daughter just told me we were on TV during that Methodist choir thing I wrote about earlier up there. She was just flipping channels and saw us. Some local network I guess. I'm a star already so I don't need a blog!
