Quote Originally Posted by Quick Orange View Post


Brad, how is it you end up in a ton of either really great or really ****ty situations? I'm sure it all happened, it just cracks me up the extent to which it seems to happen.
I was a very rotten kid. My mother is an alcoholic and has a history of mental illness. She was in a state hospital from a few weeks after I was born until I was seven years old. My old man worked three jobs (two full time) to keep my mother going. I was raised those first seven by my brother and my mother's father. He was a character. When my mother suddenlty appeared in my life I would have nothing to do with this wacky stranger who was constantly telling me what to do and that I was wrong and why couldn't I be like my brother and that I ruined her body and made her have to get a hysterectomy and I was a mistake who would never be anything but trouble. I was constantly trying to avoid her so I was running the streets, smoking cigarettes and weed and drinking booze from the time I was eleven. Whenever I got in trouble I was beaten with "The Stick" unless it was a measureable offence for which I was beaten with a black jack Dad had from the National Guard. I ran away from home three times before I was sixteen. Each time I'd go someplace different. The last time I spent six days on the streets in the South Bronx doing drugs and fighting. I grew pretty big and looked older. I was in the class of 1976. A very hot chick in the class of 75 had me as driver and security when she got a gig stripping in Bridgeport bars. Eventually I joined the Navy to get away for good.

When my ship was in the Portsmouth Navy yard I got a gig as a bouncer in the best bar in Portsmouth, NH. It was the Kearsarge House. They had national blues and jazz acts every week. I got to hang with greats like J.B. Hutto, Junior Walker, Eddie Shaw, Mose Allison, the Brubeck Bros, Albert Collins and many more. I met my first wife in there. Our relationship was deeply in the shade of drug and alcohol abuse. She slipped me a mickey (nine atavans in red wine)during dinner on Easter Sunday. I awoke the next day at 0930 in an empty house. She left me with two dogs, Fritz and Bumper (he was a blind pekinese), my records and the B&O stereo and a 12ga double barrel shotgun. She took all the furniture and the new Isuzu Trooper and the kids. I was stuck with the house which was worth less than a third of what we paid for it. I sat on the floor of my empty house with the barrels of my shotgun in my mouth. Fritz and Bumper standing by faithfully made me realize that if I pulled the trigger they would eat my brain off the wall and eventually they'd eat me to temporaily fend off their inevitable death from starvation. I decided to make some other decisions.

Wasting my life running the streets and hanging in bars gave me alot of great stories. My retirement plan is to have a stroke and die alone. I am the "don't let this happen to you" picture.

I apologize for hyjacking this cool thread.