"Car #6 you just hit the lady crossing the road." the whole trailer would hear. Ethel and I would giggle.
"Car #5 you just ran the stop sign. Would you two stop please." It was so much fun. And to think we were getting ready to get behind the wheel, together, in the same Driver's Ed car. When I turned 16 I realized my mother had no intention of signing for me to get a driver's license. It's not that I'm a bad driver, oh contraire, it was that my mother saw me as a delinquent (maybe because I never complied to my curfews). I didn't push the issue because by now riding my bike was good enough. The weather in So. Cal. always seemed nice enough for a ride and everything I needed to do was close enough. It also kept me in shape. Ray had a car, and I drove it around if I needed one, or I'd steel my brother's while he was at school. (Edison high School was within walking distance.)
That was the year my Mom went on a business trip and wanted my brother to paint the outside of the house. She filled the fridge with beer as payment. She left on Friday night and would be gone a week. My brother and I had a big party that Saturday night. We figured we'd have the party early just in case something got broken. That way we'd have a week to get it fixed. Turns out it was a good call. In a drunken state of mind my brother had this bright idea of ironing his new 'I'm With Stupid' applique on a t-shirt using our new glass dinning table as an ironing board. When it cracked the sound hushed all 60+ party attenders who were in the house. Outside, we hushed the filled (with stoners) backyard when we put the keg on the picnic table and the table collapsed.
Within the week my brother and I had painted the house and hammered the picnic table back together. We couldn't lie about the glass dinning table so we left out the part about the party when we told our mother what happened. It took her a long time to find out there were over a hundred wasted teenagers trampling thru her house that night. It was long after the pot plants had started sprouting up near her roses.
We had two more parties after that while I was in high school but none were as large as our painting party.
Something needs to be said about the way my brother and I painted the house. Our mom had selected a bright yellow color and a dark brown trim. The first thing we did was to paint a BIG yellow wave on the garage wall of our house next to the front door. The neighbors didn't know we were painting the house because we had started with the back. There was no telling what they thought. No one said anything. The wave was there all week.
Making macramé speaker hangers.
This was also the year I had sex for the first time. Ray and I were hanging out one afternoon while my Mom was at work. We started kissing and one thing lead to another. I was really scared. I didn't know what I was doing. Penetration hurt but I couldn't let Ray know, so I concentrated on surfing. I thought of how good the surf was the day before when I ditched school and we spent the day surfing Oceanside. I was glad when my first sex encounter was over. Then I got used to them. Then I saw Ray at a party with another girl. I was devastated. She was a Homecoming princess and a friend of Ray's sister. In retaliation I asked another guy to the Homecoming dance. Ray and I got back together at a party after the dance and I discovered the joys of Make-up sex.
Homecoming Dance 1976
When I turned 16 I got my real first job. Up until then I'd babysit if I needed some cash, but now I was doing a lot more traveling to surf and I needed gas money. Plus I wanted a new kneeboard. Robert had a used one in his shop on Main St. that I liked so, I got a job at the Carls Jr. on Brookhurst and Hamilton. I loved it! I worked a lot of nights with a group of stoners. Deals would go down thru the drive thru all the time. My fast-food job consisted of getting high, drinking spiked sodas, and eating free food. I was also doing a lot of cocaine which wired me out so much I'd scamper about like a machine filling stock, cleaning floors, and cooking my free food. It was easy work. One day I didn't show up for my shift because Ray and I went surfing at Blacks in San Diego (that's when the nudest were all over on the beach). My job fired me only to call me back two days later. "We want you to work for us but we can't have you not showing up without telling anyone." my Manger said. I didn't do it again. When I went into the Robert August Shop to buy the used kneeboard, Robert said he'd shape me one instead. Within a week I had a 5'6" rounded pin with ever so slight wings opaque tan with white bolts down the rails 22 inch wide three inch thick single fin. It was my first custom made board. I still have it. It hangs in a small breakfast house in Carolina Beach, NC.
The school year ended with my 17 year old brother's gradation. Relatives came from all over to see it happen. The night before my brother was to walk we went to a party. The festivities at the party lasted all night (we were playing drinking card games) and when it was over Ray dropped my brother and I off at our door. He had to carry my brother. He was too wasted to stand and he fell asleep next to the font door where Ray left him, I however went into the house and into hell. My mom started yelling at me the second I walked through the door.
"WHERE THE HELL WERE YOU?" She screamed.
"I was at a party with Russ." I answered.
"DO YOU KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS?"
"Yes. Bedtime." I answered. She slapped me. Everyone in the house woke up and ran to the living room. I walked out of the house, picked up my brother, and carried him into the garage where we both spent the night. The next morning the argument continued to the point of my mother slapping me again. I hit her back without thinking and my brother (who didn't get in trouble AT ALL!) smacked me in the face. I went to his graduation with a black eye.
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