Tales from the dark underbelly

05/09/2020 at about oh I don't know 5:00 o'clock in the a.m.

More tales from the dark underbelly of old age,

When I was a kid living on a military base several things were pretty apparent to you very quickly. One was if you wanted to stay entertained and not stay constantly in trouble, you had to get out of the house. Two was you lived on a military base, your father was in the military, there was no extra money for you to fritter away buying cokes and candy and junk with. And three if you wanted to keep whatever money you had, well, you better learn to fight and defend yourself because the other kids on the base learned the same lesson pretty quick. These lessons applied in civilian life too although to varying degrees, but they were the same lessons.

If you put the desire to get out of the house and coupled it with the desire to have money it wasn't long before I was looking for money-making schemes that would allow me to live the luxurious lifestyle that I wanted to be accustomed to. I liked candy and sodas and they both cost money. Money wasn't given away for doing nothing and the parental units tended to get pissed off if it disappeared due to a little in-home five-finger discounting. I figured out pretty quick that I was gonna get blamed because;

A) My little brother couldn't even really talk yet why the hell did he need money? and
B) My older brother was 5 years older than me with a wicked fast left hand and if I got his ass in trouble that shit was gonna hurt. He didn't screw around if you got him in trouble with your bullshit.

I knew that from experience. Some lessons you only have to tell me once. He got really pissed off at me once (I deserved it) later in life and smacked me upside the head with that sneaky assed left hand open-faced and I swear to god I never even saw it move. I just remember the pain. Killed my buzz that's for sure. That's another story but I think that was the point. He beat my ass so my Dad wouldn't kill me. Thankx Man.

Anyway I became the industrious ten-year-old tycoon earning sometimes as much as $80-$100 or so dollars a month depending upon the time of year and what reason I could come up with for smooth-talking people out of the money they had just waiting for me that was in their purses and wallets. It turned out that no one on a base had a lot of money but everybody had .50 cents or a $1 they could spare. Also the men wouldn't pay you squat, but the Moms? Well nobody could resist my cute little smile. I also noticed everyone hated to edge their lawns. It was a military requirement that all lawns had to be edged properly to allow for drainage. People were willing to pay me to edge their lawns and I had figured out that if I edged your lawn and noticed one little extra I could do and tell you when I was done that I picked up all the cigarette butts too for example, Not only would I get the $1, but usually another 10-25 cents too. In 1967 or so at ten years old, this was BIG MONEY. You only had to do four or five customers a day two or three days a week and pretty soon you had a clientele and a fairly steady income. Some months were better than others and I never saved a dime, but I went to the movies, played pinball and pool, paid for my own haircuts after a while, and fished, and bought tackle and never needed the money from Mom or Dad to do it. Kids today talk about being bored and being broke, I just laugh at them, the lazy little shits.

That went on, the earning money doing odd little jobs, the fighting to keep it out of the clutches of the neighborhood kids until we moved to Indiana. During that whole time I learned a couple of valuable lessons too. Things like Yes it hurts to get punched in the face and Yes sometimes you bled a little bit if you chose to fight. You get over the pain and I found out it's not really that bad anyway. You can put up with it even if you get kicked in you know where's or hit in the nose. Your opponent is waiting on you to give up, and when you laughed and spit blood on them and fight back usually they have already used their signature move. Nothing is more fun than punching a bully in the nose and watching him cry.

I also found out that you didn't really have to go very far from home to make money. One thing I did for money was stand in front of the base exchange and sell GRIT newspapers. They would sell you 20 newspapers and you got to keep a nickel from every sale. Every paper was a quarter and I could sell 100 papers every month without really trying hard. That went on for a while until I got tired of lugging them around and by then I had a racket going everywhere I went for some reason or another. The other thing you always had to do was hide your money from your family. Those assholes always wanted to "borrow" it and then they never paid you back. I remember I paid my own entry fee for Little league every year, I paid the entry fee for being in the JRCA (Junior Rodeo Cowboys of America) where I learned to shovel horse manure, I paid for my own Civil Air Patrol stuff, paid for my own socks and added some money for the shoes so I had a tiny say in what kind I got, I always sold extra pens, pencils, and candy at school.

I tried a little bit of everything but also learned to be a master of the cost-benefit analysis before computers and before Excel, when looking at a new racket. If it carried too much potential for getting in trouble, then no way Jose`, I ain't doing that because then they want to take the stuff, the money, and the scheme. I got away with it at school by giving people pens and pencils when they needed it, usually in front of teachers so they could see me being this cute kind little kid and then all the other people I sold it too. Its how I figured out that there might be a ton of money in illegal shit, but there was way too much risk and it put everything else in jeopardy too.

It's why I never sold liquor, drugs, beer or cigarettes, or anything else like that. You only have to see one 14 or 15-year-old idiot searched and arrested for selling weed or pills and you figured out that somebody will always tell on you. There is no such thing as a secret at 14 years old. You scare me enough and I'm spilling my guts to you. So I learned the safe rackets to be in. When I got searched I never gave up anything but candy. "OK you can go Michael" they would say - hee hee I know thankx I would think in reply. It sounds sorta evil when you put it on paper doesn't it?

I just knew my parents didn't have any money or didn't have the amount of money I wanted and I was too young to get a job and I either had to figure it out or do without. I couldn't have a Reeses' cup? No way. I shoveled snow even though I detested it (I hated and still hate everything to do with snow -YUK), I edged and mowed lawns, I washed cars, I babysat, I took out the trash in several homes (but couldn't be bothered to do it for free at home), I pulled weeds, I picked up cigarettes, I sold GRIT, I sold candy door to door, I sold stuff at school and probably a bunch of other stuff I noticed at the time but have forgotten now.

I would tell the mom that the money was for whatever sounded good at the moment and wasn't too big of a lie. Usually telling the truth was a better option but maybe sometimes you had to embellish a tiny bit to get what you wanted. I have always been a good storyteller. If you needed a cute little kid to help you with your chores, I would smile and say "Yes Ma'am". Mom's big rule was if I was going to be inside somebody's house I had to be neat, clean, and nice and I had to make sure she knew where I was.

You would be surprised how many 30-35-year-old women want a nice kid around that they can pay to do stuff for them.

Later in life at 18 or so (yeah 18 that's how old I was !! and I'm sticking to it), I found out that 35-year-old women wanted a nice older kid around to do lots of other physical stuff for them if you know what I mean.

Those were the years !

No top five today, just dusty memories,

BigMike