Bye George! Some Saturday Non- Fiction

The late 70’s was such a great time to be a kid. We would come home from school and before my mother knew it, my brother and I would be out the door and up the street to the park. It was an every day ritual that extended into the weekend and was an all day event during the Summer months.

We always knew who would be at the park. There was George and Tommy, and Anthony, they were constants. There were also some kids who showed up every once in a while like, Lonnie and David, but for the most part, it was those three, along with me and my brother.

Although we were all in the same age range, I was a lot bigger than the other kids. Just from appearance, one would probably guess that I was three or four years older, but that was not the case. We would play football and baseball and I was always the one that everyone wanted to have on their team. I still laugh at the thought of three people trying to tackle me without having any luck.

George was your basic ten year old bully. He would fight anyone at anytime, regardless of size or age. I was his total opposite. I shied away from confrontation and would leave anytime that George wanted to start something with someone. I actually remember other kids wanting to go home and George not letting them leave. There would be fighting and name calling, but we all would come back the following day, like nothing had ever happened.

Many days we would not even make it to the park. George’s house was just three doors up and his back yard was ideal for football. We would play until we would hear our mother’s voice echoing off of the houses between our home and George’s.

“Michael! David! Time to eat!”

Of course, at that age, your friends all made fun of you for having to obey your mother, but it always seemed like we were the only ones who had to go home. I am sure that is just the way that I remember it, though.

Summers were the best. We used to get baseball games going that would last 10 hours! Because of the fact that we had no real time restrictions, we could recruit kids from other parts of town. We would end up with a dozen or more kids, sometimes. George’s cousin Frankie, was a regular. He and George were not that close at the time, but would be in the future. These were the best years of my life!

When I was about to start eighth grade, I let my father convince me that I would be better off living with him, about two hours away. The lure of his home in a coastal town, and his persistent badgering caused me to make a move that I wish that I had not. I left my brother and my little click of friends and spent two lonely years in a school where I failed to make new buddies. I would talk to my brother and he would tell me that he was on his way up to George’s house, and I would hang up the phone and cry. It was a definite low point for me.

My brother hung out with the gang for another year and then my mother and stepfather moved about ten miles away to the next town. By the time that I was in tenth grade, my father’s marriage had fallen apart and I went back to live with my mother. My brother and I were reunited, but we no longer had a gang. We developed some new friends, (one of whom is actually responsible for me being a blogger.) but never really could recapture what we had. I felt like our Beatles had split up. It is funny how it was back then. My childhood friends lived ten miles away, and they might as well have lived in Alaska. We did not get driven places very much.

I remember going back one time and hooking up with George and Tommy. They wanted to go up to the top of the railroad ridge and throw large rocks at passing cars. I knew better than to do that. Although my brother wanted to stay, I dragged him away and I think that was the last time that we ever hung out with those two.

High school was interesting because our school imported kids from three different townships. There were two high schools, one geared for academics, and another one that was a technical school, for kids who had no future college plans. George and Tommy, and George’s cousin Frankie went to the latter school, while My brother and I attended the other high school.

I did not see George again until I was eighteen or nineteen. I ran into him at the mall. I had my normal little sedan type car, and he had his souped up muscle car, exactly what I would have expected from him. We talked for a while. He had a bruise on his face from a fight that he had been in. He never came out and told me that, but I still knew how he was. He was there with a very attractive girl named, Teresa, and his cousin Frankie.
A mutual friend of ours had told me how George and Frankie had become best buddies. There was a part of me that was a little jealous. George, although a crazy guy sometimes, had been my close childhood friend. I was the only one who could reason with him and actually talk about things with him. I hated my father for messing up my childhood.

Some time later, I don’t remember the exact time frame, I ran into Lonnie, one of the semi regular kids from the playground. I had not seen him in about ten years and the full beard and mustache took me by surprise. Lonnie asked me if I had heard about George? I told him that I had not heard anything.

Apparently, George’s cousin Frankie, had been sleeping with Teresa, and George had found out. George went to Frankies house with a shot gun and shot him point blank in the thigh, almost severing Frankie’s leg. Upon seeing what he had done, George tied a tourniquet around his cousin’s leg, threw him in the backseat of his car, and left him on the concrete walk outside of the emergency room. When the police tracked George down, he had already blown his own head off.

I saw Frankie, one time, years later, walking down the street with his prosthetic leg. I did not even let him know that I noticed him. Part of my childhood died when I heard about George. I think that life was the only fight that he ever backed down from.