Let’s tie this thread up….
I said child, child staring into the streetlight
Messed up child lonely boy tonight
Kick the wall turn the street and back again
Oh boy you’ve been forgotten
The old man began silencing the TV at night, then sitting at the kitchen table with a calculator, counting his money just like Scrooge–how much he would have in the future. (This became a daily occurrence by the early 80’s).
Maybe a year after the bike disaster, mom took me aside and said “Your father is going to ask if you hate him. Whatever you do, don’t say yes.”
“Are you crazy? Of course, I wouldn’t say yes!”
“One of those things he was writing down was a list of what he would do to you if you said ‘yes’. I saw it when he went to the bathroom, now he put it somewhere in a drawer. He was going to break all your records and put them back in the sleeves, break your record player, and throw out some of your clothes.”
Now there’s a psycho at work, gotta admire that kind of pure evil.
It took him months, but he did ask. He sold it to me with smiles and friendly eyes. “I hated my father, you know. It’s ok, that what sons do, they all hate their fathers. I can take it, it’s not a big deal.”
As I said last post, I merely said no. Gave him nothing else to chew on, just no.
Let’s shift now to the late 80’s…….By this time mom and I were a team, controlling everything he was told and saw. He knew and sometimes just screamed at her in frustration, but she remained mum. This time, she told me he tried to sell the bike to a store (Wolverton’s was gone) and they told him no and suggested he give it away to a church (which was funny, by that time he hadn’t been in a church for over 15 years). I returned home on a Sunday to help with some chores and retrieve more records from my room. Monday was a ‘clean up day’ where people could put anything out at the curb for the borough to collect.
He asked me to get the bike out of the cellar and put it by the curb. I was excited, time to get rid of this cursed thing. I came back inside, he’s watching tube as I sit down.
“No one would give me money for the bicycle.” He’s talking to the tv, not at me.
“Yea, I heard.”
“You hated that damn thing didn’t you?”
“Sure did”
“Why?”
“You made me sell the bike Gramma bought for me.”
“So why the hell did you want it?”
“I told you at least three times I didn’t want a new bike.”
Her considers this. “So why the hell did I buy it?”
“Search me. I got up for breakfast, you loaded Gramma’s bike in the car and said ‘Let’s go’.”
Another pause. “You remember that day, huh?”
“Yep.”
Discussion over.