Liquor and Money madness
Long ago. all was not right with my small world. I was a 7-year-old dark-haired shy boy living in Buffalo,NY on the very poor west side. My mother was a selfish part-time drunkard and a fool. She was one of a few curses i had in my young innocent life. A monstrously abusive mother, a public school that dismissed me as 'learning disabled', and fellow students that treated me like a pariah, and starving in a very poor household. These were my various curses I dealt with daily.
There was a perpetually-drunk boyfriend and his grown abusive son living with us as well. Her boyfriend was a southern gentleman by birth, but not really. The accent was there, the habits and mannerisms too, but not the famous politeness. There was no gentlemanliness about him. He was a stoutly built wrinkled and tanned man from Georgia. Sporting a shiny bald head, and wearing thick glasses most of the time.
His name was Clyde Williams, and his grown son with long hair and a mustache was named Ronnie. Clyde had a long association with my mother, many years before she met her final monstrous third husband John Dunshie.
Clyde was a full-time drinker, usually drunk of whisky or cheap wine, and he came fully loaded with a seriously violent temper. His son Ronnie was closer to a drinking buddy then an actual son, and they were a dual package, ruling the roost of my mother's house normally. However, this did eventually change with one particular incident.
Clyde spoke with a very distinctive strong southern accent. I doubt if anyone ever mistook him for a New Yorker. I have memories of lots of heated arguments, and even some physical confrontations between them, but one-sided normally, him arguing and attacking her mainly, but sometimes she fought back. My mother Elizabeth was always borderline schizophrenic and very psychotic, and from my experience had no issues with physical violence. She both received it and gave it as well, and she took out her anger on me her only son too many times in the past. She tolerated it from those stronger than her and repaid the weaker in turn. Sadly, I was the latter.
She wasn’t one to hold anything back, verbally or physically. It just wasn’t her way. The few times she did hold her anger or nasty quips back, it would usually be only for a minute or two. Push her again and Hell itself might be unleashed.
One time that Clyde and her (and his son Ronnie, in his early 20s) got into a serious altercation. All three of them were heavily drinking, and this time, the confrontation was physical as well. They all seemed to have a preference for Wild Irish Rose, which came in small bottles. A strong wine, with the most important and relevant feature being its cheapness. They were merely arguing at first, as I huddled in the corner, a small boy frightened, yet seeing and hearing it all.
She was quite angry about something, and somehow she got a hold of their only money, an actual 100-dollar bill, which in today’s economy, would be closer to 500 bucks.
She grabbed the bill from the kitchen table, and using almost inhumanly madness-level speed, ripped it into at least 20 tiny pieces before they could stop her, but not before she scattered all the pieces across the entire kitchen floor in a gleeful rage that I knew only too well.
They looked around at the confetti that used to be currency, heads shaking, curses being uttered by both father and son.
As I sat in the corner watching, utterly fascinated, they did the only thing possible for them. To try salvaging this situation even half drunk as they were. She had stormed out of the kitchen after taking a good round slap from Clyde. She was halfway drunk and happy with her destruction, and kept gleefully yelling obscenities from her bedroom, though bruised.
Clyde and Ronnie slowly and meticulously gathered every tiny piece, every miniscule scrap as I sat in my corner watching. Slowly and oh-so-carefully, they were all found and placed on the kitchen table. There was still an open liquor bottle there, which they took turns sipping from.
A true drunken father and son moment. First they spent what seemed like forever slowly eeking it together, like the pieces of a tiny puzzle. They then found some scotch clear tape from a kitchen drawer and gently cautiously taped it all together. Ronnie seemed to have the steadiest hands, so he did the actual taping. It was quite an amazing accomplishment since they were both more than halfway drunk and the fiasco took the entire night to finish.
This was their liquor money and therefore, it had to be done, whatever it took, and however long it took as well. So two drunk guys, father and son both, one in his 50s, and the other in his early 20s, amazingly managed to put Humpty Dumpty back together again, for 100 dollars of liquor money. Of course they would, no doubt about it.
By God, when dawn came the deed was done, they had gathered every single scrap, and taped it together perfectly, to my mother’s ultimate disappointment. That morning at 9am Clyde went to a local bank and traded it in, and, since it was whole, and merely taped, but the serial numbers were quite readable it was taken by the bank, and exchanged for a crisp new bill.
Which of course was promptly shuttled straight to the nearest local liquor store, and spent on whatever the favorite drink of choice was. More of the same, Wild Irish Rose, I remember seeing plenty of empty bottles laying around my mother's house back then. Alcoholics have but one necessity, and one top priority for their money, more alcohol of course. From that time I hated alcoholics, and addicts as well, but who could truly blame them? This world is literal Hell for many folks, and any escape, even a false and temporary one is preferable to Hell itself, even one based on Earth.
Despicable as it is, I don’t hold it against the addicts of the world, I blame our world itself, the one we've made ourselves. Who wouldn’t want to leave it behind, in any way they can? I never accepted those kinds of vices personally, but I cannot judge, and I do understand it now. Our world is cruel, but we've molded it that way collectively, by the way we treat each other. It doesn't have to be this way at all, but it is. So we deal with it all as best we can.
Cruelty is ours, mankind’s responsibility, no Gods or Demons made this, we did, and its our fault; We collectively crafted this existence into the very Hell it is today. We've built our own hellish walls,and made them impossible to endure without vices. I learned this lesson a bit too well over the course of my life. Starting from my own house of drunkards.
THE END
