Author: Lee

Another one bites the dust. Another piece of my childhood, my memories and my life, gone. I drove by today, and the lot is flat. No remnants of the building remain.

Such has become so frequent locally that it’s normal. It kills my heart and breaks my soul.

I lived in this home for a period of time. It had been converted into four apartments. I lived in the two that are facing this google street view image.

I was shoved into this new living situation because “Kathy says you can’t live here anymore” according to my father. Kathy is my stepmother. I don’t know how or why he allowed that to happen. I certainly wouldn’t if faced with a similar situation.

My mother had just moved back from her years long sojourn with her husband at the time, on a drug and alcohol fueled run from the law. They ended up in Lubbock, TX as they ran out of gas to make it to their original destination, Oregon. My mom had spent time there working at a nursery, while they lived in a camping trailer. She had come back alone, trying to get away from him.

She had gotten a job, and a good one, at General Electric. It was at the time one of the largest employers in the area and the largest side by side refrigerator factory in the world. She had rented the top floor apartment facing Walnut Street.

So here I was, essentially thrown at my mother like the garbage. It was odd, it was scary and it was traumatic. It was only a 1 bedroom apartment, my bedroom was the living room. I had no place to keep things, even clothes. Such was my life for that period of time.

It was during this period that I got into some of the most serious trouble I had ever gotten into in my life. It was the summer between 5th and 6th grade. I, like my father had matured physically earlier than my peers. I was six feet tall by then. I met some of the neighborhood kids and started to form bonds, as the move meant going to a new school (that also doesn’t exist anymore). It was a nice summer bonding with those guys, we got into a lot of mischief.

There was a new gas station one block away, called Bigfoot at the time but now a Circle K. Back then, they used to store all of their cases of soda right outside the front door. We hatched a plot to take it all, and take it all we did. With two lookouts, we would run across the front making sure to keep our heads down to not be seen by the employees. We would then drop off our load at the back of the gas station, in an alley. It was a circular pattern that we repeated until we had met our goal. We then split up the spoils and took our booty home.

I, through the connections I had made found out about these things we called “bullets.” No, they were not the item a piece of ammunition fires out of a firearm, but something used on cable TV systems to block premium TV channels. This was before the wave of “digital” everything in our lives. These “bullets” would give you the channel if you placed it on the back of your TV however. So, we banded together to harvest as many of these as possible – to sell on our neighborhood’s black market.

There was a trick to harvesting these “bullets” however, as they were installed on the distribution blocks that fed cable TV access to each home, roughly fifteen feet in the air. Most of the electric poles in the vicinity had steps embedded in them however, making access easier. Those steps didn’t start until about six feet, causing some issues. We would often use trash cans and other items we could find to help us reach our goal. We obviously couldn’t do this during the day, so it would always be late at night when we did this. We didn’t want an unsuspecting person to start looking out their windows when we disconnected their cable service to remove these items, just to connect it back a minute or so later.

They were a very popular item, which we would sell for $20 a piece. They worked for Cinemax, Showtime and Encore but would not work for HBO. For HBO, the cable company installed a device that blocked the network and would have to do something in their office to enable the service.

It was during this time that I also became addicted to the act of being a “peeping tom.” There was a piece of my sexuality that was becoming awakened. My stepfather constantly had porn videos playing, or old fashioned pornographic magazines around. It wasn’t all about the sexual end of the spectrum for me however. It was about doing something I knew was wrong and the rush of adrenaline it gave me.

Those were the good times. That was when life was good and my innocence was being chipped away slowly. Then my stepfather came back, looking for my mother. I was actually spending the night at my best friends house when we heard a very loud clatter. It was him, he had driven back from Texas, pulling that camper he and my mom had lived in the entire time.

Soon enough, he had moved in with my mother and we moved into the apartment downstairs. It was “larger” according to the adults, but again I had a couch to sleep on and not much else. My clothes were kept in a cardboard box in the bedroom. The bathroom was so small that only 1 person could stand in it at a time.

The kitchen was straight out of the 1950’s, with metal cabinets and countertop. The stove looked like a 1959 Cadillac, with curves galore.

I had heard a tale from neighbors about that apartment. A trucker and his wife had lived there previously. He came back from a run to discover her in the act of cheating on him with another man. The neighbors said that he shot her in the head in the bathroom. There was a bullet sized hole that was covered by a piece of foam backed plastic and a couple of blood spatters high on the wall. I believe that story to be true.

Eventually tales of violence and sexual conquests would come back to the apartment, and they would leave their mark on me forever.

That summer, I had made a girlfriend of sorts. She lived by my best friend and we would talk here and there. Eventually we started talking on the phone a lot. We then began going to each others houses. There was one large difference between us however, she was 17 and I wasn’t 12 yet. Physically, I had the stature of a 17 year old, but wasn’t matured emotionally yet.

One night she came over, my stepdad filled her thoughts of being his secretary of his “company” that he ran (he always worked for himself, but was by no means rich), gave her alcohol and started massaging her. Before I knew it, they were in the bedroom, having sex. I couldn’t believe what was happening, right there basically in front of me. I was crushed on multiple emotional angles. I didn’t even know how to process it. When they finished, she came and offered to perform oral sex on me, but I wasn’t even sure what that was and I didn’t even want her near me. My stepdad paid for her to take a cab home, I never heard from her or saw her again. She and I had been playing “footsie” before everything transpired.

When school began, I was suddenly forced to realize how much of a different area I was in. There was originally two 6th grade classes, but one of the teachers quit. After multiple substitutes, we were finally provided with a teacher who was supposed to be there the rest of the year. I don’t know if she finished the year or not, because I was expelled from the school in October.

Before I get to how, I must explain why. Being the tallest kid in school, I became a target of anger from all of the other boys in my class, except for one who was oddly enough the smallest in the 6th grade class. He was one of the kids I befriended over the summer. I was chased, beaten and terrorized in and outside of school.

One day, while walking home from school the entire population of 6th grade boys followed me, in an attempt to beat me up. This was when I refused to be a victim any longer. My mother surprisingly showed up in an attempt to pick me up from school and witnessed this, along with the single friend I had made. As these boys were throwing rocks and other items at my back, I turned around and threw one of them into the path of a car. He almost got hit.

That however didn’t stop the attacks. A few days later, a group of them came with BB guns and knives, shooting up the apartment and bursting holes into every window. I grabbed the keys to my mom’s Dodge St. Regis and ran them down (no I didn’t run them over). I did however, run over their bicycles – all of them.

Those kids still weren’t deterred. My stepdad had bought me a cheap Daisy BB handgun. I carried it with me anywhere and everywhere I went after that. Anytime I saw one of those kids, I would shoot at them. I had hit a few of them, it’s aim wasn’t exactly precise.

Eventually, I decided to take that BB handgun to school with the intention of shooting everyone I could. The stresses from the horrible life I was living in addition to the constant attacks I was facing from the school (both students and administration) were more than I could bear.

So I loaded it up with all of the BB’s it could handle, and brought an extra tube of BB’s with me. I showed that friend I had made right before we made it to school. I was going to leave it in my backpack but chickened out and hid it in a bush instead. Someone saw this and reported it to the principal. Within an hour they had called the police and placed me under direct supervision.

The police talked to me about how that BB handgun looked like a real one, and how they would shoot someone with real ammunition if they saw someone with it. I was expelled from the school (Templeton Elementary School) but I was advanced to the 7th grade with only having 2 months of my 6th grade education. Much like the majority of educators in my life, they were just passing the buck.

When I got back home, my stepfather surprised me with a beating with a switch that I’ll never forget. I was then driven to Terre Haute to stay in Charter Hospital under lock down for the 2nd time in my life. This experience was much darker than the previous time. I was there for 3 weeks.

I don’t know if there were other complaints made about me to the police or what, but I was eventually put on probation for a term of 6 months. I distinctly remember my father taking me to the homes of each of the boys who’s bikes I had destroyed. He paid their parents for my destructive defense.

So, goodbye 1301 South Walnut. You brought a lot of misery to my life. While I certainly didn’t have a good time while being a resident of your neighborhood, you did leave memories and impressions on my life that I will carry with me to my dying day.

Postscript:
That single friend I had made while in that school turned out to be the biggest bully of them all. His mother died when we were in middle school, and he was put into the foster care system. I eventually lost contact with him. It wasn’t until the age of Myspace and Yahoo! Profiles that we reconnected. It was great for the 11 year old me, who always appreciated how he stood by me when it felt like the world was against me. He eventually moved back to Bloomington, but lived a life on the edge. Sleeping on friends couches or making girlfriends just for a place to stay. I offered him my garage for anything, and did whatever I could for him. I even enlisted my dad’s AAA service when his car broke down. He constantly pressured me to let him stay at my home for free, but my wife at the time wouldn’t allow it. I eventually got divorced, and when I began dating again, he started harassing me about it. I had to block him on social media and cut him out of my life on the request of the police. He has a lengthy rap sheet, with multiple convictions but seems to always slide between the cracks of the justice system. Funny to call it that, as his first name is Justice. As of late, he began harassing people making comments on The Bloomingtonian’s Facebook page. The website is operated by an award winning photojournalist who is trying to keep local journalism alive. I’m happy he’s no longer in my life, but sad that he can’t let go of his own sadness enough to not bully and intimidate others.