| General Non-Fiction posted March 22, 2021 | Chapters: |
Prologue -1- 2... 
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-friends are diverse and unique.
A chapter in the book Fifty Days of Friendship
Charlie
by Bill Schott
I ended the first chapter having mentioned my wife. I will explain about her in a bit. There are other people in the friend sphere that I should mention first, in order to create a timeline of some kind.
Friendships are really a multilayered or perhaps, in some cases, a prorated relationship. You may be friends on the playground, but nowhere else; friends in church only, or nowadays online exclusively. As a kid, my friends were typically my cousins, who visited constantly, or the neighbor kids, who I saw about the town looking for a pick-up baseball game or to shoot baskets.
I would like to say that my brother was my friend, but that would be an exaggeration. Mutual tolerance would fit our relationship better. I tended to pick up friends from my brother, who were all older than me. I suppose they started out as his friends, found him basically unfriendly, and settled for me.
Charlie was one. He was two years older and he developed from a sort of Pigpen character, from Peanuts cartoons, to the first hippie I knew personally. Playing in the town dump, driving the silently rusting, old cars, which sat there, we were totally unconcerned about the rats and snakes that seemed to be everywhere.
We played on the coal piles next to the train depot, and I would often return home to jeers from my mother as I was covered from my toe-head top to my bare feet with a layer of black, sticky resin. My mother would blame Charlie, in absentia, and I endorsed that accusation.
Hanging with Charlie meant that we got to look at his dad's nudey books, for the articles, of course, and smoke cigarettes on the back porch. Stealing his mom's cigarettes ensured a carefree inhalation of poisonous gases through a modern spun filter, separating the smoker from the foul tasting tobacco. When his dad's cigarettes were purloined, Lucky Strikes, the unpleasantness which that entailed was suffered.
Charlie collected all types of music, mostly from bands I had never heard of, which wasn't hard. I found that he listened to Cream, with Eric Clapton, before most people had heard of the band. Ultimate Spinach, Third World Rasberry, and the Beatles, when no one wanted to hear them anymore, were some of the LPs he played.
I guess we stopped hanging out when I was about thirteen. His older sister, who was graduating from high school, I think, wanted me to hang out and kanoodle in her bedroom upstairs. That was enlightening, but ended as soon as her mother discovered I was up there.
My friend left for Florida soon after and I never saw him again. I guess his parents retired and they all went south, except his sister; she married the Pepsi delivery guy she met at a family reunion. She was a friendly girl.
I ended the first chapter having mentioned my wife. I will explain about her in a bit. There are other people in the friend sphere that I should mention first, in order to create a timeline of some kind.
Friendships are really a multilayered or perhaps, in some cases, a prorated relationship. You may be friends on the playground, but nowhere else; friends in church only, or nowadays online exclusively. As a kid, my friends were typically my cousins, who visited constantly, or the neighbor kids, who I saw about the town looking for a pick-up baseball game or to shoot baskets.
I would like to say that my brother was my friend, but that would be an exaggeration. Mutual tolerance would fit our relationship better. I tended to pick up friends from my brother, who were all older than me. I suppose they started out as his friends, found him basically unfriendly, and settled for me.
Charlie was one. He was two years older and he developed from a sort of Pigpen character, from Peanuts cartoons, to the first hippie I knew personally. Playing in the town dump, driving the silently rusting, old cars, which sat there, we were totally unconcerned about the rats and snakes that seemed to be everywhere.
We played on the coal piles next to the train depot, and I would often return home to jeers from my mother as I was covered from my toe-head top to my bare feet with a layer of black, sticky resin. My mother would blame Charlie, in absentia, and I endorsed that accusation.
Hanging with Charlie meant that we got to look at his dad's nudey books, for the articles, of course, and smoke cigarettes on the back porch. Stealing his mom's cigarettes ensured a carefree inhalation of poisonous gases through a modern spun filter, separating the smoker from the foul tasting tobacco. When his dad's cigarettes were purloined, Lucky Strikes, the unpleasantness which that entailed was suffered.
Charlie collected all types of music, mostly from bands I had never heard of, which wasn't hard. I found that he listened to Cream, with Eric Clapton, before most people had heard of the band. Ultimate Spinach, Third World Rasberry, and the Beatles, when no one wanted to hear them anymore, were some of the LPs he played.
I guess we stopped hanging out when I was about thirteen. His older sister, who was graduating from high school, I think, wanted me to hang out and kanoodle in her bedroom upstairs. That was enlightening, but ended as soon as her mother discovered I was up there.
My friend left for Florida soon after and I never saw him again. I guess his parents retired and they all went south, except his sister; she married the Pepsi delivery guy she met at a family reunion. She was a friendly girl.
 Recognized |
Thanks to Sean T Phelan for use of the pic
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