The Interesting Adventures Of Doc.

  In the summer of 1980, I lived in Sacramento California. I had just finished music school and went back to California to look for a paying gig. I lived near 22nd and P St. It was a duplex and I lived on the bottom floor. I worked around the corner at the newspaper, loading papers on the trucks. One day I noticed a woman sitting on the porch at the house on the corner. She was tall, had dark skin and wavy black hair. I assumed she was Italian or Greek. The more I saw her, the more interested I became. Walking over to her house would take a lot of nerve when we did not even know each other. A friend, who lived a few blocks down the street and she always passed by the house on the corner on her way to the store. Her name was Peggy. One day I stopped her and told her about my interest in the woman who lived on the corner. I asked her if she could mention my interest. She said she would have no problem doing that for me. We were friends who sometimes spent time together...

      When the phone rang, Doc was watching football on the television. He almost let it ring, as was his habit. It was a pleasant surprise to hear Eline’s voice when he answered. He and Eline had met some six months earlier while he was in the Netherlands for a Jazz Festival. When she    dropped Doc off   for his return flight back to San Francisco, she told him she would visit   him at his home. At the time he  did not think much of it,  but there she was on the phone asking for a ride from the airport. It was a   typical rainy and foggy San Francisco evening as Doc made his way south on the 101 towards the airport. His dogs had created a fuss when he left his home because they had been waiting for their evening walk. He thought to himself that the dogs would have to wait for their walk on this day. When Doc slowed his car near the KLM terminal, he saw Eline sitting on a suitcase, waiting. His   thought back to the t...

      In the fall of 1969, I spent some time in Juvenile Hall for borrowing cars. My social worker got me into a children’s home right outside of Toledo, Ohio. Any place would have made me happy as long as it was not the lockup or back home. I enjoyed going to the baseball field across the road and hitting balls. One day a girl came to the field and suggested we pitch to each other. She told me her name was Elaine. Elaine could play and knew all about the game. She was a breath of fresh air. We talked for hours about baseball, football, boxing, and what we wanted to be when we grew up. It did not matter what the subject was; we were always on the same page. She was a tomboy, but that did not matter at all to me. There was something about her I could not resist. She was my friend. We hung out at the middle school we both attended and most days after school. One day Elaine told me there was something mysterious about me because I was not like the ot...

  In the fall of 1977 I moved to San Francisco. I had visited the city several times in the past and found it to be cool, hip, laid back and open minded. I did not give moving much thought. I just got it in my mind one day, and that evening I packed up and was gone. I hung out with people who did not fit into the main stream and looked down on by big society and the pretty people. I found them to be most refreshing. An associate introduced me to someone who had one side of her face disfigured in car crash and fire. She told me her name was Sam. I could tell she was conscience of her face as she covered the disfigurement with her hair. Sam was cool and we saw eye to eye on most things. We talked for hours on end about everything in the book. One afternoon she came to my house and said she needed to talk to me. I let her in and asked what was on her mind. Sam told me that she needed a favor and that she would understand if I said no. I told her that I would do her the fav...

      People might say I was mean in my handling of a classroom bully. It probably was mean. All these years later, I still do not have one ounce of guilt. Julia Benz was a bully, and she reminded me of Brutus. Julia taunted me daily. She would throw spitballs at me while we were in class and hit me with her fist when we were in recess. This girl would throw rocks at me while I walked home from school. As a result, I had bruises all over my body. I sometimes wonder if there was more to it than just her taunting me. It would be great if I could go back in time and find out. On her way home, she would walk up the dirt road about fifty yards from my house. Being the mischievous boy that I was, I started searching for a way to make Julia pay for all that she had done to me. I thought of everything from placing thumbtacks on her seat at school to trashing her lunch box. None of that seemed nasty enough. I had this BB-gun that I used to hunt rabbits in the woods. We did n...

  The first thing I learned living on the street was to trust no one and to never let anyone what you are thinking. The pretty people like to say that they would never eat out of garbage cans. I have news for them. Not only would they eat out of garbage cans, they would like it. They would also do whatever they had to do to eat and stay out of the cold. I met a girl who hung out around skid row. Her name was Pauline and she introduced me to a crooked real estate agent who would pay us to break into houses and steal paintings, jewelry, and other expensive items. Pauline and I became fast friends. It is hard to explain but whatever that ‘IT’ is, we had it. We could not get enough of each other and we clicked physically, mentally and emotionally. We ran errands for thereal estate agent so we could earn a little money to eat. This real estate agent catered to wealthy people and her crooked ass had us ripping everyone off. She would tell us what home and what to take. She would take...

      It was a cool sunny day and Doc bounced down the steps from the house in which he lived. He was going over to see his cousins who lived on Fernwood Street. It was about a 45 minute walk, but he did not mind. He loved the cool, brisk air. As Doc was approaching Fernwood, he heard someone calling him. He looked around and saw that it was Marie. Marie was one of his cousin’s friends. She lived right across the alley in a big yellow house. Marie was always throwing hints at Doc, but him being young and dumb thought the girl was playing. On this autumn morning, she hugged up close to him and told him that they should go down to the empty house. She expected him to say no, but when he said yes, she put her arms around him and gave Doc a sloppy wet kiss, tongue and all. When they got to the house, they went around back to get in. She led Doc upstairs and into a room with a piano in it. Doc had a hard time imaging someone leaving a piano behind. With his limited skill...

  Doc was an adventurous kid. He was mischievous, and he liked the girls. The staff at the children’s home did not care for his midnight creeps. He was living at the children’s home because he left home at 13 because of a bad family situation. I imagine every kid has their breaking point. Doc worked down in the barn and the pasture taking care of the horses and cows. Taking care of horses and cows is not an undemanding job. To do it right requires hard work and you must like animals. His counselor assigned him that job to keep him out of trouble. On more than a few occasions, his friend Mary would sneak down to spend some time with him. Other times, he would sneak over to meet Dru under the kitchen porch. He got away with it most of the time, but he got caught once in a while. The punishment for breaking the rules was getting thrown into the quiet room. The quiet room was just that, a dirty room with a dirty mattress on the floor. There were two rooms. None had a toil...

  After my discharge from the Marine Corps I went to live with my mother. I had never lived with her and I wanted to get to know her. It was a crowded house with just two bedrooms and four sisters, a brother and nephew. I lived and slept on the sofa. It was close to Thanksgiving and there was no holiday meal planned. Donna Jean, my younger sister, and I decided to pool our money and cook a holiday meal for the family. Donna Jean and I were just a year apart and were close. She was the sibling I never had. We went to the market and purchased a big turkey and all the fixings. We got stuff to make three different pies and a cake. We took it all home and told the family that we would be cooking the Thanksgiving meal for the family. Everyone seemed receptive to the idea. On Thanksgiving morning, we started cooking. We cooked most of the day and the meal came out perfect. We set the table, laid out of the food, and waited for everyone to come to the table. No one came. Whi...

  As a little boy, I lived in the small football town with two wonderful people who were not my parents. Mrs. Rodgers was my aunt, and Jimmy was her husband. I lived with them because my mother could not care for me, and my dad wanted nothing to do with me. Mrs Rodgers was a kind woman who taught me many things about living off the land and surviving in the wild. Mrs. Rodgers passed when I was five, and Jimmy then took over my care and would not let my dad’s family mess with me. Jimmy was shady. He had a habit of taking me to pool halls, juke joints and sometimes brothels where I would play with the other kids. It might seem like a bad thing for a kid, but that was an education I would never receive in school. Jimmy passed five years later, and my dad rushed down to move me to Toledo, Ohio. It is my belief that he did so to keep my mother from me. I Mr. Moore came to the house where I lived and made me give away my dog and toys. I felt much anger about having to give...