Freddogg Off The Chain

A midnight knock came at my bedroom door. I hoisted myself off the floor level mattress and stepped over the side rails .The bed’s slates had long before broken. I was college guy, rumpled but fit, and neither was my fault.

I opened the door and down the end of tar dark hall I heard a voice, ”How would you like a few sky rocket balls up your ass?” And then they started to come by the hundreds. I could hear my roommates Thom laughing. I closed the door suddenly in the middle of an "Apocalypse Now" outtake.

By the way if your laughing you must realize I could have lost an eye.

A week later in the dead of a winters night Thom went out the front second story window of our downtown West Chester apartment, walked along a ledge, and crawled through an open window into a flop house. Then he crawled back and sat in the easy chair next to me. We often sat in the dark and waited for bars to close because there was always a show. The fact that Thom has just gone ledge walking dressed in all black didn’t get my attention in the least. He just went off on those types of sorties.

What he did while out and about was set three timed fuses to strings of firecrackers under the beds of drunken bums as they were affectionately known back in 1968. They started to go off and I thought the noises and flashes would never stop. Thom didn’t smoke pot like most Sixties morons but he laughed like he swallowed a bowling ball of hashish.

There was a party in our old style four bedroom piece of shit apartment. A college girl got sick. She went into the bathroom with a friend. Big mistake! Thom tossed in a string of firecrackers then locked the door from the outside. The only time he laughed harder was when they came out and started screaming about what an asshole he was. The more they badgered him with insults the funnier he found it.

Young boys to men become enamored early by sparkers, firecrackers, cherry bombs and eventually homemade blockbusters and paipe bombs. Why do hundreds of thousands enegized Americans show up at Fourth of July Fireworks celebrations? Personally, I hate fireworks and I don’t know what that says about me other than I have seen too much victimization and I know that someday the guy on the barge is going to be Thom and he will attack a city and cause a riot.

So don’t give your stupid kid fireworks and if he’s walking around the yard with a sparkler this Fourth of July smack him and the grandmother who bought it.

Peace Freddogg

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