Those adolescent years

I guess I was about 13 years of age when I suddenly realized that the girls I used to play
with as playmates were girls instead of playmates. They were blossoming into pretty young women and they were not interested in me any more as a childhood playmate. They seemed to have very weird and different ideas about almost everything. I remarked one time that we always got along with them and suddenly; they have become un-approachable or just too busy for us.

As time went on I began to take on a different attitude toward them too, as I saw them as girls that I wanted to get to know better, a lot better.

I was at a dance one night and met a girl we will call Sylvia. She was a real looker and all the boys were trying to get to talk to her. She kind of picked me out of the crowd and we danced the whole night until it was over. One boy came over to me and said, “If I had your looks and with what I know, you would not be talking to her tonight”. He was also one of the boys that had given me such a hard time in grade school and thought he was better than me. Needless to say, we got into it and when finished, he had a very bloody nose and black eye. Growing up tough, had its advantages, that was one of them.
At that time I was almost 16 years old, and of course, I thought I was the cat’s meow.

Sylvia and I became an item in the community because she was 20 years old and she had a really nice car and would take me everywhere. In a small community, that was the talk of the town. She was related to a family that lived about a quarter mile away and when they wanted to go out for the evening, she would baby-sit for them.

Needless to say, I would be there too. I would lie down with her on the couch and go to sleep with her. When the family came home, that’s where they would find us, sleeping on the couch. Of course, that information was reported to the community that I was sleeping with her and I was a child and she was an adult. No one ever believed me when I would say. “Nothing Happened”. But nothing did happen, probably because she was older and new that if she got pregnant there would be real trouble as I was a minor. I was still in the “Children’s Aid Society” and wouldn’t be set free until I was 18.

Well, along came my real mother, she had divorced my father and got married to a man that worked in the court system in a city in another state. Through his influence and contacts with Judges and others he worked with, he was able to get custody of both of us in a matter of weeks. I was told later that it may have taken the court system 2 years to get done what he got done in a few weeks. Anyway, the community now wondered, after all these years, why did she want her two boys back, especially now, with a brand new husband. I was just about to turn 16 and she was 32, yes, I was born when she was 16.
It was concluded that I was just about to become of legal working age, as the law had just changed, and you had to be 16 now to hold a job – so it was for the money I could bring home into the household. At the time, I refused to believe that, but time would prove me wrong.
By that time I was in trade school studying to be an Electrician, fully paid for by my foster parents. I was transferred to another trade school in the new community and graduated.
During the period of time I was in school and afterward, I am guessing, maybe about a year and a half, Sylvia was writing to me as I had written to her the first day I got there.
I never once got any of her mail as they were afraid I would run off with her. I ran into Sylvia many years later, purely by accident and we had a very long talk. She was married by that time, but still had a thing for me. It was easy to tell by the way she talked to me and how she hugged me for very the last time. It was as though she wanted to turn the clock back. I was 20 and in uniform and on Liberty then. I never saw Sylvia again.
By this time, I was 17 and ½ and graduated from trade school. I couldn’t get a job in the trades because I had no experience and contractors wanted experienced tradesman. So,
my new stepfather got me a job with the local police, working the switchboard and other
duties. I had temporary police identification complete with a badge and ID card. This came in handy when I would go to a bar in Atlantic City or another big city. When I was asked for ID I would show the badge and ID – they would check and I would get in. The real problem with that was, I was supposed to be 21 to get that kind of a job.
I would get paid $155 twice a month and he wanted $150 of it every time I got paid. I would ask why I couldn’t have more of my money and he said he was buying me bonds.

One day I got really mad about working for this money and not getting hardly any of it, so I insisted to see the bonds, and I wanted to see them NOW. He threw the money back at me and told me to leave the house and never come back. Of course that was only the last paycheck of $155, not all the rest. My mother did step in and said that here may be another way to handle this problem. It was decided that I would be signed into the armed forces, as I was too young to join by myself. I chose the Navy and they signed the papers.
My Mother still wanted me to send money home, I did for a while, but I stopped it after about a year.
Would you believe, I was still a virgin and very naive to the real world.
After boot camp, I decided to become a radioman, and again off to another school I went to learn electronics, paid for by Uncle Sam. I completed, which gave me an equivalent to an Associates Degree in Electronics.
It was now time for me to go aboard ship as a striker radioman. My very first day was a memorable day. The older men I was assigned to work with realized very quickly I was so naive that they could pull all kinds of tricks on me. As a radioman, I was supposed to be able to repair the radio equipment as well as operate it. So, I was asked to get a tube to get one on the very latest pieces of equipment operable from one of the five storerooms on board the ship. Needless to say, it was a big ship. The name of this tube was called a phalopian tube and I went everywhere on board to get one. No one had one and I was getting very upset because I was told not to come back without it. Of course, it got a big laugh by all when I would ask for one. Someone finally took me aside later in the day and told me what was happening, but not before I was all over trying to get one.

Lets say, that the ship went all over the world and I saw a lot of ports and when I came back, I was no longer a virgin. I called myself a “Lean, Mean Love Machine”.

While I was in the Navy I met my current wife of 51 years (so far). I wanted to stay in the service, but she was dead set against it, so I was discharged after my 4 years was up.
I met her in a USO club for servicemen. I was trying to date her girlfriend and in doing so, I was enlisting her help to do that. As it turned out I decided that she was the one I really wanted. We were married about a year before I was discharged.

Now I am an adult with a wife to support and we had a child on the way. We had to have a place to live and you won’t believe this, the apartment we got was just across from my mothers apartment. Not the best place for my wife as she was not the one they wanted me to marry. My wife is a very strong woman and managed to survive it all until we moved to another apartment. My first child was born in May and I was discharged in November of the same year. She was a beauty then and still is today.



End of chapter 3