Vinegar Years- Chapter 2

He left his parents house in the middle of the night while they were all asleep. He got in his van and drove 5 miles to a large wooded area and parked for the night. He had left. Now what? he thought to himself. He had taken the leap, but he did not realize what he had done. Now he was utterly on his own, with no way back. He would sleep and live in his van for the next 2 weeks until he rented a room in an old woman's house for $25 a week.

Vinegar Years- Chapter 1

He graduated from high school in June 1975, age 17. President Nixon lowered the legal drinking age to 18 in 1973. In December 1975 he could legally buy alcohol and he did. He found drinking beer dulled his rage. He followed in his father's footprints. He drank in his local bar nightly and stumbled home each night, but went to work every morning, albeit hungover. One night he came home drunk and his father ripped him a new ass. The father told him to move out. The end of June 1976 he packed his clothes and left. He ventured out on his own completely ignorant of the hard world he entered.

Vinegar Years- Chapter 1

He withdrew into himself and built walls around his emotions. People seemed to him to be ugly and predatory. His early teens were a jumble of bewilderment and confusion. His peers in school seemed to him stupid and distant. Rage began to grow in him. Hate for his father solidified into a rebellious attitude towards all adults. He grew cold and hard, for the hand that grips with an iron grasp begets a soul of iron in that which it grips. He began to pity his mother for the inescapable prison she was in. He lived in a desperation that was smothering him. He absorbed his father's prejudices and attitudes.

Vinegar Years- Chapter 1

His early years were colored mainly by his bitter father. His young mind wrestled with the riddle of why his father was such a miserable prick. He did not blame himself, he was more fascinated by the wild behaviour. He was a prisoner of his situation as much as his mother and older brother by 2 years was. The father was sole provider. There was no way out. He had to adapt to the reality. When the father went to work in the morning it was like all tension was released and a sense of normalcy descended. But each afternoon about 5 pm the tension would begin to build. If 6 pm came and went the mother would say "you boys might as well eat now." As each evening hour passed it was a dual feeling of relief the father was not home yet coupled with the growing dread of his eventual drunken and pissed-off arrival. As he got older his hatred for the father grew and leeched into his outlook on everything. He did not, could not, really trust anyone or anything. He became a true sceptic about everything. His self confidence was shot. He became bitter himself, as did his mother and brother. The mother attempted to compensate for the father's pathetic parental example, but it made little differance. He and his brother became rebellious at school and the community. His older brother discovered LSD and later pot. His brother then corrupted him with this. But it provided an escape and an alternative and parallel existance.