Something I wanted to write about...

Pardon my writing skills. I have none.

This is the past. It is true but it is the past.

Mid February, well before that...

In the winter of 1974/1975 I headed back to Clearwater/Tampa area to return to see my friends there from the year before. The house I had stayed at was now closed down and everyone was gone. I bummed around a few days thinking "well, there must be something more". There was nothing left even similar to what I had experienced just a year ago.

Thinking more I decided "nothing here then find something". I went to Miami looking for something less disappointing than nothing.

I arrived there with nothing and went looking for work. At Manpower I met a group of guys. everyone shared a single room with a bathroom and kitchenette and they all worked two shifts at Coca Cola bottling plant every night. One shift you use your name to work, the AM shift you just used some other name and you were paid two checks every morning. I think it was around $20 each or more like $32 after taxes with both cashed.

This seemed great. I gave my share which was about $5 a night for the room and rest went to rum, beer and weed. What we really did for work at Coca Cola plant was drink rum & coke and break bottles. We were hired to clean up broken bottles so we needed broken bottle clean up to show we earned our money.

I think around 10 days into this my (our) supervisor tried to rape me. I was 14 years old, he was late 20's. I convinced him there would be blood and he gave up on me throwing me out and firing me.

I had some money left. I think $5 to maybe $8 and I walked down the BLVD. It was Tuesday or Wednesday and that was quarter 16 to 20 ounce Budweiser draft beer special day everywhere, so I started hitting bars.

I met a guy at a bar and he was pretty much in the same boat as me so we drank together. Plan was one beer at each bar so we could drink but not get stupid drunk. I drank with him till about 2:30 and we were walking in between bars when I looked back and saw two guys walking towards us. They were walking fast but not looking at us so I said nothing. When they got to us they split around us and then the blonde guy had a mini baseball bat in his hands. This guy was built too. To describe him I'd have to say he looked like Chuck Norris. He beat my friend in the face with the bat, as he did this the other guy pinned my face to the glass store or warehouse front window screaming at me "you want some? You want some too?" I asked why. He said guy I was with broke into a car earlier. He was with me earlier, they had the wrong guy but the blonde killed him right there on the side of the street.

I ran down the street after they left and hid in weeds and bushes along the beach. I think I hid there a couple to three days only moving a little way at a time until I came to Biscayne Boulevard and from there on to Lincoln Street.

From there I got a job at The Ritz Plaza working for Judah Bernstein. I lived and worked there a few months glad just be off the streets. Judah fucked me over for all my pay and I got run over by a car leaving but still it was worth it.

I had learned something about life and a few things about death.

People know me now but I don't. Those few moments changed me forever.