Women & Blacks & Hank!, oh my...

Every once in awhile I wonder how Hank! is doing without my stepfather around to pull his nuts out of the fire. Has he learned to take responsibility for himself? Or has he found someone else to protect him from the consequences of his actions?

Back in the late '70s, Hank! was busted for shoplifting. He was caught with socks in his back pocket.

Socks. He stole socks?!

Well, I'm one to mock...I got busted stealing a freaking dollar penlight. Without batteries.

The store manager called the cops and the Old Man, who went to the store and did a little song and dance--not the first, not the last--to get his boy off the hook. Can't have him going to jail or having a record or having to pay for his crime.

Maybe somewhere there's a list. Just for the sake of blogging, I wish I'd made up a scorecard, but I stayed away from Hank! as much as possible. Guy's a dick. He went from being a shoplifting dick to a drinking dick to a drunk-driving dick to a paranoid psychotic drunk-driving dick who walked along the right-of-way in front of his mother's house holding either a shotgun or a rifle. Screamed at passers-by to get off his street. People out for a walk would cross the street before passing that house.

The neighborhood adored him.

Then--early '90s--he became a drunk-driving dick who had a car wreck that landed him in jail. There were injuries. He was facing 30 days in jail. Actual consequences loomed in his future!

...and step-pops pulled some Fred Astaire magic, that old song and dance, and Hank! ended up with 6 months' house arrest instead. In our house.

If I didn't like Hank!, my mother loathed and feared him, especially after he pushed her into a wall because she was in his way. The Old Man took Hank!'s shotgun and rifle away, so Hank! wandered around the yard with a sledgehammer instead. I hid it, so he toted a jack handle instead.

The neighborhood--different neighborhood--adored him, especially with his racist screaming at the black family next door and his more mundane screaming at the white folks.

His own mother stopped letting him stay with her, so he bounced from our house to his siter's to his son's and back, never actually welcome, only endured.

I learned something the day the old man danced to get Hank! house arrest instead of jail.

I learned that "women and n*ggers" were responsible for Hank!'s plight.

The Old Man came home from the court hearing ranting that "one day I'm going to make it my business to get even with all the women and n*ggers!"

Amazing!

The past few weeks, I've amused myself wondering what the mechanism for this vast conspiracy against poor, much-maligned Hank! might be, and which group, for example, bears responsibility for which problems in Hank!'s life.

Was it the women, the blacks, or both who forced Hank! to drink?

Which group made him drive? Was it women who engineered the traffic "accident" that brought down this mighty Titan? Black people who conspired to get him arrested yet again?

Thunderstorm kills the TV? WOMEN!

Sportsball team loses the game? BLACKS! GAWDAMMIT!



I don't really have an ending for this post, other than to say I'm glad I don't share blood with him. I can't get too smug about that, though, since I did a little digging into my birth family and found one habitual offender who could well be the Hank! of that family. Felony battery, burglary, criminal mischief, larceny, prison time, five different mug shots since 2003. Makes Hank! look like an amateur.

Skatin' Hank and Collections Agents

Over the past few years, I've been getting messages from various bill collectors looking for the deadbeat son of "Hank," my crazy stepbrother. Apparently Hank, Jr. has been skating checks. No idea what Hank's part in this might be, aside from living with his son. I'm good with not knowing, given the trouble he caused all the time he was in this house.

For a few years, I didn't get any of those calls, but there were three waiting for me when I got home from the hospital Tuesday. The first two were pleasant-voiced automated messages, quickly deleted.

The third was amusing. It was from a Collections company based in Canada, the Takhar Group. It seems that they "represent" Columbia House (CD 'club') and some book clubs. This jackass was taking the tough-guy approach: "You are REQUIRED to call [whatever the number] or use our website at [whatever the web address] NOW." He went on like this for half a minute without so much as naming who he was after. I played it twice for the amusement value before deleting it--and I'm kicking myself for not recording a copy. Hope he calls back!

I did a lookup on Takhar Group and found that they've got a reputation for bullying and harassing people who don't even have a debt, let alone check-skaters and credit-defaulters. They like to come across as kneecappers and say they'll ruin your credit if you don't pony up. The Better Business Bureau gives them an "F."

Thanks, Hank. Even when you're not here, you're a pain in the ass.

Nicknames and Tone

I wish I had more stories for some of the nicknames I've come up with. I've tried to make the nickname fit the person, just the right amount of snark or contempt or whatever to give the reader an idea of what that person was like--I'm too lazy to flesh things out all the time and I like the mental picture that pops up with the proper nickname.

I came up with some really good ones--like Sergeant Allstate, the insurance salesman by day, sergeant for 1 weekend a month, the cheap and kind of slimy salesman--or Farmboy-san for one of the blackbelts back in my karate days; he really did have a farm, and the whole country-boy thing, but without being your Larry the Cable Guy redneck. But those are pretty much one-story guys. I didn't spend a lot of time around either of them. It's a shame--those nicknames took a while to work out (Farmboy-san only occurred to me this morning!).

Then there are Pocahontas/Piglet (first ex), Number Two (second ex), Scumbag (haven't written much about him, aside from the "Saving Whitney" post a few years ago), Hank (the insane stepbrother) and the Old Man (stepfather), some of whom are regular topics.

Lots of snark. It seems at first glance that I don't have a lot of happy stories. But I intend them to be at least partly funny, rather than just a collection of angry rants.

Geetar Hank!

So while Hank was on his 6-month house arrest (briefly explained here), he decided to learn to play guitar.

It's my fault. I was teaching myself to play, learning Rush songs and those of lesser bands.


Hank didn't have anything else to do. Couldn't go out, couldn't drink. I bet that hurt, given that it's been the bedrock of his existence for much of his life. So he got himself an acoustic and a chord book and started watching MTV because that's where the rock stars go. He was gonna be one, you know, because that's where the money and girls are and because he had music in his soul, like Hendrix and Van Halen.

But first...he had no music background. I had to teach him the basic strum pattern everyone seems to learn first. For the rest of his house/jail time, that one pattern is all I heard. Since he couldn't read music, he played the chord book, so I'd hear him strum an F Major barre chord (first fret)....then there was a long pause while he rearranged his fingers to play an F Major barre chord (8th fret)....another pause...another F chord (minor, diminished, augmented, whatever)...pause...chord...all night long. He never seemed to get any better.

Keep in mind that a chord book's not a music book, it's an aid that shows the different fingerings for a variety of chords. A basic book will show you hundreds. I've got one that claims 5,000! Ask any guitar probie what it's like trying to remember just the basic "beginner" chord forms, then imagine Hank just going page by page through his book, making noise instead of music.

I wonder if he ever got better.

Shotgun Hank!

I know I've never written about "Hank," my crazy stepbrother. He's the natural-born son of my stepfather and he is, as I mentioned, batshit crazy.
Hank's always been an aggressive ass and a bully. The apple didn't fall far from the tree, there, but since he spent most of his time at his mother's house instead of ours my life was a lot simpler.

I'm not sure when he started getting crazy, but I know he did it to himself by boozing heavily, driving drunk, and demolishing cars. He took a few head injuries in the late '80s and early '90s. As I understand it, the head trauma triggered some changes in his brain that led to him being diagnosed as paranoid psychotic.
One of the drunken car wrecks led to him being placed on 6 months' house arrest. In our house. Thanks, Dad (step-pops talked the judge into that instead of 30 days in jail--he never seemed to let the bastard face the consequences of his actions, but he'd whip the shit out of me for relatively minor stuff).
Hank took to muttering to himself--"goddamnmotherfuckindrinkinproblem" was a favorite--and pacing around the yard like Jason Voorhees working as a mall-cop. He carried a sledge hammer around for a few weeks, always leaving it at the back door when he came back inside. I decided that it needed to disappear so he wouldn't hurt anyone, and I'm still pretty smug about how I did it.
As I was heading into the house from a coffee run, I grabbed the thing, hoping to sneak it into my room before he came outside--and damned if he didn't pick that moment to open the back door. I'm holding the sledge in my left hand by the end of the handle (he always leaned it head-down against the house by the door) and quickly moved it so it was hidden along my left leg. He came out to my right, never even seeing the hammer, and I moved it around to the front of my leg, walked into the house, and closed the door. Scared the crap out of me. I don't know if he ever figured it out, or whether he blamed the neighbors.

He started carrying a jack handle, instead. Oh, well.

When his house-arrest was finally over, he went back to live with his mother. Instead of the jack handle, he started toting a 12-gauge shotgun or a rifle, pacing along the property line and shouting at passers-by to get off his street. Yes, they were loaded. Step-pops finally got some backbone (it always took him a while to man up and deal with Hank) and took the guns away from him. The rifle went to Hank's son. The shotgun came to our house, where the Old Man kept it in his closet. Yes, it was loaded.

In the next 10 years or so, Hank would cycle between living at his mother's house, living at ours, and staying with his son or sister out in Mississippi. By the late '90s, his mother was so terrified of him that he ended up with us when he was in town. In 2006, when the Old Man had the stroke that brought his Alzheimer's into full play, Hank had to go.

I was picked to clear the guns out of our house, since no one really knew what the Old Man would be like when the Alzheimer's took over. It was a good idea, as it happens, since he freaked out over mirrors and photos of people and was convinced that my mother was an impostor.

I found the shotgun in his closet. Yes, it was loaded. Safety fucking OFF. That's scary enough, but the ammo it had in it was a couple of triple-ought buckshot shells and two one-ounce deer slugs. That's what Hank had been toting around.

It's a wonder no one ever got killed.