Chapter 3:
The Rebel
It must have been the rebel in me that made me the way I was at the young age of sixteen. Looking back to this time I must say that it had to be what most teenagers go through in their lives. At this age you think that you are finding out about the secrets of the world that none of the adults in your life wanted you to know. It’s kind of like the time you said a cuss word for the first time around your folks. They couldn’t believe their ears. Where did you here that word! Of course you probably heard it from your parents when they thought they were all alone, maybe you heard it from your friends, the latter is the most likely of course, at least that would be what you would tell your folks.
Now being a teenager, having a job, a girl friend, and plenty of friends. I thought I was pretty much all grown up. I started coming and going from home as I pleased but not as my mother and father pleased. This created a lot of arguments. Which caused me to slip further away from the innocence of my upbringing.
Now I was to be accused of smoking pot or taking drugs, but though I may had been around it, I didn’t know it. I didn’t know what it looked like or even smelled like. My friends for the most part were older, but they liked Boones Farm Wine and some beer. Where we lived was in close proximity to the Ohio state line and you only had to be eighteen to drink in Ohio and twenty one in the state of Indiana. So many trips were made to the state line for some of the booze.
I liked how I felt being with my friends and to have the good times that we were having required money and we all had some, some more than others, like me. Working at the super market and selling the candy and cigarettes at school made me the one big supplier for the parties that we had. This went on for most of a year. Then I finally woke up and realized that I didn’t have any money, that I was living paycheck to paycheck. I supposed that would have been okay for a seventeen year old, but I was so much older than a normal seventeen year old. I had learned to make money better than anyone I knew.
I decided that I needed to occupy my time better than partying, so I took another job that I would work along with what I was already doing. I went to work for another super market company, Kroger.
This job was several nights a week starting at 10:00 p.m. That was when the store closed. No twenty four hour stores back then. The manager of the store would lock the night crew in and the crew would stock all night long. We had a good team, we would put up a whole trailer load and have the store looking good by 7:00 a.m. when the manager would come to the store and open up. I would then get a bite to eat and have several cups of coffee at the restaurant next to the high school that I went to.
School became harder to get through and I thought I would never make it through the day. My grades were slipping badly, but I just hung there. I’d get done at school and go to my other job at the grocery. Couldn’t wait to get done and head home. I remember that on my way home I would think about what was waiting for me when I got there. What would it be this time? My grades, homework, chores, or was it just not ever being home. Every night there was something that would lead to an argument. I was distancing myself from my family more and more each day and week. Time was flying by all I was doing was working, going to school and sleeping. The school year was almost over and soon I was going to be seventeen.
This year was going to lonelier that I thought, as most of my friends were graduating from high school and they were all either being drafted into the Army or signing up for the Marines. They were going off to a different life, some to a sad life by having to go and fight in the Vietnam War. Coming from a family where my father had been in the Navy and most of the fathers of my friends had been in some type of service, it was no surprise that this would be the future of most of my friends. I wanted to go along with them. So I went downtown to the office where you would enlist. This office was for the Navy and the Marines. I got some information and I talked to a few sailors and marines. I of course had to be eighteen to enlist. So I had to wait for a year.
