Best of...?

You drowned a cat? What the FUCKING FUCK?

I need to write a song aboot this.

Sorry, posting a little late.... but I have my ducks in a row and I can give a happy home to that tabby you guys were talking about!

RealityCheck wrote:I lived at 2811 Ivanhoe. Did you go to that school? The criminals there were so dumb they tried to break into the house next door with 3 large dogs in broad daylight with the next door neighbor watching.

I called my sister because I am amazed at how small a world it is that I run into people who either lived in the same areas I did or know some of the people I do. She tellls me Ivanhoe only ran about 10 blocks.

We lived in the 1700 block, I think, because 17th Street was one block away and I think numbers went up in that direction. If I stood on Ivanhoe and had 17th on my left, I'd be facing the house and downtown Denver would be behind me. I remember the large street one block away where the bus ran (which she confirms is 17th), and two blocks further or so was the school I attended.

I lived at 2811 Ivanhoe. Did you go to that school? The criminals there were so dumb they tried to break into the house next door with 3 large dogs in broad daylight with the next door neighbor watching.

Tdarcos wrote:No one was ever beaten in my presence, although when I was about 20 or so I committed my first premeditated killing. (Killing bugs doesn't count; you either step on them or you spray the place, but it's not the same.)

I drowned a cat.

We had to get rid of it, so rather than see it suffer long-term by starving on the street, I took it in the bathtub and held it under water as it fought me with all of its strength to live until it drowned and died.

It was after that fight with the cat where my brute strength permitted its execution, I decided that if we had further cats to dispose of they could fend on their own and I could and would abandon them on the streets, I could never do that again.

I'm not sure why, but that may be the incident that made my own opinions about capital punishment soften a bit, and I wasn't so virulently in favor of the death penalty. I'm still a supporter but I'm not rabidly fanatic in favor of it.

You drowned a cat? Thats pretty fucked up. ROBBB if you ever have this guy over for dinner, don't let him wash the dishes.

Knuckles the CLown wrote:Jeeze you a regular old Tom sawyer. A tour of the phone company and a disfunctional family. Less phone company more disfunctional family. Why couldn't your mother keep a man? How did your sister enjoy your gypsy comings and goings? Was anyone ever tied to a radiator and forced to watch a beating?

Christ I lived in colorado for 5 years, managed to get arrested twice, do time, fuck about 20 girls eat 500 shitty pizzas and drink 500 different kinds of great beers. My only regret was not getting a tour of the phone company :(

I didn't get old enough to be interested in girls until after I got to California, outside of the summer of 1976 when we lived in Colorado I was very young, under 15.

My sister didn't mind. Our family moved a lot, and it gave me "roaming syndrome," I tended to go out and see things every place I went. As far back as I remember I came to the conclusion that unless I went out to the airport to see it, walk around and look, I hadn't lived in that town long enough to be a resident.

When I was very young I went to Mitchell Field in Milwaukee, where we lived; I remember that was when they first started the installation of metal detectors. I visited what is now the torn-down Denver Stapleton Airport. I visited Long Beach Airport once or maybe twice; there wasn't much to see there. I've been to Los Angeles International more than a half-dozen times, always lots of things to see. I've been to Reagan National airport here three or four times, and I've been to Thurgood Marshall BWI and Dulles at least twice each, not counting times I went there because it was the connection or transfer point between bus or rail systems.

I have no idea why my mother never married again and didn't have boyfriends - which I understand now is strange - except my sister and I came up with a hypothesis about 5 years after our mother died. We suspect that, based on the stories she told us, what happened in her life, and how we lived, that our mother was sexually abused by her father.

No one was ever beaten in my presence, although when I was about 20 or so I committed my first premeditated killing. (Killing bugs doesn't count; you either step on them or you spray the place, but it's not the same.)

I drowned a cat.

We had to get rid of it, so rather than see it suffer long-term by starving on the street, I took it in the bathtub and held it under water as it fought me with all of its strength to live until it drowned and died.

It was after that fight with the cat where my brute strength permitted its execution, I decided that if we had further cats to dispose of they could fend on their own and I could and would abandon them on the streets, I could never do that again.

I'm not sure why, but that may be the incident that made my own opinions about capital punishment soften a bit, and I wasn't so virulently in favor of the death penalty. I'm still a supporter but I'm not rabidly fanatic in favor of it.

Jeeze you a regular old Tom sawyer. A tour of the phone company and a disfunctional family. Less phone company more disfunctional family. Why couldn't your mother keep a man? How did your sister enjoy your gypsy comings and goings? Was anyone ever tied to a radiator and forced to watch a beating?

Christ I lived in colorado for 5 years, managed to get arrested twice, do time, fuck about 20 girls eat 500 shitty pizzas and drink 500 different kinds of great beers. My only regret was not getting a tour of the phone company :(

I lived in Colorado, at first I thought it was twice, now I realize it was at least 3 if not four times. All of these were either in Denver or the Denver Metropolitan Area.

Thinking about this has clarified my thinking. In no particular order, here they are:

1. My sister owned a house with her husband on Ivanhoe Street and our entire family lived there for a while, then

2, me, my brother and my mother moved to another part of town - on the other side of Ellsworth - then moved on to California.

In both those cases I was young enough that I was going to Elementary school, below 6th grade.

3. I spent a summer at my sister's place in a suburb of Denver that (then) was far enough out that bus service was commuter-type only. This is the kind where it runs into downtown Denver from about 6 in the morning until 8, and then back from Denver from about 3 until 6. Other than that, no service.

I believe #3 was before my sister got the house on Ivanhoe.

4. I spent the summer of 1976 - I was there on July 4 - back at the house on Ivanhoe. Me, mother and brother had moved to California. I rode out to Denver - alone - from Long Beach courtesy of Continental Trailways. I remember that because back then for some strange reason I had this dislike of the Greyhound company.

5. Me, my brother and mother were living in an apartment in the city of Arapahoe, directly across the street from Buckingham Square shopping center, which I routinely kept mistakenly calling it Buckingham Palace. I think I can reconcile the events by putting #5 either before we lived on Ivanhoe, or between #1 and #2. It's kind of fuzzy.

I do remember during #5, the theatre across the street in the shopping center was running "The Prisoner of Second Avenue" and "Murder on the Orient Express" which was the worst movie I would ever see except maybe until "Fargo" came out.

I remember two things I did while I was living in Denver, which was when I was on Ivanhoe. One, I saw an exhibit at the telephone company's office downtown. It mentioned that tours were available. I call and find out they're not available for individuals by themselves. But the sign didn't say this. So I did the exact right thing. I found out once from a book that with large companies like a telephone company, the thing to do is call the office of the president of the company, where you won't get them, but you will get some flunky who'll usually try to placate you.

So I called the president of Mountain Bell - QWEST wouldn't even exist for twenty years - and spoke to someone there. They told me to wait while they checked into it.

They did. Half an hour later I actually got my tour.

The second thing that happened was I essentially snuck onto a tour group that was visiting a railroad yard, and we went inside one of the towers. I stuck around for a while after everyone left, and actually got to run the tower (with the guy watching me). He had the TV on where they were showing the several week-old premiere for "The Towering Inferno," and I pointed out that was old; I'd already seen the movie.

Oh the memories of childhood. I think about some of the things I did back when I was a kid, that either were serious crimes then or since have become crimes but weren't when I did them. I'll talk about that in a different article.