In 1966 my mother was pregnant again and had a boy. He became very sick and they had to transport him to San Antonio, the nearest Army hospital that had a heart specialist. While my mom was in the hospital giving birth to my little brother my dad came home late one night drunk. I had already gone to bed. I woke up to find my dad in my bed playing with my penis, then he made me play with his and I don't want to talk about what else took place. I didn't know what to think, he kept telling me that he loved me. My mom had become very sick during this pregnancy and I had to take care of my brother and sister. When I would get home from school it was my job to take care of them till bedtime. I had to feed them, bath them, and put them to bed. So to say the least I was not happy that she was going to have another baby, I knew that I would have to take care of him too. When my dad told me to pray for him, before leaving to escort him to Texas, that's exactly what I did. But I didn't pray for him to live, I prayed he would die. Guess what? He did die, he was missing one of the oxygen tubes to the heart. I carried that guilt around with me till I was an adult. When my mom got home from the hospital I couldn't talk to her about what had happened because she was so depressed about my dead brother, she had her tubes fixed after giving birth to him. The next time my dad did it to me, I tried to tell her but she wouldn't believe me, she told everyone that I was just a trouble maker.
About six months later my dad got orders to go to Germany and this time he took us with him. A couple of months after we got there I found a job working with the Beer-man. This guy, Rolland, had a flat-bed truck and it was loaded with beer and soda cases. He went around to all the American housing complexes delivering the beer and soda. There was 24 bottles to a case, the cases were either wooden or plastic, the beer bottles had those ceramic caps held on with wires, just so you know how much they weighed. I got to where I could carry one on my shoulder and two with my other hand. During the summer I worked with him all day, during school I only worked after school til we were done usually between 7 and 9. Got pretty good money too, and of course I had to pay rent and buy my own cigarettes and what ever food items I wanted for myself. I even had a suit tailor-made for me, it had the Nehru jacket and was made from shark skin material, bell-bottoms pants with a Spanish waist, three buttons on each side above the zipper. I wore it with a turtle neck shirt, or sometimes just a dicky.
My shoulders had already stated filling out because of the hay hauling days, by the time I started playing football in the fall my shoulders were out there. That's why I played defensive guard. When we got to Germany I stated the eighth grade, the school I went to was run by the Department of Defense. The local school only went up to the ninth grade, the high school was in Frankfort about 20 miles away. You could live on campus if your family could afford it, or you could catch the bus every morning at about 6am. When it came time for me to go my folks said they couldn't afford for me to live on campus. They had also heard that there were a lot of drugs on campus and they didn't trust me. School started in August and we were being transferred back to the states in December because my dad got orders to go to Vietnam. So my folks talked me into not going to school till we got settled in the states, I would only miss one semester and would be able to catch up. I don't know why they didn't trust me, when all my other friends were smoking dope I didn't. I didn't start smoking marijuana till I was in the Army, but that's another story for a later time.
In 1966 my mother was pregnant again and had a boy. He became very sick and they had to transport him to San Antonio, the nearest Army hospital that had a heart specialist. While my mom was in the hospital giving birth to my little brother my dad came home late one night drunk. I had already gone to bed. I woke up to find my dad in my bed playing with my penis, then he made me play with his and I don't want to talk about what else took place. I didn't know what to think, he kept telling me that he loved me. My mom had become very sick during this pregnancy and I had to take care of my brother and sister. When I would get home from school it was my job to take care of them till bedtime. I had to feed them, bath them, and put them to bed. So to say the least I was not happy that she was going to have another baby, I knew that I would have to take care of him too. When my dad told me to pray for him, before leaving to escort him to Texas, that's exactly what I did. But I didn't pray for him to live, I prayed he would die. Guess what? He did die, he was missing one of the oxygen tubes to the heart. I carried that guilt around with me till I was an adult. When my mom got home from the hospital I couldn't talk to her about what had happened because she was so depressed about my dead brother, she had her tubes fixed after giving birth to him. The next time my dad did it to me, I tried to tell her but she wouldn't believe me, she told everyone that I was just a trouble maker.
About six months later my dad got orders to go to Germany and this time he took us with him. A couple of months after we got there I found a job working with the Beer-man. This guy, Rolland, had a flat-bed truck and it was loaded with beer and soda cases. He went around to all the American housing complexes delivering the beer and soda. There was 24 bottles to a case, the cases were either wooden or plastic, the beer bottles had those ceramic caps held on with wires, just so you know how much they weighed. I got to where I could carry one on my shoulder and two with my other hand. During the summer I worked with him all day, during school I only worked after school til we were done usually between 7 and 9. Got pretty good money too, and of course I had to pay rent and buy my own cigarettes and what ever food items I wanted for myself. I even had a suit tailor-made for me, it had the Nehru jacket and was made from shark skin material, bell-bottoms pants with a Spanish waist, three buttons on each side above the zipper. I wore it with a turtle neck shirt, or sometimes just a dicky. 
My shoulders had already stated filling out because of the hay hauling days, by the time I started playing football in the fall my shoulders were out there. That's why I played defensive guard. When we got to Germany I stated the eighth grade, the school I went to was run by the Department of Defense. The local school only went up to the ninth grade, the high school was in Frankfort about 20 miles away. You could live on campus if your family could afford it, or you could catch the bus every morning at about 6am. When it came time for me to go my folks said they couldn't afford for me to live on campus. They had also heard that there were a lot of drugs on campus and they didn't trust me. School started in August and we were being transferred back to the states in December because my dad got orders to go to Vietnam. So my folks talked me into not going to school till we got settled in the states, I would only miss one semester and would be able to catch up. I don't know why they didn't trust me, when all my other friends were smoking dope I didn't. I didn't start smoking marijuana till I was in the Army, but that's another story for a later time.
