Flashback to My Charmed Childhood
Flashback to My Charmed Childhood
This song has such a street kid feeling, I always get a kick out of it. While I have no desire to drink cheap wine or sniff glue, it gives me a serious laugh, for what reason I don't know. We've all hung out with people who are totally like this song. The Ramones connected with the poor kid aspect of my personality. When I was a kid I liked to hang around the bus station in my home town, Phoenix, playing pinball, reading books and comics, and meeting the people of the road. They were often young, shifty, but sometimes older and amused at such a young kid like me running around loose asking questions.
I met a lot of regular people in my parents' restaurant, The Mexico Cafe, on old Route 66 running through the belly of the town. I talked with the waitresses a lot, who were sometimes pretty, and often very nice to the boss's kid. The restaurant had a bar, and I met a lot of truckers, drunks, and gamblers. The jukebox had a lot of country-western, and it got played. The restaurant had a special feature that we learned, to my father's chagrin, drew a special crowd — gays and lesbians seeking privacy in the little hidden booths that ran the length of the restaurant down the right side when you walked in. The waitresses had to walk through a narrow hall to serve the tables. The booths were dimly-lit and had total privacy unless you actually came up to the table and looked in. My dad cut the wall down, exposing the booths to view. One of the waitresses told me that an Arizona Highway Patrolman came in one evening, took one look at the renovation, exclaimed “On no! You ruined it!” and walked out. So I learned a thing or two in that restaurant, before and after the wall came down.
From the Mexicans in the kitchen, I learned how to cook, but I was impressed with how little the cook and waitresses earned, and how uneducated they were. I didn't see that as bad, though. They seemed a lot less troubled and less powerful than people like my mom and dad, who ran the restaurant as a sideline to their office and political jobs. Since my parents had a busy social schedule, I spent a lot of time with people who worked for them, usually poor Mexican people. They weren't intimidating, though their houses seemed terribly bare, particularly of books. My own home was dominated by my brother's baby grand piano in the living room and my father's cluttered desk in his burgeoning office, afloat in a sea of books and papers that had to be move aside to make space for a visitor to sit down. It had a certain psychotic warmth to it, in that it was our psychotic mess, of course, but the simplicity of the working class lifestyle held some attraction.
When I ran away from home, which I did repeatedly in my early teens primarily to avoid answering for bad report cards, I went to missions. My fellow mission-mates, the bums, mostly seemed not to fit into society because they were too sensitive, too childlike, too self-indulgent, spendthrift, wild and foolish. There wasn't as much self-pity in the underclass in those days, I have to say, because it was more accepted to be poor. Now it's like you should just die, melt, and drain down the gutter. For me, it was a relief to be with people who didn't challenge me. School, parents, authorities, were always in my face, telling me what to do. Poor people were also impressed with my smart-kid gab. So when I grew up, I became poor. St. Francis was into poverty, and being poor meant you were resourceful and satisfied with little.
Eventually I learned that being poor meant your wife and kids felt poor. And being poor, you could work low paying jobs with low-class people as your bosses. Poor people can make really bad bosses, who can take you back to third grade with their petty sadism. No smart person wants to be in that position.
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This song has such a street kid feeling, I always get a kick out of it. While I have no desire to drink cheap wine or sniff glue, it gives me a serious laugh, for what reason I don't know. We've all hung out with people who are totally like this song. The Ramones connected with the poor kid aspect of my personality. When I was a kid I liked to hang around the bus station in my home town, Phoenix, playing pinball, reading books and comics, and meeting the people of the road. They were often young, shifty, but sometimes older and amused at such a young kid like me running around loose asking questions.
I met a lot of regular people in my parents' restaurant, The Mexico Cafe, on old Route 66 running through the belly of the town. I talked with the waitresses a lot, who were sometimes pretty, and often very nice to the boss's kid. The restaurant had a bar, and I met a lot of truckers, drunks, and gamblers. The jukebox had a lot of country-western, and it got played. The restaurant had a special feature that we learned, to my father's chagrin, drew a special crowd — gays and lesbians seeking privacy in the little hidden booths that ran the length of the restaurant down the right side when you walked in. The waitresses had to walk through a narrow hall to serve the tables. The booths were dimly-lit and had total privacy unless you actually came up to the table and looked in. My dad cut the wall down, exposing the booths to view. One of the waitresses told me that an Arizona Highway Patrolman came in one evening, took one look at the renovation, exclaimed “On no! You ruined it!” and walked out. So I learned a thing or two in that restaurant, before and after the wall came down.
From the Mexicans in the kitchen, I learned how to cook, but I was impressed with how little the cook and waitresses earned, and how uneducated they were. I didn't see that as bad, though. They seemed a lot less troubled and less powerful than people like my mom and dad, who ran the restaurant as a sideline to their office and political jobs. Since my parents had a busy social schedule, I spent a lot of time with people who worked for them, usually poor Mexican people. They weren't intimidating, though their houses seemed terribly bare, particularly of books. My own home was dominated by my brother's baby grand piano in the living room and my father's cluttered desk in his burgeoning office, afloat in a sea of books and papers that had to be move aside to make space for a visitor to sit down. It had a certain psychotic warmth to it, in that it was our psychotic mess, of course, but the simplicity of the working class lifestyle held some attraction.
When I ran away from home, which I did repeatedly in my early teens primarily to avoid answering for bad report cards, I went to missions. My fellow mission-mates, the bums, mostly seemed not to fit into society because they were too sensitive, too childlike, too self-indulgent, spendthrift, wild and foolish. There wasn't as much self-pity in the underclass in those days, I have to say, because it was more accepted to be poor. Now it's like you should just die, melt, and drain down the gutter. For me, it was a relief to be with people who didn't challenge me. School, parents, authorities, were always in my face, telling me what to do. Poor people were also impressed with my smart-kid gab. So when I grew up, I became poor. St. Francis was into poverty, and being poor meant you were resourceful and satisfied with little.
Eventually I learned that being poor meant your wife and kids felt poor. And being poor, you could work low paying jobs with low-class people as your bosses. Poor people can make really bad bosses, who can take you back to third grade with their petty sadism. No smart person wants to be in that position.
Next Page --->