Why am I in a potato field with kids?

In case you didn’t know…True Blood is the best show on television right now. At the end here, I’ll show you why.

A little background between the last entry and this day:

Gnarly Dodge Neon was sold to Josh Dore (It’s probably still sitting behind Dore Enterprises right now)

Done with Autozone on Center Ave., moved on to Advance Auto in Saginaw.

Flemmer took his bitch ass out to near Seattle, and wouldn’t come back for 2 years. Grrrrrrrr

After a slew of 3 random cars, I had an odd looking pickup truck. (I’ve got some stories about those too sometime for a funny time)

A lot more stuff.

So, on or near the last day of high school in Bay City 2003, my brother said that a party was happening out in Munger somewhere, and that his friends were gonna be there with a bunch of other people and for me to stop out. He also mentioned that The Natalie Fight was going to perform their first (?) show there. Apparently it was acoustic, and for that reason I could be wrong as it “technically” wasn’t the first show. Now, for someone who was 21 years old, a high school grad party was not the place to pick up girls, but then again, they were now out of high school…Anywho, this party was alright and I ran into Rachel and Amanda. Now, I knew Rachel because I met her through Tara like about a year before, but I hadn’t seen her but maybe once in that time. Amanda I had never met, even though she lived about one block from my Mom’s house her whole life and I probably walked by the place 2500 times. Who knew I would become such good friends with them because of a chance meeting? I’m sure that how everything works actually. You can never plan to become great friends with someone(s), it just happens. Either way, we met up there and started talking and somehow they, Nigel, and a number of others convinced me to have a party at the apartment that night once this placed closed up. (It woulda be early, remember, high school party…) I never really knew any of those guys (the crew which is included in the rest of my life), at that time, but this night started what would be the craziest, most ridiculous, coolest summer ever.

So Bill and I headed out from the party to go pickup some booze and then said we’d meet everyone at my apartment. This was cool because I was all pumped that I would have some new friends, and new girls coming by the apartment finally. Bill and I were close to moving out anyway. Our lease was up like June 15^th or something, and we were moving into the infamous 5^th street house with Brad Jeske and Seth Montana (More on this place later, a lot more). Now, because of this move Tara said she was going to break up with me. Now, hooray right? Nope, nothing is that easy. Tara said that by moving into a place like that (what kind of place? Hmmm) I would forget about her, blah, blah, blah. Well, I said the usual boyfriend stuff to ease that situation down hoping it would just go away. I was definitely not calling up Tara and telling her about this party, let alone telling her anyone of who was going to be there, but somehow she found out and came by with a bunch of her friends. This pissed me off for three reasons...

1. 1.) I hated all of her friends

2. 2.) All of them were just booze fiends and never had any money.

3. 3.) When they did drink, they got pissed off.

Well of course Tara and her Sabrina crew show up with all these other folks in the middle of everyone else having a good time. They ended up pissing a bunch of people off, and many of them weren’t going to spend the night a place they just found 3 hours before, so most of them had left. In the middle of all this, the apartment was pretty trashed anyway because of getting ready to move. My room looked like shit, as did the living room. I couldn’t keep track of where anything was, including my cell phone. I left to go to Kroger to get some more booze, when at that moment Stacie had to call. You can find anything when it’s ringing right? That’s how Tara found my cell phone for me, and started screaming at Stacie and all that crap. I came back home to a wonderful situation. One girl and her cracker friends in my face screaming, and one on the phone wondering what the hell was going on. Stacie was wayyyyy more easy going than anyone in my life, and she blew it off to some crazy trick, she was actually dating Seth at this time anyway, and we still were good friends.

So this blew up in my face as usual, and the night was all downhill from there. The oddest part though was whatever happened in my room before I got home. Bill was home the whole time I was gone, and so were a number of other people, but when I went to my room it smelled like a dog shit on the walls!

I still to this day don’t get what the fuck happened in there, but with all of the furniture moved away from the walls, there wasn’t any room to move around in there. Honestly, I think some dipshit had that skunk smelling hunting crap in there, but it was bad. I mean like someone shit between the mattresses, you know. Anyway, disgusting as it was, thank god we were moving like 4 days later.

Tara, of course, broke up with me that night, but it wouldn’t stick. It didn’t officially end until July 3^rd, sweet day to be explained later…after the other good stuff about the apartment and moving.

This night doesn’t really seem too eventful compared to most days that mean a lot to me, but sometimes the most important days are the simplest. This day started off as nothing to me, and ended up being a turning point in my life. This was the first day I met the group of friends that would be with me everyday for the next 4+ years until I moved to Grand Rapids (and I’m still friends with all of them). This day honestly showed me that there was cooler and nicer people around Bay City, and we all could get along.

And the reason True Blood is the best show on TV, not the only reason, but a high one.

Catherine Wheel...I'm burning for you

Wow, first one in over a year. No more of that waiting trash. I have time and this stuff needs to get put up for everyone to read and have a good time reading because most of it is funny as hell on a Sunday.

Well, what has happened in the last year? Moved out of Grand Rapids, almost to New York, then I found out my work has a bunch of clowns working in HR, and came back home to near Ann Arbor. A lot of other stuff too, but I’m leaving that til later so I can get back to the tale first.

A Catherine Wheel (disambiguation), seems to describe Tara and I’s relationship btw. Google that shit.

So yeah, starting back to Tara. We started dating of course (see the last article) and usually hung out around Gabe and Shawn Moore’s apartment. Again, we were all good friends, but really we hung out there to drink and have a good time. It was typical of me to have a case of WARM Busch Light in the trunk of my gnarly 96 Dodge Neon in case they weren’t home or whatever. ---side note: Have you ever had warm Busch Light? Like it’s been in the trunk, so it’s nearly hot? The first one tastes like garbage, but after that they taste like warm grape Faygo soda. Still disgusting as hell, but manageable--- Anywho, around June (must be 2k2) I get the sweet idea to move out of my Mom’s house into an apartment. This came about because I felt I was old enough to move out and I had the decent job of controlling the auto parts trade of Essexville. I figured moving into Huntington Place apartments would be ideal. It’d be across the street from my work, and since you haven’t lived Bay City style til you’ve lived in the Huntington Place apartments, I’d just start there.

Gabe was the one who initiated this because he and Moore were having issues living together and figured I was one of the few friends who were good for rent money each month. Well, turns out Gabe backed out of the deal, then one afternoon Bill pulled up in my Mom’s driveway and literally asks, “So when are you gonna move out of this place?” How’s that for timing? I tell him I’ve already been approved for an apartment and it’s on.

Tara was more pumped about this then I was. She figured that now she can hang out somewhere else besides her crazy house or my Mom’s. So of course I had to break the news to my Mom somehow that I was moving out. How did I do this? Moving out ghetto style!

In case you don’t understand “ghetto style”, it’s the way people move that typically live in the hoods, and have to move to a new place every 3.5 weeks. Get your crew together, get a pickup truck , grab everything from the old house in about an hour, load the bed up until it’s literally overflowing, throw your crew of 7 in the front of a single cab manual tranny pickup, head to the new joint, and empty it in one hour.

She was gone for the weekend we were planning this, so I can only imagine wondering were my stuff was Sunday or Monday. No big deal really, once we talked about it, but my named was all signed already, so there was no going back.

This entire year of living there was relatively cool. Living away from home, doing whatever you wanted really, throwing couches off of the 3^rd floor balcony into the parking lot (3 of them) and not getting in trouble. Sounds like a good time to me. The best part was though that you could have people over all night and no one could tell you they had to leave. Tara would usually have to be home to her house by like 10 every night, damn young women, but that left it open for my friend Stacie (or anyone else really [NOT former girlfriend Stacy]) to come over after that. (hehehe) There’s nothing like being at work from 7am until 4pm, then hanging out with your girlfriend from 4pm til 10pm (doing nothing), then hanging out with someone else from 10pm til like 5 or 6am, sleeping one hour and going back to work at 7am. Thank god I only worked across the street. Man, if I would’ve been caught back then doin what I did, I’d probably be dead right now. Tara was nuts already at this point (you’ll see in future parts), but hey, at 20 years old you really don’t care about much.

A stupid funny story about one time in the year Bill and I lived there – I was hanging out over at James Knappman and Brandon’s apartment, hanging out with Stacie and Flemmer and all the other every weekend friends drinking. Now James made this drink called a reverse jackhammer. Some orange creamsicle tasting vodka drink. Back then I really didn’t drink much, but those things were so good, I couldn’t stop having them. Next thing you know its 3am, and you’ve finished off a bottle of Mohawk vodka while drinking beers in between. Well, deciding to head home then, this dope named Mark somehow finds out I live at Huntington just like him. He wants a ride home too. Now drunk driving is wrong mmmkay, but home was only a straight road and a mile away and I didn’t feel drunk (pfff) so We set out home. I felt perfect getting home, got out of the shitty van (that’s next time) I had, made it to the very first step upstairs and it hit me. Time to puke all over the stairs. I crawled up those damn stairs, made it to the front door,and heard banging on the door. I open it to find Bill on the floor arguing with his girlfriend (at the time) on the phone and throwing shoes at the door. WTF? Who the hell throws shoes at the damn door anymore? I made it into bed with a stove pot next me while the room was spinning. That didn’t last long as I ended up on the bathroom floor. Bill was nice enough though to stay up all night arguing on the phone, and still managed to pick my head up off the floor and put a towel underneath it. Thanks Bill.

Next entry: Meeting Rachel (again) and Amanda …and the last day of high school 2003.

Thanks for reading!