PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

Way back in the 80's sometime I spent a lot of my youth in various trailer parts or courts as they call them up north.  This particular one was in Frazee, a little tiny ass town in northern Minnesota somewhere.  It was sort of in a horseshoe shape with two entrances and exits to the street.  It was in this of all places that I remember the strangest things.  Like April,  she was my first girlfriend that I can remember of.  

I was maybe in second grade at the time, but don't quote me on that one,  I've had a very crazy life and my memories are as clear as they maybe should be.  But enough of that.  Anyways she was the same age as me and amazingly tall, or come to think of it maybe I was amazingly short.  As I had always had problems in school for being smaller than anyone, of all things.  For some reason she took a licking to me almost instantly when we met.  My mother was friends with her parents which were of course colorful characters in themselves.  Her mom looked like an ex-biker chick really skinny and kind of leathery skin but not too bad.  As I remember she was always nice to me and I can't remember that much of her mom as I don't believe I ever payed attention to the parents when I was over there.  Her father or maybe step-father on the other hand I remember a great deal about.  

He was a very big scary type of guy you would find in a bar somewhere that you did not want to mess with and he had a temper as well on him which completed his scaryness.  I can tell you one time  was over there and his Brother-In-Law must have said something to make him really mad, or maybe he was just really drunk.  He beat the guy down with a chair and when I mean chair I mean the old kind with the metal frame around it and vinyl on the pad to sit on.  While this was happening April and I went to this Flatbed trailer that used to sit behind their trailer house.  Which was the place we used to be alone and talk or sometimes kiss on each other and hold hands as kids do at that age.  Just a note about her trailer, it was a single wide trailer and as many of them back then they had the Dining room in the very front of the trailer with a large glass window to look out like a wall of glass, although what kinds of sights are you to see in a trailer court besides your neighbors really.  Well we started to walk to the front of her house from the back to see if everything had cooled down yet.  Just as we barely got to the front of the trailer and what do we see?  Aprils uncle flying out of the glass wall, shards flying everywhere and him falling to the ground.  It really was a sight to see especially at that age.  Who needs T.V. anyways with neighbors like this.  

While I was hanging out with her my best friend Nathan, also a trailer court refugee, was inevitably frequenting the local molester's house whom we named Brian-Lisa, although we did not know that he was really a molester at the time we did have a strange hunch about the guy thus the name.  Unknown to me Nathan was apparently hanging out there quite more often than I had thought.  And while I myself had hung out there a few times because he would give us coffee and what kid doesn't like coffee, it was like   alcohol to us in a way that it was a forbidden fruit of such.  I really always had a bad feeling about the guy and had warned Nathan as well.  Unfortunately he was never that bright in the first place due to bad genes, I had always thought his mother was slow.  If not for the fact of the very poor housekeeping conditions of the house and the fact that she never had anything really that intelligent or able to understand in the first place.  Mostly for the simple fact that she had married his stepfather Jerome or as the kids had dubbed him  "Bozo"  because with his balding head with the patch around he looked just like the clown without makeup.  Plus he must have been a hair lip as we could never understand a word he had ever said except for a mumbled  "I'm gonna kick your ass" as we often yelled Bozo at him as we had passed on our bicycles.  I don't believe he ever had a job as he was always home. I think both his parents were on disability of some sort.  

One day we were there at Brian-Lisa's little fifth-wheel trailer which was about five or so down from mine at the time as I was in the very front of the horseshoe at the time.  I say at the time cause often time people would move up into bigger and perhaps nicer trailers when they had more money or when it was available.  So we are there hanging out and listening to some sort of music drinking coffee when I noticed some strange fondling going on between the two of them and of course loudmouth me had to say something.  To this day I still don't remember exactly what I said or exactly went down.  I do remember that it definitely pissed of Nathan.  And then he, my best friend in the world, decided to punch me right in the face to defend that molester.  I'm not sure if I hit him back or not but I did run home crying.  I hate to say it but I did not totally understand why this had happened at the time and was not able to tell my mother much which inevitably made her think much worse of the situation.  She knew of Brian-Lisa's vices as it was apparently known in the trailer court as gossip does often spread in places like that and everyone knows everyone's business.  My mother went to his house and had a conversation with him that night,  after that he had a black eye and never looked my way ever again.  If I had rode by his house he would go inside if he was outside because he was afraid, because my mom is a bit crazy sometimes in good ways.  Also after that Nathan and I never hung out again,  we were friends for years and it ended by him defending a pedofile.  How depressing it was,  although I just spent more time with April after that which was better for me at the time as I look back.....

Years later, many years later I would return to that area and happen to come across Nathan all grown up just like I was although he had the same crooked glasses on that he always used to wear.  Even probably the same tape holding them together.  I saw him walking with a very old and shriveled up Brian-Lisa.  They were still together!  Nathan saw me as well looking at the confusing sight and we did not say a word to one another.  I know he knew it was me, and that I saw them.  I wonder what he thought then.  As I walked away I had a sickness deep in my stomach at the sight of it and my girlfriend would ask what was wrong and I would tell her nothing or some bullshit like that as we often do to hide things.  As I said Nathan was never really that bright in the first place.