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RockyG666 63M
1750 posts
4/12/2018 1:30 pm

Last Read:
12/31/2020 7:23 am

all together now


"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference."

It was a beautiful spring day. The leaves and foliage were just starting to turn green, and the birds were chirping to each other throughout the sky. You couldn’t really hear the horrible sounds of a dozen or so gorgeous rainbow trout gasping for their lives on the ground around the pond. If trout could ream, they would be totally confused and reaming for . moment they were content and swimming around looking for something nice to eat, and the next second they had clamped onto the painful little fly and were jerked brutally out of the warm water and into the cold barren suffocation of land.

Something very important was missing, lost; they felt this major absence in their tiny little hearts, they were empty without it. Little popped out fish eyes inspected the strange world of the land and air, and their stout rainbow bodies flipped and flapped insanely under the savagely hot sun. They tried desperately to eape; but were somehow trapped.
Writhing and gasping for air, like snakes choking dust, serpents from hell. Like fish out of water. Air all around them, yet n they could breathe. The thing that they had always known since their wet birth in it, and taken for granted, was now not there anymore. They had no clue that tons of water were right beside them in the nearby pond. The horror of the dry earth was too much to understand, the unfiltered sun was too bright to bear. They could not breathe, they could not eape; death was slow and painful.

His full name was Johnny Consealus, but every called him JC Nobody ever called him John, he was always Johnny, but most people called him JC. He was half Cuban on his father's side and half Italian by his mother. It was a great mix, he was beautiful and manly, and he was a joy to be around. He was always smiling and quick to tell a joke, he had a great sense of humor. He had long shiny black hair and dark brown, almost black, eyes. He was not a huge , but he was no runt either, probably around 5' " and 10 lbs. He could handle himself well, and nobody ever messed with him, he was a little crazy. But everybody liked JC anyways. He was 16 and a half, his birthday was September 7th.

JC was out and about in his father’s white 66 ford Econoline van and he turned on the radio. The old man had the radio preset to stations that JC never listened to and today he heard an ad on the farm report for Fisherman’s Ranch, a stocked trout farm. This was a delightful idea to JC since he had never heard of such a thing before. The very idea that such a thing might exist, and so near to the city, had never even occurred to him before.

He only knew that he had to check it out. The internet was still a few in the future, so JC had to use a somewhat dated technology to check out the ranch, the Yellow Pages. He started by looking up fish; found lots of places to buy fish and fish food restaurants, but nothing useful. Then he thought of trying to look for ponds, but also came up just as empty. The old Yellow Pages were like that, thank God for the advent of search engines and Google.

After several more failed attempts, he remembered the call letters of the radio station the Farm Report aired on and looked up Radio Stations; he found the ph number and called it. The person that answered was not a complete idiot; and wanted to . Fisherman's Ranch was of their regular public companies, located in Park Ridge, a little suburb north of Chicago. He knew the area, he had dated a girl who lived nearby a year or so ago, he wrote down the address and ph number on a little slip of paper that he folded up and inserted in his wallet.

The morning sun is beating down on the little pond mercilessly, the dozen or so rainbow trout strewn on the land around it are dead or dieing. Gasping for their last breaths. The wetness of their ales is long dry, and they are starting to stink badly. The nearby insects are becoming interested and crawling in rapidly. Flies are buzzing all around, ants are inspecting the trout and worms are coming out of the ground slithering around them. The few fish that are still conious, are moving their mouths to eat all the insects, but they do not have the strength. Overhead, the eons and gulls notice the swarm of insects first, and the strong smell next and begin circling the pond. Terrible ghoulish fish reams can be heard to those who can hear fish reams. The bird's hunger overcomes their fears and they dive down upon the fish and begin ripping apart their flesh. The horrible fish reams become almost audible.

JC liked fishing somewhat, but having been raised in Chicago, there wasn’t much fishing to be found. Lake Michigan was of the great lakes, yet the fishing in Chicago was not that great. There were always a multitude of dead white fish washing up on the beaches and piers, and that did not smell so great. There also was a lot of homeless hanging around on the beach, and begging for change, and they did not smell so great either. But the main, and over-riding reason JC did not go to Lake Michigan to fish was because his cousin Mike had drowned in that lake when they were .

Mike and JC were always close, Mike was his first friend. Mike and his older brother Jimmy, and their mother, Aunt Patty, moved into the basement apartment in JC’s beat up wood frame flat. JC was too young to realize that Aunt Patty’s little family was not the traditional family in the affluent mostly Catholic North-Side Chicago neighborhood where they lived. JC’s father had taken in his younger, wayward sister, Patty, when her first marriage had failed. JC only knew that his cousins lived downstairs. Mike and JC were inseparable.

Mike's funeral was JC's first encounter with Catholicism, it was his first real experience with the church at all. His folks were raised in the church and had intentionally turned from it as a result. His father was a devout atheist and his mother claimed to be an agnostic, but in practice she was mad at God. JC was raised on Darwin and had only been to church for a wedding when his older cousin, had been married. When other asked what religion he was, he did not know, and he would answer that he was "public." He knew that some other went to catholic hools and some to Lutheran hools, and that this had to do with their religion. He went to public hool, so he decided that he must be public.

The funeral was a terrible thing. It was terrible that Mike died at all, but the pomp and circumstance of the Catholic church was even more terrible. It was an open casket funeral, JC didn't know yet that there was any other kind. He didn't want to look, but he was nudged along in the procession and he couldn't look away. It was Mike, he just had to look. He wished he hadn't, that wasn't Mike after all. Mike was always so alive and mihievous; he always had a sparkle in his eye. There was no sparkle in the eye of Mike’s dead body, in fact, of his eyes would have been missing if they were not tightly closed.

They had only found Mike's body after weeks of dragging the lake, and what was left should not have ever been publicly dised. Mike was all swollen and kind of blueish, and pieces of his face, including of his eyes were missing where fish and other lake creatures had chewed him up. The morticians tried to dress Mike up some for the , but there was no dressing up the worst of it. JC felt something deep inside himself missing as he looked on at the body in the coffin. JC tried to be strong and not to cry; but choked up and balled like a baby. Snot ran down his face as much as tears, but he just could not stop. He wanted to run away, but he just stayed there crying and sniffling, wiping his nose on the suit coat his mother had bought him for the event.

JC remembered Mike as his best friend. He was always there when he needed him, he just was always there. He could remember Mike laughing with him and smiling, and always happy; he could never picture Mike not enjoying life. This was not Mike in this coffin; this was a black parody of what used to be Mike, but this was not Mike. Ntheless, JC would remember Mike this way in nightmares for the rest of his life. He stood there in front of the open coffin, crying for what seemed like hours.

They were both 10 old at the time and it was just before Christmas. It was a very somber Christmas that year. The only witness found on the ene, was an old homeless man, that hung around on the beach and usually drank himself asleep on a bench near Montrose Pier. He claimed that he saw fooling around on the pier, and that when of them slipped and fell in the frigid water, the other jumped in after him. Neither of them returned. The police found bicycles hidden in the bushes nearby, of them was identified as Mike's, the other was later identified as the property of another missing from the neighborhood.

Mike and JC used to ride their bikes to the beach together in the nicer weather, JC didn't remember Mike ever wanting to ride there in the winter. He knew the other who rode the other found bike, Jose, a Mexican that Mike sometimes hung around with when JC was not around. JC never knew Jose's family, and did not try to connect with them after this happened. JC liked to think that it was Jose who first fell into the water, and that Mike was the hero who tried to save him, but they never really figured that part out. JC also didn't figure out how Mike and Jose decided to ride bikes to the lake in mid-December, it just never made sense.

Other than the horrible open casket, the thing that made the most impression on him at the funeral, even more than his aunt Patty reaming out loud and crying frantically, was when the attending Priest passed over the casket with a smoking golden thing on a chain while he chanted in Latin. JC later learned it was called an incense censor, and a Catholic funeral tradition, but at the time it seemed archaic and just wrong. JC formed his first theological thought at that point, if there was a God, he was silly and cruel.

About a year later, Aunt Patty got married again and moved out of JC's house. "Uncle" Jack was a big man, and he drank a lot of beer. He seemed to be good for Aunt Patty and Jimmy, they had kind of fallen apart after Mike died. Aunt Patty and Jimmy moved into the house Jack owned and JC really didn't see much of them anymore. Jimmy was always a little "slow," but after Mike died; he got slower. Uncle Jack was cruel to Jimmy at every turn. He never had a chance.

It was a few days after Mikes funeral when JC first tried marijuana. He had been walking home al from hool when he came across an older , Mitch, that he had known from the Boy out troop he belonged to. Mitch seemed to be nervously hiding something from JC, and something didn't smell quite right. JC thought it was a cigarette at first, some of the at outs smoked cigarettes, although JC had no interest in them at that time. But it didn't smell like cigarettes, it smelled somehow sweeter, and more inviting. As JC looked closer, he correctly surmised that Mitch must be smoking pot.

JC knew a bit about pot and other illegal drugs, there was a lame old campaign that circulated at the hool called "Why Do You Think They Call It Dope?" were well warned about the common problems associated with drugs. He was a little afraid of the pot, but he was more afraid of coming off like a dork with Mitch, so when Mitch offered the smoking 'joint' to JC, he took it and eagerly inhaled it. He nearly coughed his lungs out, and Mitch laughed and told him to "try to hold the hit in, it was some good shit, man."

JC's love affair with eaping reality through substances began that day. Pot remained true to its classification, opening a multitude of other gateways in JC’s life. In less than a week, JC passed on to alcohol, stealing an occasional beer from his father’s fridge, and within a month he had graduated to barbiturates. JC met other at hool who shared his need to eape, and soon learned to earn to buy drugs by reselling them for profit.

He would ‘front’ something from some; break it down into smaller portions; mark those up for profit and it back later. It started with marijuana, and JC got very good at dealing pot. Every knew him, and he was young enough not to arouse undue suspicion or undue mistrust. JC dealt pot exclusively throughout grammar hool, there was not a whole lot of competition there and he quite accidentally fell into a valuable monopoly. He built up quite the list; and met many people from who to purchase large quantities from cheaply. He became known among the other as the friendly pot guy; he had a million friends in the neighborhood.

He really never thought about pot too much, but when he thought about it, he knew that he had to have it all the time. It kept him normal, kept him from freaking out; as long as he had a little buzz going, everything was ok. This addiction followed him throughout his life. Even when he took other drugs to keep the buzz going; the pot became his staple. By high hool, JC had started dealing other drugs as well; and he began using other drugs the same way as he used the pot. It kept him feeling normal as long as he was std, and he rarely freaked out.
He freaked out a bit on acid.

Paulie "Bear" Barbarrusso looked as much like a bear as he Acted like . He was near 250 pounds with a barrel chest and accompanying beer belly; he had curly dark hair that was almost an afro, only longer and wilder. He looked to JC all the world like the leader of the Hair Bair Bunch, a cartoon featuring hippy type bears that was popular in the 70s. The middle of nine other of this quintessential Italian American family, Paulie had learned to fend for himself at the relatively young age of , when his father was first imprisd for grand theft. His father was an alcoholic, among other somewhat lesser cravings, and his mother was addicted to pharmaceutical barbiturates, and whatever drugs she could afford at the time. Lately his mother was crazy for Meth.

The state somehow did not have Paulie's family on their radar until he was arrested for breaking and entering at age eleven. Paulie broke into a home across the street from the apartment his mom and siblings were living in, and stole several valuable items including TV's and some beer. Paulie was ushered off to Juvie lockup and s took his mother into rehab; his brothers and sisters went into various foster home environments. Paulie was released from Juvie and inducted into Lydia Home s where he would live for the next few , at age .

"Bear" and JC first met in the parking lot of J&R's Liquors on Milwaulkee Avenue. Bear was hanging in the parking lot there, as he did much of the time on weekends, looking for some to buy beer for him, or looking for some to work with to steal beer from the store. JC was at the store to buy cigarettes; they were of the few stores near his home where he knew he could buy them even though he was under age. JC was cutting through the parking lot because he was on foot, and it was the shortest route.

Bear approached JC and asked him if he could "buy beer?" JC answered, "I am not old enough yet." Bear then asked him if he might be interested in some "FREE liquor without age restrictions?" JC could not smile and agree fast enough.

Bear smiled even bigger and explained the gimmick in detail, "There is a counter towards the back of the store, and the only person in the store is behind the counter. There is a bell on the door, so the person is alerted every time some opens the door. But if some 'crawls' in at the same exact time, and stays lower than the counter, the clerk has no way of knowing there are people in the store. If that some also grabs a bottle or so from the aisle, manages to hold onto them quietly as they crawl back to the door as the first person rings the bell again to leave, the clerk continues to be clueless. "I'm smarter than your average bear."

This was the first of many times that Bear ared JC with his slick plans, but JC quickly agreed anyways. The plan worked flawlessly. Bear managed to snag a full quart of Canadian Club whiskey, and a liter of Skol Vodka. JC also got away with buying a pack of Kools in the box.

It was July the Fifth, the day after the th of July. The park was littered with spent fireworks and beer cans, burned out bottle rockets and the even larger dis rockets were laid in the grass. The papers of blown up strings of firecrackers like confetti the day after a new year’s celebration. The charred remains of paper fire blew in the wind and the smell of burning gun powder still choked the air. The bottle rocket sticks floating in the lagoon at Lincoln Park were at least not smoldering any more.

JC and Bear were renting of the paddleboats available for a small fee next to the farm at the zoo. JC was not huge on the idea, it seemed more of a romantic thing for a guy and his girl; but Bear was insistent, and it was a beautiful day and they had nowhere else to be. Bear also had offered to , which was unusual, so JC just gave in, as he always did to most of Bear’s whims; they rented of the seat paddle boats for the hour.

They needed to don the provided bright orange life vests, as was the rule for the boats, and they felt a little silly. Bear’s vest was a little small for him, evidentially they were out of extra huge bear size, and so Bear looked especially silly. Even still, Bear was careful to fasten it so tightly that much of his bulk was popping out of the vest at every side. Bear could not swim at all and was completely terrified of water.

Bear lit up a smoke as they ventured out onto the lagoon, and JC chain smoked another, monkey butt from Bear's lit smoke. They were a little down the lagoon and went underneath an overhead bridge for foot traffic. After the squares were finished, JC rolled up a big fat joint from his stash; and offered it to Bear, who lit it up. There were no other boats near them, and they were out of sight from any else. Bear took a swig from the flask in his pocket, Everclear 10 Proof grain alcohol, and then he offered the container to JC, who took a swig and made a nasty face. Bear was so accustomed to the grain alcohol that he never even blinked anymore. Bear was so accustomed to drinking any kind of alcohol he never even thought twice about alcohol anymore.

Bear reached into his other pocket and pulled out a Silver Salute left over from yesterday. Silver Salutes were stronger than ordinary firecrackers, and they had thicker, waterproof wicks. Silver Salutes were supposed to be equal to a quarter stick of dynamite; and had a much louder boom when they went off. Bear lit the Salute with his lighter; and dropped the sizzling silver firecracker nonchalantly into the lagoon.
JC was intently looking at the beautiful surrounding enery and enjoying the buzz he was getting and didn't even notice Bear messing with the Silver Salute. It ared him half to death when it went off a few seconds later; wetness splashed up in his face and on his shirt as the explosion caused a huge amount of water to displace from the lagoon.

When he looked instantly at where the sound came from, smoke filtered out of the water and a dozen little baby blue gills, each no bigger than a dime, floated up to the surface. They were beautifully blue and shiny silver, and would have been very cute, if they weren't all very much dead. A muddy black and grayish shape slowly appeared below the dead baby fish; it was a slightly dazed catfish. The underwater explosion had caused the catfish to lose its orientation; floating up with the other fish, appearing to also be dead. JC leaned over the side of the boat; reaching a hand towards the startled catfish while at the same time causing the paddle boat to lean towards him. Bear very nearly soiled his shorts at the boat becoming unbalanced, and the catfish rebalanced itself and swam away quickly.

Bear started cursing JC for rocking the boat, and JC cursed Bear right back for lighting the firecracker; and they argued back and forth for a while, like an old married couple. JC was complaining about killing the little baby fish, and bringing attention to themselves to the authorities, and Bear just kept complaining about not liking water, and telling JC to chill out.

On the way back to the car, JC was still thinking about the dead baby fish and it reminded him of the Fisherman's Ranch. He looked through all the little pieces of paper in his wallet and found the address in Park Ridge. He tried the idea out on Bear, and Bear was all in, only he wasn't up for any more boat rides today. JC was quick to remind him that the boat ride was Bear's idea, and he didn't think there were any boats at fisherman's ranch; they started cursing on each other again for a while anyway.

On the way home, JC took a little detour that lead to the ranch. He found the place without too much trouble; it was near where the girl he dated lived, but he never remembered the actual place. It was a fairly big pond (lake?) surrounded by a chain link fence that was surrounded by another higher chain link fence with barbed wire attached to the top. There was a quaint little faux log cabin in the front and large round filters spewing water in the pond.

JC and Bear learned that Fisherman’s Ranch was closed today for the Holidays from a flyer posted on the bulletin board on the front of the cabin; that business as usual would resume on Saturday, July 12th. They also learned that Fisherman’s Ranch required State Fishing Licenses to participate, and that the Ranch offered Fishing Licences for a $20 fee, besides the $50 state fee for commercial fishing licence. The fees by the pound for fish caught at the pond were more than it would cost to buy the fish at the grocer. Bear was the first to state the obvious although it was more of a question:
“We could maybe fish over that fence?”

“Maybe...” answered JC thoughtfully.

"Well, I aint ing those prices for catching fish that you hafta catch yourself." Bear answered back.

Footprints in the Sand
night I dreamed I was walking along the beach with the Lord. Many enes from my life flashed across the sky.
In each ene I noticed footprints in the sand. Sometimes there were sets of footprints, other times there was only.
This bothered me because I noticed that during the low periods of my life, when I was suffering from anguish, sorrow or defeat, I could see only set of footprints, so I said to the Lord,
“You promised me Lord,
that if I followed you, you would walk with me always. But I have noticed that during the most trying periods of my life there has only been set of footprints in the sand. Why, when I needed you most, have you not been there for me?”
The Lord replied, “The when you have seen only set of footprints, my , is when I carried you.” - Mary Stevenson, 136

Mealady46 77F

6/26/2019 9:21 am

Quite an interesting post. I enjoyed reading it.


RockyG666 63M
1357 posts
6/27/2019 6:38 am

I recently got a new laptop, and hope to use it to get back to this story in the sun shine


Mealady46 77F

6/29/2019 7:25 am

Be sure to let me know when you do.
Thanks