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Dear Caelan,
They came from Amarillo, Texas in the summer of 1968 in a black Cadillac pulling a trailer with two horses in it, and they moved into a plywood shack at the corner of Virginius and Lemon Way. They were the Midgette clan; the parents, Bob Lee and VaRue, the two sons, Ronny Gayle and Ricky Leroy, and the dogs, Lazybones and Squirt Blossom. I first encountered the Midgettes when I was in seventh grade, when Ricky Leroy, who must have been sixteen at the time, stood up in front of the class for Show and Tell, pulled a pill bottle out of his jeans pocket, and said, "Looky here what my little brother Ronny Gayle found in the woods. It's a leech. Looky here whut it kin do." He unscrewed the bottle's perforated top, put his finger in, and then waved it in the air to show that the leech was sticking to it. Then he waved his finger harder. Then he shook his hand violently in the air, eyes growing large with fright. "Help, Mommy, Daddy, it won't come off," he sobbed, as the teacher escorted him to the school nurse's office.
On another occasion, Ricky Leroy stood up for Show and Tell, said, "Looky here whut I kin do," put two fingers down his throat, and pulled something green and glistening out about two feet from his biscuit hole. When he let go, the thing vanished back down his throat with a faint snap. I learned early to pay attention whenever Ricky Leroy Midgette said, "Looky here whut (fill in as you wish) kin do."
Back in Amarillo, Texas, Bob Lee Midgette had worked at a place called "Six Gun City," portraying the losing badman and being shot down five times each day, eight times Saturdays, and VaRue had played the losing saloon girl. That's where Ricky Leroy and Ronny Gayle spent their childhoods, and where Lazybones acquired the mange that took each and every bit of hair off of the back half of his body, had one eye shot out with rock salt in a shotgun shell, and ate way too many cactus buttons. He was the only dog I ever knew who could pronounce the letter "F."
He'd stand near the Midgettes' front door when they had one and squint that one eye, and we'd know that he wanted to get some fresh air. "Lazy want out," we'd ask, until he frantically opened his mouth, showed all three teeth, and did a pretty good approximation of saying, "Out." At least, it seemed pretty good at the time, but we were taking a lot of drugs then. When he wanted back in, though, and only God knows why in the hell he ever would, Lazybones would always go to a back window, squint up that one eye, and pronounce the letter "F" for all he was worth and more. "Fffffffffffffffffffffffffff," puffed Lazybones, like a bus tire deflating in the ratlands of Mexico, until somebody let him back in. Amarillo was also where Lazybones somehow managed to sire Squirt Blossom, who had the same Hereford markings as Lazy, but longer hair, which covered his entire body. The Gang always thought Squirt Blossom was gay, but it could have just been the way the Midgettes talked to him.
Once settled in the plywood shack at the corner of Virginius and Lemon Way, Bob Lee got a job three months out of every year as a welder, being content the rest of the time to collect bottles and cans by the roadside to earn enough dough to buy beers for his friends at the Moose Lodge. VaRue became an Olan Mills photographer. Ronny Gayle raised fishing worms under his bed, a fairly easy accomplishment in a home with a dirt floor, and Ricky Leroy earned a mail order degree as a "Greaze Monkey, Second Class," dropping several truck transmissions on his hands in the process so that his fingers pointed off in different directions like the roots of trees.
VaRue had a set of false teeth made of barbecued corn nuts@, with a duck call whittled into one of the front ones, and was fond of revealing undergarments and periodic attempts to seduce Dirty Andy, who deserved it. There were sixteen guns in the Midgettes' house, ranging from the cigarette lighter sized .25 caliber "virgin's pistol" in VaRue's purse to the 12 gauge Remington pump shotgun in the hallway rack. Hatchets, saws, hammers, and other tools, becoming more and more automotive in purpose the nearer one got to Ricky Leroy's room, were strewn over the entire house and yard. Laundry was done in an oil drum in the back yard with a boat motor attached to the inside. They made coffee by pouring an entire can of "grinds" into a Dutch oven of boiling water and continuing to boil it interminably until they felt that it was ready. At this point, Bob Lee would get a nickel out of VaRue's purse and toss it into the bubbling mass. If the nickel sank, then Midgettes' house coffee was not ready yet.
One day after school, we were sitting around the Midgettes' living room. and it seemed to be a normal day. Steve Arnold, Andy Reid, Kelly Milam, Ricky Yates, and Jeff Pilate crowded the sagging, plaid couch and recliner chair(which Kelly had not yet set on fire trying to find a hit of LSD in the upholstery and lighting his search with a butane lighter). Lazybones intently scanned the air for flies, leaping over five feet in the air to chomp them down every few minutes. A tee shirt clad Bob Lee lolled on the dirt floor, almost four feet from the console Magnavox TV on which Festus on his mule lagged further and further behind Marshall Dillon.
This was our routine on many school day afternoons, circa 1972-1973. We'd sit around and sort of watch the Midgettes watch flies and Gunsmoke. Occasionally, Andy or Steve would steal one of VaRue's Bel Air cigarettes or one of the special, Texas import Galaxy cigarettes with the spur right there on the pack favored by Bob Lee and Ricky Leroy, who eventually saved up enough coupons to buy a set of real spurs, but gave them up after repeatedly puncturing his bicycle tires. At 4:30, during the mid-program break in Gunsmoke, Bob Lee would get up, dust the dirt from the living room floor from the front of his tee shirt, and go into the kitchen for his usual afternoon snack, a half gallon carton of ice cream, daintily devoured with the monogrammed garden scoop he always wore in a belt holster. That was the usual pattern.
On the day etched so clearly in my memory, though, things went amiss. Bob Lee found no ice cream in the freezer at 4:30, and he was not a man to meekly accept having drawn his monogrammed garden scoop in vain. "Ronny Gayle, hop in the pick 'em up truck, run on up the Colonial store and get me a half gallon of vanilla ice cream and a half gallon of raspberry swirl ice cream," ordered Bob Lee. "Okay, Daddy," replied the dutiful son.
Literacy was never a Midgette trademark, and Ronny Gayle accidentally brought back a half-gallon of raspberry swirl ice cream and a half-gallon of vanilla ice milk. You could almost hear the banjos in the air as Bob Lee tore into that kitchen, ripped into the bag Ronny Gayle left on the table, ripped the top off of a chill carton, chunked in his garden scoop and took a huge bite. Time seemed to stop, Lazybones suspended in mid-air scant inches from a doomed housefly as Bob Lee realized that there was something wrong. "Ice milk, I wanted me ice cream," he shouted in disgust, winging the whole carton into the living room corner behind the Magnavox console TV. Lazybones, tired of his usual diet of flies, dug his way into the corner and ate the evidence, carton and all.
It was shortly after this episode that Bob Lee decided on a change. Without even checking the freezer, he called the son who had not disgraced himself at 4:30. "Ricky Leroy, hop in the pick 'em up truck, run on up to Hardee's and get me a big bag of them charco-broiled hamburgers. "Okay, Daddy," replied the dutiful son, who drove straight to McDonald's and came back to deposit a bulging bag o'burgers on the Midgettes' kitchen table, ever sticky and cluttered with woven bushel baskets of apples, collard greens, mistletoe, strawberries, yams, or whatever else happened to be far out of season at the time. Time seemed to stop, Lazybones suspended in mid-air scant inches from a doomed housefly as Bob Lee ripped into the bag, ripped into a burger wrapper and took a huge bite of burger. "McDonald's! I wanted me Hardee's charco-broiled," he shouted in disgust, winging the rest of the bag into the living room corner behind the Magnavox console TV. Lazybones, tired of his usual diet of flies, dug his way into the corner and ate the evidence, except the pickles from the burger buns. Lazybones never did much like pickles. Should doubts ever arise in your mind about these anecdotes, just go to the plywood shack at the corner of Virginius and Lemon Way in Virginia Beach and look to your left. As of 1997, according to Dirty Andy, who popped in one day, there were still pickle slices stuck to the wall.
Some things, like the pickle slices, were extremely consistent around the Midgettes' house. Others were not. One never knew what new damages to the house and grounds would next exhibit themselves. Preparations for camping trips usually, but not always, resulted in hatchet marks on the furniture. Cooped up in the house one blustery winter afternoon while Bob Lee was off welding, we were entertained by Ricky Leroy. "Looky here whut I kin do," he prefaced, "I'm good with a knife."
Oddly enough, there were no knives within easy reach of his seat on the ratty couch, which wheezed antique flatulence from its exposed, damp foam rubber whenever sat upon, but a screwdriver came readily enough to his tangled hand. Concentrating intently, Ricky Leroy threw the screwdriver across the room, where its point quivered satisfactorily in the front door. Thrice more did Ricky Leroy repeat this feat, which we encouraged with rebel yells, before a dim flicker of thought passed through his crew cut skull. We could always tell when Ricky Leroy was thinking, because his lips moved. "I better stop. My daddy might git mad," he reflected, ending his knife throwing exhibition despite our boos and hisses.
Half an hour later, though, having forgotten the screwdriver incident entirely, Ricky Leroy leapt to his spurred feet and announced, "I'm a kara-tee expert. Looky here whut I kin do!" Launching himself over the coffee table, Squirt Blossom, the cylinder sleeve from a 1967 Honda 250cc. motorcycle and sixty-three cigarette butts, he met the front door firmly with a booted heel. The door split cleanly in half on a vertical axis. "Uh oh," pondered the Greaze Monkey, Second Class, "Daddy's gonna beat my ass." Our rebel yells failed to cheer him at all.
It was shortly after this episode that Ricky Leroy ran away from home ... all the way to the panel truck that lived in the Midgettes' side yard, between the pick 'em up truck and the oil drum with the boat motor mounted inside, cattycorner from the Pontiac GTO, far away from VaRue's Maverick, fairly close to the 1967 Honda 250cc. motorcycle. The Gang, of course, didn't want Ricky Leroy to get lonely out there in the truck by himself, so we started sitting on top of it late at night, smoking dope and drumming our heels against the truck's sides. "Cut it out," exclaimed the awakened sleeper. "Y'all better stop, or I'll come up there an' git ya."
"Oh sthay, big boy, come on up and get usth," and similarly we responded, because to both annoy Ricky Leroy and to do ridiculously inflated imitations of homosexuals was a combination we couldn't pass up. The drumming on the sides of the panel truck quickened, until we heard the rear doors swing open. A gnarled hand, nails black with grease, fingers pointing off in different directions like the roots of trees, appeared on the luggage rack. Then another. Then the pointy toe of a worn cowboy boot. Then a second. A face, grim in intent yet placid in pure T for Texas stupidity rose like an idiot moon before us. Then all disappeared. A short howl, "Yaaaaa," followed by a sodden thud and the exclamation, "My boot slipped," led us to peer over the luggage rack to see Ricky Leroy clutching his ankle and writhing on the ground. It was just one more chapter in the everyday world of Ricky and Ronny and Bob Lee and VaRue and Lazybones and Squirt Blossom Midgette, and the whole Midgette clan from down around Amarillo, Texas, where there's plenty of hot coffee, McDonald's hamburgers and ice milk in the corner. Yip-ee-ai-yo.
These pages describe the delusions, fantasies &