JAMESTOWN RD.
In the North County of St. Louis,
close to where the Missouri River dumps its
muddy waters into the Mighty Mississippi, is where I grew up. I am what is
called a third-generation “Laker”. My grandfather, Harry Sneed, moved to the
middle-class neighborhood of Spanish Lake in
the late 1950’s and thus became the first Sneed “Laker”.
GRANDPA SNEED
Grandpa Sneed was a product of North St.
Louis City
who grew up during the Great Depression in a long forgotten area of town often
referred to as Hell’s Half Acre. Located somewhere between the ass-kicking neighborhoods
of Wellston and the if-you-know-what’s-good-for-you-you’ll-stay-of-here Pine
Lawn, these areas are still the worst parts of St. Louis, which has just been named
The Murder Capital of America for its second year in a row. By all counts
grandpa ran with the rambunctious crowd. The boys from the other side of the
tracks who enjoyed their alcohol, hand-rolled cigarettes and wasn’t opposed to
getting in a scuffle or two or breaking the law if it made for a little
excitement. I’ve heard stories from aunts and uncles about some of grandpa’s
escapades but I don’t care to share them here because I can’t believe he did
such things. Thankfully, Grandpa Sneed grew up, got married, had children and
wanted to better himself. So he moved out of the violent and congested North City and
into a little brick Cape Cod house on two acres in the far North County
called Spanish Lake. It was here, surrounded
by farmland, schools, a Catholic hall, churches, ball parks and play grounds,
Grandpa Sneed built a barn on the back acre and filled it with Hackney horses
and Shetland ponies. On the front acre he constructed a chicken shed and raise Bantam
chickens. It became known as Grandpa’s Farm.
Memories of my grandfather are
positive and loving; filled with security and masculine nurturing. Sure, there
were the ass whippings with the belts, weeping willow branches and anything
else that was within arms reach later in life but as a child, Grandpa Sneed was
my rock, my fortress against the storms of abuse and my haven of happiness. He
was my only true father figure.
The dominant physical
characteristic in the Sneed linage are our blue, crystalline eyes that sit
close together porched beneath stern heavy eyebrows. Grandpa’s could beam with
happiness one second or slice with anger the next; another characteristic
passed down through the male Sneed bloodline. His voice was deep and rustic and
he used words like “zink” when talking about where you washed the dishes and
“chimley”; the brick part of a fireplace where smoke comes out. His full set of
wavy, silver hair, parted and pressed down the middle was reminiscent of
Fitzgerald’s Gatsby minus the wealth and flashy clothes.
Grandpa was of the working class
whose wardrobe for every season was the same; leather boots, muted-toned work
pants and solid colored button-up short-sleeve shirts. Buried beneath his
cotton shirt was the standard post WWII generation’s white undergarment called
The Wife Beater t-shirt. I never saw grandpa in a pair of blue jeans or tennis
shoes, nor on the hottest summer days did he ever wear shorts. He was from the
old school, where men didn’t wear shorts outside. But inside the house it was
perfectly normal to run around in your boxer or briefs underwear. Just like
grandpa, my dad, brother and I also traipsed around the house in our skivvies when
visiting Grandpa’s Farm. Grandma didn’t seem to mind, she had changed our
diapers and bathed our naked bodies. Besides, being pantless in the morning
made it easier for her to stick grandpa with a needle when it came time for his
daily insulin shots.
As far back as my memory goes grandpa
was always a diabetic. Sugar was a scarce (and often hidden) commodity around my
grandparent’s kitchen. In its place was an abundance of dietetic deviations; “Sweet
and Low” sugar substituted instead of real sugar, “Tab” sugar-free soda instead
of regular Pepsi and orange juice poured over pancakes instead of syrup. These sugar
substitutes were just a normal way of life living in a house with a diabetic and
were easily enough to acquire a taste for; it was watching grandma give grandpa
two insulin shots every morning that I couldn’t stomach. Sitting next to the
eggs on the refrigerator door like expensive tiny jars of Russian vodka was
grandpa’s insulin supply. Each day grandma extracted their clear liquid into a
syringe and injected it into some part of grandpa’s body. One day it would be
in his left arm, the next day his right. The following two days he was jabbed
twice in the fatty tissues of each leg. Sometimes he’d even yank down the back of
his underwear exposing a big hairy ass cheek and right there at the kitchen
table, grandma would stick it. You would think that after years of daily needle
pricks, one would become acclimated to their sting but I guess just like the
other pricks in life, you never seem to become immune to the pain they cause
you. With each poke, grandpa’s face would contort and scowl. Sometimes the
needle would hit a tender spot causing him to curse grandma back into the hell
from which she came. I couldn’t watch. Like most kids, I was terrified of
needles and shots and watching my big, strong and brave grandpa grimace and
call out in agony didn’t help sooth my fear. It only strengthened it. But like
the bitter taste of pancakes covered in orange juice only lasted as long as you
chewed on them, the painful taste of grandpa’s morning insulin shots never
lasted long either and soon we were putting our pants on and heading outside to
slay our daily dragons. Mine was of the imaginary kind and grandpa’s was of the
physical kind.
With two acres of land, a barn
filled with horses, a shed filled with chickens, two dogs, three kids, four grandkids
and grandma all begging for his attention, grandpa was forced to play the roles
of farmer, cowboy, breadwinner, mechanic, groundskeeper, chauffer, foreman, handyman
and most importantly, surrogate father. It was Grandpa Sneed who taught me how
to ride a pony, a horse, a lawnmower, a tractor and a bike (in that order). While
most kids were still learning to ride their bright yellow plastic Big Wheels, I
was already galloping on a pony around the pasture one minute and sitting on a
riding lawnmower cutting the grass in the same pasture the next. When it was
time to get my first hair cut, grandpa was the one sitting across from me at
his barber shop promising me a chocolate shake from White Castles if I sat
still and didn’t cry. I didn’t cry but I also didn’t sit still. I never sat
still. I still don’t sit still. I’m always moving, tapping, rocking, fidgeting
or swaying to an imaginary tune in my head. Grandpa never sat still either. Just
like me, he was always on the go. Or was it that I was just like him, always on
the go? We were cut out of the same Godly granite; two male Sneeds sharing the
same name both gregarious and friendly-spirited people who could talk to a
stranger as easy as smiling at them, who was always willing to help someone in
need and who didn’t take shit from anyone.
One of the most vivid memories
of my grandfather’s potentially tumultuous temper is the time we made a trip to
the local grocery store called Tom Boy’s. I was maybe six or seven years old. Grandma
needed some groceries and since she had never learned to drive, grandpa was her
main means of transportation. The three of us all climbed into Grandpa’s pickup
truck and drove the mile or two down the street to Tom Boys. Grandpa and I had
decided to wait in the truck while grandpa did her shopping. As we sat there hanging
out and doing some grandfather/grandson bonding, a rusty old Ford Fairlane pulled
up in the parking spot next to us with the stereo blaring Three Dog Night’s “Liar”.
A long-haired, hippy looking guy quickly jumped out of his car and in the
process he banged his door into the passenger’s side of my grandpa’s pickup
truck. He ignored the fact that grandpa and I were in the truck and he kept
right on walking into the drug store that was next to Tom Boy’s. Upon hearing
the distinctive “dink” sound against his truck, grandpa immediately jumped out
and ran over to see if any damage had been done. There was a tiny, yet visible
dent in his door.
“Hey you asshole!” Grandpa
shouted to the hippie who by then had made his way across the parking lot and was
about to enter the drugstore, “You dented my truck with your car door.”
The hippie turned to see who was
loudly calling who an asshole and realized he was the object of my
grandfather’s articulation. He defiantly rolled his eyes and proceeded to go
into the drugstore stopping momentarily to do something really, really stupid;
he gave my grandfather the finger. I’ve seen my grandfather pissed many times.
I was the often object of his pissfulness, sometimes it was my brother, father,
grandma, aunt or uncle. An uncooperative horse, chicken or dog could also get
grandpa’s err. And then there were stupid drivers, slow waitresses and blind
baseball umpires; all were capable of setting off the trigger to grandpa’s
pissfulness. But in each scenario, it was always something the offender was
personally doing that was frustrating or aggravating to grandpa. To physically
or personally attack grandpa himself, even by a mere flipping of the birdie,
was enough to open the missile silos of grandpa’s anger and commence a retribution
of ass-whipping war.
A blind person could have seen Grandpa
was pissed. A blind person’s seeing-eye dog could have sensed it. I was pissed
too. I didn’t like anyone banging their door into my grandpa’s truck and I
especially loath anyone gesturing to grandpa with the “fuck you” sign. We both
had every right to be pissed but when he told me to roll up the window and lock
the door, that’s when my pissfulness turned into scaredfulness. I was too young
to know what a James Dean movie was but had I know what a James Dean movie
looked like at the time, I would have sat shaking in grandpa’s truck saying to
myself, “This looks like a scene from a James Dean movie.” Grandpa lit his Pall
Mall, removed his shirt, exposing his white wife beater t-shirt and casually
leaned against the front of his truck, tapping his fingers on the hood and waiting
for the hippie to reappear from behind the drugstore doors. I sat nervously
forward on the seat, secretly excited and prayed that Grandpa wouldn’t kill the
guy or the guy wouldn’t kill grandpa; or worst grandma wouldn’t come out before
either and spoil the whole thing. After several minutes, the hippie walked back
out and saw grandpa was still there, now a raging fountain of pissfulness.
I didn’t hear the exact word exchange;
I only watched the verbal confrontation in the front of the truck as the hippie
pointed his finger at my grandfather’s face in an act that seemed to be
interpreted as “Don’t mess with me old man”. While the next series of events
lasted a mere half minute, it played in my mind like the surreal slow and jerky
scenes in Spielberg’s war classic, Saving Private Ryan. Like a firecracker’s
blast, Grandpa grabbed the hippie by his collar and threw him face first into
the hood of his truck. The slamming jolt of his body against the metal shook through the driveshaft, the
transmission, the steering column and the dashboard until it finally
reverberated through my own little shaking bones. Grandpa then leaned over and said
something into the left ear of the hippie. Again, I couldn’t hear the dialog
but I imagined it was something like;
‘You need to show a little more
fucking respect to your elders or I’m going to beat it into you.”
I watched the hippie’s face contort
with pain just as grandpa’s did when he got his morning insulin shots but only
the hippie’s face was heightened red and painfully more intense. Grandpa had a handful of the hippie’s long hair clenched
in his fist and used it like a tent peg to secure his head in the exact
position he wanted it. There were no punches or
kicks, no rolling around the parking lot pavement; no knives or guns; just a
hippie’s face smashed against the hood of the truck and grandpa in complete
dominating control behind him. Through the
windshield, I could read the hippie’s lips repeat over and over:
“I’m sorry man. I’m sorry man.”
And just as quick as Grandpa laid
into the guy ready to remove his long-haired head for his lack of disrespect,
when he heard those magic words, he let go of him and pointed to the hippie’s
car.
“Alright, now you get your ass out
of here and have a good day.” I imagined him to say.
The hippie dashed back into his
Ford Fairlaine and when he cranked the key to make his get away, his eight-track
stereo came back to life, once more blasting the Three Dog Night’s Lyrics;
Ain’t that what you said.
Ain’t that what you said,
Ain’t that what you said,
Liar, Liar, Lair
Grandpa got back into the truck
and gave me a big grin and a wink. The fear rushed out of my body and I smiled
too. I could see in his eyes, for a brief few minutes, he had visited his past;
the glory days of his youth; running dangerous and wild in the streets of Hell’s
Half Acre.
“Don’t tell your grandma what just
happened.” he instructed.
I promised not to tell grandma
but you can bet your ass I went on to tell my mom, dad, my brother and sister, the
stranger walking his dog in front of Grandpa’s Farm, my Sunday school teacher
and any other ear that didn’t mind hearing. That next Monday at school I was in
my natural element standing in the hall surrounded by classmates telling my animated
story how my grandpa kicked a hippie’s ass. By the end of the day I had added a
couple more hippies to the mix and maybe they had guns or nunchucks, whatever made
for a more interesting tale. It’s easy suppressing the truth when the sound track
that plays to a particular memory is Three Dog Night’s “Liar”.
I was grandpa’s namesake and was
admittedly spoiled by him and my grandma. They doted on me as their first
grandchild and showered me with favoritism over my half-sister and brother. This
created a wedge of sibling jealous and rivalry, bonding my sister and brother
together as one offensive antagonizing team and me and the “Sneeds” as the
other defensive team which made for some interesting chapters of my life that
I’ll share later.
Although I was spoiled and knew
I was the apple of my grandfather’s eye, I don’t recall him ever actually verbalizing
he loved me. The male Sneed’s weren’t the kind of men who vocalized or showed
affection. My grandfather never showed it towards my father, just as my father
never showed it to me. But when it came down to it, I knew grandpa Sneed loved
me. And while he never wrapped his arms around me and spoke those three words, as
I learned to do on a daily basis with my children, it was expressed in every
pat on the head, every gleaming smile he flashed my way and every time he
called me “Kid O’Kid”. And on those special occasions, when grandma and grandpa
would push their twin beds together and let me sleep on the crack between them,
I would snuggle up next to Grandpa and inhale his natural cologne made of three
very distinctive scents; his own body sweat, the scent of the great out doors
and the lingering stench of Pall-Malls. On an individual bases, these smells
can be offensive and belligerent but combined and smeared on the brow and body
of Grandpa Sneed, they made for a masculine musk that still lingers in my scent
memory. I knew I was in the safest place in the world, no monsters, robbers or
long-haired hippies could get me because Grandpa Sneed loved me and was there
to protect me. I can honestly say, besides for my son, he was the only male,
who I truly Loved with a capital L.
After a long employment as a foreman
at Emerson Electric, grandpa retired and used his horse handling skills to
become a mounted Park Ranger for the St. Louis County Parks. He spent his
golden years riding horses around Spanish
Lake Park
checking fishing licenses, confiscating alcohol from under-age teenagers (many
of which would one day become my friends) and patrolling the park. Sometimes I would
ride my bike up to Spanish Lake
Park and have lunch with
Grandpa. I was proud of Ranger Sneed dressed in his kaki uniform and shiny
badge and sitting heroically upon his horse. Grandma often accused him of cheating
and having all kinds of girlfriends but I didn’t believe those accusations. He
was an old man and old men don’t cheat on their wives and have girlfriends. But
as I got older, I fell from that spell and I realized the appeal that draws
women to men in uniform. I wondered if there hadn’t been any validity to those
accusations of infidelity. Besides, where did I get my turbo-charged sexuality
and womanizing from? Surely it wasn’t from my father.
GRANDMA SNEED
Grandma Sneed was, for lack of a
better word, Baptist. By some strange mystery, upon her death, her diary found its
way into my possession. Reading your grandmother’s diary during the Great Depression has the potential of
being extremely interesting. There was Black Monday, soup lines, Al Capone, speakeasies,
Amelia Earhart, Jazz, the Rise of Hitler, each a promising interesting chapter
of a life lived during the Swing age. Unfortunately, unlike grandpa, the bad boy
of the block, Grandma was a preacher’s kid or PK as they’re infamously called. While most PKs I have ever known (some
in a biblical sense even) were wild and
rebellious, Grandma was one of those goody-goody
church-going and Bible studying PKs. Her diary entries are short, boring
snippets of days spent playing card games with her sister and evenings going to
prayer meeting and movies. I know the exact date she met my grandfather and have
read her secret frustrations with dating him. It was the classic—good girl falls in love with bad boy—story. And just when you get to the part where she finally
comes to her senses and realizes bad boy is not good for good girl and decides
she wants to break up, something tragic happens. Between the prayer meetings or
after the movies, the bad boy seduces the innocent good girl and voila, Grandma
Sneed became pregnant. Several months later they were married and soon
afterwards my aunt was born. I would not learn of this ...until many years
later after both Grandpa and Grandma Sneed had passed away. Had I sat down and
did the figures of how many years they were married minus the age of my aunt, I
would have figured it out. But Grandma Sneed was a God-fearing, Bible reading Christian
woman and the thought of her having premarital sex had never crossed my mind.
It was impossible. Unimaginable. It was like thinking God was going to let
anyone other then Baptists into the gates of heaven.
Shortly after Grandma and Grandpa
Sneed moved to Spanish Lake, their youngest son, my father, Harry Philip Sneed
Sr. became the second Sneed “Laker” when he married my mother, Irene Alma
Farrell and moved into the house who’s address is printed on my birth certificate; 1625 Jamestown Rd.
I don’t know any specifics about my
parent’s dating life or their early marriage other then they met on a blind
date set up by one of their cousins. Both had been previously married, my
father for a short time to a woman known anonymously as “Susan”. She supposedly
only married him because she needed some kind of operation and dad had insurance at the time. It was a convenient and temporary marriage
that ended upon her recovery.
My mother had also been married to a
man named Donald Hauk, who left her upon finding out their second child was
diagnosed with severe Cerebral Palsy. Unable to cope with a raising a retarded
child, he deserted or divorced my mom and left her to raise, Carolyn and Donnie
Jr, my half sister and brother all alone.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending
on who you ask, she met my father and
I guess there must have been
something called love in the beginning. For a young single divorcé to marry a woman
with two children, one being mentally and physically retarded, has to say
something about the nobleness of my father or the irresistibility of my mother.
I’ll put my money on the later.
I might as well pause here and
interject a warning to the reader. Chances are the more you read this book, the
more offended you may get from its language. You may believe my choice of words
like “retarded”, “nigger” and a plethora of other extremely offensive curse
words are uncalled for and totally unnecessary. I know there are even some out
there in reader world who take offense to the word “Broad” in the title of this
book. But allow me to point out these are not my “choice” of words. They are
words that were used as a stable vernacular diet in my house. To attempt some
sort of political correctness and say that I called my brother ‘mentally
handicapped” would be absurd. As a boy, the word handicap was something having
to do with golf and was just as foreign as the game to me. In my world growing
up, Donnie and every other physically and mental handicapped person was “retarded”.
Blacks were “niggers”, homosexuals were “queers” and “fags”, lesbians were “dikes”,
cops were “pigs”. Jews were “kikes”, Asians were “gooks”, Mexicans were “spics”,
Italians were “wops” and women were “broads”. There was no political
correctness or prejudice against who was called a racial slur in our house.
Everyone was equally insulted.
[NOTE: Recently some publishers
have once again decided to replace the word “nigger” from Mark Twain’s books. They
say it’s offensive and degrading. And in today’s society they are absolutely
right. But taking the word “nigger” out of Mark Twain’s books and replacing it
with “slave” because someone is racially offended, is like putting a loin cloth
on Michelangelo’s David because someone is offended by nudity. Advocates of
this type of censorship are so caught up in seeing the ugliness of one old, dead,
and decaying word, that they don’t see the beauty and majesty of the thriving story.
Future generations, don’t ever change my words or censor my books. Better to
have them covered with dust sitting on shelves like fine wine waiting for
sophisticated, intelligent and open-minded people to taste them on rare
occasions then to water them down with politically correctness and censorship so
that the masses can swallow them better.]
Curse words, racial slurs and political
incorrectness were my normal way of life during my Innocence of Broads years
and many years afterwards. It showed the ignorance and prejudices of those who
raised me. But I am not my ... grandfather, nor my ... father.
I am me, Harry
Sneed III
I was born eight weeks pre-mature
exactly one week before Christmas on December 18, 1962 and became the third
Sneed “Laker”. The name on my birth certificate says Harry Philip Sneed, Jr.
but that name will change over the course of my life taking on different forms
until finally, as Samuel Clemens adopted his nom du plum, Mark Twain, I took on
my own pseudonym, Speegg Met.
I was a pretty baby, if there is
such a thing, who sported a full set of dark hair and carried on the classic bright
blue Sneed eyes. For some cruel reason, maybe it was because I was extremely
premature or maybe it was merely my parent’s choice but I never got circumcised.
I felt it necessary to state this fact here and now in this chapter of my life
because it plays such an important part in the other chapters of my life; later,
when I’m no longer innocent of broads.
It’s strange to image how I was so traumatically embarrassed of being one of
the only boys in the neighborhood, in the school gym lockers, in Boy Scouts
camp showers, in the entire world that was uncircumcised, that I painstakingly hid
it throughout my early life only to announce it to the entire world in this
book written later in life. It just shows how we mature and change with time. So
often the nouns of our present lives; the
people, places and things that seem so monumental and profound become the unimportant
and forgotten pro-nouns of the future. I don’t remember her. ...
In addition to the doctor sparing
my penis with the scalpel at birth, he also didn’t cut my umbilical cord short
enough. Dad said my belly button stuck so far out they had to tape a quarter to
it to push it back in. I sported an “outy” belly button all through elementary
school.
I haven’t verified the validity of
this next tale but the story goes that at the time of my birth, there was a popular
local television program called The Charlotte Peter’s Show. Each week proud
parents would send in pictures of their newborn babies and Mrs. Peters would pick
the “Cutest Baby of the Week”. The winner was awarded $25 and the baby’s
picture was momentarily flashed on the screen. Supposedly, I won one week and got
my cute kisser aired on TV and mom and dad got $25. Mom took it as a sign I was
destine for greatness in the eye of the public and dad, well he just took the
$25 and probably went out drinking.
Some paternal traits like athletic
abilities, artistic talents and even professions are often generationally passed
down from one male figure to the next. Great musicians are often the offspring of other musicians; same with
baseball players and rich bankers. The art of consuming
large quantities of alcohol and still remaining relatively sober was a cursed legacy
passed down through the male Sneed family tree.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but if an
Irish man marries and Irish woman and they have kids, their kids are considered
to be full-blooded Irish? The same holds true for Italian, Romanian, Polish or
any other decent. When you bring two people of the same nationality together
and they have children, their children are full-blooded descendants of that
nationality.
If that’s the case, then (waving
hello) Hi, my name is Harry and I’m a full-blooded alcoholic. That’s right, both
my father and my mother were 100% prof...I mean...pure alcoholics therefore I
am a purebred alcoholic. And it is because both my parents were alcoholics and
I have witnessed firsthand, up-close and personal the misery and destruction alcoholism
causes in people’s lives, I evaded alcohol like liver and onions. I’ve never
drank my entire life, therefore I have never been drunk. One would think that a
person who has never killed billions of brain cells by the effects of alcohol or
have forgone nights passed out on dorms floors has a stable mind and clear memory.
I only have one response to that....LOL HAHAHAHAH LOL HAHAHAHA LMAO HAHAHA HAHAHA....ROFL....HAHAH!!!!!!!!
Riiiiiiggggghhhhttt.
To be totally honest, one must remove
the phrase “to be totally honest” from their vocabulary. Whenever I hear someone
begin a sentence with... “To be totally honest...” it makes me think that
person lies a lot and is normally not honest but they’re going to do something
special and be “totally honest” for the next few seconds. I had that epiphany
many years ago and no longer use that phrase and make it point to share my
little piece of wisdom about being “totally honest” when I hear others say it.
But since this book is part fact
and part fiction I’m going to insert it right here:
To be totally honest, I don’t have
too many memories of my entire childhood. Like apples that hang on a tree after
a fierce storm, the stories of this book are few but ripe and delicious and
worthy to be partaken. My mind holds very few details of early (and even later)
childhood. That is why this book is only 150 pages. When my friends, siblings and
cousins come to me with an excited memory of the past and say things like, “Remember
when we did this?” or “Remember when you did that crazy thing?”, I just look at
them with the usual blank stupid stare. Nope. I don’t remember.
But the lack of my recollection of
my very first house on Jamestown Rd. isn’t because any suppressed memories,
it’s because I was but a babe-in-arms and was too young to remember anything. Ironically,
years later one of my very best friends would live across the street from this
house and I’d pass it on a regular basis. On occasion, my father and I would
drive by and I’d ask him for any good stories about the living there. The only memories
he was able to recall was the time he started a fire in the
fireplace and forgot to open the “chimley’s” flue and smoke backed up into the house sending
mom and us three kids scrambling out of the house. Boring.
Oh...there is one more story he told me that will give
you a peak into why I probably don’t recall much of my past. As I stated
earlier, my brother Donnie had severe Cerebral Palsy. He was unable to walk,
talk or do simple things like feed himself or use his hands functionally.
Donnie spent most of his life lying on a mattress on the floor in front of a TV.
This allowed my mom the freedom to do domestic chores and take care of my
sister and me. On this particular day, it was nap time. My sister and I were
peacefully sleeping in our beds down the hall. Donnie was lying on the floor contently
watching TV, so mom thought she’d take advantage of the situation and do some
laundry. The washer and dryer were in the basement under the stairs so she left
the door open to listen in case anyone woke up. As mom was putting in a load of
laundry, she heard a noise at the top of the steps. When she looked up, there was
Donnie hanging his head over the first stair and smiling through the risers. Mom
let out a bloodcurdling scream which jolted my brother to tears then frantically
took off to save him from tumbling to his potential death. But when she rounded
the corner, there at the top of the stairs, was my father safely holding Donnie
and dangling him like a human retarded puppet over the top step. Donnie’s
crying woke me up and I started crying which started my sister crying which
started my mother crying. Dad thought it was the funniest thing in the world
and delighted in telling the story each time we drove by the house.
Thanks for reading my first chapter of The Innocence of Broads. Please follow and share with others.
-Harry "Speegg" Sneed
