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Billy
Joe |
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I don't know if there was a kid like this in every neighborhood, but there should have been. Billy Joe was a real hoot. Even us kids knew he was looney. The first thing the neighborhood mothers told a new arrival was, "Keep your child away from Billy Joe," and we would be so admonished. So naturally, the first kid we saw on the street would be asked, "Hey, where does this Billy Joe live?"
He was legendary. The first day I met him, Jack and I were with him in his basement when his mother came down to fuss at him about something and he grabbed a can of gasoline and opened the furnace door. "Get back upstairs," he yelled, "or I'll blow us all to Kingdom Come!" And he held the can in a threatening manner while his mom scurried up the stairs. I thought, "Hey, this guy could be fun."
He would entertain all of us kids with outlandish and wild tales of grandeur, with elaborate gestures and wild sound effects. Like his adventure at the West End Theatre: "CARONG! SCRANG! BALOOM! So I pulled the sword off the wall and wacked the usher's thumb. Blood spurted everywhere. Then I leaped off the balcony. Everybody was screamin' and runnin' all over the place!" While we laughed so hard we peed our pants. I guess he thought we believed his crazy tales because he kept on telling them.
Occasionally a newcomer to the audience would show up and say, "Oh bullshit, Billy Joe," and we would shush him up quickly. We didn't want our entertainment to be curtailed.
But he was a doofus. For one thing: he idolized Hitler and everything Nazi. None of us agreed with him on that of course, I mean this was right after WWII. That alone was enough to make him a pariah in the hood. Anyhow, one of our favorite things was riding our bikes down the alleys and kicking over all the empty garbage cans. They made a lot of noise and would roll to the center of the alley, causing a great deal of trouble for people trying to get to their garages. One day, Billy Joe thought that sounded like fun, so he said, "Let's go. I'll take the lead."
"Okay Billy Joe," we cajoled, "Lead on."
What he didn't give us a chance to tell him was that the garbage men had not been by, as yet, so the cans were still full. So he goes charging at a stand of cans on a platform behind an apartment house. He sticks his leg straight out and piles headlong into four or five loaded garbage cans. His bike went careening down the alley alone while he lay sprawled on the platform amidst garbage and cans.
Someone retrieved his bike and he said, "Well, that's enough for one day," and limped miserably home. The rest of us were unable to continue as we laid around the rest of the day roaring with laughter. That was Billy Joe.
One day we are in the alley and we hear someone shouting, "GOLD! GO-O-L-L-D!" Like he had discovered the Superstition Mountain treasure.
So we run down to see what all the excitement was about. It was Billy Joe, on his knees. He had found some old, rusty candlestick in a burned garbage pile and he was holding it up for all to see.
Somebody said, "Get outta here, that's not gold."
"Oh, yes it is. You'll see, you'll see," said he and cradled his find and scurried off.
He later told us that he melted it down and sold it for a goodly sum. Yeah, sure he did.
He was also just about the biggest racist I ever knew. One evening a bunch of us guys were hanging around outside the pool hall and we heard someone screaming a tirade of racial epithets. We looked around and here came Billy Joe, tearing down the street on his bike. About a half block behind him came four black dudes on bikes doing their best to catch him. Most of the guys were hoping they would and cheered them on.
I saw him two days later and he looked none the worse for the wear, so I figured he had escaped. I asked him how he did it and all he said was, "Eh, it was easy."
He lived next to a vacant lot we called the commons. There was a shack in the back, on the alley, where these men would clean the almost empty paint cans from the Fawcett-Dearing Printing Company. A truck would drop off a bunch of empty cans and pick up the clean ones every few days. The cans were five gallon metal cans. They were cleaned by steaming them. Talk about a hot job. The cans were always cleaned at night, so during the day there were always a bunch of inky cans laying around. I said they were almost empty because if you tilted the cans upside down, you could get some of the ink to seep out. Some were not as empty as others.
Now this commons was full of weeds and high grass and some junk. We made some pathways through this conglomeration and Billy Joe came up with a brilliant idea. We were occasionally chased by various people. It may be some other kids, or a cop, or a disgruntled neighbor, etc. He suggested we dig some holes in the paths and pour some ink in the holes, then cover them with a few weeds to disguise them. If we happened to be chased, we could run through the commons, dodging the "paint traps" as he dubbed them, and leave our pursuers behind. The traps were not real deep, just enough to throw you off balance and perhaps down, and we poured a layer of ink in the bottom. The ink was very sticky and if you got some on your shoes, you just had to throw them away. I never got chased through there, but of course, Billy Joe had numerous, descriptive episodes.
Perhaps his most famous/infamous stunt happened during his "Knights of the Round Table" faze. I think he had seen a movie about King Arthur or something when he decided to relive those glorious days as only he could. He stole several of the clean ink cans sitting outside of the shed, and with a large pair of cutters, a hacksaw and a hammer, he fashioned himself a suit of armor. Well. not exactly a complete suit. He made a chestplate, arm and leg protectors and a helmet, with a piece cut out of the front of the can through which to see. He invited half a dozen of us lucky onlookers to observe his magnificence as he donned his armor and mounted his steed (his bike) which had been outfitted with ribbons and feathers and streamers. He had a shield, of course, (a garbage can lid) and a lance. The lance being a clothes-line pole. In olden days everyone had a clothesline or two strung across their back yard and they had several clothesline poles. A clothes-line pole was a six foot wooden pole with a notch on the end. The lines would naturally sag and the poles would hold the line up to keep the laundry from dragging on the ground.
The object of Billy Joe's ire this day was a wooden plank stuck in a sewer grate. Now these sewer grates were usually placed maybe twenty or twenty five yards from the street in the middle of the alley. They were about two feet long by eighteen inches wide and there were two of them end to end, covering the four foot long grate opening. They were very heavy iron and he had set a two by four plank in one of the iron slats and was going to joust with it. We all began to look at each other and giggle because it was obvious what was going to happen. I should say it was obvious to everyone but Billy Joe, who with grim ceremony circled the "ill fated" grate and pedaled halfway down the alley before turning around and facing his adversary.
After gathering his courage he began his charge. He steadied the lance, picked up speed and with steely-eyed determination aimed at the plank, he raced onward.
It was beautiful, as he hit the plank dead center. We had wisely given him plenty of room for the anticipated collision and we weren't disappointed. When the lance hit the plank it actually lifted the grate an inch or two and that was that. He made the mistake of holding on to his lance. Once again the riderless bike careened on down the alley and Billy Joe crashed to the ground and laid in an agonized heap in the middle of the alley. He had to be assisted home and we didn't hear from him for several weeks when he suddenly made his final appearance in his armor.
There were about a dozen kids gathered at the edge of the alley. Some older boys playing basketball and the younger ones just hanging out. Suddenly we hear someone cursing and we look to see Billy Joe walking toward us in full armor, waving his sword and yelling. We all just gawked and laughed. When he got closer, several of the older guys, who thought he was nuts anyway, took off and grabbed his sword, turned his helmet around backwards and started beating him over the head with it. He yelled and tried to retreat back down the alley with the guys harassing him all the way.
Thank God that ended that faze of his lunacy as we didn't see any more of the suit of armor.
He once described the great clubhouse on stilts he was going to build and defend from the older boys with fire arrows. So he did, except instead of it being a mighty fortress, it was a little shack suspended by some spindly boards. It was about six feet off the ground and none of us would dare try to get into it.
I don't know how he got the thing that high off of the ground, but he burned it down with his own fire arrows not long after and made up a story about his valiant escape from marauding hoodlums who attacked him in the middle of the night.
He made a sling, like David. He would go to the riverbank in Shawnee Park and hurl rocks at the workers on passing barges and hunt for gar fish with his homemade tomahawk for something to do.
But with Billy Joe the craziness never ended. One harrowing tale was about the fearsome Night Rider, who was terrorizing the neighborhood. He was a frightening spector who rode through the neighborhood killing pets and threatening to burn down houses and the police were baffled as to who he was, but they were determined to catch him. He had been coming through with terrifying frequency and Billy Joe had a feeling, "he could be coming by tonight."
We all had never heard or seen anything like what he was describing, but as we were hanging out around my front porch that night at about nine o'clock, we heard someone yelling, and around the corner came a bicyclist dressed in a sheet from head to toe, a la the KKK, flying down the street shouting obscene slogans and disappeared around the next corner. The most simple minded kid on the block could tell it was Billy Joe, of course. That's just the way it was with that guy. He could wear you out.
Some years later I ran into him while Christmas shopping in downtown Louisville. He was dressed like Humphrey Bogart, sporting a trench coat, fedora and pipe and accompanied by some weird little guy named Steen, who looked like a German spy. We spoke briefly and then they hurried off in a swirl of pipe smoke.
Several years after that I was at a party and someone pulled out a photograph to show around. There were several people in it and I thought I recognized someone, so I pointed and asked in astonishment, "Who is that?"
The lady says, "Oh, that's my sister's crazy husband."
I replied, "Really?"
She went on: "Yeah, he broke her arm a few weeks ago, but it was an accident. He was showing her how to defend herself with karate or something, and he had hold of her arm when he slipped on a rug and fell down, and dragged her down, too, and broke her arm."
And I said to myself, "Yep, that's Billy Joe. Somehow still at it."