One renter was a 60 year old Cherokee Indian from the reservation. His name was Fat Fast Bear, but we called him Chief. He was always drunk, religiously even. He worked at the graveyard mowing plots and would sit up on the roof playing keyboard all night wasted. I kinda loved him. He was like the bad ass grandfather you never had. He drank cheap whiskey out of the bottle and rolled cigarettes with his wide stained fingers.
One night he went the the Alpha, which was a restaurant and bar down the block. He ended up fighting this young guy out in the street. He was maybe 29, he was also a member of our local hockey team the Nailers. He came back all banged up and bleeding saying him and the guy were going fishing the next day. He was funny like that. He loved to fight, but it wasn't out of anger it was just something he enjoyed. He had all of these beautiful pictures of his father in these big feather head dresses. I would go up there and sit in the floor and play this game he taught me with multi colored rocks. He never lost, and he always said he won good money playing out on the grounds with the white boys. There was this old white woman who would come by from times to time. She was the same age as him, but she looked so old. White people do not age as gracefully as Native Americans, sad but true. He could have past for late 40's, but she looked like she had a foot in the grave. She would come around and he would be drunk calling her squaw. They just didn't match up, he was too wild for her and I always kinda hated her for whining at him in this high pitched voice.
He ended up marrying a Blackfoot Indian right before he moved out. I remember it being a serious matter for him because they were from different tribes. They had a traditional ceremony in her living room in Moundsville. She was just as lovely and wild as he was. Then one day they were gone, and just like that never saw him again.
Connie was the woman who lived in the separate house. She was a portly woman who always had a tower of Pepsi cases in her kitchen and cartons of Private Stock ultra light menthol 120 cigarettes. She hacked constantly. You could hear her from the yard and sometimes she would come out on the deck and try to talk to you through it. It was painful to watch, but somehow I ended up a smoker. She had this awful dog. He was a grossly overweight beagle who loved to rub his smelly balding self all over you. She would scream his name "Jay Do!", in this smoke ridden voice. He howled constantly, more like barked I guess. The two of them was a sight. Them both toddling along wheezing and hacking and barking. They were nice, but god if you got stuck in a room with them you would end up covered in dog hair, just gasping. She was old friends with my friend's mother. They were those older women that still stuffed their bra and got hammered on Arbor Mist. They were crude and graphic and sarcastic. I kinda admired it, but it got weird sometimes. You realized they weren't 16, they were someone's guardian. This was my friend's mother singing Shaggy songs way too loud in a lawn chair in my back yard.
The upstairs apartment was usually rented by younger adults, my sisters friends. I had come back from Saipan and had just turned 16 when Aaron B. moved in. I was always boy crazy I think. I hate to admit that because I never thought I was, but I was, and he was no exception. He was older, in his twenties. He was tall maybe 6'3" and had a foot long mohawk. He always wore aviators and a leather jacket, combat boots the nines. He stomped around generally drunk and he had this great smile. It was sly, like the bad guy in a movie. Not weasely necessarily, but that he might be the type to do some wild things to you. So of course I was curious. I was 16, again I never know if reiterating the age is helping me. I sought him out. Everyone came to his parties including the people I hung out with in high school so I was there a lot. We were kind of a crew, the older kids and the younger ones. Punk is really heavy in the area so we were a sizeable group. I went up there one night and hung around drinking beers I was definitely not supposed to be having. We were watching Resident Evil and he was talking about women. He said "When you're young you want the trophy, you want the girl your friends think is hot. Then you get older and you just want someone to put up with your shit. You just want someone to hold onto". Of course I swooned. This rough and tumble pouring his heart out like that to me. It was like the movies. Then he grabbed my face, said "Don't tell your mother", and kissed me. There we were making out on his leather couch, zombies on tv, and my mother just down stairs. I definitely felt cool. It ended quickly and was followed up by a series of weird conversations. Basically I was a teenager and he was not. I did not yet realize the concept that making out meant nothing. It was something that people would do with just about anyone, and my weird young minded fantasies were just fantasies.
The point I am getting at is that I learned things from all of these weird misplaced people in my life. I guess that is why I am writing this all down. All of them helped me progress past my understanding at that time. It was generally not pretty, in fact it was usually humiliating, but witnessing these people and interacting with them, and even loving them taught me a lot about growing up.
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