How to Ruin Thanksgiving for Others.

Another Thanksgiving and I'm reminded of how I spent some of them in my youth, drunk as shit at 10AM watching St Ray's vs. Tolman High school battling it out at McCoy stadium. I wasn't the only inebriated teen there either, so don't point fingers. If we jailed every 15 year old boy who did stupid things, there'd be no 15 year old boys left. Do I have to drop names Mr. Cody?

I was never a big football fan due to the fact it's f'ing freezing out there in late November and I wasn't one for sitting in the stands for two hours suffering through it. Though exceptions were made for the Tday football game, plus cheap Popov vodka that we smuggled in. Funny thing about vodka, you still feel the cold but you don't care anymore.

I do remember my brother and I getting nasty looks by some of the older members in the crowd. The St Rays/Tolman football tradition, I suppose, was a family-friendly, upstanding, good clean fun event. Then came us two...or rather, we were the loudest of the drunks there that day. No, we were the funniest because of our ability to be sarcastic and ready with a riposte should someone hurl insults our way. Though I have to admit my brother was quicker and more creative a it, in the double entendre way.

“Tolman's very good at handling BALLS! My brother shouted out. The more intelligent heads whipped around to look at us, the ones who “got it.” The other dullards were just mumbling to themselves how we two were RUINING an almost religious event. Many “tsk tsks” were uttered.

“Crush them! Rip their lungs OUT! I cried out, trying to keep up with my brother.

“Rip their lungs out?” he guffawed.

The problem with those other people is that we had better seats this time around. The year before, we had the cheap seats in the upper galleries. This year, for a few bucks more, we were closer to the action and next to more respectable people instead of the pigs who inhabited the bargain basement seats.

We were, at least, supporters of the St Ray's team. We were in the Saint's side of the stadium...I think.

My brother spared NO ONE from his humor. His belief that all races, types and people were ripe for it, no matter how politically incorrect. Ah, political correctness hadn't been invented yet.

St Ray's football team in the early 80's had ONE black player. St. Ray's back then was as white as you could get but don't forget about those times too. Be that as it may, he was one of the best running backs that team had and was partly responsible for crushing Tolman time and again when those two teams met up.

Enough time as passed and I will tell this...

So, the Saints running back manages to grab the ball out of the air from a Tolman throw and return it nearly 80 yard to score a touchdown. As he was running my brother shouts out...

“Run boy! Run! RUN TO FREEDOM!”

We both laughed our asses off.

Was it racist? You bet it was. Was it funny? You bet it was. Ken eventually made a bit of a writing career out of humor for various Providence magazines. He was astute enough then to pare the harder humor back some. No moron he was. But in private his humor slashed everything and everyone. Before you go off and brand him a right wing ideologue, I can tell you he was a left wing pinko commie most of his life.

If I have to explain the joke...sigh..ok. Black guy running as fast as he could. Think of some slave running for the Yankee border as a Southern slave owner tries to catch his runaway slave.

But that comment wasn't what nearly got us into trouble.

We were close enough to the field and I noticed the Saint's cheerleaders freezing their nipples off most of the time. They would stand in a tight group, conserving their heat, with their visible breath fogging around them and barely talking. They looked sort of miserable to tell you the truth. When they mustered the energy to go out and do a routine and cheer, I watched them instead of the game. What struck me about them besides the bare legs, was how much makeup they pancaked onto themselves. It was a bit overdone. Lots of flaming red lipstick. No matter, I stared at one anorexic looking cheerleader, through my drunken haze, trying to remember which class she and I were in.

“Wow..she's adorable.” I thought.

My brother, watching me and wasting no opportunity, shouts out: “Hey Saints...if ya win..the cheerleaders will...” and he trailed off, leaving it at that.

About thirty seconds later, he mentioned to me that we better change our seats. I was too drunk to notice the rising anger of the people around us, though my brother shrewdly noticed it. Perhaps some Father of a Cheerleader was near us?

We got up and left, looking for some empty seats in the cheaper sections. Those stadium stairs are at a pretty high angle and once we reached the budget seats, I took a tumble all the way back down those stairs. I was lucky though, I was wearing so many coats that they acted as buffers to the concrete steps.

All I heard was laughing from the crowd. My brother then comes down to get me, having to tell me what had happened because I was far too gooned to put two and two together.

“Why are they laughing?” I said, probably with a drunkard's smile on my face too.

We met a Mr. McKlonden there, a friend of Ken's and member of the old band the Felbs. He was dressed in a Santa suit and kept trying to tell me who he was but I was thrown by the costume and probably seeing double as well. I think he was having his fun by f'ing with the people in the crowd. I do remember him trying to kiss the other college aged girls around there as “gifts” from Santa.

**

The next Monday, we were all back at St Rays, having finished up that four day weekend. I was sitting in Ted Duluk's Human Anatomy class as he was discussing the effects of Rx on the liver when he veered a bit off and spoke of the effects of alcohol on the liver and brain. I'm paraphrasing but this is close.

“You see, it takes the liver a while to process alcohol from your body, until then, you're brain is turned to mush and act like the biggest fool that ever was.”

As he said the “biggest fool,” he shot his head around to me and the entire class started laughing. I swear I didn't “get it,” as I thought no one of importance really saw us there at the game. I then realized Mr. Duluk was sitting two rows behind my brother and I. The memory had came back.

“Oh yeah, he was sitting behind us.” Whoops.

Though in his heart of hearts, knowing Duluk as I knew him, he probably was giggling to himself at the comments we were making at the game.

Intestate

“Congratulations! You are now part of the 18% that have a will!” said my attorney back in '96. I had just finished being an executor of an estate, my mom's, and the final thing the lawyer wanted me to do was to draw up a will. 

Until you sit down and actually think about it, you really have to grapple with just you want to leave and to whom. It's not that easy. Not only that, time passes from when you put your John Hancock on the document and you realize you have to change it up again.

Why change it? Because the people you were going to leave stuff too turn out to be pig-dogs years later. I can't see leaving eight guitars to a chick I want nothing to do with now.

I've been named executor three times now in wills and have sat in court many times too to process them. It's boring but you have to make sure you dot all your i's and cross all your t's. If you don't the judge will rip you a new one. The thing I noticed about probate judges is that they really detest stupid people. I watched on judge tear into an executrix for not having half the documents needed. They give you nine months in RI to do that. PS. Keep your mouth shut and briefly answer ONLY the questions asked you. There really is no fucking around when it comes to this stuff.

So when you walk into that courtroom, have your shit wired tight at all times.

Know what's even spookier? Signing your own execution warrant. I have a power of attorney and a living will which says to yank the plug out of the wall should I become too demented to leap off the Rt 95 bridge myself, should I become too sick to do so and want out NOW. It's feels like James T Kirk giving the final code for the self destruct of the Enterprise. I finally signed it. Yikes!

I'll tell you this. Being executor gives you immense power over someone's estate. It also pisses the fuck off anyone else who wasn't named or mentioned in the will. I have received phone calls from others trying to grease their way into my brother's assets. “Oh, he would've wanted you to have that gold plated guitar signed by Jimi Hendrix?”

That last sentence is a bit hyperbolic but it ain't too far off of a phone call I got after my brother died. I sat there, with a shit eating grin on my face and drew out the conversation a bit more. It was time for fun. “Really? Ken said he hadn't talked to you in 18 years. He said he wanted you to have that Strat? When? 1983? Well, I hate to tell you but it's gone, sold in an estate sale I had to do about seven months ago.” I could swear I felt the disappointment come through the phone line. The Strat was sitting against the wall by my stereo setup.

Bastards. God. How they try.

**

I warn you all. Keep your eyes open when the funeral is over. They're very emotional times and everyone goes bananas. The sleazier ones will try to finagle something out of the estate and then get fuming mad when you alert them you've been appointed an “officer of the court” for a while and have ALL that backing to say “NO!” to them.

Here's a telling story about keeping your shit together and what happens when you don't.

My Mom, after her husband had died, became a pile of jello for a while. My brother and I had to run the ship around here for a while but we were both too young to have been appointed executors. She was appointed. Bad choice. But what the hell are you gonna do? She was at a loss for what to do, what lawyer to hire and had not the slightest idea on how to push this whole thing through court. She then mistakenly relied upon her oldest brother to find a lawyer and “help.”

Well, the probate went thought the court but for one thing that she found out months after it was finalized. $10,000 was missing. Thinking back on it, she remembered her brother and the lawyer he hired had come to Fatima hospital where she staying for a bit for stress. She signed a document while ripped to shit on drugs and barely remembered just what it was.

This is about as illegal as Hitler running a red light. Any lawyer getting caught doing this will have his testicles handed to him in court. If caught, of course.

But, she had no evidence to make her plea and being in the emotional state she was, wasn't about to mount a fight. But she never forgot. Neither did my brother or I.

I don't have to tell you that the closest people in your lives are perhaps the ones who love to shove that knife in your back, do I? Especially when an insurance policy comes due or a guitar is known to be available.

Get mercenary. Get prickish. Use that court appointed power like a baseball bat if needed and you find yourself in some screamfest family fight over dear dead ol' Dad's assets.

Keep your eyes open.

Oh, and get a will too. If you die intestate, your scumbag sister and her alcoholic husband can mount a claim against your estate and chisel off some of those assets meant for your wife and kids. No joke. I watched it happen once.