This really happened...
I debated whether I should use his real name since he’s long since dead. Personally I wouldn’t mind sullying his name even in death, but his kids are still alive and the abuse I’ll fling may strike them even though they had little to do with what happened. Even so, I didn’t like them much either growing up, but I’ll leave them out of it.
I’ll say this: He lived very near Hamlet Street.
The Nacht family was a boisterous family of mainly boys whose Dad (who I intend to besmirch) was right-wing conservative in the 70’s when the entire nation was leaping Left after the shit show of Vietnam, Nixon, Agnew, Watergate and when hat ugliness that came to light. Anyone in the late 70’s who pubically supported anything conservative was shamed to keep their opinions to themselves as any defense of Nixon et al was not going to go over. They had nothing support their beliefs as the entire right wing managed, on their very own, to be seen as a huge joke. See a vision of Nixon, after his resignation, walking alone on a foggy beach at San Clemente...with a metal detector.
In the summer of ‘78, most of young teens here had longish hair, were discovering pot, girls and lived to ape anything coming out of LA as it was seen as height of “cool.” Being cynical, hip, mouthy and telling adults to shove it up their ass was in...and we got away with it. By that time, the capitulation of the adult world was apparent by their total failure to demand any respect, after we kids saw what kind of world they wholly screwed up. All Holy Institutions of America were being seen as covered in shit...and we kids didn’t do it.
And I was a big one to point out adult failings as I never would automatically respect anyone older than me unless they proved they deserved it...weekly. The suspected child toucher (and later confirmed) down the street? Fuck him. The Dad who beat his kids in the front yard? Fuck him. The arrogantly proud white trash loud mouths on the other street, whose Dad belonged to the “Job of the Month Club,” fuck them too. I had opinions, just like everyone else did.
And I wasn’t the only kid who had this particular disposition. Most of us kids pissed on many things held Holy by the adult world, like government, the church, business world...all those things held in high esteem by the end of the Eisenhower era...and whose honor was destroyed by their very leaders.
If you want proof of this, watch the first few seasons of Saturday Night Live. They shit on everything held dear in America. The show was #1. We kids watched it and agreed.
Enough of the history lesson, back to Mr. Nacht.
Mr. Nacht, who we really didn’t know except through his kids, as we sometimes hung out with them, probably didn’t like us anyways on first look. We looked ratty, sort of hippy-ish and were untamed and disrespectful. Out in the street we reverted into being more feral as many of us were that to begin with, due to our family upbringings. (That’s another topic! I wonder why so many of us kids on these two blocks here were so bent in one way or another).
One morning, Jimmy and I were tooling around on our bikes, talking to Mr. Nacht’s son Paul, just in front of his house when Jimmy said something (I don’t remember, but knowing Jimmy, it was probably insulting) when Mr. Natch, loudly told him to “Get the hell out of here.” Upon hearing this, and leaving, I managed to mouth, what I thought was under my breath, “Ahh..fuck this..let’s go,” when he yelled again to take my foul mouth and beat it too.
OK, I get it. Some people find cursing highly offensive. What I found offensive was the feeling he was trampling all over my First Amendment right to say “FUCK!” if I wanted too. No joke, that’s how insolent I felt. I felt authoritarian type families were seriously mentally ill. No joke there either. The Nacht’s, especially his Dad, viewed everything as top-down and orders are given from on high and WILL be obeyed, no matter how irrational or wrong (and how many grown ups had I come across who were appealing examples people?).
I once saw something at Chicago’s O’Hare airport while waiting for a connector to Portland OR. As I sas in the pre-boarding area, a man and his son where checking two long, black cases that both had large red tags on them. I knew what those cases were, they were rifle cases. I guess he and his son were flying to some hunt and brought their own firearms.
As luck would have it, they were on my flight and in the seats just ahead of me. After a bit, I started listening in on them as their accent was pure south Midwest, maybe Oklahoma? It wasn’t much about what they were talking about but how the son talked to his Dad. “Yes, sir, No sir, I don’t know sir.” It was the Dad setting the topics and tone of the conversation and the kid just followed along w/o offering any thoughts of his own really. He wasn’t scared just that he seemed so well trained in ‘knowing his place.’” Privates don’t tell Captains what to do or think! I’ll say it again, I knew, as a kid, that many adults were just plain wrong or worse, malicious. Why “Yes sir” that?
I digress...back to Mr Nacht.
Then another altercation happened a few weeks later that confirmed that my estimation of Mr. Nacht was a Grade A asshole.
Jimmy and I were at Jack’s house, which was right across the street from Mr. Nacht, talking about President Carter (What about Carter, I do not remember) when we heard Nacht start opining loudly about what he thought of him.
“Carter? Carter? This country’s going to hell! We need as STRONG leader! Democracy put him in for God’s Sake...it failed! It would be better if we had a dictator!” There’s a pause when then he felt justified and safe in saying his next thought.
“Germany had it right! They put in a…” and he shut up.
Jack, Jimmy and I just stared. We couldn’t believe he had the balls to praise Hitler.
At 14, I was quick. There were times when situations just appeared before me and I could ad lib and sub-reference like Robin Williams. Now Mr. Nacth just provided with an opening for me to kick open wide and go to town.
So I say caustically as I can...
“Hitler!? Hitler? MY Dad fought in that war! He was THERE!!”
That was a total lie. My Dad was in the Korean War and way too young for WW2, but so what, I felt justified putting down this crypto-Nazi who lived among us in any way I could. Claiming my Dad was a veteran of the European theater seemed just soo perfect in claiming social credence beyond measure. I knew this and played it up.
Mr. Nacht, now realizing just what he had said, in public, and also hearing my condemnation by using the holy virtue of my Dad the American Patriot, spun his head around and he quickly went back into his house.
I felt elated and validated in what I had done and knew that this guy who I thought was a total jackass..was a jackass.
I felt so brave and validated that I walked across the street, up the porch and knocked on his door.
Paul, his son, answered.
I say loudly to him, so that my voice carried into the house, “I want to talk to your DAD!”
Paul had no idea what was going on. Soon the other two older brothers come and feel something ugly is up. All three start circling their wagons, defending the family’s honor, although against what they had no clue.
I can tell Mr. Nacth is in the kitchen, as I see a piece of him.
“Come OUT here Mr. Natcht!” I yell, standing tip-toed trying to see him past his son’s heads.
A few seconds later, Mrs. Nacht comes, corrals her boys into the house and firmly shuts the door in my face. WHAM!
I turn around, completely delighted in what I had just done and probably with a mile wide smile on my face as I look at Jimmy and Jack. Of course I had one, I just socially convicted, condemned and executed, pubically, a 40 Something year old guy who I didn’t like and who spilled the fact he liked Nazis. God, could I wield social POWER like a baseball bat when it fell my way.
“What an asshole!” I say, loud enough for the neighbors to hear as I descended the stairs of the porch.
**
I never saw him again, ever. Though years later I heard he got busted by his wife fucking around with another women. Many arguments and a final divorce eventually happened.
Once, a few months later that Nazi event, as I happened to be walking to school, Paul up with us, (Mr. Nacht’s son, remember?) and he asks and as if knowing the answer already...
“Your Dad was really in WW2?”
I then realized he had heard the whole story and I never admitted that my Dad wasn’t. Paul didn’t threaten me nor do anything to defend his Dad on that walk to Goff that day. For the rest of the walk he just got quiet and remained so
