R IS FOR RED SHOE'S CHRONICLES

My theme for A to Z this year is a wildly different, but very exciting, HERE'S TO YOU all month long. 26 posts to be precise. The most difficult part was narrowing down the 26. All of you deserve your own post. What you will find here is a post by the featured blogger, with traveling music chosen by me that complements said post, and two links. One will link back to the original post and the other to the main page. This year's A to Z is all about making new friends!

Red Shoe's Chronicles the days of his life. Be warned: sometime Black Shoes grabs control on that blog and it gets ***crazy*** over there. When that happens, I suggest you visit at your own risk. Now, I don't recall when or how I found Shoes, but I am ever so glad I did. He is funny, charming, and a seriously great guy. I vote him Most Likely To Travel Cross Country To Help A Friend In Need. And that is saying something.

and the shoes...

Cue the traveling music:



Momma Said by Red Shoes
7/12/13

When I was a little pair of ~shoes~, my brother had a 1964 Ford Galaxy 500 just like the one pictured above... only his  was a golden/brown color (of course, I am biased towards the color, red).  A BEAUTIFUL car... the damn thing had a 390 cu. in. engine... and was so fast that the from time to time, the car would have to slow down so its paint job could catch up with it.  That is one of the most amazing vehicles from my younger ~shoes~ memories.  My brother was one those "IT" people, whereas I was always on the fringe of any of the cliques of kids in high school. More often than not, I was excluded instead of being included... but that was ok.

But I could go riding with John in that car, and we would get all kinds of attention.  I always imagined that the girls we would meet were talking to US, when in reality, they were talking to him and his nerdy, goofy brother was just there...

Still, when he would say, "~shoes~... let's go riding...", I was always game and ready to go.  Our journeys would take us all over the place around here.  Maybe it would be a late afternoon run over to Rosedale to go see the Mississippi River... or to Merigold...

From time to time, Mom would tell us about things we shouldn't do, and places we shouldn't go... if for no other reason than our own survival.  I suppose Mom did know best... she certainly wouldn't mislead us about things like that.

One of the places in town that was "off-limits" was 'Bob's Drive In.'

Not Bob's Drive In, but...

... it could have been. It had the long awning much like this one... and you could park underneath if it happened to be raining... but if you wanted to be cool, you would park just out from underneath it... you could be 'seen' better that way.

They had the BESTEST chili-cheese burgers, onion rings and cherry cokes...

AUGH!!!!!!

Sooo... this one Saturday afternoon, my brother finds me and says, "let go for a ride..."

I knew that probably meant we would go to "Bob's," get a couple of those burgers up there, and have a great deal of fun...

The car hop came... took our order... brought us our food... and we were in paradise... and I was sitting on the passenger's side of that cool looking Ford up there...

At some point, my brother started the engine... we weren't finished with our food yet... and I asked, 'where are we going?'

"We are going to back up some so we can watch 

that fight over there..."

That alone shows you what a geek I was... I was so busy eating that I didn't realize that  a fist fight was brewing just a few cars away from us... the kinds of things that Mom wanted us to avoid...

... so we back up a bit... and we have a front row seat... this fellow in blue jeans and a white T-shirt is cussing this guy inside a pick up truck up one side and down the other... waving his arms... yelling... stuff like that.  I couldn't hear what the fellow in the truck was saying, but at some point, the fellow on the outside grabs the door handle... jerks the door open... and reaches in to grab the occupant... and...

POW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

... just that sudden, a little red dot suddenly appeared on this fellow's white T-shirt...

Have you ever been a witness to... or involved in anything like this?  In the movies, they tend to portray some of this stuff in slow-motion... and it was... it was moving so slow... maybe to give that fellow as long to live as it could...

After the sound of the shot, this fellow stumbled back and started a turn to his right... and was facing our vehicle...  and there was a little red dot on the front of his shirt... centered right in the middle of that fellow's chest.

... and I said to my brother...

"John... he's dead..."

I was in the ninth grade at the time... I didn't know shit about shit... but I knew this guy was dead.  He stumbled towards us... fell up against the car next to us... spun and staggered out into the gravel parking lot where he collapsed... and bled out what little Life he had left onto the ground.

The bullet must have severed the aorta... or hit one of the major chambers of the heart...  I didn't know that someone could have that much blood in them...  I didn't know that someone could bleed that much...  horror movies don't have the effect on me that this event did...

The next thing I know is that cars are screaming and rushing out of the parking lot... everyone wanting to get the Hell away from there...  We got home... I ran to my Mother and hugged her so tight and was crying... and she was asking John what had happened to me... when we really both lost as to what we had just witnessed...

I better understood then what Mom had tried to save us from... how she was trying to protect us...

I lost a great deal of innocence that day...

Did that piece punch you in the gut like it did me? After you comment here, I strongly encourage you to link over to the original post and read the comments. There is actually a bit MORE to this story...