39: Tom, Jerry, and a Bastard Named Evel.

This chapter talks about how a cat & mouse got me through some rough times, and yes I also write about THAT Evel, as in Knievel.

Probably signed by a machine, but a very young me, this was everything.

I can feel your eyes rolling already. Seriously Mark? What do Tom (a cat), Jerry (a mouse), and a bastard named Evel Knievel have to do with each other?

Tom & Jerry were my imaginary friends who protected me from the evils that haunted my life until my early teens. I met them when the door to our house’s attic was in my closet and would open when the air pressure in my room changed.

Evel Knievel was a true American bad ass while I was growing up. I wanted to become a professional stuntman solely because of him. Even taught myself how to do some pretty fun stuff in boats and JetSkis. Somewhere out there are videos of me taking JetSkis off of regulation water ski jumps. Some mental health professionals have stated that I had suicidal tendencies. To paraphrase Joe Walsh, “They said I was crazy, I was just trying to have a good time.”

There were several cartoons that I looked forward to watching, The Flintstones, Peanuts (Snoopy rocks!), The Jetsons and Tom & Jerry. Due to some bullshit imaginary allergy that Fran had to dog fur, I would never be able to raise a dog (until Kathy brought Bailey into my life one Christmas Eve, ok a few days before Christmas). The Flintstones were too far-fetched to be real, while The Jetsons gave me hope for a future that so far has not materialized.

Then there is Tom & Jerry. I do not remember the first time I watched a Tom and Jerry cartoon, nor what the cartoon was about. But I do remember thinking about a couple of things (ok, ok, maybe not the VERY first time I watched them, but soon after, I know the house I was in, and we moved from there when I was barely six years old.

A. I thought they were brothers. Look, I really thought this because Tom was a complete jerk to Jerry. Jerry did everything he could to not getting captured. Maybe because he knew if Tom were to be replaced by another cat, the new cat would actually capture and, of course, torture him.

B. They might be friends, good friends who need each other to survive. Well, it makes more sense than that they were related. I was raised in a home where whites hung out with whites, blacks were hired by white people to do the chores that the whites didn’t want to do, and somehow the whites were able to feel superior to the blacks because they paid black people to do that work. With that logic, Tom, a cat, and Jerry, a mouse, could never be related.

Do any of you remember how, due to the success of the book and mini-series “Roots” by Alex Haley, schools across America introduced the concept of doing family trees to all levels of students? Well, at Lake Sybelia Elementary School in “lilly white” Maitland, FL several of my friends figured out that though they had light skin, they were descendants of black slaves. Sadly, those few kids were no longer seen as white by many of the white kids.

I got to hide behind a root system that ended a generation or so before the Lepows (formerly Lepofsky via Russia), Gralias via Spain, or Greenbergs via Poland, who arrived at Ellis Island. Since then, the Lepow tree has been researched back a few hundred years. BUT, since I am adopted, knowing what they found out was pretty cool, it did nothing to tie me to the Lepows. BTW, my roots via DNA tests show I am Nordic and German with some English and other European blood tossed in.

It was rough finding out that my Grandma Bessie on my mother’s side (aka Fran’s side) was the only survivor of the Holocaust from her side of the family. She NEVER spoke of it, and was sent to America as part of the evacuations before Hitler took total control. Fran only found out during my Grandma’s final days. Both of my Grandmothers were named Bessie.

So, back to the racial tensions at Lake Sybelia Elementary School in the early 70s. Bussing had just been desegregated, and my bus route was the one that detoured into Eatonville to make a stop at an apartment complex to pick up a few students. We didn’t make this stop the year before, nor did we start doing it at the start of the school year. I remember the bus driver being an all-out racist, complaining about being forced to let “them” ride on HER bus.

Even in my earliest memories, which I might add are what horror movies are made of, I just knew that I had to somehow get through this point in my life. There are only two people on earth I have told the details of what I was forced to endure at the hands of people I was told to love, honor, and, of course, obey. Via this substack, I have touched on the generalities, but please understand that some of these chapters take a huge toll on me mentally.

OK MARK, GET BACK ON TRACK DUDE!

Due to the horrors of my life, I have been able to remove myself from situations mentally. YES, I am there physically, but I remove myself, and just push on through whatever the fuck I am being forced to deal with.

OK, one more try, and I very much appreciate that you are putting up with me at the moment. It has taken me roughly 8 hours over a couple of days to compose this much so far.

I don’t know why I keep getting distracted right now, because I know thinking that two imaginary ghosts were real to me is a tad bit out there. But they were probably the first step in my life of adopting weirdness as a life skill and or strategy.

Usually, this is where I stop typing, hoping to get back to this challenging chapter. If I managed to finish all of the chapters I started but have not revisited and finsihed, this chapter’s number would easily be in the 90s. But damnit, I have been composing this chapter for weeks, and now, after I finally find the cover photo, it is a struggle. I feel like I am having to explain something important to me that you, my readers, might actually think is weird. I know, the irony that I would think typing about my imaginary ghost friends would be considered weird.

But I haven’t told you about my childhood hero, Evel Knievel. I spent so many hours launching that toy “stunt cycle” across my bedroom, the family room, the back porch, over the pool (yes, a swimming pool), and off some of the plywood jumps that I would also launch my bicycle off of, and usually wipe out upon landing, just like Evel Knievel. I think I went through three of those ”stunt cycles” by Ideal Toys. Plus I had the van/camper, and Snake River Jet Cycle. The jet cycle weighed a friggin ton and NEVER caught air. What a disappointment.

As many of you know, my parents moved from one side of Maitland to the other when I was six years old. Our house was on a canal, which was maybe 6.5m wide. For my US-based readers, the canal was MAYBE 19/20’ wide. It was my dream to figure out a way to get my stunt cycle fast enough to have it jump every inch of that canal. Tried plywood, tried nailing lots of Hot Wheels track to plywood, hoping to mimic his tracks inside stadiums. I used ladders for the height. The damn thing NEVER cleared the canal. The bottom of the canal was muck, gooey friggin’ muck! After almost losing my toy, I attached way more than was needed fishing line to the back of the motorcycle so that when Evel couldn’t keep himself up long enough to finish the job, I wouldn’t have to jump into that canal to retrieve him. I would just pick up my Zebco fishing rod and reel the toy back to safety.

One year, I was Evel Knievel for Halloween. I was in maybe the 3rd or 4th grade, and back then, we would be allowed to wear our Halloween costume to school, but without the mask. I was so proud of my costume. Until one teacher lashed out at me about how horrible a man he was. He was a criminal, abused women, and drank too much.

This was before he took a baseball bat to the reporter. The day after I found out, and