Legacy Blog #43: The Summer of 1995

My Beloved Daughter,

The summer of 1995 found things changing for our little group.  Despite the fact that it had been James who had brought Michael and Jeremy into our circle of friends, Michael made no secret of his disdain for our older friend (well, he made no secret to anyone but James).  He often did things to make James angry.  Knowing that James had a very strong hatred toward homosexuality, Michael declared his sexuality to him merely to try to get him to stop coming around the group.  When that wouldn’t work, he secretly told him that none of us really wanted him around, causing him to break off contact with us.  I didn’t find out the extent of the betrayal until much later, as we’ll get into down the road in a later entry.

Michael, as I’d mentioned in the last entry, was a devout atheist.  He discussed his views openly and even how he had purposely blasphemed God at a point when he was younger, so he had no reason to try to come to faith later on.  Truthfully, this is the essence of blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, when you no longer care if you are saved.

Your Grandma Pat puzzled him.  Just like all of my friends, he couldn’t get in the house without an affectionate hug from her.  Just as Michael’s lack of affection from his mother puzzled me, my mother’s fierce love of hugging shocked him.  In fact, my whole family pretty much puzzled him.  Here was a family who barely had the money to feed ourselves, but was rich in love for one another.

Also, you grandmother’s pure faith shocked him.  He would actually try to argue with her over it, only to be kindly rebuffed with, “I just believe because I believe, hon.”

The biggest event of that summer came when the circle of friends drove to St. Louis to go to Six Flags.  Before Vickie’s stroke, you’ll remember that you, Bree, Jay, Vickie, and I had season passes to Six Flags.  However, going there was a rare occurrence when I lived in Van Buren.  We stayed in Edwardsville, Illinois, with Eric and Jack’s older cousin and her family.  She had a nice, two-story house with pool in the back yard.

The night that we stayed there, Eric and Jack’s youngest cousin, who was no more than eight or nine, was very antagonistic toward me.  To this day, I’m not sure what I did that really set him off to dislike me.  I do remember, the next day, Michael, Josh King, a friend named Travis Hanger, and I rode in Jason’s car to Six Flags, while Eric, Jack, and their family rode in Eric’s car. If I remember correctly, that younger cousin rode with them.  At some point, the younger cousin made some goofy faces at me from their car while we were all stopped at a gas station.  I wasn’t particularly bothered by it, but Michael had had his fill of the boy’s antics by this point.  He pointed at the boy, laughing disrespectfully.  Josh, Travis, and I followed suit.

Peer pressure.

The boy left me alone for the rest of the trip.

We had fun at Six Flags.  We rode the Screaming Eagle, the Ninja, and Tom’s Twister (which has since been decommissioned).  Josh King, a massive Robin Hood fan, bought one of the green hats.  Some of the group made two music videos, something that is much easier to do nowadays than it was then.  All in all, I think Michael, who was the one who wanted to do it, paid fifty dollars for two VHS tapes.  He lip-synched “Born to be Wild” and I can’t remember the song that Eric lip-synched.  The stand out was truly Josh.  With his back-length hair and full beard, he looked like he should be playing the metal guitar and he egged the performance for all it was worth.

Instead of going back to Eric and Jack’s cousin’s house, the four of us in Michael’s car got a room at a hotel in St. Louis.  At some point in the evening, we started watching the movie OUTBREAK (a movie that had just been released that year).  Travis and I stayed in the room and watched it, while Josh and Michael decided to take a walk, where they were tricked into buying dried cooking mushrooms from some guy who offered to sell them psychedelic shrooms.  Travis and I laughed about it, feeling that it served them right.

The next day, we stopped at a Cajun restaurant near the hotel before heading back home.  That place is no longer there.  I’ve looked for it since I have lived in St. Charles.

A few weeks later, I found out that, while we were on that trip, something happened that made Jack leave our group.  I won’t put it into print but you can always ask me in private.

With our circle friends dwindling, Evan left home to go into a work program called AmeriCorps, which was kind of like the Peace Corps, but concentrating on the U.S.  That left Eric, Josh, Jason, Jeremy, me, and (sometimes) Travis and Josh’s younger brother, Jesse.  Also, at this point, Eric and his wife had a falling out and divorced.

Then Linda Clardy began getting to come back to Mark and Mary’s for visits from her foster home.