I grew up in a society filled with some weird thoughts.

St. Joe was (and in fact remains to be) across the river from Benton Harbor.

As a child it was a very clear black and white situation.

White flight in the 60s and particularly the 70s left Benton Harbor with no tax base.

One of my first friends was Grant. We lived next to one another. Then my family and I moved way down the street to Lake Blvd, looking over Lake Michigan. I missed my friend, so at the age of 4 or some such, I decided to walk down to Grant’s and started to do so. This turned out to be my first arrest as the policeman got me into the car and had me direct me home. Ha! I had him take me to my granny’s house instead.The house was always Granny’s, not Granpa’s.

One of my friends was Dave. He had a brother who in high school faked his death (and his girlfriend) to conceal a teen-age pregnancy. I remember distinctly the day Dave told me that blacks couldn’t swim because their bones were solid.

Butch was another friend. He had polio as a kid, and wore leg braces. During my senior year in high school I was a hippie and met Butch at a hippie party. He had moved to BH. He was a hippie.

Grant had a bunch of brothers, and one sole sister. One of his brothers was Bob. I was personally in no fewer than 3 auto accidents where he was driving. I was also in the car when he pulled up to a stop-light. Another car stopped next to us, but Bob was not to be reduced to glancing at the car inching up on our left. The light turned green. We were off like a rocket. Until the car to the left turned on its lights and siren.

I knew a family in grade school that had like 2-3 sets of twins. Jack and Judy were in my grade. Jack in 1st grade had what might be called disruptive behaviors. When Jack went up to the janitor and grabbed his nuts and squeezed real hard, he was reclassified as a behavior problem. He would jump all around the chairs during class, and evade capture continually. His sister was very studious. For the life of me I can’t explain it, but Jack was held back for a year. He fell off my radar. Because I can’t remember them I am guessing that they moved away.

Pete was a good friend. He was catholic, which was different from me. I used to sleep over at his house a lot. He called me Tommy Yuma, referring to Johnny Yuma (The Rebel) and we would watch war movies and sleep out in our “summerhouse” in our yard looking right over the bluff. We would try to figure out how, if the universe was infinite, it could have a curve to it. We hung out pretty much through high school. We had lots of mutual friends.

Pete and ... Rick? visited me in Tempe in ‘73. ?Rick’s? brother Mark and I practiced law together for a couple years in St. Joe. Mark may have gotten a JAP sort of girl preggers at ND/St.M’s or so I may have heard.

In high school we learned how to play “Prank Phone Call”. Very much like Crank Yankers. One of our better ones had a bunch of schoolmates answer the question “Can you identify the product - When it rains it pours - ?” The correct answer got them a free case of Pepsi but they had to go to the station to get it. Consolation prize? The same.

OR, we would call a random home in Benton Harbor and tell them we were with the phone company, and that our system had determined a problem with their phone and we had them unscrewing mouthpieces, swinging phones around their heads, and all sorts of things. If, we would assure them, we were not able to determine the source of the problems, we were going to attribute all unpaid bills in our system to their number.

Mike M and I used to call this girl and tell her I had been hijacked in my car over the bridge to Cuba and things of that ilk. Man. We were pretty mean sometimes.

Bill T, Grant and I used to write poems about people. For example, Grant’s brother, Bob, with whom I experienced accidents - Twas the night before Christmas and all thru the town all were wondering if beer were around” or some long epic about the Yacks.