People say What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. I'm not so sure I fucking believe it, people like to brag about their shenanigans far too much for it to be true. I'm pretty sure the saying is just a clever piece of advertising designed more to promote reckless behavior like spending money that you don't have, than to push the idea of sharing secrets with close friends. Now if I said, What happened at the Brodie Pits, stayed at the Brodie Pits, it would be a bit more sincere, but not because those of us who partied there in the 70s and 80s were more prone to secrecy than Vegas goers, but more because we seem to be dropping like flies. There's only a few of us left and in a decade or two all the stories and memories of those wild times will pass noiselessly into the darkness of the past. Someone will plant an orchard there, or even worse build a housing development complete with stop signs, trash pick-up, and cookie cutter tan stucco houses. Kids will ride their bikes down paved streets where the stragglers used to kneel in the dirt and vomit or stand straddled legged to empty their kidneys after drinking a gallon or two of cold beer. The Pits, or more correctly the Brodie Pits, were the Vegas of Corcoran kids not quite old or affluent enough to avail themselves of the real pleasures of Sin City. It was, as the name suggests, also a place to spin brodies, or make tight circles with cars where the driver has turned the steering wheel sharply to one side while pushing the throttle to the floor and pulling the parking brake so that the car's ass end spun around and around. I would certainly hazard to guess that during the time period in question that more brodies were probably spun out at the Pits than anywhere else in the free world. I remember a time when I arrived late one evening and discovered a friend of mine named Tommy had tied his steering wheel down and fixed the gas pedal so that his car kept driving in a great big loop while he and another friend sat on the hood, smoked weed, and discussed the workings of the universe. I have often written about how the modern world was created on the day that Galileo was humiliated by the Pope for arguing that the earth circled the sun and the sun circled some distant star. The Pope, on the other hand, wanted it known that Universe surrounded the earth and the earth stood smack dab at its dead center because he felt that it elevated the importance of man. Remember, in his way of thinking, man was made in God's own image We could have settled the argument for them without all the unnecessary bullshit it caused because us Corcoran kids were born with a great deal of humility and knew that people's expectation for us weren't all that great to begin with, so we didn't have to believe that we were at the center of shit. Nobody who partied with us then would have much liked the idea of a God who thought his shit didn't stink, and we still don't. If God created us in his own image, he's had some serious shortcomings of his own to deal with, but, unlike our lab coated counterparts, we try not to point them out so as not to embarrass him. We had God's back. We understood that spinning around things is just what we earthlings do, and it didn't matter a whole damn mouse fart where the axis of the circle was; it's the ass end of things going around it that makes life tolerable. When I saw Tommy and his friend smoking a joint and chatting on the hood while making that big loop, I didn't need to be in the middle of that circle to enjoy the spectacle. I was fine with watching it from the side. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ** * * * * * The main feature of The Pits was, in fact, a big f**king pit, a hole in the ground that wasn't much wider than two, three car lengths at the most, although memory has made it wider and deeper. There was always a fire burning down in that hole and cars parked all around it. We sat on our tailgates or on the rear of the car and drank, shot the shit, screamed at the moon and the stars for a while, smoked a joint or two, and then drank some more. Sometimes, feeling a little more amorous, we would park a little farther away from the fire, and whisper the lines of a Shakespeare Sonnet or two into the ears of some young filly who didn't know the difference between Shakespeare and a grocery list. The words didn't seem to matter all that much. Ain't like we were writing a book or nuthin. I know it doesn't sound like much when you describe it this way, but, as they always say, the sum is a whole lot more than its parts. It was always more about a time in our life than what we actually did. It was probably the one time in our life when we knew that life was just a moment and knew instinctively how to act upon that knowledge. I mean if Corcoran had possessed a world class university, art museum, library, or a smarter than normal preacher or two, things might have been different. But most of us were full aware of the shortcomings of our surroundings, and it seemed to be a place near the end of of the universe where our lunacy would go unnoticed I remember my parents and a few other people giving me the side-eye and a few mothers warning their sons not to be seen in public with me, but I felt that most of the grown-ups I knew understood that kids standing on the threshold of growing up gotta blow off steam, and were generally willing to chuckle at our antics after we left the room, warn us about running with scissors or waiting an hour after eating to swim, or just cross their fingers and pray that we didn't get killed or permanently damage someone in the process of shedding our heathen skin. In our view, riding a motorcycle naked down the high school's hallway was pretty near the same as fighting in the Trojan War and deserved the same respect and countless retellings that that deed had inspired. Speeding along the canal bank and crossing that little concrete bridge without sliding off into the canal was also a deed worthy of great respect and wonder. Subjecting our automobiles, prized above all else, to the rigors of that uneven, broken ground, jagged edges, and the random undulations of terrain was one of the ways that you proved your character. "I love this car like my own son, yet I will jump that ridge over there so hard and fast that my muffler will drag and shoot off sparks all the way down Whitley Avenue to the parking lot across from the Jolly Cone where I will continue to show my complete and utter disdain for all material things by slamming the driver's side door so hard that the servers across the street will swear they heard a gun shot, or two." Our nights at the Pits were the stuff of great art. We made the connection between heaven and earth in a most peculiar way. To relieve ourselves, we always stepped out of the circle of light and into the darkness and stood beneath the giant sky like our uncivilized ancestors. No porcelain bowls, no walls, and no rules. We did it like cowboys on the open range, straddling the ground with our feet wide so that we didn't tumble over in our drunkenness. There was always that first involuntary sigh of relief as our overfull bladders offered up their gratitude, then the unavoidable looking up at the stars in the night sky which would fill us with such wonder and amazement, and in our awe, would invariably cause us to mumble some of the stupidest shit that has ever been spoken upon this planet. "Look at those f**kin stars, Man. They jus like little lectric butterflies smilin down on us all. . . . . . .. . . .Muthaf***n stars. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .F**kin Electricity!" Then as we wobbled and buttoned up our pants back up, "F**kin butterflies!" * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * The Pits were a place where both alcohol and primal juices were spilled, where food and ideas were gnawed to the bone and later vomited onto the ground, where gossip was both created and spread, where tender hearts were filled with drunken joy only to be broken moments later and then put back together with a special glue made out of spilt beer, unsolicited advice, and wet sand, and where way too many I don't a give a flying f**ks were just pulled out of thin air. Back then, our hearts burned way hotter than our heads, and the guttural sounds that bubbled up out of our chests usually emerged in roars of rage, self-doubt, and laughter caused by the joy of shedding the heavy chains of our Baptist/Pentecostal/Catholic upbringings. The only time I remember the law came out to see what was going on, we were sitting there commiserating our lack of beer and weed. They looked under some bushes, opened our trunks, flash-lighted the back seat area of our cars and in the end just looked pretty silly as they walked back to their flashing red lights mumbling over their shoulders something about putting the fire out. We waited a while after they left then went and got some beer. I knew things were coming to an end when I arrived one night and saw a car sitting half in and half out of the canal just past the little concrete bridge. We had always been protected before by the magic of youth and our mother's prayers and that kept us from dying or being injured by our follies and excesses. Our innocence and our vulnerabilities caused God to wink at our stupidity. But there always comes a time in life, when innocence is finally lost, stupidity can no longer be ignored, and that the ugly face of consequences peers out of a closet door that we accidentally left open. One of my last nights out at the Pits, a group of people, strangers mostly, were burning the back seat of car that someone had parked there. One of them was standing in the shadows brandishing a gun and threatening the moon with certain death. He stole a box of eight track tapes out of my car while another one kept me busy talking about a bunch of mean spirited bullshit. His silver front tooth gleamed when he flashed his evil smile. The person who had parked the car there to begin with returned to discover the back seat being burned, and he lost it. Turns out, it wasn't his car, he had borrowed it from another guy, one much crazier and prone to violence than he was. He kept shouting about what he was going to do to the people who had done that to the carseat not knowing that he was sharing a joint and drinking with them. The crazy dude with the gun just smiled hideously. My friend and I told him another guy had burned the seat trying to keep him and us from getting shot. It worked after a while, and he finally calmed down. We gave him a ride back to town. The first person we see as we pull up to a convenience store to get more beer, was the guy we told him who had burned the seat. He was out of the car in a blur and choking on the guy before I could even put the car into park. We tried to explain the scenario to him later as we took him home, but he was way too worked up to listen. He died not many years after that night, and I always felt that he never completely understood what had really happened that night. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * I never knew the last time I left Brodie Pits that I wouldn't be coming back. I did the same thing with the Candy Store too, the party house on Van Dorsten, my marriage, and the Freewill Baptist Church. I never knew the last time when my ex-wife kissed me on the lips. I don't think it would have changed a f**king thing. But it would have been nice, I think, to have lingered just a bit and took things in before the fire finally burnt out. People say that order always descends into chaos once the primary energy source has been exhausted. I think it works the other way too. Once there was a time and place when I was young where I could let go and live without restraint for few hours at a time, howling at the moon if I so wanted or even pissing on a flat rock while howling at the moon. It was wild and chaotic; it was liberating, it was unscripted and totally ignorant, and it was a lot more fun than anything I've ever done since. Then the fire ran out of wood, cardboard and car seats, and life quickly descended into order as most life eventually does. |
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