Drunk Dad Wrecks Rim
I don't recall the reason why, but when I was sixteen my mother and sister went to visit my grandparents in Bennington Arkansas, leaving my father and myself alone with a budget of maybe $85. At this point I had my license and was able to drive my dad's Chevy Malibu. The second day of my mother being gone was a Saturday so I didn't have school so wanted to go drive myself to Helter High to play tennis with my friend Raji. What would have been a good day to escape for a moment in tennis, turned into a painful memory seared into my brain.
My father being an alcoholic took the car to go buy beer when he was already drunk. Somewhere on his drive he hit something with the vehicle. I remember seeing him drive into the driveway with a destroyed front rim. He hit something and continued driving. I never got clarification of what happened but his face was beaten up and there was blood in the car. He stumbled inside and went to his bedroom and laid in bed. I called my mother to ask what to do and she said to go ask our neighbor whose husband is a mechanic, and so I did.
I walked a couple houses down and explained who I was and that we had a flat tire. Again it being a Saturday the mechanic didn't have work, so he walked with me back to my home to inspect the car. He looked it over and his prognosis was that the tire was fine, but the rim was bent and needed replaced. Fortunately, we had a donut sre tire in the trunk. So I watched as the mechanic replaced the bent rim tire with the spare. A few moments before he began though my father came stumbling outside to look at what he had done. I desperately pleaded with him to go inside because he was fucked up physically and mentally. I was the sixteen-year-old son that had to take on a parental role and fix my father's mistakes. After a few moments my father went back to his bedroom to lay in bed. I never got clarification on what really happened, what he had hit, and where, I just remember it as a time that alcohol made our lives so much worse.
When changing the tire, the mechanic pointed out how thin the brake pads were, that they had "the width of two leaves stacked on each other," and needed to be replaced immediately or risk damaging the rotor. He offered to replace the pads using a jack in his garage down the road for a cost of at least $100. I told him we were struggling financially and couldn't afford much, that I only had $80. I called my mother and she said "just give it all to him." So the mechanic drove the Chevy Malibu down the block and worked on the pads. What really established my distrust in humanity was the mechanic's actions and his one comment that ignited fury in my mind. He said he needed the full $80 so he has something to "munch on" during the week. The man had a $40,000 truck, two $10,000 cars and a boat, but instead of being a gracious human being and offering help he just wanted money for himself. I made comment to him, "you have all these things, could you not help out for less," and he said no that he couldn't and when I briefly questioned his situation, he said "oh yeah I have savings, but you never want to touch that, ha ha ha." This made me very angry. You only help out a struggling family with an infant grandchild and a mother dying of cancer so you can have something to "munch on." This man took all of our week's budget for food and expenses and did so with a smile on his face. Perhaps now things have equivocated but I wouldn't bet on it