The Wild Bunch

Reminiscing again about the old neighborhoods.
This one had a family that lived down the street from us that my old man called the "Wild Bunch."

They lived next door to my friend so I would encounter them frequently when I went to his house. I think there were four brothers and their sister originally living in that house, but two step-brothers moved in with them.

Whenever a fire truck, ambulance or police car came down our street it always went to their house. Their old man never wore a shirt, only tattoos, and always had a beer in his hand, even early in the morning.

He was always looking for trouble. I remember when the cops showed up because he was trying to pick a fight with the mailman, claimed he was peeking in his window. One night a fire truck came down our street with lights flashing and siren blowing. I ran down there and saw a huge orange fireball lighting up the back of their house. It turned out that he quit paying his trash bill and was burning a month's worth of garbage in one of those 10 foot galvanized pools in his back yard.

One of his sons was kind of goofy, he spoke with a raspy voice and kept his head tilted to one side all the time. My friend told me that he was standing on a chair with a rope around his neck playing Gunsmoke with his brothers when he was little and the chair tipped over.

THE BB GUN WAR

I had gotten a new bb gun and my brother and I went to our friends house to show it off.
My brother brought his old bb gun along and our friend and his brother brought out their guns and we were shooting soup cans in their back yard.

Those kids next door saw us and recommended that we choose up sides and have a war. There were two rules: 1. No shooting at the head. 2. Those with pump guns could not pump them more than 2 times.

We tipped over a couple of picnic tables and each side, consisting of 3 to 4 kids, took cover behind them. I was at the end of one table along with my friend and one of the Wild Bunch boys.

I noticed the kid next to me would not crouch all the way down when he was pumping his gun and I was just about to tell him to get down, when I heard a bb whistling through the air and saw it smack him right in the ear. He jumped up screaming " No shooting at the head, damn it."
While he was standing he got hit twice in the belly. He ducked back down behind the table with his red ear and began pumping his gun about a dozen times while saying, " you bastards are gonna get it now."

I was more careful, I would peek through the cracks of the table and look for a shot. I saw a foot sticking out and I popped up real fast, shot him in the ankle and quickly ducked back down. I saw him pull his foot back in while he was saying " Ow, ow, ow."

After our war, we were all standing around checking out each other's guns when my brother tapped me on the shoulder and suggested that we better leave. When I asked him what the hurry was, he pointed to the Wild Bunch's house and I saw that their siding was riddled with bb holes. Their old man was due to get home and we didn't want to be there anymore, so we left.