My father has a prominent tattoo on his right forearm. It's a caricature of a feisty little boxer with his fists at the ready and the words "KID CHASE" inside a furled banner printed beneath.
He said he got this as a teenager, both the tattoo and the moniker as a result of his bar brawling prowess and local "notoriety". He admitted to us kids that he would easily get into fist fights in bars and come out on top. But he also admitted that his perception of "winning" at these fights was dampened by the fact that he usually ended up getting arrested, and ultimately charged with various misdemeanors causing him to pay fines and retribution, as well as a stint or two in jail. The full scope of his legal ramifications of his unruly behavior was downplayed by him in favor of building up his self-illusioned cult of personality over his imagined macho barroom local legendary status.
Here's a quick timeline of some "Kid Chase" style stunts he "lovingly" interspersed throughout his supposedly "settled down" family man lifetime of raising three kids on a high school dropout's, mill worker salary:
1968: Kid Chase decides to again come home to his wife, two toddlers and one newborn, after a night of bar hopping with his buddies. Mom and he get into a heated argument, like so many before, but for the first time, it gets physical. Kid Chase grabs an object off the kitchen counter and throws it at Mom. It misses, but mom replies with the pot of hot spaghetti and sauce on the stove top. Whoosh! It smashes against the wall mere inches from Kid Chase's beer-buzzed head.
1972: Mom takes us kids on a midnight ride around town, not for the first time, mind you, to hunt down the whereabouts of Daddy aka Kid Chase. She stops at every corner it seems, because in the early seventies Woonsocket actually has a bar on every corner, it would seem. She can't find him and he's very late. Turns out, Kid Chase was a lot closer to home when we had set out on our search. Mom had headed in the wrong direction. Kid Chase wrapped his car around a telephone pole at the end of Florida Avenue just before it intersected with our home's street, Morin Heights Blvd. An ambulance crew pried him out of the wreckage and, amazingly, he survived. After a week or so in the hospital, he only had a Frankenstein-ish scar across his forehead to show for his exploits. He vowed to his family to never drink again. Yah, that would last a full 2 weeks or so.
1978: After being mildly harassed in public at a town parade by the father of the neighbor kid he'd months before decided to turn against, Kid Chase's oldest son, me, made the fatefully bad decision in telling his father about the admittedly minor humiliation. Well, more out of bravura than protection of his child, Kid Chase decides to confront the offending neighbor by assaulting him on his own property. Ugh! Now Kid Chase is faced with the humiliation of having to settle out-of-court to avoid an even costlier lawsuit. Who gets the blame? I do, of course.
1984: I get a car and park it in the driveway. Kid Chase gets home around 1am, drunk of course, and orders me to move the "piece of shit" out of the driveway so he can park his car there. I do so but after getting back in he continues to berate me. I had enough of his shit. I challenge him to come at me with his fists. He does. We get into it. But since I'm a virile, muscled and strong (and very pissed off) 19-year old, it very quickly looks like I will kick his ass royally. Younger brother and sister in witness intervene and the match is ended before a winner is declared. But by his out-of-breath, resigned look and my stance of ready-to-continue defiance, it's clear. I've won. Kid Chase has been defeated by his own son.
And a homosexual son, at that!
1989: Kid Chase had become almost dormant for years but he was making a comeback in the late 80's. He was undergoing a full-out mid-life crisis and was destined to take it out on everyone he could. On Christmas Eve, the family got together to enjoy the holidays but when he opened a card he had received from his wife, he suddenly fell deathly quiet.
"We said, that since times were tough, we were NOT going to be giving gifts to each other!", he sternly reminded my mother of their solemn promise to each other, in front of all of us attending this party.
"Paul, it's just a card!", my mother protested.
But the card contained a scratch-off lottery ticket. And that represented at least another $1 investment but a potential of thousands of dollars in winnings. To him, this was a valuable gift, thus, a breaking of their agreement.
Within minutes, the assumed "slap in his face" and the accumulated alcohol in his system from a night of partying flared up into an immense fit of rage.
He picked up the wooden rocking chair near him and threw it against the wall smashing it. He violently swept the contents on top of the table onto the floor and lunged for his wife, our mother, with total hate in his eyes.
My brother was able to restrain him, my brother's girlfriend hugged and reassured my mom, and I sat there benignly watching, drunk myself, playing the role of the totally unaffected bystander. To me, by then, this was so much an every-year occurrence, I almost welcomed a final, dramatic resolution to the ongoing soap opera of my parents' tumultuous existence. I was over it. But alas, they woke the next day and made up...as always, like it was "nothing". Merry Christmas!
1996: Kid Chase and his hapless wife had moved to Florida but ever since the move almost two years earlier, bad luck had plagued them. Mom had been stricken with severe phlebitis and eventually lost her leg. Kid Chase's 15-year-old settlement with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts obtained because of his "job-related back injury" he'd suffered in 1983 while working at Wrentham was finally running out, and they were having their over-priced, crappy manufactured home foreclosed on.
They decide to fly up and visit relatives in Rhode Island over the Thanksgiving holiday. I decide to make the short trip from Providence to these relatives to visit with my mom. Kid Chase takes issue to the fact that his eldest son has not contacted either of them for several months but suddenly shows up for T-Day dinner. A heated argument ensues. I decide to leave but before I go I scream out, at the top of my lungs, to Kid Chase through the open window from the driveway that I know he's really upset with the fact that his son is a fag!
2002: Things really start to disintegrate for Kid Chase. His invalid wife is wheelchair-bound for life and gaining all her flabby fat back from years before. Money is thin and he needs to work minimum wage jobs in a low-end laundry working with people he refers to as "ignorant niggers". He and his wife get in many heated arguments often, since they both get drunk on cheap beer and liquor frequently now. He ends up having the Volusia County Sheriff's Department called on him when his wife becomes fearful of his violent mouth. He's arrested for domestic violence and is soon released on bond, but is quickly arrested again and ends up spending a month and a half in lockup awaiting trial. He's nearly incarcerated again in 2003 when he verbally curses out a hospital customer service rep on the phone when he tries to call his wife who is a patient there. He actually threatens to use a bomb and blow up the hospital. He is arrested but released on personal re-cog, yet after the trial, he has to pay a hefty fine.
2003: As his wife lies dying in the hospital, he drinks himself to sleep nightly but not after causing anxiety to his son who is staying with him by screamingly cursing his God and punching the walls like a madman. He eventually calls his daughter to oust his oldest son since he can't deal with him. Poor Kid Chase has only so much tolerance for adversity. He only learned one way to deal with difficulties...punch them out...or drink them away!
2009: Who knows what drama Kid Chase experiences now? Surely it's more subdued due to age and wisdom. One would think, eh?
But ultimately, who cares?
He said he got this as a teenager, both the tattoo and the moniker as a result of his bar brawling prowess and local "notoriety". He admitted to us kids that he would easily get into fist fights in bars and come out on top. But he also admitted that his perception of "winning" at these fights was dampened by the fact that he usually ended up getting arrested, and ultimately charged with various misdemeanors causing him to pay fines and retribution, as well as a stint or two in jail. The full scope of his legal ramifications of his unruly behavior was downplayed by him in favor of building up his self-illusioned cult of personality over his imagined macho barroom local legendary status.
Here's a quick timeline of some "Kid Chase" style stunts he "lovingly" interspersed throughout his supposedly "settled down" family man lifetime of raising three kids on a high school dropout's, mill worker salary:
1968: Kid Chase decides to again come home to his wife, two toddlers and one newborn, after a night of bar hopping with his buddies. Mom and he get into a heated argument, like so many before, but for the first time, it gets physical. Kid Chase grabs an object off the kitchen counter and throws it at Mom. It misses, but mom replies with the pot of hot spaghetti and sauce on the stove top. Whoosh! It smashes against the wall mere inches from Kid Chase's beer-buzzed head.
1972: Mom takes us kids on a midnight ride around town, not for the first time, mind you, to hunt down the whereabouts of Daddy aka Kid Chase. She stops at every corner it seems, because in the early seventies Woonsocket actually has a bar on every corner, it would seem. She can't find him and he's very late. Turns out, Kid Chase was a lot closer to home when we had set out on our search. Mom had headed in the wrong direction. Kid Chase wrapped his car around a telephone pole at the end of Florida Avenue just before it intersected with our home's street, Morin Heights Blvd. An ambulance crew pried him out of the wreckage and, amazingly, he survived. After a week or so in the hospital, he only had a Frankenstein-ish scar across his forehead to show for his exploits. He vowed to his family to never drink again. Yah, that would last a full 2 weeks or so.
1978: After being mildly harassed in public at a town parade by the father of the neighbor kid he'd months before decided to turn against, Kid Chase's oldest son, me, made the fatefully bad decision in telling his father about the admittedly minor humiliation. Well, more out of bravura than protection of his child, Kid Chase decides to confront the offending neighbor by assaulting him on his own property. Ugh! Now Kid Chase is faced with the humiliation of having to settle out-of-court to avoid an even costlier lawsuit. Who gets the blame? I do, of course.
1984: I get a car and park it in the driveway. Kid Chase gets home around 1am, drunk of course, and orders me to move the "piece of shit" out of the driveway so he can park his car there. I do so but after getting back in he continues to berate me. I had enough of his shit. I challenge him to come at me with his fists. He does. We get into it. But since I'm a virile, muscled and strong (and very pissed off) 19-year old, it very quickly looks like I will kick his ass royally. Younger brother and sister in witness intervene and the match is ended before a winner is declared. But by his out-of-breath, resigned look and my stance of ready-to-continue defiance, it's clear. I've won. Kid Chase has been defeated by his own son.
And a homosexual son, at that!
1989: Kid Chase had become almost dormant for years but he was making a comeback in the late 80's. He was undergoing a full-out mid-life crisis and was destined to take it out on everyone he could. On Christmas Eve, the family got together to enjoy the holidays but when he opened a card he had received from his wife, he suddenly fell deathly quiet.
"We said, that since times were tough, we were NOT going to be giving gifts to each other!", he sternly reminded my mother of their solemn promise to each other, in front of all of us attending this party.
"Paul, it's just a card!", my mother protested.
But the card contained a scratch-off lottery ticket. And that represented at least another $1 investment but a potential of thousands of dollars in winnings. To him, this was a valuable gift, thus, a breaking of their agreement.
Within minutes, the assumed "slap in his face" and the accumulated alcohol in his system from a night of partying flared up into an immense fit of rage.
He picked up the wooden rocking chair near him and threw it against the wall smashing it. He violently swept the contents on top of the table onto the floor and lunged for his wife, our mother, with total hate in his eyes.
My brother was able to restrain him, my brother's girlfriend hugged and reassured my mom, and I sat there benignly watching, drunk myself, playing the role of the totally unaffected bystander. To me, by then, this was so much an every-year occurrence, I almost welcomed a final, dramatic resolution to the ongoing soap opera of my parents' tumultuous existence. I was over it. But alas, they woke the next day and made up...as always, like it was "nothing". Merry Christmas!
1996: Kid Chase and his hapless wife had moved to Florida but ever since the move almost two years earlier, bad luck had plagued them. Mom had been stricken with severe phlebitis and eventually lost her leg. Kid Chase's 15-year-old settlement with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts obtained because of his "job-related back injury" he'd suffered in 1983 while working at Wrentham was finally running out, and they were having their over-priced, crappy manufactured home foreclosed on.
They decide to fly up and visit relatives in Rhode Island over the Thanksgiving holiday. I decide to make the short trip from Providence to these relatives to visit with my mom. Kid Chase takes issue to the fact that his eldest son has not contacted either of them for several months but suddenly shows up for T-Day dinner. A heated argument ensues. I decide to leave but before I go I scream out, at the top of my lungs, to Kid Chase through the open window from the driveway that I know he's really upset with the fact that his son is a fag!
2002: Things really start to disintegrate for Kid Chase. His invalid wife is wheelchair-bound for life and gaining all her flabby fat back from years before. Money is thin and he needs to work minimum wage jobs in a low-end laundry working with people he refers to as "ignorant niggers". He and his wife get in many heated arguments often, since they both get drunk on cheap beer and liquor frequently now. He ends up having the Volusia County Sheriff's Department called on him when his wife becomes fearful of his violent mouth. He's arrested for domestic violence and is soon released on bond, but is quickly arrested again and ends up spending a month and a half in lockup awaiting trial. He's nearly incarcerated again in 2003 when he verbally curses out a hospital customer service rep on the phone when he tries to call his wife who is a patient there. He actually threatens to use a bomb and blow up the hospital. He is arrested but released on personal re-cog, yet after the trial, he has to pay a hefty fine.
2003: As his wife lies dying in the hospital, he drinks himself to sleep nightly but not after causing anxiety to his son who is staying with him by screamingly cursing his God and punching the walls like a madman. He eventually calls his daughter to oust his oldest son since he can't deal with him. Poor Kid Chase has only so much tolerance for adversity. He only learned one way to deal with difficulties...punch them out...or drink them away!
2009: Who knows what drama Kid Chase experiences now? Surely it's more subdued due to age and wisdom. One would think, eh?
But ultimately, who cares?