a bloody mess

For me, it all started when I was just a lad. My papa owned a fourth generation butcher shop in Kingston, New York and life was a bit different for me than most of the other kids. My sense of who I was and the fuckin big shot I thought I would grow up to be, turned me into an asshole at an early age. A very well liked and charming guy but an asshole just the same. More details to follow.
As early as I can remember all I wanted to do was be a butcher in my dad’s store. I worked there every day that I could, stocking shelves and packing groceries, learning how important it was to be nice to each and every customer no matter how much of a friggin pain in the ass they were. I did it with greatness, proud to be of service to my parents in their quest to provide an above average life for all of us.
Play time was as important to me as it is to any kid but I always knew that what I really liked was hanging out at the store. This made me see things a little bit different at times. Instead of keeping my head down and buried in the many text books that have been through my fingers during my early school days, I would be much more interested in watching and learning what the other kids were interested in. After hours of investigative observing I hatched my first of many money making schemes. The idea was simple enough, kids love sweets and junk food, so I would make a side business out of that insatiable craving that kids have for that type of shit. My first thought was to just bring in a couple things each day and give away some here and there to get kids to like me. Then I would start selling the items at a very nice profit, hell I stole them from my pops store so it was all profit to me. Bubble gum was the very best seller, hands down, I think that was because there were specific rules written about not being able to chew gum in class or even posses gum during school hours. I also found out very quickly that you become the popular kid when you are offering a little piece of rebellion at twenty-five cents a pop.
As I sailed through my younger years without a care in the world it never occurred to me that the very things I was doing at that time would be laying the foundation of a lying and cheating lifestyle that I embraced from those moments of enlightenment that I found at the end of my rainbow each and every day. My teachers would tell me to pay attention and sit up straight and all that other bullshit that those self absorbed pain in the asses liked to demand of young kids. I really didn’t care at all, when told to, I would sit straight and focus on the instructor in front of me not giving a crap about what was coming out of his or her mouth. This was mostly because I felt that I didn’t need this information. My path through life had already been laid out in great detail in my mind and none of it included these people getting on my ass on a daily basis and making my life a constant battle of me and my big brain against theirs.
I remember my fourth grade teacher wanting to keep me back and calling a conference with my parents to talk about it. Big mistake, if she thought for one minute that I was a conniving little brat that seemed to get my own way most times then she definitely was not prepared to deal with my father at all. I was a clone of my dad, big Jack Farber, and let’s just say that he had a way to convince people of whatever he needed them to be convinced of. In this case it was the simple fact that his eldest son could not and will not be held back a grade. My teacher did her best to explain that I was the class clown and that I was actually selling contraband to other students along with cheating on tests and a myriad of other distracting and disruptive activities. After assuring her that she indeed would have no problem securing a loan from a particular bank to help her buy her first house and that she would never have to pay retail for her groceries again as long as she shopped in his store, I somehow became that teachers pet and passed with flying colors. Friggin teachers were easy man way too easy.
My fifth and sixth years of school went pretty uneventful until my pompous narcissistic sixth grade teacher threw a basketball at me and hit me square in the face. He had second thoughts as soon as he saw the fury in my eyes as I started to charge him with the sole purpose to maim that mother fucker and remind him that, just as they all preached, there are consequences for your actions. All of my classmates joined in to stop me from doing something that would have ended badly for me and the asshole teacher standing at the other end of the court shouting and acting all tough , to a sixth grader mind you, let’s face it I was a big kid and I was more than a little unstable but for Christ sake I wasn’t going to exactly beat his ass down. However with the help of my absolute best friend in the world, DVL, we hatched a great little plan to even up the score between me and the overbearing asshole of a teacher that thought he was above the fray. On a nice sunny afternoon we ran up to my buddy’s parents store and grabbed two bottles of 64oz. Pepsi and poured out the soda then added a little water in each bottle then got a hold of a small amount of dry ice. With vengeance in my heart and weapons of mass destruction clutched in our hands we then jumped on our trusty steeds (our bicycles) and headed back for the school’s faculty parking lot. Now, I hope you all remember that a 64oz. bottle back then was made of glass, as was all other types of bottled refreshments. However, a 64oz. bottle was very large and very thick. We located the car that this guy drove and as luck would have it he left his windows half way down. I imagine that was because it was such a nice sunny day and he thought what harm could come from leaving your windows down for a few hours, especially in such a safe environment as the faculty parking area. Well that way of thinking blew up in his face. You see if you are to take a piece of dry ice and mix it with a small amount of water and then seal it, you got yourself a little explosive device that can cause a great big hassle if it’s a whole bunch of little thick shards a glass embedded in your seats and all throughout your precious little sports car that you used to pick up the young high school girls in. Screw him and his perverted way of thinking, justice is mine.
Well, that way of thinking has landed me in trouble more times than not. However , sure as I’m standing here today, I would still have lived this crazy screwed up life of mine all over again and do things the same way ( most things anyway , more about that in later chapters). I was cruising right along and enjoying the hell out of being a spoiled brat.
Things came very easily to me and I admit that I took full advantage of that most of the time. Strike that from the record, all of the time is more like it. With age comes wisdom and I lived like most young wild boys did and figured that I was never going to live to see old age so what the hell. So with this mindset I started to do things a little more daring and with a lot more disrespect towards other people and things.
Simple changes in my behavior was sometimes funny and most of the time hurtful but I didn’t distinguish between the two so I just went ahead with my wild antics. Something as simple as refusing to mow our lawn because my father had a hired lawn service for all of my childhood and when my brother and I got to be teenagers he figured he would have us do it. Why not, it’s only normal to have your fully capable kids mow your own lawn. I was fuckin livid, for years I watched the crew of sweaty, tired and dirty men that looked like broken souls come over to the house and take damn good care of our yard and I thought that shit looked great and pretty damn prestigious when the not so fortunate neighborhood kids would drive by with their parents. So naturally I considered that type of work was far beneath me. So I broke each of the two mowers we had in the garage and cut the cords to hedge trimmers and threw the swing sickle into the woods across the street from our house. My father the enabler, just hired the guys back and our yard went back to being one the nicest ones on our block. Typical rotten bastard spoiled brat elitist type of shit, I know.
Now I caught on real quick that I was able to manipulate and charm people better than most people, including adults. I still possess those capabilities and it still serves me well.
Being at the store was where I was most able to use my new found skill set of the above mentioned. My father and my grandfather were the best at selling their products and making the customer feel like they were the only ones getting that type of special treatment or the only ones to receive such a special deal. Those two men were very instrumental in my learning the craft of salesmanship and art of bullshit. I want to say right here and now that I thank them both and miss them both dearly. My dad was the man who I admired the most in this world. He was a very loving father and he adored my mother. He was tough as nails and a very good card player to boot. I will spend a lot of time and words later on in this story talking about the love I have always had and will forever have for my parents. Learning the family business was such a natural high for me, it made me stand taller and talk better and act more bad ass, because I was a friggin butcher at the age of thirteen and a first rate salesman by the age of sixteen.