Ralph, the early years, '69-'72

Yeh Gods, what the hell happened.
Where is the rain?
Some deranged washed out barbie doll on the tube is trying to tell us with a glee in her left eye that the temperature has dropped to minus 10 and that things are about to get a whole lot worse. Snow. Imagine that. Finally an opportunity to take out the Hummer and strike fear into the local populace. This is not the time nor the place to show off your sophisticated little overpriced European or Japanese speedster. Those of us who appreciate the muscle of an American made gas guzzler are out in force. How's the bumper, Bubba? Do you even have one?
Jeremiah's, the place where those of us who appreciate a few beverages right after lunch congregate, is only a few blocks away from the old homestead however it took me about half an hour to get there. Vancouver drivers are notorious for going to pieces the moment the temperature drops below zero and the white stuff is starting to cover our gentle tree lined streets. I used to stop and help out whenever another poor sod would wrap his Lexus or Beemer around a streetlight however I'm no longer in the mood to get my hands dirty. Fuck them. Serves you right, freak. Weren't you the one last week that almost sideswiped our local homeless binner when he tried crossing the road with his Safeway card? Where's the smirk now, shithead.
Fortunately things at the pub are a bit more relaxed, almost civil except for the sniveling and whining from the usual suspects and associated wino's. Nothing that cannot be resolved by a free round of  cold beverages. Contrary to my usual destitute circumstances I happen to have a few big bills in my wallet compliments of the friendly folks at Revenue Canada making me the Go To Guy of the day for the regulars. However my new found wealth has allowed me to pay a few bills, taking off the pressure so to speak. I have a few glorious hours to myself which I'm not planning on spending with Bob, Bill, Bert and the other Bozo's but instead with my trusted little laptop.

I think it was in the summer of '69 when Ralph and I crossed paths for the first time. We both had graduated from Elementary school and were now considered sufficiently prepared to enter Junior High. He was a tall lad for his age and that combined with his haughty demeanor made him stand out from the rest of the rabble when we were called into the "aula" to find out who our classmates were going to be. He was standing right beside me, towering over me while looking down his nose at me, a pose I would come to know well. His polished manners and "kak" (but unlike so many others not "kale kak") arrogance was only outdone by my "volksbuurt" and " you want a piece of me" arrogance. Mutual animosity was instantaneous and was raised to even higher levels when we found out that we were in the same class. It only took a few weeks before things came to a head. Without any effort at all Ralph was instantly invited to hang with the cool group while I sought out those with darker motives and looked for coolness in all the wrong places. One morning, while parking my bike, I happened to bump into Ralph's bicycle and crashed it to the ground in full view of Ralph and his posse. Shit hit the fan and not before long we were having a go at each other and that's where I got to meet Mr. "Driftkikker" for the first time. He lost his cool and went completely berserk making me the object of his fury. However I had been there before and this wasn't the first potential beating I had been able to face up to. He seemed surprised that I was very capable of dishing out as much, and then some, as I was taking and that only enraged him further. Things took an unexpected turn when a boy from my neighbourhood got involved, a known thug with promising criminal tendencies, who felt that the conflict had gone on long enough and made it clear in no uncertain terms that the show was over. Ralph felt strongly that as far as he was concerned the matter was far from settled and he was threatening half heartily to get his older brothers involved to even the odds.
(I didn't know Sjarl and Sjon at the time but over the years I would consider the two of them about as useless as tits on a bull and compared to Ralph's character and integrity not fit enough to shine his shoes. Neither one of them would have had the balls or the skills to peel me off )
 It took us a few weeks to push beyond that first close encounter and act with a certain measure of civility towards each other and another few months or so to realise that although we were from opposing backgrounds we had enough in common to be on speaking terms.

It took Ralph about a year to abandon the rules imposed upon him by the cool group, just about the same time it took me to stop the slide into minor thuggery and mischief so easily associated with Enschede's  "a-sociale" underclass. My burgeoning friendship with Ralph allowed me to envision a different path forward. Even as a young man Ralph already looked at the future as a place of limitless opportunities, not limitations. So many people with similar backgrounds like mine end up believing the bullshit that they are fed in their younger years and already, at a very young age, started building the walls of their own prison. " Ai veur 'n dubbeltje geborn bint woi nooit 'n kwatje."(If you were born to be a dime, you'll never be a quarter) How many young minds have been corrupted with these types of vicious, hope killing, dream dashing, self imposed class based obscenities? Buoyed by Ralph's infectious confidence and hard hitting, demanding and unforgiving rules that characterized our relationship I was able to escape a path that until then I would have considered unavoidable or probably not even would have recognized as such. He gave as much as he took.

We solidified our friendship in our second year of high school and started showing up at each other's homes. Ralph was always quite comfortable visiting our small apartment while I on the other hand needed a few months to rid myself of a gnawing feeling that somehow I didn't belong whenever I was sitting at his kitchen table in, what at the time seemed like a ginormous kitchen, wolfing down a sandwich all the while talking to his mom. Although his older brothers never could shake their unrelenting quest for validating their position as upcoming make belief top dogs, Ralph never suffered such delusions. In those days he never even so much as hinted at our strikingly different backgrounds. We were friends and that was that. His mom and sisters were easy to get along with however it took me a few more years to feel comfortable whenever his dad was around. At that time he was still Mr. Herder, The Director, a mover and a shaker, a giant among mortal men, as far as I was concerned.

We both had little use for school and it showed in our marks. Most of Ralph's posse had moved on to the HAVO/VWO on the Borneostraat while my gang was slowly but surely finding their way to the Ambachtschool and Huishoudschool. Ralph and I ended up somewhere in the middle, at the MAVO on the Jan Vermeerstraat. We were both surprised by our mediocre results and promised each other solemnly that should financial independence not be within our grasp by the time we'd turn 25, we would try our hand at crime and other associated career defining occupations. Not that far of a reach for me but quite a leap for Ralph, considering he was absolutely serious. We picked up smoking well before our fifteenth birthday, started listening to the kind of music that had our parents shaking their heads and our conversations  increasingly involved such fun topics like sex, politics ( his hero was Wiegel while I believed that they were all useless and should be hanged at the first opportunity except for boer Koekoek (or was it boer Kroepoek?) not that it makes a hell of a difference), sex, religion ( we both liked Buddhism for its pacifist tenets although we both believed that structured violence and  uncompromising massive retaliation was an acceptable alternative), sex, mopeds ( he was about to inherit his brother's Puch while I was considering a souped up German made speed freak, a Zundapp), sex, our female classmates and of course, sex.

By the time we moved onto grade 4 of the MAVO we both were in a process of letting our hair down, literally, and due to the potential violent aspirations for our future, had moved away from mainstream high school thinking and settled in for some unconventional extra curricular activities. Early into that school year a friend of mine "van de buurt" got caught stealing a moped on a dare, took off on the bastard like Evil Knievel and within minutes drove into a steel post, crushing his ribs and puncturing his lungs. His death affected me to such an extent that during one our classes I started losing it. Not able to get a grip on myself, my classmates had a pretty good time giving in to some of the darker aspects of the human psyche. When Ralph, now almost 195 cm tall, clued in, he once again turned to his alter ego, Mr. Driftkikker, and invited anyone who felt so inclined to come outside. We never talked about it, didn't have to. Loyalty stood at the core of our shared journey .

This was also the year that we discovered alcohol and its associated benefits. Beer was not really our thing then, however red wine was another matter altogether. He was a lush, a fellow traveler, and to see him lay down that thin veneer of control, discipline and sense of self and have it replaced by a raving wild man, singing along at the top of his lungs with Mick and the boys, rolling of his bike into the nearest ditch all the while laughing hysterically, was a hoot. God, he was a monster, a true villain right after my own heart. Cheap red wine became our beverage of choice whenever we found our way to "het kippenhok", an illegal drinking establishment in Boekelo, managed by Seine Snippe, one of our classmates and a fellow crackerjack. Our  dark habits and expeditions into the countryside demanded an ever increasing financial commitment and it was at that time that Ralph started developing a keen interest in supplementing our allowance with something more then just spare change. He conned his dad, a firm believer in teaching his rambunctious offspring the value of hard work, into letting us work at The Factory, during Christmas break. We started out in the "lasdoppen" department, a hellish and fiendish environment, noisy, dirty, just the right place for two young lads who were up to no good. Ralph did more then his fair share of the daily workload, much to the surprise of the old man and not before long we were both promoted to the "casting department" where we were taught how to make fake, authentic looking fireplace logs, an enterprise that would play such a feature role in Ralph's future career. He never asked or demanded any preferential treatment, either from his dad or from the department staff, worked diligently and got along amicably with everyone. however since our casting schedule did not always coincide with the regular coffee breaks we usually slithered into the "kantine" when everyone else was gone so we could have the ping pong table to ourselves. Since he was unable to outwork me, blue collar background and all that (and an unhealthy portion of stubbornness not to let the arrogant prick best me) we would work ourselves into a frenzy over a game of ping pong. It is there where we worked on our ever expanding cursing vocabulary. He was a better player then me but not by much and at times I would walk away, the Victor. And did he hate to loose! He would not talk to me but instead mumble and babble incoherently to himself, then move on to threatening  me with relentless beatings while I could not get enough of rubbing his nose in his downfall. His antics made me laugh until I cried which would infuriate him even further. Honor would not be restored until the next time he once again would reign supreme.
Just came back from the bar where I ended up freaking out a few regulars by downing in quick succession 2 double Balvenie's, no ice, straight up. My eyes were sweating and needed something a tad stronger then a cold Heini.
It was customary in those days that all workers would get a "kerstpakket" to take home during the holidays. Ralph was able to bypass my obstructive independent nature to such an extent that he cajoled me into taking his share of the loot also. On our way home that evening we cycled by my grandma's place  and dropped of one of the baskets. By then I knew his heart well enough to know that it mattered to him for all the right reasons.

On January 24, 1973 he showed at our apartment, proudly showing of a silver coloured wreck that he referred to as his kick-ass bike. He graciously offered to pull me all the way to school and I ended up hanging on for dear life, almost ripping off the sleeve of his jacket, while he showed off how fast the bugger could run. Of and on we kept up this scenario until my birthday, a month and a half later when I proudly showed off my ride, less elegant but a lot faster. It took about a week until we decided to switch bikes as to figure out what all the fuss was about. I ended up taking his Puchje to the max, loosing complete control and parking it under the front tire of a tractor on a lonely country road. While I'm pinned under the goddamn tractor with the farmer shouting all kinds of obscenities at me, Ralph is desperately trying to pull his bike from underneath the vehicle. He was at his best, prime form, even the farmer took a few steps back and managed to keep his mouth shut while Ralph was having a fit. When he realised that I was not hurt he did his utmost to break one of my legs but, alas, his attempts came to naught and we ended up hauling his bike, I mean I ended up hauling his bike back to the shop while he tried desperately to outperform me on my bike. We decided that the only course of action was to head back to the casting department at The Factory for Easter break thus allowing me to pay for the damage.

Despite our best efforts we graduated that summer.