Ralph, the latter years, '76-'79

Friday morning, 10.30.
Just walked in the door, feeling all warm and cozy, proud of myself for getting out of bed on time, shortly after the kids left and having put in a hard day at work. Yes, boys and girls, it's the Weekend, the kids will be tortured at school for at least another 4 or 5 hours while I get to light up the fireplace, real logs, thank you very much, prep a pitcher of margarita's and put up my feet and take another walk down memory lane. It's pretty tough to relate to a word like "work" when you've been self employed or unemployed for the last 30 years or so. Not that I don't keep myself busy. It's always been "all in" regardless what kind of trouble I got myself into or not.

This thing with Ralph has drawn itself out now for over 2 years and in order to put the issue to rest, or at least make some kind of concerted effort to get him to stop haunting my dreams, I find myself irresistibly drawn to my laptop in the den by the fire, my pc in my office or the Ipad when I'm on the road. We just returned from Enschede, where we spent Christmas and New Years with the family.  Good times, kids got to blow up things, my oldest daughter got to hang out with a few friends and run around the town until the early hours,  an activity outlawed here in big, bad , beautiful B.C. unless your 19 years or older. Politicians, a politically correct alternative for swine, have chosen to stick to a fairly narrow, atavistic concept of what B.C youngsters should be exposed to therefore condemning a sizable group of our community to seeking solace in drinking in dark places, getting pedophiles to ply them with alcohol, preteen motherhood and a whole array of other mind bending avoidable societal problems.
Anyway we stayed at a resort in Boekelo, Bad Boekelo. The old wave pool has been turned into a pond, fountain and all and the large pool had been filled in. In its place they had constructed a four story gleaming concrete hulk, " het apartementen complex" that reminded me of the old jail in Almelo. Jan and I used to go out for walks in the morning and at times I would stumble across some reminders of the good old days like where Ralph and I would spread our towels between the wave pool and the large pool, out on the concrete, a strategic location allowing us to google, a fine word and already part of our vocabulary 40 years ago, all that the female species had to offer. Most of the time we'd have our backs to the sun, hiding the tent in our shorts, snickering away at our devious ways.

Ralph's first year at the HTS was about just as rewarding as my last year at the MTS. We talked about the possibility of me continuing on to the HTS thus being able to hang out more often but we both had gotten so frustrated with what our future prospects would be that the ugly truth was rearing its head and the beastly consequences of a road less traveled became unavoidable. There was no way that either one of us was going to work for any considerable time for someone else and feel good about it. I already had gone through my first job interview where some sick company prick wouldn't shut up about the fantastic benefits, including a generous pension plan, should I be so privileged as to fit into the fold. Ralph tried to soften the blow by generously supplying me with numerous beverages after that horrible, depressing experience but I never really got over it. Whenever things, during the early days with my own company, did not go as planned and the panic and drama of running my own show would be so overwhelming that a steady pay check looked damn attractive I only had to think of that poor sod sitting in his office firing off all that gibberish. No other motivation was needed to double my efforts to turn things around.

It became frighteningly clear that we were on a very slippery slope indeed and that darker days were ahead. The unrestrained madness of the early years would once in a while still guide our ways but the joke was over and life kept us reminding that the piper had to be payed. We both got ready to throw in the towel on the education road to nowhere allowing us to graduate to the next stage of our journey that inescapably would involve our debt to our beloved homeland. The Army. Ralph tried everything to convince the powers that be, that he was a raving lunatic and should be locked up before someone  would teach him how to load, or even worse, how to aim and shoot a gun. However he failed to convince anyone during the "keuring" although I did offer to put in a few words on his behalf agreeing fully with Ralph's own assessment that he should be locked up and put on strong medication. It was not meant to be, they wanted him. He was devastated, blaming his mom, then his dad for not putting in enough of an effort when he was conceived. He was 198 cm tall by now and he would have gotten his walking papers at 200 cm. The Dutch draft board was not interested in clothing, let alone feeding, those who had reached that magic mark. Weeks before he had to go in for his medical check up, he started whacking the bottom of his feet to speed up the growth of hideous calluses but the extra 2 cm kept eluding him. During the written test he pretended to be a "boer" from the backwoods of Twente, a genuine Tukker, the product of too much inbreeding in a closed and ignorant culture, answering every question with a convincing absurdity, not realising that these wonderful characteristics would make him extremely eligible to join Her Majesty's Royal Forces. At the end of it he just gave up. He knew it was fate and  that an inescapable great doom was upon him. I didn't fare much better.

I got my notice at the end of 77, 78 and I think they hauled him in at around the same time. Chance would have it that for a while we were stationed on the same base somewhere on the Veluwe, het Harde. An appropriate name, it hardened him. It made a man out of him alright but not the kind of man that would easily be manipulated by the bullshit that the Army was laying on us day in, day out. He did not like to be told what to do by some kind of second rate shithead who just happen to have a few stripes on his shoulder. He just fucking hated it with all his being, almost as much as I did.  However he handled it a lot smarter. Obstinacy, violent tendencies and an embedded dislike of all forms of authority would make the brig my second home and I would spent many a night there. At times I would run into him whenever they'd march me back to jail and he'd be hobbling along on his crutches, pretending to have gangrene, polio or some other hard to diagnose horrible flesh eating  disease. He would look at me slyly, grinning from ear to ear, because the Doctor, a sickly little shyster, easy pickings for a sublime con artist of Ralph's caliber, had once again signed the papers that he was better of resting at HOME for the next month or so. Whenever I did find my way home, having done my time, I would inevitably run into him at one of the local dance halls. And, Praise the Lord, a miracle, he'd once again would have full control over all his limbs and be running around like a  man possessed, daring anyone to best him on the dance floor or at the bar for that matter. It was a good gig and he had my blessing although at times I was sorely tempted to rat him out so that we could share a jail cell together.

I still had my apartment downtown, "op de oude markt", above the Pimpelaar, the pub where I used to help out whenever I needed the cash. By now a wide variety of artists, pot heads, punks, bouncers, long haired bozo's, musicians and other degenerates pretending to be my friends were able to find my doorbell. It was Party Central and if not then people knew that I'd be raising hell somewhere in the immediate vicinity. De Pijp was one the places within crawling distance and another one of my favorite hangouts. It was also Ralph's older sister's favorite place. She was a lush (who couldn't hold her liquor), a dope head and a looker and inevitably would always attract a string of "admirers" looking for an easy score. At times I was able to scare them off however she had a taste for the more adventurous but darker characters that were so prominent in Enschede's bar scene.  Trying to persuade her to leave and seek her kicks in a more appropriate environment was like trying to guide a psychotic horse through a burning barn. At times she was completely berserk and she'd be raving incoherently about God knows what and it be hell on wheels to get her into a cab. One night she ended up at one of my parties and we both ran amok and became completely twisted and got along splendidly, maybe a bit to well.
Ralph by that time was shying away from the downtown scene and preferred going crazy in a more private setting. Sometimes we would end up in Marloes's house and by now Robin would join us for a few beers. We'd sit around, shoot the shit, giggle and assault each other because of our strikingly opposing different political views. Robin and Ralph became natural allies, although Robin was in the midst of one of his last soul searching episodes. His affinity for excessive alcohol consumption and mayhem forced his hand my way for about 6 months but he never caved in to such an extent as to give up his love for the good life as he understood it. I on the other hand would look for guidance to Mencken, Freek de Jonghe and other like minded freaks. I never did find a party where I could hang my political hat. A free enterprise party, for sure, but one that would be able to attract a dynamic, inclusive and interesting crowd, not the usual bunch of  naysayers, greedy scumbags, yahoo's and "galbakken" that made up the VVD with Wiegel at the helm, Ralph and Robins preferred vehicle to bliss and happiness. One time Ralph got so worked up that he jumped up on the couch, frustrated that he once again had failed to convince me of the righteousness of his beliefs and proclaimed exasperated that surely my ties to my past and my family made me a natural ally of the PvdA horde, therefore failing to see the Light and doomed to a bleak future. I went completely of my rocker, no holds barred because this was the first time that he was pegging me, something so out of character that I didn't know how to put it into perspective. We gave it to each other and for some asinine moronic reason his sister's wild wanderings slipped into the argument and that's where he lost it and we both went for the jugular. When things got physical, we suddenly realised where we were. I apologized, grabbed my coat and walked of.( Just thinking about it makes me curse the delusion of youthful idealism, not that its wrong but that its not tempered by life's realities. Not many things are black and white, there are many shades of gray and many devils hiding in the shadows)

We both pretended it never happened, but it did and played itself out in our friendship. For a while we teamed up with Robin, Paul, Marloes, Helen and Astrid, got to hang out together in Delft at Paul's dorm parties, terrorized the bars in Oldenzaal during Carnaval and I even went so far as to travel to Pau, a place on the northern side of the Pyrenees where he had a girlfriend. He begged me to drive down and give him a few directions as to how make things work out between him and his French Belle but I only managed to introduce her to the wonderful wacky world of Mr. Crazy. It cured him from ever seeking my advice again regarding his romantic involvements. He liked the fiery tempers of the Spanish and French ladies however shortly after a few doomed foreign affairs he ended up in Losser, dating a native girl, Brigitte, that he would end up marrying. It struck me as odd that he should be the one, setting up house, in such a traditional way, banning the old Ralph to a mere memory. I felt ambivalent about where his gig was heading because I couldn't wrap my head around the fact that the old warrior had just packed it in. He settled down and although he'd come out for a few drinks now and then, he no longer drifted of into bouts of  fearsome anarchy and uncontrolled mayhem. The two of them were a good fit, he loved her and she was able to keep that temper of his in check. I saw them sporadically and had them over for dinner but our paths slowly separated. He was getting ready to chase his dreams while I was itching to find mine.