Johnny

Johnny was one of the bunch of high-school kids that worked at the local Kroger store after school and on weekends. We bagged groceries and stocked shelves and had a pretty good time, pay was decent as the Teamsters had them by the balls. I didn't care too much if it was a dollar or two more than the new Wal-Mart (where I eventually went) or one of the other places. Had a buddy worked at an independent grocery store, knew a couple worked at other places, money was about the same. The full-time employees with years in made real good money - over ten dollars an hour (1973 or so) and some got five or six weeks vacation. The guy that ran the meat department had a lot of years in, over tweny an hour and time-and-a-half overtime and double on Sunday. He scheduled himself for one Sunday a month just for the extra few hundred bucks. Did I tell you the part where they closed the store yet?

Anyway we bagged and carried out groceries, flirted with the cashiers and the pretty customers (you learned which ones you could do that with) and had a pretty good time. They store gave stamps then, Quality Stamps was the brand they had, and women (mostly) would save them and buy stuff from the stamp catalog. We stocked the shelves and kept them straight - blocking and facing was a regular activity - and mopped the floors after closing. And there were the bottles.

Johnny and I were in the same grade, seniors the year he came - I was there the previous year. There was a crew of about six or seven of us all in high school. Two or three, I forget, regulars supervised us. One was the union steward, he was a smart-ass and if not dumb as a brick pretty near it, had a younger brother my age who was even dumber. Talked about fucking a lot - that wasn't uncommon but there were always those guys that were obsessed with it, talking about it anyway. I couldn't imagine him getting any but I've seen guys you wouldn't expect would that got more ass than a ... nevermind. Still I always figured a lot of the talk about getting laid was lies. Johnny was one that liked to talk about it a lot, and we knew about all of them.

There was a woman in the meat department - named Peggy before I forget - late twenties or early thirties, unmarried with two kids. We went over to her house and partied a lot, got drunk a lot. Might as well tell you about the time... well, she lived in a subdivision near the edge of town, near a gal in my class what was one of the hottest (we didn't use the word 'hot' back then) chicks in the H-class. I'd guess there were two or three equal or close. Anyhow we went up there and partied a lot, and got seriously drunk.

One night she made a bunch of strawberry daquiris, must of been a few gallons at least. We drank strawberry daquiris and watched television, and before I passed out there was a Dracula movie on. One of the Hammer films, Brides of Dracula. Then I passed out. Later woke up, few people still there, decided to go home. I still hadn't figured out driving drunk wasn't a good idea then and so I went out to my car. I'd left the window down and as I was opening the door a bigass cat that had gone to sleep on the front seat suddenly exited past my head. Scared me half to death.

Peggy liked to fuck but fancied herself something special. Called it enjoying men's bodies' and she had a selection of local guys whose bodies she would enjoy or like to enjoy. She wasn't that good-looking but not ugly, I didn't do her even though later on she decided I was one of the ones she wanted to enjoy. Johnny did though, and one night he went to see her and did it. Monday at work he told us all about it. As far as I know for him it was one-and-done and she wasn't too happy since she liked to get a guy and do him for a while, weeks or months before moving on. Probably had more than one going on at a time as far as I know.

Fucking is what we called it, the author of the famous book was more subtle since it was the 1950s. Was it so much cruder a couple of decades later or was it always that way in real talk among horny young men? So Johnny fucked Peggy, like that was a major accomplishment, and described it. He described his other conquests as well and I suppose most of them were true, he seemed to be pretty good at it. I never felt comfortable talking about it and never talked about who I did it with. Not that I wasn't a horny young guy that wanted to get laid but if there wasn't some kind of relationship there... alright, sometimes at parties you'd get drunk and do it with some chick and it was fun and you might never see her again. That wasn't right but it's what horny and drunk people do sometimes.

Anyway most of us didn't think much of him. He was lazy and avoided unpleasant duties like working the bottles. Back then soft drinks were in glass bottles and when you bought them in a store you had to pay a deposit, about two cents per bottle back then. People would go along the roads and pick up the bottles thrown out of passing cars and take them back to the stores to the the money. Customers who didn't bring the empties would have to pay the deposit so quite a few did. Up at the front of the store was a big bin where we put the empties, sometimes it would get full and have to be replaced with another one, the full one going to the loading dock at the back of the store. At the end of the day the bottles had to be sorted and placed into cases to be collected and returned to the bottling facilities.

The night manager would detail one or two of us to 'work the bottles' as we called it. It was not hard work but dirty and no one wanted to do it, and when it was Johnny's turn he would just happen to have on a real nice shirt and tie and would give the aw shucks, I'll get this shirt and tie dirty act and the manager would have someone else do it. We already didn't care for him much anyway so it didn't bother him that it annoyed us. It annoyed the assistant managers too but he was one of those guys who figures out what he can get away with and goes balls to the wall with it.

I don't remember if he was one of the mass quitting that went on one day. Seems like he was, anyway one night we had a truck come in - usually Wednesday or Thursday was the big main load - and we'd be there until midnight or so getting all the new stock in. A couple of the full-time guys were there to supervise us and there was usually a bit of clowning around. I don't know that happened that night that was different - or if anything was - but the next day somebody got max anal and wrote a bunch of us up. Had a little form you had to read, had your offenses listed on it, and you signed it. The usual documentation for when they decide to fire you. It kind of pissed me and a couple of other off since we didn't know just what it was we were being disciplined for. Two or three of us went out to the new Wal-Mart store (Twin Falls had one of the early Wal-marts, before they got big) and the manager offered us jobs and we accepted. Went back to Kroger and told the assistant manager (not the one that got us wrote up - they had two and it was the other one that got anal) we were gone. They had a district manager that came by every week or so and he had a reputation for being a guy you didn't want to make unhappy. He came in that day and they were about three or four guys short. We didn't hear if the manager got reamed or not but figured it would be nice if he did.

I was only at Wal-Mart a few weeks as I got offered a job at the bank so wasn't around that crew much. Still saw some of them, including Johnny, as we hung out in town and drank beer and smoked dope and tried to get laid all the time. To hear Johnny tell it he got laid about every time he felt like it, and he was a slick dude and probably did get more that most of us. He stayed in Twin Falls and eventually married a chick we knew from high school. She wasn't great looking, decent body soso visage, don't have much info on personality or intelligence. They had a kid with some kind of medical condition, they got monthly checks from the government because of it. The kid died young, in his twenties I believe. Anyway he built a big fancy house on a five acre or so estate, worked as the manager of a local business. It didn't seem to me the kind of business that made the kind of money to pay the manager that much but there are usually enough things going on if you know the right people you can do pretty well even if your regular job doesn't pay that well.

Sometime in his thirties I guess he was putting up trail cameras at a hunting camp where he was a member. Fell out of a tree and busted his back beyond repair of even 1980s medical technology. Permanently in a wheelchair. Okey-dokey.