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One of them was my age. I only saw him in PE class because it was about the only time the H-section kids were mixed in with the others. He was a scrawny little guy and mentally not too sharp - not K-section but barely into M-section. He had a weird eye, out of sync. On the poor side, lower working class. He wasn't bad to be around considering his mental deficiency but once in a while he would make you want to slug him even if you were a low-violence type like me but I could see it was a dysfunctional mind and he wasn't being malicious. He had two brothers and probably the most normal one was one that worked at the local Kroger store. I and some other high school kids worked there after school and on weekends. Delbert Middleton was a department head, I forget what it was. It wasn't frozen foods or produce (produce and meat were the only ones that had to do much real work) but the one that soup and cereal and common grocery stuff. He wasn't much brighter than his brother with the flaky eye but fancied himself smart. He was the union steward too and was constantly after mt to get signed up but I quit and went to work at Wal-Mart for a little less money than be a part of any union and especially the Teamsters. They hadn't done away with Hoffa at that time but were a mean bunch and strikes when they had them could be ugly. Mostly vandalizing cars and roofing nails in parking lots and stuff like that. Dad wouldn't join a union either and left a good job in Michigan working for General Motors because of it. Those got real nasty and one night some of their thugs drove down our street and shot up a house. The couple that lived there were sitting in the living room watching their three year old child playing in the floor. One of the bullets hit the baby in the head. It wasn't long after that Dad said we were moving back down south. Mostly though Delbert talked about sex. The women he did and how they did it. He wasn't good-looking - I'm not either but probably better than him but looks aren't all or even most of what matters. And he made good money and since it wasn't exactly high-society stuff he probably got as much as he said he did. Probably the smarters of the three but that's not saying much. The third brother - Vernon - I met later working at a car dealer. The one where I bought the '78 LeBaron with all the buttons. He was something like a shop manager but not really the boss. Kind of a clerk that made sure the paperwork got done, this was the late seventies or early eighties and they had a computer modem thing they used to do reports and order parts and stuff and he did that. He got fired for some reason. He was about second-smartest of the three but had a pretty decent personality. I didn't hear much about him until he died. Seems he was working for someone doing some work at a trailer park and a pretty big tree was being cut. It fell on him and he died. Probably about forty then. I've cut a few trees working by myself and no matter how careful you think you're being you can get a scare now and then. I'm pretty paranoid about it and in fact don't cut trees any more if they're much taller than I am.
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