Ricky Rockanova Part Two

One night Ricky called me up and left a message on my answering machine asking me to come over to his place and help myself to whatever I wanted of his posessions. It was an awkward message. I called him back and asked what the hell he was talking about. He mentioned that he had nothing left going on for himself and that he was going to join the US Air Force. He was going to leave soon and he wanted to lighten his burden by getting rid of most of his stuff. Cool. I was all about taking advantage of the situation. I'd had it with the guy anyway and I got to the point where I hated him. I had been lukewarm towards him for almost a year. The novelty of his personality had worn off long ago. Now that he was at the end of his rope I was almost happy about it.

Senor 23 was lounging around doing nothing at the time and he didn't care for Ricky at all. I told him about the bizarre answering machine message and the phone conversation afterward. Senor 23 and I jumped into his Grey Beast and we headed over to where Ricky was currently living. The address was at a retirement mobile home park, which was odd since Ricky was in his mid-20s just like us. When we got to his door in the mobile home park Ricky was pleasant enough but to Senor 23 and I he seemed suicidal. After some idle chit-chat and a beer Senor 23 and I started loading up Ricky's things into the Grey Beast. Ricky told us to take just about everything he had except for an 8 disc JVC CD player. He gave us every single CD he owned so it didn't make any sense that he wanted the CD player anymore. Whatever. We were busy loading up his gold metal flake 1962 Ludwig drum set, about 150 CDs in a box (most of which were total crap), a space heater, one shoddy phone, a decent turntable, and a bunch of records (again, most of them were garbage). Ricky told me all of that stuff I could keep for good. It was a strange conversation and an even weirder scene.

Turns out Ricky was hiding out at his grandparent's place in the mobile home park while they were staying elsewhere. The neighbors caught on that a young guy was staying there much longer than the guest period allowed for and he was being thrown out by the park management. He had no job, and no place to live. His grandparents really loved him. They thought Ricky was someone special and they were very proud of him. They never knew about all his womanizing or all the jobs and friends he had lost over the years. He was a troubled person. Bad personality and he had a serious problem making good decisions in his life. They had no idea what their grandson was really like.

The Grey Beast took us swiftly away from where Ricky was staying and spirited us to a burger joint. Both Senor 23 and I didn't expect him to live through the night. We agreed he'd probably slit his wrists in the bathtub or shoot himself. Neither one of us cared to be perfectly honest. Over the past couple of years we had put up with so much drama and stupidity from him that it didn't matter anymore. As we sat down to eat some hamburgers we looked at each other and started laughing. What in the world had happened to that guy? Ricky's show that night was so over-dramatic it was comical. Senor 23 was looking forward to setting up the vintage drum kit in one of our livingrooms and I was going to rummage through all the CDs and then sell the rest of them. I could use the cash for all sorts of stuff. Beer was in the forefront of my mind. I could always use the extra beer money selling those CDs. We continued forming our plans for Ricky's stuff while munching on fries and cheeseburgers. the car was so loaded with stuff that it felt almost like Christmas...