BILL CADY Word Count: 149,227 - At My Friend's Place

Bill Cady, The Early Years … by Bill Cady 76
O‟Rafferty was divided into two wings. One side for boys, the other for girls.
That completely sucked. We were becoming what I termed when I was an adult and
fought them away from my daughter, piles of raging hormones. HP‟s, for short;
Hormone Piles.
Worse, the girls were getting a thing called “tits”! Come on! Why move „em
where we can‟t even see „em when they‟re all getting nice tits? That‟s evil and low
down. Really nasty.
Now that I was a confirmed smoker, there was one nice thing about the new high
school. It had Rack ‘n’ Rail, a brand-new billiards parlor, less than two blocks away.
That‟s where I got started on what you‟ll soon see was a crucial part of my life in later
years. It was one of the building blocks.
We could smoke while shooting pool, except when one old fuddy-duddy was in
charge. He wouldn‟t let minors smoke in there. When he was running it, we had to go
outside. Maybe it was training for life as I know it today. If I go somewhere like a
restaurant and there‟s no patio, I spend half my time standing outside the front door with
a cigarette in my hand.
There wasn‟t a lot worth mentioning about my time at O‟Rafferty beyond two
incidents involving the same kid, Pat Finnerty. He was a prick back then. I‟d be willing
to bet he‟s still a prick today, forty-five years later. He wasn‟t all that big, maybe five-
six, one-thirty. I was five-eleven, one-eighty by ninth grade. Okay, my “freshman year”.
Jesus, get over it, okay?
I saw Finnerty a couple times in Lansing when I was in my 30s. We never talked,
but I saw him around town. He had a ponytail, leather jacket, biker‟s boots and a nasty
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