True Chronicles of a Prodigal Son

Chapter 1: True Beginnings >"Aunt Lena Mae is most memorable to me for a number of reasons I will never forget. She had no children of her own, and often said after giving us hugs and a weekly allowance, that we were her favorite nieces and nephews. She lived most of her adult life in Brooklyn NY. She was very petite in stature, quite bold and a very aggressive person. This little frame woman, drank liquor like a man, swore like a sailor and her "bite was far worse than her bark"! And this is no cliché. As tough as the men were on my dad's side of the family, when aunt Lena Mae barked even they took caution. Looking back, there was an argument between aunt Lena Mae's sister and her boyfriend's sister. My aunt Gladys seemed to be the most upset and fierce at the time. With one unheeded warning from aunt Lena to knock it off, she pulled her 32cal. pistol and shot her own sister in the chest in front of everybody standing around at the shop! God spared aunt Gladys that day for it was only a flesh wound, the bullet just missing the heart and other vital organs. And it would be, that aunt Gladys would end up caring for the sister that shot her while Aunt Lena was on her deathbed, because not long after that incident, while working the service windows one night at the shop, an irate man had his hands through the opening of the service window banging on the counter top being intoxicated with anger, shouting, and swearing at the top of his voice! The man ignored aunt Lena's warnings to calm down and continued with expletives, and out of no where, she took a twelve inch metal cooking fork, the kind with the two long sharp prongs on it, and impaled the man's hand to the wooden counter top! They rush all the children out to grandma's after any such confrontation. A big shoot out ensued during the night. Being at grandma's house, the sound of gunfire woke me out of sleep. There I was in the wee hours of the morning standing on top of a metal wash bucket trembling, looking out of a door window facing the shop. In the early morning when things were thought to be quiet, aunt Lena opened the back door to the shop, and a shotgun blast hit her in the face and in the upper part of her body...