Ken Allison kicks ass!

I've had some great moments in my life and I've decided that here is where I'm going to write about them.

Ken Allison was somewhere around the age of 16 when he moved to Stallion circle, the place where I lived. He was old and he was cool. He was way cooler than Mike Miller our 16 year old next door neighbor. Don't get me wrong Mike was cool, he listened to Kiss, wore cut off sleeves, had long straight blond hair, and muscles. He was not only cool, but he was bad ass! I really envied him and hated his guts at the same time. If he hadn't have punched me in the stomach for some reason I have long forgotten I might not have hated him so much. His brother Mark was a couple years younger and he was exactly my age. I think it was having a bad ass older brother that turned mark into a bit of a brute himself. Our personalities clashed a bit, you see at the time I liked Barry Mani low and Mark liked Black Sabbath. I really think it was their influence that got me into a sort of body building frenzy myself at a young age. Well then there were fights. I remember near the woods punching mark while he held my head and tried to bang it against a skinny tree. Afterwards we both thought we had won the fight! Needless to say, I had no idea at the time how terrible my life was nor how terrible it would have continued to be had not the Allisons come to our street.


Ken Sr. and Joice Allison, the parents, were from Scotland and had the warmest friendliest voices you ever heard. When Ken yelled at his kids in that deep Scottish accent he was the funniest and strangely nicest man you'd ever heard. When their mom was firm the magic of her accent was but the sweetest firm voice in the world. When they spoke to you directly, or patted you on the head, you could not help but wish they would sweep you up in their arms. I really felt that Ken and Teddy were extremely lucky to have them as parents.

Of course in the beginning we were slowly becoming acquainted, trying to see who the new neighbors would like better, us or the Millers. Of course Ken would want to be friends with Mike(but that didn't happen). They were the same age, it only made sense. Ted was a couple years younger, and he could be friends with my brother Mike or Matt Miller (He became Mike's). It didn't really make sense that I would become close to either of them being right in the middle between their ages.

What followed were the effects of an unseen slow gravitational pull that forced us together. The Allisons had an above ground pool in the back yard where the best ever rock the boat battles were fought in big inner tubes that emptied half the pool. We had a large rectangular back yard where the best ever soccer and football games were played. Ken had a snowmobile that he would generously take us for long rides on across snow covered streets and sidewalks. On one occasion we were flying down the sidewalk on the snowmobile and a police car pulled right out to cut us off. Ken said, "Hold on, I'm going to ditch this pig!" To this day I wish I had let him, but I was too scared, and I begged him not to run. He knew he could have easily gotten away with all the snow everywhere. Even the street was covered in snow and ice we were just on the sidewalk out of respect for the Law? Yeah? Anyway he bit the bullet and took the ticket, the snowmobile was impounded. Later he told me wasn't really going to run, anyway. That was a lie, I know he would have, but he didn't want me to feel like the impound was my fault. Later he said the judge just laughed and gave him the snowmobile back and he didn't have to pay the fine. What a nice guy protecting me from feeling bad! You'd think a nice guy like that wouldn't run from cop's. But Ken was cool, he was James Dean cool, he was Han Solo cool. I panicked and missed out on the thrill ride of a lifetime.


Still Ken was older than us and he had his own life. He was awesome, he was our favorite babysitter, he took us riding on his dirt bike at Green Acres, he played soccer with us in the backyard, but it was Ted that we lived with. It was not uncommon to have Ted waking you up in the morning getting you ready and involved in his next idea for adventure or play.
Whether it was riding tricycles around the block or hooking the wagon up to a bike and strapping someone in with bungee cords, or firecrackers, he always had firecrackers, I remember one of his bottle rockets getting launched into the open second story window of an old neighbor ladies house. Of course he was always ready to go pike fishing!
It was like our own private, hidden away little fishing spot. Even though he was too young to be my friend, he was my friend. He was my younger brother Mike's age. Needless to say they were close, my mom says they were inseparable, yet we were still good friends as well, and it's strange looking back because I don't even remember my brother Mike. It's as if he wasn't even there, but I remember Ted, I remember Ted everywhere, in the raspberry patch, in the woods, at the creek in the backyard in my house. As we got older he created a game that became an obsession called gotcha last. A game I've carried onto play with my child. Basically just a game of tag that never ends. Followed up by phone calls dedicated to taunting and eventually sneaking over to his house just to tag him back and then run back home. That would be a waste because he was relentless. Ted was subtle. He liked to come up behind you and lightly touch you on the top of the head. Then he would walk away, and you knew he had just gotten you, and he knew you knew, but he was saving the taunting for later. Oh and I just remembered the best scare of my life, Ted was under my bed. Unlike your typical jump out and yell Boo!, he just silently waited until I turned out the light and walked over to the bed. When I got to the bed he gently reached out and lightly grabbed hold of my ankle! One of the few times fear has brought me to scream. He's lucky I didn't hurt him because, believe me, as I screamed I tried to stomp the crap out of whatever creature it was that had me.

All this is just a little intro into my life with the Allisons. Yes all this information is just an introduction to a very short story. It was a moment that happened one summer day in the street right in front of Ted's house. A moment that has left a photographic imprint in mind, a memory I will have for the rest of my life! I still see it in slow motion just the way it was 20 years ago... in slow motion. There were two, maybe three kids, messing with us. Ted, me, my brother Todd, and a few neighborhood kids were about to get into a fight. It was NOT a fight we wanted, and certainly NOT a fight we were going to win, but we had brought it upon ourselves! You see we had discovered you can break a branch off the crab apple tree in Ted's front yard, skewer a crab apple and then fling it half a mile down the street. So like a bunch of idiots we taunted some bigger kids that we didn't like with our new found weapons. My brother Todd always had bad luck throwing things, because he more often than not hit his mark. I distinctly remember my heart abandoning me, when one of the kids rode over, flipping down the kickstand in the street, got off his bike, and walked straight up to Todd ready to kick his ass. Time slowed down as the boys friends rode up for backup and all our yelling was not going to stop the beating that was to ensue. And that's when it happened, like a streak of light the screen door slammed shut, and he was in the street connecting his foot to the front tire of the same bike the attacker had just abandoned. You couldn't have blinked and Ken had gone from somewhere in the house to 3 steps deep into the street and that's when time stopped. I watched that bike rise up and up and up rotating into a full gainer. It was staggering trying to comprehend how kicking a bike would make it do that! How did Ken know that if he kicked the bike like that he could make it do that? Had he done that before? I don't remember what was said after that, but it wasn't much and it doesn't really matter. Those kids were gone in a flash, I never saw them again, and I was left with the most awesome feeling in the world. I don't remember if the movie My Bodyguard came out before or after this, but I remember watching that movie and thinking we have one of those.