Sunday, March 17, 2013

Cornbread

The second of four boys, Charles H. Riley II, was named after my Dad because he was the spitting image. We called him Bubba his whole life until we became teenagers. I don't remember who gave him the nickname Cornbread but it stuck. Bread was a fighter early on in his life. In the first grade he was diagnosed with a degenerative hip condition called Leggs Perthese Disease. For two years he had to wear a harness that kept his left leg off the ground. It never bothered him. He played little league baseball using one crutch and could outrun most others.   Cornbread and I did not become real close until we were in high school. When he got his drivers license we were almost inseperable. Concerts, pool halls, juke joints is where we could be found. In the 70's, you did not have to worry about someone pulling a gun, so, fist fighting became our favorite passtime. We did a lot of it, too. Cornbread was not a huge guy he just knew how to fight. If anyone went places with him you could almost guarantee getting in a fight. It was a lot of fun, back then. Foosball was our thing. Buddy's gameroom on Hoke street was the place to go. We could put down a quarter on the foosball machine and play for hours. The winners kept playing and we were a very good team that played, a lot. My brother decided to join the Air Force when he graduated and when that day came I had lost my partner. My concentration went towards school. Not acedemically, it was more for entertainment. My senior year in school was a blur. I graduated but honestly don't know how. After my graduation I did what Cornbread did the year before. I, too, joined the United States Air Force and trained to be a medic. I was in Ft. Walton Beach, Fl. and Cornbread was at Shaw A.F.B., S.C. eighty miles from Myrtle Beach Me and Bread met a knew friend, Jimmy Buffett, and we became full blooded parrott heads. Soon, came the second worst day of my life. It went down hill from there.   theblogmeister

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