The Scourge of Greenbriar in The First Rat in Space Volume 1

By Steve Lytle

“The First Rat in Space” tells stories from the author’s degenerate childhood, with insane anecdotes about his family, friends and bizarre adventures. He does this all through one master plan: “Get attention. Get laughs. Get laid.” In this first volume of The Scourge of Greenbriar, he writes of his Grandma Bernie and her obsession with bowel movements, playground experiments gone horribly wrong, his torment of a 7-Eleven clerk with anger management problems...and Ted Nugent’s scrotum! As he takes us from early childhood all the way through college, you can’t help but laugh at the stories, wondering if they actually happened or if they’ve come from the bent mind of the Scourge himself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Steve Lytle
• Release date: Jul 17, 2013
• ISBN: 9780989724708

Steve Lytle

Steve Lytle is a wannabe stand-up comedian who mumbles and has no stage presence, whatsoever. Out of desperation, he began writing. He hopes to someday deliver his crass and sophomoric book by the truckload to the Westboro Baptist Church.

Book preview

The First Rat in Space tells stories from the author’s degenerate childhood, with insane anecdotes about his family, friends and bizarre adventures. He does this all through one master plan: Get attention. Get laughs. Get laid. In this first volume of The Scourge of Greenbriar, he writes of his Grandma Gertie and her obsession with bowel movements, playground experiments gone horribly wrong, his torment of a 7-Eleven clerk with anger management problems…and Ted Nugent’s scrotum! As he takes us from early childhood all the way through college, you can’t help but laugh at the stories, wondering if they actually happened or if they’ve come from the bent mind of the Scourge himself.

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The Scourge of Greenbriar in The First Rat in Space Volume 1

By Steve Lytle

Scourgeonline.com, LLC

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ALSO BY STEVE LYTLE

The Scourge of Greenbriar in The Man from Nantucket Volume 2

The Scourge of Greenbriar in Dawn of the Dead Volume 3

These books are meant to be read in a sequential manner. Like sex: first you do it...have a smoke, and then get a washcloth. All things in their proper order...

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THE SCOURGE OF GREENBRIAR IN

THE FIRST RAT IN SPACE VOLUME ONE

Copyright Steve Lytle, 2011-2013

All rights reserved. Except for brief passages: quoted in newspaper, magazine, radio, television or online reviews, no portion of this book may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or information storage or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.

All characters in this publication are entirely fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this free ebook. Although this is a free book, it remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied and distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy at Smashwords.com, where they can also discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support.

Scourgeonline.com, LLC

ISBN 978-0-9897247-0-8

Cover designed by Michael McGee

Editorial assistance by Julie Cortes and Rob Bignell

Manufactured in the United States of America

First printing July 2013

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DEDICATION

For Sweet Pea…with open arms

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Contents

Preface

Holy Moses

Monkey Boys

Too Stupid for School

My Kindergarten Lover

You’ll Go Blind

Eli is Coming

He is Harmless…Right?

Weekend at Gertie’s…and Josiah’s

Crapola

Cough into Your Elbow

Thanks, Mom!

It is Mighty Fine

Bright-Eyed and Bushy-Tailed

What? No Donkey Show?

Those Carnival Games are Always a Rip-off

A Red Rubber Ball

Let’s Get Ready to R-R-Rumble!

Daniel Boone was a Man

The First Rat in Space

Red Rover, Red Rover

Beaker Street

We Go Dancing Nightly in the Attic…

Beat It

A Little Head

Kiss My Ass

The Lady’s Clothing Vanishes

The Scourge of Greenbriar

The Burghers of Calais

Iron Man

The World’s Greatest Dad

Alms for the Blind

Pink Hearts, Yellow Moons, Orange Stars and Green Clovers

Once More unto the Breach

Hey! How Come I Don’t Get a Gurney?

Motion Sickness

There’s a Ringing in My Ear…It’s the Call of the Wild

Love-Love

El Scourgebo

The Exodus

A Futile Italian Attempt at Transportation

Charge It

Gay for a Day

Busy, Busy, Busy

An Excerpt from The Scourge of Greenbriar: The Man from Nantucket

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Preface

Scourge – noun

1. A whip or lash, esp. for the infliction of punishment or torture

2. A person or thing that applies or administers punishment or severe criticism

3. A cause of affliction or calamity: Disease and famine are scourges of humanity

Number two and three, they are both me. My behavior is my mother’s fault. Let me explain.

Holy Moses

My deeds were my mother’s fault. She is to blame for my degenerate behavior.

I state that with all the appropriate love and honor. My mom, Anne Mae, was raised in a small Midwestern city, the only child of first-generation German immigrants. After an average adolescence, she settled into young adulthood in her hometown. My mother began her career as a TV anchorwoman on the first television station in her area. She dated frequently but never seriously. Mom had even spurned a few offers of marriage.

My father, Noah, on the other hand, was a player long before the term came into use. He grew up in Chicago, Illinois. My grandmother, Gertie, was the English and drama teacher at my father’s high school, so my dad was encouraged and expected to take to the stage.

After high school, my father enrolled at Northwestern University. He competed for roles and attention with the likes of Charlton Heston. My dad is, and was a pretty impressive actor.

But I have read about Moses, and my father is no Moses. So he was No. 2 at Northwestern U. After my siblings and I became aware of his acting rival, we began calling him Moses. That name was not in reference to his age but rather the fame and fortune that may have been his…if it hadn’t been for Charlton Heston.

I could see my dad in Planet of the Apes. We kids could envision him with a rifle held high over his head at a NRA meeting or parting the Red Sea…if it had not been for Charlton Heston. Mr. Heston’s presence must have made my father’s career change inevitable as my dad soon discovered radio…not as Marconi had discovered radio, but as a disc jockey and announcer. He traveled the Midwest, jumping from station to station like a railroad prostitute. My father blew into my mom’s hometown with considerable fanfare. I still have the newspaper clipping which announced his upcoming arrival and leading role at the public playhouse.

I love my dad, but if he were front-page news…then the social scene sucked in Trenton, Missouri. My father pulled shifts at the local radio station. Between the live remotes and the weekend stage plays, he caught a glimpse of his future wife on the television set as she was reading the evening news, on camera.

Fast-forward about 11 months and my older brother Clay was born. Fast-forward again for 22 months and my younger brother, Gabriel joined our home. My mom was pregnant nearly non-stop for three years.

By the time her head cleared, she had had Gabriel on her hip, and Clay and me pulling on each leg. My lifetime of inappropriate behavior was due to the decisions Mom made back then. I can’t blame her terribly. I would have done the same thing, which she finally did, if I were in similar circumstances.

But it was all her fault.

Monkey Boys

Clay, the oldest, was out of control. There exists not a single still photograph or Super-8 movie of our family that doesn’t have my loving brother mugging for the lens. If he saw a camera of any kind in use, Clay would begin leaping and screeching in the foreground like a rabid chimpanzee berserk on amphetamines. There is not one shot that was taken in our household that does not have him holding up two fingers behind the heads of his brothers or parents.

Clay wasn’t capable of keeping his feet on the ground. He was always climbing, always needing to master the highest physical object within his view. My brother conquered the peaks of places such as the grade school roof, the sycamore in the backyard, the lattice work over the garage and the cupola of our home. Clay would crawl through his second-story bedroom window after kicking the screen out. Scaling the downspout, he would pull himself to the roof. Standing at the chimney, victorious in his quest for the summit, Clay would salute the passing cars.

Anne, your boy is on the roof again! my mother would hear on the phone from a neighbor.

Fuck! Mom replied, followed frantically by, CLAYTON! GET DOWN HERE RIGHT NOW!

He was five years old when he scaled our home the first time. My brother also spent his days digging holes, the bottoms of which he lined with sharpened sticks. He’d cover the pit with brush and grass as camouflage. Who knows what Clay was trapping.

My mother likened him once to having a 500-pound tuna on the hook: she found it best just to let him run with the line.

My brother topped the fireman’s pole at the neighborhood park’s swing set one day. Look at me! Look at me! he yelled to my mom.

Clayton, you’d better get down here. You’re going to hurt yourself, my mother calmly warned him.

He grabbed hold of the fireman’s pole and came down a lot faster than when he went up. As a direct result, Clay broke his hip and leg in three places, which necessitated a full lower body cast. The injury merely inconvenienced him, as he began pulling himself up and over furniture, like a snake, slithering over stones and brush. Clayton relearned both movement and mobility.

Due to that injury, he spent the fall terrorizing the slowest thing within his limited reach, our little brother, Gabriel. The cat could escape Clay’s grasp, but Gabe could not move out of harm’s way quickly enough.

Clay once put Gabe in the dryer and was about to turn on the cotton cycle, right as my mom reached them both. I am sure she lectured him, but if my mother needed to explain it, he would never understand.

One day, my older brother found a bottle of Phenobarbital in the bathroom cabinet. The liquid was a pleasing fruit-flavored color, but the secret ingredient was the barbital, as in barbiturate. Clay took the bottle out of the cabinet and handed it to the baby, Gabe.

It is soda pop! Drink it! he said.

My mom told me often that Gabriel’s pupils were the size of nickels when she found him on the bathroom floor. My little brother needed to have his stomach pumped. A few weeks later, Clay fed castor beans to the boy. My mother grew the castor oil plant as an ornamental addition to our front yard. The beans can be fatal if chewed, due to the ricin contained within the seeds. They also look like little jelly beans.

They’re candy! Eat them! Clay suggested.

Gabriel had his stomach pumped, once more. My little brother has said that he has no memory of either event. My mom said he was too young to remember, but I believe he must have been too stoned to remember.

If it were me, I think I certainly would recall plastic tubing being forced, involuntarily, in my nose and down my throat…twice.

Gabe was also always interested in keys and was fascinated with anything that had been locked up. He nursed his early obsession with a plastic baby set of them, but Gabriel soon graduated to more serious teething tools. My parents were constantly searching for lost car, house, door and locker keys. Check Gabe, first became the catch phrase in our home.

With Clay making all the headlines, I must have decided that I needed to develop a style of my own if I was going to get any attention. I remember dancing, poorly, for the neighbors or my mom’s bridge club. My mother would call me downstairs where I would oblige and give them a child’s impersonation of Al Jolson.

Wait a minute, wait a minute. You ain’t heard nothin’ yet, I would announce.

I may have put on an amusing little show, but with no rhythm or talent I must have looked like a drunken transient that was killing cockroaches while dressed in footed pajamas.

Mom tells me that I spent fair weather days eating grass and dirt clods in the backyard. I remember thinking that the little purple clovers must be sweet, so I began grazing like a young calf by our swing-set. I could chomp on the turf in the summer, but in the winter, my entertainment options were limited. My mother tells of a recurring habit of mine…that of wearing my meals if served in a bowl, as a hat.

Obviously, I was confused as a child.

Wintertime, cold! Hat on...warm. Oatmeal, good! Warm! Oatmeal hat on, I must have reasoned as I turned my breakfast bowl over and into my hair.

I am sure my dad came home many nights to say, Did the little shit put his food on his head, again?

Even when I didn’t have a dome full of breakfast, I was still into the foodstuffs. My wintertime hobby was more artistic than my warm-weather grazing. I would open the refrigerator at all hours to remove my condiment of choice. My parents would find me in the formal living room, spreading French’s yellow mustard on the carpet, with a knife. The stain wasn’t just a little spot, either. I used the entire canvas in an avant-garde style that pre-dated the Andy Warhol period. My favorite mediums included peanut butter, mayonnaise and ketchup. I may have preferred the mayonnaise for my art as its vegetable oil base proved more lasting on the rug.

My mother would cuff her budding young art major on the back of the head when she caught me at work in my studio. She said it was to stabilize my lazy left eye, but I now have my doubts.

I certainly appreciated the ready-made canvas that my mom and dad provided. I presume that when they chose from color samples, my folks were both giddy as their nouveau-rich dreams of fancy for their first home came true. They chose bone-ivory colored carpeting. My parents raised three young boys in the same household as that carpet. Mom is still pissed off about the living room art. I asked her once after I fathered my own child, what she had been thinking.

Really, mother. White carpeting? With three little boys? Didn’t anyone try and stop you? I asked.

You should be able to buy things without regard to your children. I waited a long time for my dream house! she informed me.

"Didn’t you go to, like, parenting