In the summer of 1996 I was fresh from my drop-out from Asbury College. I felt extremely defeated and worthless, because my studies had started to fail, and I was incapable of associating comfortably with my peers. So, perhaps discerning these problems, my Aunt invited me to live with her for awhile at her home in Louisville, Kentucky. She planned to get me a job there and teach me how to drive, in order that I might gain some measure of Independence.
So, that’s exactly what I did. I applied to a Temp Agency, and they placed me at UPS doing dumb data entry. All day I typed in Invoice Numbers from receipts in order to confirm that packages had been shipped or delivered. I developed some mean Numpad skills that I possess to this day. I worked with a bunch of twentysomethings who cursed profusely and were always going to Chi-Chi’s for margaritas. The Macarena was the craze at the time, and there was one fat guy there (he reminded me somewhat of Chris Farley) who would frequently dance it as a sort of ironic joke. I didn’t fit in there, either. I was nerdy looking and reclusive, so my Co-Workers would frequently tease that I had a pair of Spock ears at home. They would ask me, “How are the Spock ears doing, caco? Worn them any lately?” and then snicker.
I lived in a large, stately house on Louisville’s East End (the good part of town). My Aunt rented the upstairs with a rather persnickety room-mate in the downstairs (who was almost never there). The neighborhood was attractive and filled with trees, if a little old. It was quite pleasant. But of course the work and the house weren’t the interesting part of my stay in Kentucky’s largest city.
I had discovered BattleTech at Asbury, thanks to Switchblade’s ownership of the Starter Box Set. He professed a lack of interest in it since he was trying to be accepted by the “cool kids,” so he pretty much let me have it. I absolutely loved it. I bought one of the Advanced Tactics Manuals that had a bunch of broken weapons and armor in it and set about designing my own ‘Mechs. I staged 4v4 battles with them to test their effectiveness. The worst were these “Thunderbolt” missiles which converted the usual 20-count missile launcher into one huge missile that did 20 damage to one location.
I was never able to buy many more sourcebooks for BattleTech while at Asbury aside from that one. Until I moved to Louisville. In the Mall at St. Matthews (which was close to home) they had a niche Hobby Store which had a full rack of role-playing materials. I bought a lot of Sourcebooks then, including several useless expositions on the various factions of the Inner Sphere. I even bought BattleTech novels and started to read them with no awareness of how terrible they were. I particularly liked Michael Stackpole. I even staged a mock battle and wrote down every move and action, converting it into an adjective-laden work of fan fiction which I posted online. I became thoroughly immersed in the BattleTech universe. Every day after work I would read one of the books in a hotel lobby, waiting for my Aunt to get off work and pick me up. (We never got around to getting my driver’s license.)
The hobby store in the Mall is also where I discovered Call of Cthulhu. When I read the example of play in the introductory section of the book, I found it to be potentially one of the most compelling gaming experiences ever. So I bought the Core Rules and read through them in a few days. When I got home, I eventually introduced both games to Bill, starting with the MechWarrior RPG (an adjunct to BattleTech) and moving on to Call of Cthulhu. That “Year of RPG’s,” 1997, I have detailed in a previous entry, so I won’t go into it again.
However, my stay in Louisville was not without its downsides. My aunt spent rather lavishly on me while I was there, buying expensive groceries and taking me out to eat two or three times a week to the Applebee’s in the Mall, where she was a regular. There was one bartender there whom she seemed to know well, and she would always tip him at least $20 each time he served her meal. She claimed it was worth it since he would give her free food whenever a customer returned something they didn’t want, but I’m certain it would have been cheaper just to buy that food instead.
I also remember I first confessed my lack of faith to her right inside that Applebee’s, the first time I had told any family member. I think she admitted that she had been having doubts recently as well. Her religious belief has since recovered, although she is a very Liberal Christian.
A potentially catastrophic event almost took place at that Mall. I was standing in the hobby shop, looking at RPG books, when I noticed some type of commotion behind me. I looked out into the main corridor of the mall, and the stall vendors were quickly putting all their merchandise under the shelves and preparing to close up. There were also a large number of people running toward the exit. I walked out amongst the maelstrom and asked what was going on, and somebody told me there was a tornado headed straight for the Mall.
I went down to “our” Applebee’s and holed up in there, along with a lot of other people. It probably wasn’t a good idea since the entire restaurant was fronted by plate glass windows, but we were all stupid. The tornado got so close, and was obviously heading in our direction, that the staff members started begging the manager to offer free drinks to everyone since these would probably be their last moments on Earth. The manager refused. It turned out to be a good decision, since the tornado swerved at the last second and took out the south part of Louisville. You could probably find a news story about this tornado if you looked.
Well, that’s about all the notable information regarding my stay with my Aunt in Louisville. I have to say I enjoyed the time spent there, and if it weren’t for that hobby shop I probably never would have got so heavily into pen-and-paper RPG’s, the playing of which were some of the best times of my life.