The Adventures of Frick and Frack: The Ricanys and the Candy Man

--Ryan
I remember when Gram—the original, not our step dad’s (Cement Hands)—used to call us, me and Kyle, by the nicknames Frick and Frack. We thought it was because she loved us, but the real reason was because we were little shits and got in more trouble than anyone else in the entire scumbag town (it was barely a town) of Beachwood.

Lets start with number one: I threw a keyboard at Kyle’s head (Number 2’s story was totally off—it wasn’t an accident). I threw a Compaq keyboard at Kyle’s head because I didn’t want him to be in our Super Intelligence Agency (aka treetop secret spot) and go tell Mom and Dad about it. They’d make us take all the cool shit out of the tree, and we were just about to figure out a plan to hoist the monitor up there.

Anyway, after the keyboard made contact with Kyle’s head, he did, in fact, run away like a little bitch to tell Dad. However, this is where Number 2’s story goes wrong: Mom WAS at work because we had to continue the tradition of getting hurt when Dad was at home alone. Anyway, I followed the trail of blood from the side yard to the house about five minutes later, screaming “don’t tell” the whole way. When I walked in the door, I looked up to see Dad was standing there with his infamous brown leather belt in hands. It was his waterproof belt, he liked to say, in case we were bad in the bath tub (which we often were). He held the belt in each hand and pulled it tight, making a snapping sound that still puckers up my butt. Pretty much the sound of any object striking flesh makes me tense, but how else are you going to discipline seven kids, especially when they’re throwing computer parts at one another?

Alas, that wasn’t the only time Kyle and I got into trouble. We were about eight or nine and I Kyle had the idea that we should fuck with the Ricanys (right) after their daughter peed in our yard. I remember lighting a shitbomb on the Ricany’s porch (more on the Ricanys later). This particular shitbomb consisted of a Shop-Rite bag filled with our old dog Cinnamon’s two-pound log of shit. I then lit it on fire and left it on the porch, ran to the neighbor’s house (which is now torn down) and waited. We waited, watched and laughed. The best part was when stupid Linda Ricany came out after I rang her doorbell and started screaming and kicked the shitbomb. I think at that point, the Ricanys finally figured out how much we hated them. This incident started a riot that I
won’t detail at this time, but it even made me hate their little grandma who lived two blocks over, too.

This was where we lived, with nothing to do:

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We called her Aunt Jean, since she was a friend of Gram’s, and she was nice enough, but we only used to go to her house because the Candy Man wasn’t home (see next paragraph). She would give us crappy, sugar-free ice pops. We would talk for 5 minutes then demand to see what kind of snacks she had in her fridge. To hell with the chitchat; Kyle and I made it our business plan to get straight to the point.

Sometimes, we needed a break from lighting shitbombs and throwing computers. This is where the Candy Man came into play, sort of like recess. Just like Aunt Jean, we used him for snacks, except we called him “Candy Man” to his face (I don’t even know what his real name was). When we were old enough (5 or 6), E revealed the secret of the Candy Man to us that she’d learned from our other neighbors, the Truskowskis: there is a man right next door to us who gives out candy to kids—for FREE! The Candy Man would go to Clancy’s (a tobacco and news shop) and buy huge bags of Reese’s and Snickers and stick ‘em in the fridge. We’d ring his doorbell eight or nine times and press our faces against the glass to hear if he was coming, because sometimes his car was in the driveway but he wasn’t home. So he’d come get the door, we’d wave up at him and smile, and he’d hold up his shaky finger as he headed to the kitchen to put some candy into plastic baggies for us. We trusted that guy with our lives! He could have poisoned those bags. But he didn’t, he just loved kids I guess. Until our parents kept procreating. I think he started to hate kids because of us. Every day after school we’d walk up to his house and ring the doorbell and hold up one or two fingers to indicate how many bags of candy we needed, then he would deliver the goods. I’d always say “three” because I was a greedy little bastard. I wasn’t really trying to get two more for my brothers and sisters. But everyone in our family did that and he rarely questioned it. I remember kids asking us about him and how we got our stash. Word got out and the Ricany kids started going, so we threatened to kill them if they didn’t stay away. "HE’S OUR NEIGHBOR," I added to E’s "FUCK OFF, YOU SCRAGGLY BITCH" (we made up our own words too, like “grunchess”—means “good feeling;” syn: groovy).

One sad day, though, before we moved out of 1025 Cable and before our relatives, The Dirtbags, moved in, the Candy Man died. We mourned for a whole week and wouldn't leave the house until we figured out a way to get more candy (we ended up bribing the younger siblings to ride their bikes to QuikCheck). I’m out of time for today—I’m with MM in Utah and about to pwn some trails and make fun of Kyle when he falls. More to come about homemade bombs and violence later.