The Junkers were a special kind of family. Not in a way that they were a rich and highly esteemed family, no quite the opposite. They were what some would call white trash. More specifically, white trailer park trash. Was it their fault some would ask? Did they just get dealt a crappy hand and were born into this life with no hope in hell of ever getting out of it. Probably. Some would argue that their predicament was of their own making because nothing ever good comes from an attitude of not giving a shit about anything. Still others would not be so polite in their observations and just call these sorts of people out for what they were, leaches on society who took every free government handout that they could get their hands on. It was understandable that some people would be so harsh about where their hard earned tax dollars were being spent but to the Junkers, it made no difference what people thought of them at all, so long as they got their welfare check at the end of the month.
The Junker family consisted of Jimmy Junker, his wife Janice, though not technically his wife and their two children Jared and Julie. Despite being a high school drop out, Jimmy Junker was good with his hands in various ways but mainly with cars and in 1980, at the age of eighteen, Jimmy got a job as an apprentice working in a garage as a mechanic. This job would be the one and only ray of hope that was ever to shine through the dismal clouds of the life he was born in to. That job lasted right up until his boss, old man Parsons, caught him slinging hashish out the back door of the shop. Jimmy quickly found out that moving brick was far easier than rotating tires, doing oil changes and the odd brake job which old man Parsons would let him do from time to time as part of his apprenticeship. He also learned that dealing dope was far more lucrative than the measly five dollars an hour he was making. Hell, he made more money over lunch break than he did the entire day. Had he been smarter and more careful, two attributes which were not too potent in the Junker family gene pool, he could have made a killing. Sure, he would have had to slug it out in the garage listening to old man Parsons bitching and complaining but all those delivery guys dropping off parts all day was like a gold mine. If his entire three month stint working at old man Parsons garage taught Jimmy anything at all, it was this, working for a living was for suckers.
A couple of years later, when Jimmy was thick into building his small town drug dealing empire, he met Janice Tanner at the annual town carnival. They knew of each other from high school but not much more than a quick glance in the hallway or while in line at the school cafeteria. Janice was a couple of grades below Jimmy and back then, the thought of even having a girlfriend to Jimmy was far less attractive than skipping class and rolling joints under the football bleachers with his friends. It would be an exaggeration to say that on that summer night of July 1982, it was love at first sight when in all truth, it was more like convenience at first sight. A quickie behind the hot dog concession stand was the beginning of their dysfunctional relationship. They would eventually produce two rug rats which Jimmy would sneer at almost every morning after they woke him up from running up and down the hallway of their mobile home. Most days, the wake up call also included a hang over from the night before.
As far as the children were concerned, they were always pale with a runny, snotty nose and were hyper as all hell. They could be seen at the grocery store not listening an iota to their mother as they ran up and down the isles grabbing whatever they liked off of the shelf and sticking it in their cart. All of these items of course were junk food and one shouldn’t have expected anything less from two eight and ten year old kids. In the childrens’ defense, their mother would be much too busy yakking it up with everyone she met at the store, to even notice what the children were putting in the cart. There was the occasional scolding of them by her but for the most part the juicy gossip with the neighbors was more important. After the grocery carts were brimming with low nutritional value items, it was all packed into boxes to be delivered to the trailer free of charge. Then it was off to the tobacco and lottery ticket counter to get six cartons of cigarettes, a bundle of scratch and win cards and most importantly, the weekly lottery tickets. Fifteen dollars was spent every week on the same numbers that had been used for the past ten years. One of these days the Junker’s ship would come in. One of these days.
Every Friday night was card night at the Junker trailer and it was the highlight of the week for everyone in the park, whether they were thrilled about it or not. The poker games were mostly a nickel and dime affair since not many folks in the trailer park had any serious money to part with. There was the usual copious amounts of liquor to be had, everyone brought their own handle to the party and the trailer would be smokier than a seedy poker lounge off of the Los Vegas strip. The evenings were usually loud and boisterous, as would be expected, with the usual arguments about who was dealing the deck and handing out such horrible cards. From time to time, as the night rolled past midnight and into the wee hours of the morning, two drunk guys would decide that it would be a good idea to take it outside and kick each others ass out on the front lawn. It was always a real crowd pleaser and quite the spectacle seeing two men barely able to stand, throwing punches while desperately trying to maintain their balance. From time to time, one of those heavy weights for the title of trailer park champ was none other than Jimmy Junker himself. These drunken bouts never usually amounted to much and often ended up in a wrestling match on the ground with every profane word known to the English dictionary being slurred out by both men at the top of their lungs.
This particular Friday night though, was different. A new guy came to the party at Jimmy Junker’s trailer with Cyril Chambers. Cyril lived a few trailers down the road and Cyril just showed up that night with this new guy, unannounced. As he was making a thirty five cent bet, Jimmy called out from the kitchen table asking Cyril who the hell this guy was. Cyril and the stranger had already taken a seat in the living room on the baby blue velvet couch, which was littered with cigarette burn marks and Cyril hollered back that it was just his cousin Bill who was passing through town. While Jimmy trusted Cyril, having known him for over fifteen years, Jimmy still felt that there was something a little off with this new guy whom he didn’t fully catch the name of. For one, the new guy hadn’t made eye contact with Jimmy when he came in the door and two, he acted like he didn’t give two shits whose place he was at or who his host was. Not that Jimmy was one for manners per se but a look in the eye and a nod of the head was the least someone should do when entering another mans house. Jimmy got neither.
As the night wore on, Jimmy had forgotten about Cyril’s cousin. He was having a good time as usual, yelling and cheering as the nickel and dime poker pot grew bigger. While he was having fun winning at his own poker game, Jimmy was still a little miffed with Cyril for not giving him the heads up about his unexpected guest, especially since Cyril knew what Jimmy did for a living.
At some time a little after midnight, Jimmy staggered down the hall to take a leak. As was typical, being this many rye and coke’s into the night, he kept missing the toilet bowl and instead ended up peeing on the seat of the toilet and floor beside it. While he was zipping up his pants and latching his belt, he thought he heard a thump coming from the bedroom next door. It couldn’t have been Janice or either one of the kids because Janice was busy in the kitchen whipping up a campfire Jiffy Pop popcorn on the stove and the two kids were asleep in the other room. He knew something was up and he was damn well sure that unless it was two people trying to “get it on” in his bedroom, then some sneaky prick was up to something and if that was the case, there was going to be some hell to pay.
Sure enough as Jimmy quietly opened the door to the bedroom to take a peak, there was Cyril’s cousin Bill down on the floor on his knees looking under the bed. Jimmy casually walked in, closed the door, locking it behind him and reached for the bat he kept behind the door. Bill looked up over his shoulder as Jimmy flicked the light off. He had been caught red handed snooping around and he knew what was coming next. In all his years of dope dealing, Jimmy never had to resort to violence, even when people didn’t pay up on time but a guy in his bedroom trying to rob him, well that was a different story altogether. Jimmy knew what Bill was after, he was trying to see where Jimmy kept his stash of money and dope but Jimmy wasn’t stupid enough to keep it in the house to begin with, it was out in the shed in the old rusty toolbox on the top shelf behind all the other grimy tools. The only thing that could be done was to teach Bill some manners and introduce him to an Old Hickory baseball bat. As he moved towards Bill, cocking the bat over his left shoulder, Bill quickly rolled onto his back and fired three shots into Jimmy’s chest. Jimmy fell to his knees and did a face plant beside the bed in a pool of blood.
Whose to say if things would have turned out differently had Jimmy Junker taken the straight and narrow path and stuck it out with old man Parsons. Whose to say that this was likely going to be the way it ended for Jimmy Junker anyway, given the risky business he was in. But the bigger question that comes to mind is this, was it nature or nurture that sealed Jimmy Junker’s fate in the end? Some would argue that it was nature because of the messy gene pool he inherited and others would argue that is was nurture because of the environment he was brought up in. In either case and for whatever reason, that was how the end came for Jimmy Junker on that Friday night of November 6 1992.
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