You Say Apatosaurus- I Say Brontonsaurus

The apatosaurus is commonly, but incorrectly identified as the brontosaurus. The discrepancy goes back to 1877 when Othniel Charles Marsh discovered the bones of what he called the apatosaurus, meaning deceptive lizard. Two years later he found another creatures bones, much larger and he thought slightly different. He mistakenly thought he had found an altogether different creature. He called it a brontosaurus, meaning thunder lizard. He actually discovered a juvenile originally and an adult in 1879. Brontosaurus is a name that has taken hold in popular culture. Until 1974 both terms were used, since '74 the official name has been apatosaurus.

When I was a kid Sinclair gas stations used a cartoony version of the dinosaur on it's logo. The gas stations sold bright green little transistor radios in the shape of the apatosaurus. I really wanted one of those radios. I think you might be able to still find one on ebay.

One day we stopped for gas. I asked my father for a dinosaur radio. He said no. My father's good friend Tim went into the station immediately after I was rejected. When he came out he handed me a radio and gave another to my brother. My father was obviously upset about being upstaged, usurped and for another reason that my mother explained to us later that night. Tim had shoplifted the merchandise. My father then became upset with my mother for blowing Tim's cover. Shortly thereafter, I was looking at a necklace with a silver dollar in the middle of some other ornate stuff. Looking back it was probably a hideous piece of jewelry. I mentioned that it would be a nice present for my mother's birthday. Tim presented it to me in the car, and told me to give it to my mother. He told me not to tell her where I got it. I finally broke down and told her, when she kept asking how I could afford it. She stared silently when I said Tim "bought" it.

Tim first came into our lives when I was around five. We lived in an area that bordered Orlando and was still kind of rural. Tim had a pet rattle snake and an alligator. He would jump off the roof of his one story ranch house with a homemade parachute, that didn't really work. It was mostly for theatrics. He used to get drunk and run through the neighborhood wearing a sheet, with nothing underneath, he was usually accompanied by a drunk female sidekick, who was similarly attired. Tim would wave a Bible mockingly yelling intentional blasphemes. Another thing he would do after tormenting wait staffs at dinner would be to pound on the window of the restaurant we were leaving while pressing his bare ass towards the dinner crowd. He was the wildest person I had ever known. My mother seemed terrified, but occasionally charmed by him.
My father seemed to take it all in stride, his behavior wasn't too far off Tim's.

A few years later it became evident that he was far more menacing than charming. He was married for awhile. I'm not sure how long. We lived in Cleveland when I was in the latter part of the fifth grade until Thanksgiving weekend of the sixth grade when we fled the asylum we called home.

Tim followed us to Cleveland with his new wife. I had a bit of a crush on her. I thought she looked like Angie Dickinson. The two were often dinner guests at our house. After my brother and I would go to bed, they would usually get into a shouting match, then Tim would hit her. My father was not much as a father, but my mother said he never hit her, and he barely used any methods of corporal punishment on us. I was very scared and my mother and brother were too. My father, I think was trying to defend his friends character. Then I kept hearing these stories about Tim punching people with barely a reason. These stories were paired by my father telling us that Tim had been a golden gloves boxer and a paratrooper in the Army. I'm not sure if those credentials were supposed make anything O.K., they definitely didn't sit well with three quarters of the family.

After we fled that Thanksgiving weekend, I think I saw Tim a couple of times. When I saw him, it was briefly. He was charming during those brief visits. I almost forgot past horrors. I don't think my father saw much of him either. Tim went to St. Pete. I think he was single again. I heard a story about him talking his way out of a heroin bust. I heard stories that he was touring with the Allman Brother's, not as a musician, but as a buddy. When I was fifteen, my father told us that Tim had passed away. I never got any solid details. The official story was that he died from a self inflicted gunshot in his front yard. My father said, he wasn't the suicide type. He thinks he was murdered. Tim apparently told some shady character's to fuck off, after they wanted the ungodly amount of money he owed them. Tim was smuggling heroin, according to my father. At his funeral a recording of the Allman Brother's Ramblin' Man played followed by Deodato's Also Sprach Zarathustra, the 2001 Space Odyssey theme (his favorite film), my father was our only family member to attend, supposedly 400 people were there.

Yesterday, January 18th would be Tim's birthday. I think he would have been around 69 or 70.