A 'teenage loser' in the summer of '65

Jeff Klinkenberg, (right), in the 50's, and on a fast track to becoming a "teenage loser"

My friend Jeff Klinkenberg, who just happens to be Florida's best storyteller, demonstrates why he deserves that title with a great story in Sunday's St. Petersburg Times about teenage angst and misspent youth in Miami.

I was a teenage loser. In 1965, when I was 16, I was what the cool kids called a "fink." Being cool was beyond me. I had no car and no access to a car, which meant I was a fink who rode a bus — or even more damning in the hot-rod era — a bicycle. Girls liked dangerous boys who burned rubber, smoked Pall Malls and got in rumbles. I read Tarzan novels in my room and built Popsicle stick rafts under the bridge on Sixth Avenue. I liked to fish and catch snakes and study my pimples in the reflection of the water.
[...]
In 1965, Florida boys often had summer jobs. Rich kids parked cars at the fancy restaurants or toted golf clubs at the ritzy country clubs. I mowed lawns. On a good Saturday, I mowed half a dozen with our terrible, always-on-the-fritz Briggs & Stratton that stalled the instant it approached Mrs. Crespo's jungle of intimidating St. Augustine grass. Then I'd edge, rake and sweep for $1.50 a yard, hardly enough long green to pay for a roll or two at the bowling alley. Yes, finks liked to bowl, even if they bowled alone.

No Jeff, you were not a loser. All the "dangerous boys who burned rubber, smoked Pall Malls and got in rumbles" are in prison or dead.

Nevertheless, a great piece!