Stinky Pete

There is a legend among my brothers. The legend of Stinky Pete. When we were young we moved into a house in the country. The location isn’t what’s important though, it’s what was inside. And not just inside, but downstairs. The basement was finished. By finished, I mean it was painted white, it had a drop ceiling, carpet, and doors between the main area and the laundry room on one side, and the room with the heater on the other side. In the middle of the room was a metal pole, that looking back now I understand was there to support the floor above it, but as a child of 9, it made little sense. The pole wasn’t more than 6 ft. tall, but it was big to us, so we would climb it, hang from it, flip off of it, and smack into it all the time. Initially this was our play room, because it was a wide open space where our parents could send three little boys to play without making a mess of the main floor of the house. Eventually though, the TV made its way down there with the couch, and it became our Family room. For us it had always been a place where large amounts of time was spent, playing with Ninja Turtles, our first hours of Super Mario, watching rented VHS tapes, or trying to push each other off the couch with our feet. But we were not the first to occupy the space.

Before we moved in, I remember meeting the previous owners on only one occasion. I don’t remember the parents, only their son. He towered over us. He was probably in High School, and probably a football player. I don’t recall anything that he said, other than that his name was Pete. We walked through the house and met his family. We toured the rooms looking at this feature, and this thing that would need fixing, and finally we came to the basement where Pete’s bedroom was. It was a bedroom you’d expect from a 16 or 17 year old boy in the late 80’s. There were posters of bands and girls, a big bed, and laundry on the floor. I’m sure his parents were pleased that his room looked like this with potential buyers walking through the house. I’m sure they were also pleased with the way his room smelled. It smelled like sweat and socks, and a stink I had no name for. It wasn’t a powerful smell, but it was there. I think that’s when we named him Stinky Pete. Not to his face of course. He could have crushed us. But before we moved in, between my brothers and I, he was Stinky Pete.

We lived in the house for years. Time passed, and we grew, as did the legend of Stinky Pete. Anything that we found hidden somewhere in the garage, the pole barn, or out in the woods, MUST have belonged to Stinky Pete. Old toys, broken tools, failed tests shoved in hiding places adults wouldn’t find… All were attributed to Stinky Pete. But nothing we’d seen could match the final piece of the puzzle.

As we grew taller, we found we could reach things that we hadn’t before. The drop ceiling in the basement for instance. If we pushed up the tiles we could see the room in a whole new way we’d never seen before. We took turns lifting each other up to stick our heads through the ceiling.

Then Nate turned around.

Not three feet behind where our heads had popped through the ceiling was a pair of underwear. And, unfortunately there are very few reasons a person might hide a pair of underwear from his parents. These were dirty. By dirty, I mean covered in poop. Stinky Pete had hidden his darkest secret right above where his bed had been. That pair of tighty-whities had sat in that ceiling for 3 years at the least. Possibly more. By now the stink had worn out of them. The legend only intensified.

We disposed of the underwear, but we’ll never forget him or his underwear. Stinky Pete.