My First Pigeons- #whipemthebirdblues Improv/Mad Zack Radio

Hello Dolly

 

Facts are that, when it comes to Capitalistic Ventures, preying on the emotional quotient of pet owners is easily manipulated with all kinds of junk that ends up in the landfills. 

With a huge portfolio as a musician and performer, Dolly Parton has the ability to influence, if not change, the world.

Every household name artist has a slew of greedy little bloodsuckers that place demands on a lot of these artists to, say, put thirteen songs on an album- for instance. Well, when you place demands like this on the artists, it completely changes the quality of what they produce. They start searching through accumulated files of other starving artists so that they can fulfill the demands of the label- they take the love out of the artists contributions. Songs like "I can make a drink," for instance, negatively impact society- The Garden of Life.

The people do not need more pet toys when an old worn out boot is just as satisfying to any old dog. Letting your pet lick off the dinner plate is a heavenly reward to a pet. They don't care to wear clothes- even though they can be conditioned. And, it is humorous to the pet owner and their friends BUT it does nothing beneficial for the people. All it does is make them make sacrifices in their budgets, which are already stressed out. 

What would be fantastic is, if Dolly (whom we all grew up on, and love to death) would go back to music- the only thing the masses will open their ears for. She has the power (super power even) to write a song to help influence and heal the masses, to get them interested in Naturalism and caring for the soil for instance.

Soon there will be starvation, shortages of all kinds- like alcohol and coffee, and coca, and poppy. And don't forget that everyone is a pot user now- pot will be harder to get or even grow.

To say that the Earth is in trouble is an understatement. It's time to pay the fiddler. And all of us carpenters will be back in business by building affordable coffins, and making cooler living environments in the basements of homes across the country. People with money to do so will be fleeing towards the poles. Antartica has secrets. The moon is being fought over. Mars is a pipedream. 

It wasn't profitable to tend to the waste and pollution of corporations. It is such an issue that they passed bills into laws making us all corporations- responsible for all of the problems.

Fuel will be regulated soon, allowing you so many gallons per month. Water will be scarce. Wild game will be hunted to near extinction due to rising prices. Cattle farmers are killing their livestock because they can't provide and the animals are suffering.

This is the beginning of the end, and I am making popcorn because I am a Naturalist- not a helpless city boy with a television and media induced mental condition. Everyone acts and sounds like an inmate today. It's en vogue to be a bum.

There will be panic and riots and much death. There most certainly will be a new trail of tears, and the Native Americans will have their revenge. 

Good Morning America- just wait until there is no coffee. I can't wait to see Starbucks fold.

Now it makes sense why people have assault weapons and guns of all kinds. The only ones scared are the helpless- the ones too obstinant to take DICTATION from their TEACHERS.

You better hope that there is No God because people will answer for their misdeeds and be dealt with accordingly. So, ignore the evidence of life after death with the very Monarch butterfly. Your days, as mine, are numbered. 

My divinity informed me, on the 15th of December, 2021, that I have six years left, and I can't wait to die.

Choke on that.

My Secret Garden- Mad Zack Radio

My Inpression Of Andy Rooney

Escaping The Despondent Sea is available on AMazon Kindle Unlimited.

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Fasting

 Be silent to learn the language of signs. The sheep are frightened always by the Trojan horses in their lives. Drawn are they into salience and rhythm blind to the antigen of a smiling agent to a host of greedy men awaiting the indebted who will all inherit the mountains of their debris. 

I had a Vision of ticks on the 12th of May. The next morning I began finding them. The first was between the chair and cooler, on the concrete to the rear of the chair. It was discovered while straightening up, cleaning. I noticed it as I picked up a cigarette butt that it was upon. Then, later that day I found two more, this time on the dogs fur. One I found while feeling it crawling up my calve, one high on my rear just below my belt, which is still irritated many days later. All in all, 9 so far. The last one was three days ago- Julie woke up to it crawling on her face. 

So, in December I had a powerful experience, to say the least. The words and conversations given  and shared with others came at the height of some discoveries made while investigating what began October 8th, 2021 with the Neilsen's TV survey letter bribing children. Neilsen's and media broadcasting are the trojan horse that conceals the deviance used by corporations that are negatively impacting the mental health of society. ANd they are all represented by the MRC- all household names. There's so much more, like who owns what, etc... WHich takes us to Dutch ownership and English speaking people being targeted.

And then I did a numerology test for my buddy George Orwell, the day after God Spoke to me and made me scribe, to discover that 1984= 1A 9I 8H 4D AIHD=1984

Much of what was described in this book is factual reality today.

The relativity between this fact, and Neilsen's Ratings is epic. We allowed "them" into our private homes with the devices they offered us. And much of society lives their reality based upon much of what they see and hear on TV. Mind control is real, and being used by everyone with something to sell, like rivalry.

It's like society has become a carnival that doesn't end. And anyone who's been a Carney knows, you can only hide the garbage for so long, which took me to the investigation of our landfills, and landfills around the world- oh dear Jahoveh what have they done!?

Katmandu is now referred to as "Trashmandu," and the Ukraine has an explosive landfill crisis. I'd hate to be one of the guys desperately trying to clean up after the war. They may turn the whole place into a landfill. 

Landfill after landfill- look at the one in California! biggest in the country.

California Landfill Crisis
 And China? Oh, they don't want to help recycle anymore.

Watch little kids working the trash.

China Recycling Crisis

This one features coastal focus and is very informative.

Coastal Landfill Crisis

All of these studies came together in December. The Spirit was with me for days but on the 13th while in bed, it spoke. I was watching "It's A Wonderful Life" at the time, and was motivated to grab my pad and pen to record everything I could for my proof. There was fanfare and light. It was a celebration. It felt very much like I was being wedded and an energy filled me even more intense than it had been. My gal lay sleeping next to me the entire time. After scribing the words I was given the name to be The Song of Zackery

Having remained awake all night, I set to entering what had happened in my journals here, and then proceeded to contact a very close few friends-  Timothy Loren 

And, finally, A.D. though in two parts for some reason. I'm no pro, I'm desperate to record and share the accounts A.D. pt 1 A.D. pt 2

And, as commanded, I have remained silent for a while, as commanded in order to better hear. "You must leave the world behind to begin the journey" "an ear that does not listen once will not listen twice"

These are a few of the words given to me.

So now I am filled with a great fear of the lord and I have heard his anger. Television and landfills are related. We have all been deceived for profit while the words of the prophets are not profitable. Just like recycling plastic, for instance.

So I am sickened with grief over what capitalists have done. Now, to search out a paradise in space is the very impossibility the lifestyle of this society will never gain. All the while, in the vast desert of space... The Earth is The Paradise Lost.

And I sit, feeling useless, worthless, imprisoned by circumstance and unable to do anything but comfort my mate while we await desperately for an improbability to grace us with a good place to live. In the meantime, we thought "hey, lets buy a used motorhome and live out the season while we wait for the right place to open up".  Well, before you do that, call the campgrounds. Now, the parks are all booked up, and the ones that are available have a "ten years or newer" age restriction. The lot that was available was 1000 plus electric etc but was only available for a month. We've got six acres not far from the motel we are staying at but that put Julie more than an 2 and half hours driving every day. AND the well needs the be repaired to begin even considering it, which is a whole other disastrous barrel of monkey pox.

I study my bible daily, and pray constantly with selflessness. I feel like Jonah, in the belly of the whale. At least we can put the motorhome back up for sale an get our money back... to someone who wants a 1983 Pace Arrow.

  

So, I've been silent from the Mad Zack Show on Facebook, mostly I think it was a supernatural motivation in order to diffuse the "Schizophrenic" connotations that have been thrown at me to discredit my findings and claims.  

Speaking of claims, my health insurance sent me a letter regarding the billing for Ohio Psychiatrics Hospital, asking questions. I think my religious persecution and defamation claims can be filed. 

You see, after finding out what I found out, and the messages from God, I had some epiphanies to which I ran to my nieghbor to come see. It was 10:30 am, and he answered the door after having been sleeping. He wouldn't cooperate and frustrated me in my excitement so, I ran to who I thought was the woman of the house next door. In my haste I failed to recognize it was her daughter whom I startled. Anthony then reapproached me and I repeated to him to come see. I stated " This is so serious, I am even willing to threaten self harm"  which was an idle threat but he freaked out and called the police.

I begged and pleaded with the police to come see but they also refused. I actually got on my hands and knees and started praying with tears streaming down my face, begging for a sign be given to them but all denied. Also denied being believers- 7 of them total.

They coaxed me into going to the hospital where I was to be monitored for 72 hours. I asked all along the way, if they were believers, and all denied but one young nurse. I reached out to pray with her for a joyous Christmas with her family. They had draped me in linen as Jesus or a prophet and mocked me. 

Finally, they brought me a request for a cup of coffee but I am certain that it was drugged.

Left in the room, they badgered me and taunted me with lullaby songs over the speaker several times. I kept hearing God speaking. And I spoke back, At one point I began praying to God for forgiveness of all man has done, praising the creatures and nature and all the goodness I have found in it. I begged and pleaded, yet asked not one thing for myself. And then the people came in to take me away in an ambulance.

I ended up at the psychiatrics hospital, where I stayed for 33 days trying to get myself out. The Doctor, whom was very rude with me, kept insisting that I am Schizophrenic.

At one point right after Christmas, I got very sick. I felt as though I was beaten from head to toe. I sneezed a couple times and had a little gas that stunk up the entire wing. For two days I begged to be seen by a nurse. On the third day, they tested me and found out I had covid. They moved me to another wing where a few other who tested positive were also moved. The room I was kept confined to had no warm water or soap. I was there 9 days before I was finally given some form of soap. Three days later I was finally let go.

The entire time I was there, I was motivated to write. I had a very important file given to Joel Anger. He was supposed to mail it to me, for fear it would be destroyed. I never got it back.

While I was there, the arguing doctor would bring me documents. These documents were most entirely falsified. The police report was dated and timed the time I was knocking on the neighbors door to talk. It said they were going to discreatly come and sneak me out with a pink slip. They knew about my discoveries because I was all over the internet with everything. 

There was a lawyer involved that went to court to fight for my release. He and I discussed this detail. I know I have a case to file a monumental lawsuit! The very best part about it is, it's for God.

Aside from the family troubles grieving us, things are okay. And since counting my blessings I am feeling a little better about myself. Hopefully we do The Memorial Day Anniversary Show and kick off a new season of the Crazy ol Mad Zack Show. I would like to apologize to everyone for not being around but social media has been one of my fastings. Soon I will have another broadcast environment prepared to continue sharing and helping support my friends and family. Although Cody and Scarlet are lost searching for something that has been hidden from them by lies and misunderstandings, what I have to share awaits them in many forms. And though Sarah and I speak on occassion, this disruption to my stability is relative to my confidence to share with her. And the sting that is always there is the regret of my inability to awaken from the hypnosis of unhappiness that has seemed to destroy to very relationships I fantasized about all my life before the destruction.

first 125 pages most recent edit

Escaping The Despondent Sea

Adrift on the Oceans of Life

A ship’s Log

The Journey’s Of

Mad Pat Kiderm

Sea Captain

By Zachery Scott Polk

This book is dedicated to my Children-

Sarah

Cody

Scarlett

As well as to Psychologists, Psychiatrists, and Educators of all kinds.

It is also for anyone in the World- in need of being oriented with the Truth

before charting a course in Life towards an unknown destination- Destiny.

It’s a dangerous place without a family foundation.

Be sure to properly build a foundation for yourselves, and for the future of your Children.

The War is ON.

Money is the target, and we “consumers” are merely the casualties.

Remember that, and everything I tell you in these stories.

The date, today, is January 29, 2019- as I edit this for release.

This is an, at times, graphic story that is meant for mature readers. This is not for children to read for entertainment. This may be introduced as a Young Adult book that may be necessary to be used as a teaching mechanism for troubled youth.

Since I have changed the names to protect the guilty, it may be considered fiction.

What it actually is… it’s what I call, Fictionalized Non-Fiction.

The Wish bones

My Great Grandma Lindner always saved the wishbones for

Us grand kids when we came to visit.

And out of all the toys we never had, my most fun times were at her house.

We were so poor the rats ate the soap and the first words I ever read were:

“Minimum Speed Limit”

I wore a razor strap for my only pants or at least it might as well have been,

It was covering my ass more than anything they made me wear.

Right about the time I had a few names straight

I’d been enrolled in a new school, in a new town,

Where the Principal was told to beat me if he needed to.

They say you are what you eat.

Now, if that were true, I’d be a potato pancake that smells and tastes like bacon.

And if I’d known then, what I know now,

I’d have known what to wish for when we broke the wishbones,

when we were little.

Written by Zachery Scott Polk

Escaping the Despondent Sea:

The Adventures of Mad Pat Kiderm

Introduction

This is a story of some of the things that happen to an unwanted child. It supports some the theories of Psychologists everywhere.

Without a certain amount of inherent love and affection, a person can be crippled in the worst way possible. Please consider that when having sex. Our communities are a product of carelessness. Money is made in drug trafficking as a result of the demand of the broken by leading them on- that they are cared for. The end product is that they are robbed of all real opportunities, and gleaned of everything that the predators can get. It’s called Adult Abuse. And me? I am only the Witness.

My name is Zachery Scott Polk, a forty-eight year old man with hopes, dreams and aspirations.

Forty years, (I’d call that a majority), have been spent trying to rationally, comprehensively, and productively understand and accredit my acquaintances and family members for their efforts and sufferings, as well as, to do what I can do to make things resemble a closer version of a family and the way I feel life could be for all of us. It’s possible that these familial contemplation and heartache motivated my desire to want to be a writer and a musician, coupled with memories of us gathering around the television to watch the “Lawrence Welk Show” at my Grandma and Grandpa Lindner’s house, earning me some of the attention that I felt I deserved but was not getting.

When I was three to four years old my attention was a concentration. Grandma Lindner called me brooding because I was always in deep thought. Mostly, I was trying to figure out what, exactly, a boy could do without enduring the mistreatment that one gets when they cannot be heard or unseen.

Everyone I have ever talked with, studied or sought advice from said the same thing: “Write about what you know”. Well, I only know what I have lived and learned along the way.

Special interest groups, a derogative term for the reasonably concerned, grant security or, tactfully termed, consideration, to persons willing to focus on issues that are believed to be of great consequence or detriment to the Earth and Mankind. Some people pursue these interests for the convenience of the funds provided. Others are sought out and baited with money to become involved, and only act when their needs and desires have been met. You could call me a Philanthropist but I am not sure if anyone would see my humor in creating a special interest, using nepotism to appoint myself the allocations, presenting myself with a statue or award for my solutions all the while creating the actual problem or dreaming it up entirely.

Anyway, it was my own observations of the world, man, and certain family members, (both bad and good), that spurred my contemplation of what I ascertained was Right and Wrong, where it came to being a man, husband, father, friend, and human.

One of the things I had begun fantasizing about, when I was around nine years old, was of proposing to a girl and starting my own family- becoming valuable in those respects. Only, while I occupied myself with hoping for my tomorrow, my today was evolving into an acute nightmare or so it seemed.

Chapter

My senses were relieved. He was leaving, taking pieces of all of us with him that he had stolen, including, what I came to find out was, my half-brother and sister, as opposed to my full relation.

It came out that our “father” had left our mother for her brother, my uncle Gary’s wife. (Uncle Gary happened to be one of my favorite people among all of my uncles and aunts.)

Our father had been repeatedly accusing our mother of going to bars, drinking, and flirting with the opposite sex, which is exactly what he had been doing. Eventually, she started doing it, and naturally, it swept her up into a routine.

Mom didn’t understand, or just feared being without him, and as a result, did not see that he was acting out as a result of his own guilt.

One thing I will never forget is the pain I imagined she felt, and the words she said to me, while on the way to the hotel room that he claimed he needed in order to concentrate on the completion of his book on the game of Golf.

The hotel room, and his book writing efforts, turned out to be a cover, extended as to accommodate for his going to bars, drinking, and playing around with women.

He had also been playing around after work at the Red Shag Carpet Inn that was located in Grandville. He had been messing around with cocaine and prostitutes, consequently bringing a variety of minor sexually transmitted diseases home to my mother.

One night, around the house, he had commented on running a load of cocaine for the lust of the quick and easy money- more than once.

There was also the torn up coke fold pieces that didn’t get flushed down the toilet all the way.

At the time, I had no idea as to what these signs meant, or that they were signs of anything but looking back now, it is all so very clear.

So, It was a bit of an accident that I stumbled onto the truth, only because he had seemingly forgotten about picking me up at our driving range when we closed it up at night.

Left stranded for a couple of hours, I finally asked Ed Rode to take me to his room.

Ed had been helping him with the book, especially since he was a photographer who worked for the Grand Rapids Press. He took photos at concerts and other events that were featured in the section of the press called “Connections”.

After managing to get the Host to let me into the room, I found a woman’s travel bag with her clothes in it.

When I realized what that meant, I panicked, fleeing to the strip mall where MC Sporting Goods was located on, Plainfield Avenue.

The phone booth made a nice place to take refuge out of the cold wind, where I slept while waiting for my mom to come and pick me up after getting out of work.

This was my first experience of being on the street with nowhere to go. I was 14 years old.

On the way to the hotel room the next day, she told me that she hoped I never mistreated my wife in this way, or dishonored my family, in the event that I should ever become married.

The few serious attempts at getting established to build a family, or life for myself were wholehearted.

Whether it was out of self-pity or concern for me that she said that, was never a question, but as I think about it now, I am quite sure it was both.

Mom always talked about “the long run.”

I never understood my mother and I to be close- what she calls tough love are the scars left on her, and transferred to me from her own mother.

It’s possible that her mother’s habit of working as a barmaid is where she failed, only to bring her twisted attitude and perspective home to the children. I can only love my mother for it, despite the pain I felt that was a challenge to cope with- part of my inheritance.

It’s pretty ironical to me that schooling costs so much.

The equivalent of some sort of degree in Psychology only cost me tears and valuable pieces of relationships before most kids finish Junior high school, which happened to be where I was when my Stepfather left in 1984 or so.

And, in “the long run,” my mother and I finally became closer than we had ever been, which still amounted to nothing.

When you are starved for attention, a simple smile can be misinterpreted as love and affection.

I didn’t drink milk, throwing my bottle from the crib around one and a half years old. For the most part I never, voluntarily, drank milk again.

At every family gathering, holiday or special event, a spectacle was made, where I often ended up

beaten and humiliated by way of my step father dragging me from the table and taking me behind the garage, woodshed, or out into the cornfield out of view, and physically, funneled to put it mildly.

I was fourteen the last time this happened. It was Easter. I can’t help but wonder what my Grandpa thought, especially since it was at his house in Bay City.

It seems like a great display of disrespect, to make it a point to beat a child at a family holiday gathering.

That year, 1984, I believe it was the day before Thanksgiving when he finally left. I am confident that it was a Thursday.

Was it a gift from my, deceased, Great Grandfather Maximilian Lindner?

Needless to say, I still do not care for milk but the man I am, I sometimes force myself to drink it anyway by exhaling, holding my breath, and slamming it down when there is a lack food.

The milk was a symbol- rejecting my mother’s rejection, and it was my first argument in life.

Although we were a Baptist family, it seemed that I was Protestant. And to this day I have remained the Black Sheep but not with that intention.

Rejection was something that I learned I needed to work at coping with, which was not unlike coping crown molding.

Recognizing that I was allowing others to destroy me by allowing my pains to govern my actions and ability to constructively manage them, when I was twenty-two years old, was very positive. I told myself that the best revenge was to succeed, and I quickly learned to move on.

Acceptance, forgiveness, self-discipline, and perseverance should be clear to see in this stream of thoughts, though roiled with what my Language arts teachers at Coopersville Junior High School would call, “run-on sentences.”

As I read over what I have shared, I ponder where to go next. I realize and appreciate these memories, however unpleasant, but I cannot recall what Christmas was like that year just as I can’t remember most of my childhood, which is a blessing.

The majority of who I am is the result of the value found in what I do remember.

Anything more would send me into a void where self-destruction is eminent. So, it should be easily understood how difficult it has been for me to work on this manuscript- beginning in 2011.

My mother started drinking and actually doing all of those terrible things Rick had accused her of.

The disharmony created by her desperation to maintain her emotional needs, and the family, resulted in my having to remove myself from the home the following winter.

The place I found refuge in was Jim Zemiatis Junior's house, my only close friend, who happened to be only three months older than myself.

Jimmy and I started hanging out after his mom had brought him down to meet me, shortly after we moved in. It was the summer of 1980.

We began spending time hunting in the woods, and fishing, using the guns and equipment that his father had.

Jimmy’s father, James, was a Veteran of the Korean War, and an avid Outdoors man, as well as,

an alcoholic.

My mother never liked Jimmy at all. And she didn’t hide the fact. She never liked any of the kids that came around the house to see me. Whenever they did come by, she’d put us all to work, usually digging out tree stumps or what have you.

“Why do you think I had kids?” she would ask, when we complained of workloads. She thought she was funny, growing up with the comic media influences she had.

They stopped coming by after a while, and Jimmy became aware that he wasn’t welcome around myself, or our property.

Jimmy and I, started meeting halfway between our homes, riding our bicycles.

We would spend our days fishing the ponds and creek, and becoming acquainted with the forests, wildlife, and the trails in the area.

As for me, since I had always had only nature for my playthings, I found myself quite comfortable and “happy”, if I could ever assume what that was.

We started experimenting with his father’s cigarettes around 14 or 15. The excuse for our smoking began as a way to combat bugs while we fished.

Alcohol was also a curiosity, especially since it was always around the house.

After we had consumed all the liquor that his mother kept in the cabinet we would steal beer from his father’s case of “Blatz” beer, replacing the ones we had taken with empty ones. It was usual practice for me to have to sneak around, so it was my idea to take empty cans and place them under the full ones in the very bottom of the case, making it look like the beer hadn’t been disturbed.

This worked out excellent, especially since his father was in so much of a stupor as to never catch on.

And, it was long after my father had begun taunting me with the words, “Zeke the sneak,” having to sneak around all of the time in order to go unseen, or further harmed.

It was common to see us with shotguns and twenty-two caliber rifles. There were other very powerful rifles but we had sense enough to know that the ammo costs a lot of money.

My first gun was an Iver Johnson single-shot twelve-gauge shotgun.

My stepfather had introduced me to it when I was twelve, when I shot it for the first time. When he left us it stayed behind. Every home should have at least one, if not several.

A shotgun is the property of the house, and belongs to the man of the house, which, in this case, now happened to be myself. My marksmanship and love for shooting developed very quickly.

One winter day, in 1985, we got our hands on a John Deere JDX440 Snowmobile that his mother had gotten for him, eventually finding out exactly how much abuse it could take, and that we weren’t as good of mechanics as we needed to be to keep it going- yet.

We also got our hands on our share of dirt bikes, and had a Honda three wheeler for a while.

That year marked the beginning of our experience with gasoline engines, aside from the lawnmower, leaving another indelible mark on my Serotonin receptors.

The issue causing me to stay at Jimmy’s was regarding my mom’s boyfriend, Paul, and some “stuff” of his, which is what people call things when trying to minimize their existence.

Jimmy was pretty much the only friend I had, and having low self esteem, and always receiving the lame duck treatment at school, (being that I was only sublimely scarred, was what some may try calling my Water Lou, or at least an indication of coming avoidable problems, which I am happy to say were not a fatal overdose, or an untreatable STD; highly likely for affection starved people who have been stripped of their self esteem, that is to say, if it was ever nurtured at all).

The next generation of jokes may start a little something like this:

“Sometime in the fall, a latchkey kid came home from school…”

Whether I had put the Ray Charles Greatest Hits album on the record player, or not, I do not remember but out of boredom I decided to give in to temptation and open a very curious looking briefcase, where I happened to find a very large amount of marijuana.

Thanks to the Hudsonville Elementary School, and the Michigan State Police showing it to us, (probably planting seeds for their job security and future) in the third or fourth grade, I knew what I was looking at. And, I was that kid that questioned them during their “orientation” to drugs-

“You mean to tell me that one flake of that will destroy a person?”

[Someone should investigate to see if it was an “operation” to set up our youth.]

There may have been a pound or two, I don’t know but the physical look of the size was akin to a bag of cereal without the box.

A few older kids, and a couple around my age, were always talking about things like drinking, cigarettes, music, girls and… weed.

Well, with me being a quick study, and having a void in my life that needed filling, it didn’t take long for me to see the opportunity… to be accepted, to have friends or at least people who would talk to me, if not think I was cool (every kids dream) even in the slightest sense of the word- deciding to bring a small amount to them the next day.

Strange thing is, here I am in a situation that resembles the one of my youth, only today I am not in need of the camaraderie but I am readily available for substantial conversation, elaboration not included.

You may think it’s weird but I’ll say it anyway, (it never stopped me from sharing things before): though unlikely, I don’t believe it impossible that my Guardian Angels protected me from intoxication that day. I was only a boy in the woods, and among demons, the epitome’ of vulnerable. Only my name isn’t Hansel.

It goes without saying, that everyone without loved ones, and self-esteem, is vulnerable but I am told that it’s wrong to assume that they’ll think the smell is perfume, and I find myself having to sometimes cover up, or explain, my Marijuana garden.

Anyways, I didn’t care for the affects of the Marijuana at all, aside from the effect of having the Marijuana. It wasn’t until I became more mature and able to comprehend the immediate benefits, that I developed an appreciation for the herb.

With a developing maturity, recognition of the need for self-preservation, and with aspirations of becoming something more altruistic, I quickly became aware of the usefulness of the “drug,” and how to use it to my benefit. And not as a recreational intoxicant, which was the extent of it to me- nothing more than a tool.

The first step toward discipline pertaining to the use of marijuana as a tool, is to recognize and understand that knowledge of its possession attracts people and can create all of the situations that are purely distractions that undermine ambitions, desires, and commitments to something other than your true calling(s).

“It’s not the sixties anymore. It’s time to weed out who your friends truly are, and recognize where an individual finds genuine confidence,” I said to myself.

This was one of my more profound understandings, and was realized at the time of my twenty-first birthday.

Ironically, (boy, this seems to be a diet high in irony), this was when I realized it was time to eliminate using alcohol entirely- even mouthwash.

My foremost concerns began the summer of my twenty-first birthday, when I realized what was a serious possibility at a family, so I prioritized a couple things to ensure it.

First, to continue developing as a Skilled Tradesman/Finish Carpenter, which was mostly made possible by way of my mentor and Master, Paul Valdamar Jensen, whom proved to be a true friend and remains to be to this day (as I write this).

If it had not been for his patience, (he’d laugh at that word), and ability to identify my potential, as well as the forces at work tempting to deny myself any amount of success at all, I would not be alive today to make the willful efforts at Contributing to Society that I have been motivated to make- however small or seemingly undeserved, second.

[Personally, I dream of reaching a multitude but reality, and the ability to rationalize, allows me to accept the possibility of going unheard or misinterpreted, though a single person would be a success. Starting with my Children, if it’s not too late]

It was my Trade that empowered me with an Identity and provision. And, just as those great cultural icons of the world whose careers and lives ended at twenty-seven years of age, so did mine seem to.

It was the loss of my business as a Finish Carpenter when I was twenty-seven years old that caused the devastating blow of destroying my household entirely. The trigger was fear. The fear I had, of my wife, put me on the road when I was:

A friend of mine needed an estimate for replacing the windows in his home but I needed to be home at a time dictated to me by Mindy. I left the jobsite early enough to go look at the window situation, and still be home for dinner.

Well, thankfully for me, I did not have time to load up my tools or my head may have been crushed when I was stopped in traffic, only to become the primary victim of a triple collision- the definition of which is not that there were three vehicles involved but that I was hit three times.

There were, in fact, three vehicles involved.

One was the semi that hit me, from the Grand Rapids Trucking Company, which happened to be traveling at fifty-five miles per hour. He was looking down blouses when he failed to observe that traffic had backed up to a complete stop near the 196/U.S.131 interchange.

The third vehicle was in front of me. It was also hit three times, secondary to the impact.

It should be easy to deduce that I was hit six times.

The only word I can use for the moment is “senseless” because I had no idea what had happened- only that I had somewhere to be, and the man in front of me, not only wasn’t proceeding but was now getting out of his mini-van and going to the rear of the vehicle.

I was so agitated, and knocked so senseless, that when my door refused to let me get out, forcefully springing back to slap me upside my head, I simply used the other door, without a second thought. After all, there were two doors.

The explanation softens the blow but it absolutely crippled me with despondency, to say the least, especially after my wife began catting around in A.O.L. chat rooms, and then soon after, announcing to me that she wanted a divorce.

I stated one simple question: “I guess you won’t mind me having a beer then?”

It came out almost as if it invited an answer from her. At that point, I think it was more of a dare or a challenge.

It was a thinly veiled threat, a tactful yet passive way of saying, “I’ll kill you.”

I realize it would have been the easiest way out, and for that I will never get credit from man but the cynical, human, self-preservation, defensive part of me that provides humor in the face of adversity, couldn’t help but at least wonder, “what if,” like Dr. Seuss.

While making my second twenty ounce cup of instant coffee, emptying my bladder and washing my hands, I briefly pondered a lesson meant for someone else in my living quarters but gifted it to myself.

I imagined asking him what the difference was between the time God gives you on this planet, and the time man gives you in prison.

The answer is, “Nothing, it’s what you do with the time.”

I immediately thought of Danny, Dan DeRuiter, Danimal, S’Dan.

And, as I work on something I feel could be important to someone, I remind myself, “don’t ignore the message though the messenger is imperfect.” Due to the fact that drinking was one of the more arbitrary things we did the most of.

Even though we spent a lot of time drinking, we searched for, and found, substance and meaning in almost every minute together.

Trivia was merely a moment of rest, combined with comedy and appreciation for the arts. It recharged our creativity, and our passions, to be able to focus on the bigger picture, the one most people are too busy or selfish to see.

So, it was Danny that I gave credit to for my time in prison, away from my regular prison of my own existence. I recognize it as his test on my relationships, and other sailing vessels, and his value in, and of, my ability to have something to share- if not powerful. It was only up to me to decide when to get over my grief enough focus my aim.

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it Dorothy?

So, I’m doing exactly what they say to do, no matter what you do. When someone writes about something they don’t know or have no idea about, you will know.

And, even when I stumble on my topic, I hope to have captured your interest enough to keep you reading, regardless if I have ever sought compensation for my work.

Rewards come from what you have done, your feats, not what you do. To me, you are rewarded for your efforts with support from those people that believe in you- embracing your loving heart for what it is.

Those who do not will do what they can to make things difficult for you, which it is somewhat satisfying to understand just how much mental real estate you truly own in their minds! That is a reward all it’s own. They are imprisoned with thoughts of you.

Too often, lately, people get portrayed as heroes for fulfilling their job descriptions. Have we underachieved so grossly that anyone who does even the smallest thing is a hero these days? Is it possible that the state of society is related to the travesty of the disservice we have done to our people, our children, the youth- the future, for claiming Einstein was a genius for instance? Meaning nobody is smart enough to figure anything out unless they are? Boy, somebody really messed up for us! (SHHH, the game is on.)

Chapter

Danny was one of my most intimate friends. It was because of meeting him, in the spring of 1999, that I was able to get away from drugs, and trying to deliberately drink myself to death.

It was at this moment in time that I became reunited with my dreams of being a musician, and finally finding a friend at a time in my life when I was totally lost without a family.

We were far more than drinking buddies but when he died from “natural causes,” while exceeding his daily allowance of fun- I lost my drinking buddy, only gaining the perspective that I was next.

On the night of 6-6-06, I had a dream.

My truck was in a shallow stretch of the Grand River, with the hood up and me under it. I was startled by a slender, muck covered being that swam up along side of me and popped out of the water.

Frightened by the sudden appearance of it, I grabbed a long handled tool, bludgeoning it to death.

When I went to work the following day, my roommate came to the job to tell me that Danny was found dead that morning.

The thing in my dream had all of the earmarks and character of Danny. It had all of the indications of the state of my life, and I had killed him but I also killed the thing that was what I was becoming.

A murder/suicide, through my fear of what may lay ahead?

The emotional strain caused some decisions to be made. The only one I had made, with any clarity at all, was that the drinking, drinking, drinking had to stop.

And, even though some great things happened, the worst or what would seem like the worst, was failing to recall that the job offer that followed was from someone that was never a friend, and a person that had caused a lot of problems for Danny and I out of his Jealousy of us, and his Heroine addiction.

Now, here’s where a friend, or family member, would have come in handy.

My decision, to go to Florida for work, was rationalized with the desire to put fear to rest with the Friend of the Court, buying time until my SSDI came through.

It was not until one and a half years later that I could change the last statement that I made to my son, which was:

“Cody, I am going to go to Florida to work for a few weeks. I need two thousand dollars for the court to keep from putting me in jail over child support again.”

It was only too late before I realized that I had been set up and robbed of my band equipment, and irreplaceable possessions.

Some of it was purchased from the guy offering me the work, and some of it I had inherited from Danny directly.

Have you ever heard of “the Key West move”?

Google it. See if anything comes up.

I never have but I am willing to bet my Brazil nuts that something is there to illustrate what I am talking about.

Anyway, I was clueless until I discovered myself abandoned on Key West without a single soul to help me with much of anything, (well, almost nothing). I did find help getting rid of my money and smokes.

The police arrested me repeatedly, on a string of charges, without any witnesses or evidence. And, when I tried to defend myself, I found that I had no real Defense council. It was myself against them, and I was playing on their turf with nothing but the words of the local police, and mine- a homeless person in the Florida Keys.

422 days were spent in the detention facility on Stock Island but I left with a lot of stories, and information that, under certain tangible circumstances, I could be killed for.

There have been several attempts on my life. Danny would exclaim, “Unbelievable!”

Just when you get into it, and start enjoying the ups and downs, the speed changes, the screams of the fast drops, and the giggles of the climbs- it’s over. Just like life. I can only say two words: “Actuate Yourself.” [insert song link]

I lived it, and wrote it down to share with you. Let’s continue…

Chapter

It was almost time for the public school to begin when I met Sandra Van Winkle, having met her at a place on College Avenue called, the College Inn bar, across the street from the house I was staying at on the North side of Carrier Street, and West of College Ave.

Next door, north of the bar, was a local, middle-eastern owned “convenience” store.

It was just a beer-slinging joint that sold Chore-Boy scouring pads, glass pipes, and cigarettes. It wasn’t much later, that I realized she was just another drunk to add to my long list of distracting acquaintances.

Certainly, we were drinking beer while sitting at the bar but it was her inquiry about whether I had any “smoke,” that got us together in the house I was occupying.

Sandy seemed very sweet and loving and, was an all around fun person to share space with. She would always refill the ice cube trays, and spruced up the house a bit. She did little things that a person appreciated.

Very quickly, I appreciated her greatly especially since no one ever did anything for me except smoke my “smoke-ables,” and drink my “drink-ables.”

In essence, they merely prayed on my “emotionals” to spend my “spend-ables”, as if they had done the “earnorable” thing and earned them, thereby contributing to the “sociables.”

The framing in the couch was broken from a time when a very, very large man, in an overweight category that has yet to be given a term to describe it, plopped himself down upon it’s emptiness. His name happened to be, “Tiny.”

When you sat down, you couldn’t help but feel tiny in the, now permanent, depression.

The house was divided into two separate residences, and it was haunted.

The part I was staying in was Michele Shackleton’s, whom was about thirty years old, and looking very much like Goldie Hawn.

She rented the part that was the area most affected by the haunting.

The adjoining residence was in the rear, and was occupied by an older man that lived with a couple of friends.

It was himself that she had been out with, when she got a drunk driving charge that, finally, landed her in the Kent County Jail.

It had been his birthday when the incident occurred, having taken her out for “steak and lobster”, which everyone knows is a set up for sex.

They had gotten extremely drunk, to the point where he couldn’t drive.

He had her drive them home, in his Cadillac, instead of driving himself, or calling a taxi.

Of course, she clipped a moving vehicle, only to speed away.

They hid the car, in a small garage behind a stockade fence, in the backyard.

She was so drunk that she fell out of the car when she went to get out.

They were such bad alcoholics, and were so wasted, that I doubt they ever found their way out of their clothes that night.

In the meantime, she had lost a relationship, and custody of her daughter, because of the drinking and drugs.

This man she had been out with was suppose to be helping her get her six year old little girl back. Her mother had custody at the time.

As for her ex, whatever he was, I have no clue of his position or of his concerns.

This man, she had been out with for the birthday celebration, was in his sixties or just looked like it, and had an alcohol monitor at the house that was required by the conditions of his parole.

He worked as a self employed contractor, knocking on doors to drum up work, doing home repairs.

I had met Michele at the Scoreboard bar a few months earlier. Little did I know she was… let’s just say- another learning experience.

There’s more to her that I may explain later, like the fact the she was a descendant of Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton, the Polar explorer.

I am illustrating the how, where, why, when- starting with Sandy because she was the most pivotal.

Michele had been in the county jail, for I don’t know how long, before I met Sandy. It may have been weeks.

I was house sitting while Michele was serving her jail sentence.

Project rehab was part of her rehabilitation ordered by the courts.

This was a joke in itself, and anyone who has been through the program can attest to that. [expound on project rehab]

So, anyway, Sandy had just had her fiftieth birthday, keeping that a secret from me.

She started coming over before and after work at Vitale’s, where she was a drink preparer at a bar area that wasn’t really a bar but was just a bar area within the restaurant- a server’s station actually.

A few people could sit there, a place to have a drink while waiting for a table or for their party to arrive.

It was a nice place- a family place. If you wanted to drink, the Sports bar portion with take-out items was located in another building of the same parking lot.

Sandy would often come by with a picnic basket.

There would be beer and treats, and sometimes money. It was all out of her appreciation for my having pot to share with her.

She was always helpful in some way, repaying me for sharing my space in time with her.

(Here is where it would have paid off to dig a little deeper than Schizophrenia in my Psychology studies.)

Sandy was a California girl, and was unlike any person I had known at that point in my life.

I was very attracted to her aura, care, kindness, and the way she expressed her gratitude for being welcome.

She was always sharing things like weed, which I now believe was always a chief concern or motivation of hers, and why she did so much to keep in good standing with me. It kept the availability of pot open, as it was a crucial part of her everyday life. She would say things like, “make sure you find me when you have pot”.

Sandy would end up proving herself to be very concerned with pot and drinking but wouldn’t reveal these concerns as a problem until I was able to appreciate the information.

One day, early on in our relationship, while at the house I was sitting, she started dropping questions about religion, asking me if I knew the name of the Lord, explaining that she felt very uncomfortable in this house, and that it felt heavy, that she sensed a negative aura about the place.

These were things that would further convince me of her being genuine, loving, trustworthy and sincere.

She would tell me that I am teachable, probably because I listened intently, reciprocating and displaying a general knowledge as opposed to ignorance, I guess.

As a Pisces, my natural concern was for capturing her interest in me, hoping to win an important place in a relationship, and fulfilling a need to belong. Never mind that she was twenty years my senior.

She invited me over to her place, where I found a wonderfully kept, and decorated, upstairs mother-in-law’s apartment.

There was an extensive collection of scaled down replicas of Classic automobiles, a large assortment of photos displayed, and Seashells, that she had collected and scattered around as accents.

She was clearly a music lover, noted by quite a large collection of cassette tapes.

An exercise bike near the stereo stated a concern for health, along with the assortment of herbs and vitamins that were in a wicker basket nearby.

The place looked and felt like a small museum. It felt very comfortable. Maybe it was the salient affect that took hold of me, with so many things to look at, and touch- a bombardment of distractions for the senses.

Steeped in this environment, a strange and serious web ensnared me in almost everyway.

She had told me that she thought the place was being haunted, since there were things that had happened to her that she thought were odd; suspecting her deceased father.

She told of how she had opened the oven door one day, only to be blasted in the face by an explosion, burning her eyebrows, and singing her hair badly.

This house did have some strange activity in the upstairs Sandy occupied.

I had noticed a figure in the upstairs window on occasion. And, after a time, situations would occur that I was apprehensive to think of as coincidental.

I would soon learn of her son, Richard, his pretentious wife, and Sandy’s grandson.

Sandy had me sneak up the stairs, in sync with her footsteps. That was for her son to not be aware that she had company.

Richard and his family lived on the ground floor of this home, on the North East corner lot of Carrier Street and Lafayette Avenue.

At thirty-two years old, Richard was just about the same age as I- six months younger. He was very protective of his mother, or so it appeared, but I was not sure exactly why.

Regardless of his opposition of my having been involved with his mother, or that we were the same age, I had just lost three children in the recent past, and was thankful to have found her.

Him and I would butt heads for some time- he would insist on it, even going so far as to tell her that I had been in their basement snooping around- an attempt to plant seeds of doubt in her mind of me.

It was a tactful attempt to conjure up trust issues, which he knew she was sensitive about- a hope to separate us quickly. It nearly worked.

Well, with mutual confidence gained in our relationship, stories of our individual pasts would be told by both of us.

It would not be very long before she figured out about my state of mental health, from the head injuries and childhood, as well as, the Kent County Friend of the Court.

She would be the one that got me into the doctor’s offices, and the one to initiate the medical attentions needed in order to begin tending my many needs.

I am pretty sure getting locked up for child support and my visible handicaps were a factor.

She would slowly reveal stories of her past, like how she had been taking care of her father up until he died. And, how Richard had come out to California to bring her back to Michigan, where he rented her the upstairs.

She explained how she got stuck with all of her father’s worldly possessions, or what was left of them after all of his acquaintances learned of his death. She hadn’t seen many of the key items of that inheritance since the move. And, that she handed them several thousand dollars to fund the endeavor.

(Having a poor Education resulted in her having weak Math skills, and she was taken advantage of because of that fact.)

It wasn’t hard for greed to impede on her situation, handing her back the short end of the stick.

Sandy would continue to grieve over the situation, at her son and daughter-in-law’s insistence.

She was strategically being punished but for what was unknown.

(In short, I mean to highlight the keys to the story.)

Her father was always a Bastard, sexually molesting her, abusing her, and neglecting her.

He was a mean drunk and a womanizer.

Back in the early days of auto racing, he was a racecar driver.

He had been with Sandy’s mother up until she had a hemorrhage at the hands of his girlfriend, after an abortion that she performed.

She was found dead in the hotel room by the cleaning lady.

He and this woman could now be a known couple, only to separate Sandy from her sister.

Incidentally, they had just found each other after all of these years but, sadly, it wasn’t until after Sandy had relocated to Grand Rapids.

This estranged sister was living in California in the exact area that Sandy had been living all along- South of San Rafael.

One of the last memories she had of them being together was, when their father had locked them in a fruit cellar as punishment for one thing or another.

Steeped in the environment of that cold dark room, one of the only things she could feel was the fur brushing across her skin from the rats that were crawling and climbing around them as they held each other in terror.

Her and her sister were four and five years old.

She would become reunited with her sister just two months before we became acquainted.

Forty-five years had been lost since they had last seen each other. And, even though there was much anger and resentment for what their father had done to them, they picked up the pieces and began mending what had been so badly broken.

The strange thing was that Sandy had three brothers from a different mother. They were in contact routinely. One of them was in San Quentin dying with Parkinson’s disease.

Fall rolled around, on the seasonal clock, bringing the Joy of Harvest time, and the festivities of Halloween, once again.

Richard hosted a Costume party, inviting us to attend. It was a western themed event, utilizing all of the stores from the last year’s gathering, topped off with store bought emotions, and the poisons that help trick people into getting along- thinking that they are happy.

Angie’s mother was there, if only to take a stab at me by asking where the garbage was, as if I would certainly know.

That evening, during the party, a phone call came for Sandy.

It was her sister calling from California, with news that she had been diagnosed with Liver Cancer. She had been to the hospital because of some issue that arose.

Our evening was interrupted by this news, and began our Worried Blues, spending the rest of the night walking around the city, drinking and talking.

That night, she decided that she needed to save some money and go to California soon to try helping her sister, to make her well with Herbs and Vitamins.

Thanksgiving drew near, with the leaves finally changing; late in the city due to the impact of concrete, asphalt, condensed populous, sewer gases and automobiles.

We walked around town quite a bit but especially now, enjoying the fall air, and the colors of the leaves blowing away from the trees.

We happened upon a small camper that was put up for sale after a member of their family had passed away. It was a Little Gem, made in Grand Rapids back in 1963.

The camper door was open, when we walked by it at eleven o’clock that night so, we went inside to look around.

We sat at the dining table with our mixed drinks, (vodka and grapefruit), getting a feel for it, while taking pleasure in our little hiding spot.

It was reminiscent of something we did as kids, back where I grew up- pool hopping at night when no one was home.

The sign in the window conveyed that they only wanted four hundred dollars.

Since we were getting hassled by Richard for being together, we saw it as an Opportunity to move somewhere else, living in the camper.

Sandy had lived in a cube van that was set up as a camper when Richard was a little boy, defecating on paper plates or in buckets, as an alternative to not having a bathroom or plumbing.

The camper was taken by the man she had been living in it with, when he broke off the relationship with her for another woman, causing for Richard to be taken by his father.

Sandy then turned to staying with friends, living with elderly persons she cared for. And, living in shacks in the mountains and desert, where water had to be hauled in from hundreds of miles away.

Living the life of a gypsy may have been the reason for Richard’s animosity towards his mother.

Living in the camper with me was very appealing to her since she was accustomed to living on the rough side of existence.

What appealed to me was to be out of the city, away from people who find pleasure in involving themselves in everyone else’s business but their own.

We decided to buy it, and went back the next day to secure it.

Salih had been providing me with work since the log cabin job with Dan Doyle had ended abruptly. His wife had a van that she was trying to sell at the time, which I bought for about three hundred and fifty dollars.

The idea was that I would use the van to haul the camper with but She had sabotaged the vehicle by slicing the serpentine belt with a razor, just enough to weaken it.

The problem was that it was broken at some point after I started driving it, leaving the motor and accessories to drain on the battery that was apparently already weak. The next time I tried to start it, I found that the battery was dead, and the belt was gone.

Sandy and I walked up to an AutoZone store on Fuller Avenue to have the battery tested and get a belt.

Who knows if the battery was any good, of course, the person who was selling batteries told us that it was not.

We walked back from the store, with the battery and belt, taking small breaks every block or so along the two-mile trip- kept elated with the thought of the day Sandy and I would finally have enough money saved for the camper, planning on the big day when we would be able to move away from the drama that wasn’t, entirely, our own.

Richard’s wife, Angie, would continue to taunt her mother-in-law by keeping the kid, and herself, too busy for Sandy to have any time with her grandchild.

Hiring a Babysitter to watch the child was especially grating since Sandy was there waiting for the opportunities to arise, as they had been Promised.

The day finally came when I got paid from Salih. We could pick up the camper and bring it to the house to prepare for living in.

That evening, around dinnertime, Sandy and I were inside the camper, celebrating the outlook on our new Independence, with a drink, and thinking of the new living situation.

Thanksgiving was ten days away. We had been investigating various RV parks, discussing the pros and cons of each one and, had just smoked a joint, when Richard and Angie knocked on the door.

Richard was smiling and seemed to be in a good mood. His hand went to his face as if he had a tear to wipe away, informing his mother of a phone call, relaying to her that her sister had just now passed away of Liver Cancer.

He tried covering the smile as it widened, having difficulty concealing it.

He had a hard time resisting a chuckle as he spoke.

It was a pain he felt she deserved, and he was laughing at her despair.

It seemed he was taking advantage of the in-your-face punishment.

A person could possibly perceive it to be dealt to Sandy by Jehovah.

The money we had been saving, for our season payment at the RV Park, would come in handy. It helped make it so that she could fly out.

There was money coming in from another two weeks of work to make up for it.

She got on the phone that evening to make arrangements for a flight, which happened to be two days before Thanksgiving- and the day before we were to make our move with the camper.

What she would find is that it was a waste of effort on her part since the sister’s daughters were now getting a bit of money from it, and proved to be ungrateful, and unreachable as far as uniting the family. Truly selfish they were, causing a great deal of grief for Sandy to endure.

We drove to the airport, where I waited with her until she could board her flight.

The plan was that I would move the camper to the River Pines Camp and RV Park the next day.

When she boarded the airplane, I returned to the house.

Contemplated my options, I considered calling my mother while on my way back from the airport, to explain how I needed to move the camper.

It wasn’t going to be easy for me to ask her but I had no other person to ask.

She was accustomed to hauling her large horse trailer. I knew it wouldn’t be difficult for her.

The more to it was, that I didn’t feel confident that my van would pull it. Don’t ask me why I had that feeling but something told me it wasn’t going to work.

Trusting my intuition, and setting aside my pride, I called my mom to help.

Mom came out with her boyfriend, Tom, and hooked the “Little Gem” up to her truck.

It made sense to stash the quarter ounce of weed I had, inside a panel near the wheel-well, along the foot of the bed, so that if we got pulled over for some reason, it would not be found- just in case I had a warrant for child support, again.

We took the most direct and inconspicuous route, which was M-45, all the way out to Allendale, turning north on 60^th Avenue, where an intersecting road leads to The River Pines Campground and RV Park.

The RV Park was nestled in some very tall pines, and had a pretty nice pond out front near the road.

We checked in at the manager’s office and found our way to the site to place the camper, having chosen the site closest to the bathhouse because of the convenience of the washroom and laundry facilities.

It didn’t take long to drop it off, and, within minutes my mother and Tom returned to their home just eight miles back toward Grand Rapids, in Marne.

The next thing I needed to do was, go right over to Arek and Ruth’s house to surprise them with the news that I am living two miles away from them. [expand on Arek]

Some time after my mother had left, I was working at hooking the electricity up to the camper. The cord extended just short of my connection point.

No problem, I just backed my van up to the camper, attached the ball to the hitch, and lowered the weight of the camper onto it.

After backing it up to where I needed it, the Park Manager, Jerry, came cruising up on his little utility golf cart to see how I was fairing.

We discussed a bit about the park, with him making particular mention of the strict five-mile per hour park speed limit.

He zipped away on his cart at fifteen miles an hour while I returned to unhooking the camper from my van.

What I found was that the weight of the camper had collapsed the Reese hitch assembly, folding it down as if it were tinfoil.

The rust had taken over and eaten the steel almost entirely. The only thing that was holding it together was the paint and the rust that hadn’t been cracked apart.

Now, it hung like a wet noodle, and, if I would have been relaxed about it, I may have been able to see it being blown slightly by the wind.

That may be a bit cynical. The hitch maintained just enough integrity for me to stand on it but if I were another five pounds I’d have need to be treated for a laceration.

What occurred to me was that my intuition in calling my mother to move it was correct, yet I had no idea that the hitch was no good. And it hadn’t even dawned on me, when I had to pound the tongue into the receiver with a maul.

It was my first hitch and my first camper- never had any experience with towing.

The Cops were the ones who always towed stuff for me.

One of the things I have been searching for years for is, information to gain a better understanding of ESP and the paranormal. It’s been more of a subconscious effort than anything but my conscious curiosity and experiences keep motivating that search.

Anyway, my drinking wasn’t a problem at the time of moving in to the park, mostly due to having no one to wrestle with for ‘who’s got more in theirs.’ And it’s funny, I don’t recall scraping the bong either but I also didn’t recall stashing a sack of grass in the camper.

The Nature was Magnificent, at River Pines.

There were very, very few to no leaves left on the trees.

It was pretty windy the next day, as I climbed from the camper to soak up the sun of the morning.

Grabbing a cup of coffee from my campfire, I strolled out toward the river to check out the wildlife.

As I walked, there were Sand-hill Cranes standing here and there.

Bits of rabbit fur were lying about in quite a few places, looking like a hunting ground for something or other.

There were two Bald Eagles flying in the area, which happened to be over the flood plains and bayous.

There were plenty of areas to fish from around here.

I suspected the eagles as being the hunters, feasting on the rabbits, and that a nest must be somewhere nearby.

The river, itself, could not be reached on foot because of the nature of the swampy area outstretched beyond the bayou. Oh well, I was satisfied with the wildlife anyway.

It was time to get back to the camper and be off to work.

As the day progressed, I told my friend, Joe Grimminck, all about the new digs.

He was pumped about coming out after work to check the place out. We made a plan to get some beer and hang out at the campsite, and since it was Friday, he planned to camp out for the night.

When we got out to the campsite, with our thirty pack of beer, we went out back to explore the bayou a little bit.

Sitting on the bank, smoking a bowl, Joe spotted an otter that was floating on it’s back with some food he had found. It was an exciting thing for Joe, who had been out of the city very little.

A short time went by, when Joe suggested we go back to the camper, and, to make a campfire to sit around while knocking back some brews.

I tried to tell him that it was too windy but he set right to gathering wood from a row of trees that separated the adjoining westward field.

It was a bit windy but what the heck. I had to give Joe the real camp treatment- we just had to watch the fire closely.

Watching the fire closely was a pretty big job because the winds whipped up the flames, making the fire bigger.

Sparks were being sent into the air by the heat as it intensified, helped along by the wind.

Huge pieces of burning debris were being blown everywhere, causing for the leaves to catch fire and be blown into more leaves that had been piled up by the winds, where branches on the ground had grabbed them, holding them down in masses.

After running around, stomping them out in a panic, we got some water to put on the fire, knocking it down quite a bit.

My hopes were, that everyone was too occupied with their own affairs to have been watching the new guys try to light the forest on fire.

Joe never heard me say, “I told you so.”

After having about four beers, Joe wanted to make his bed near, what was left of the fire.

I tried to tell him that it wasn’t a good idea to sleep by the fire with the winds blowing as hard as they were because embers being blown about could set his clothing on fire.

He didn’t care. It was his desire to do it Cowboy Style, like in the movies he had seen.

It was pointless to argue with him, if that was what he wanted to do. He was going to do it anyway.

Joe said he would watch the fire. And, I went inside the camper to sit at the table, and to reflect on my day- an excuse to drink until I was ready to pass out.

The next day reminded me how windy it was during the night.

Beer cans were scattered all across the grounds, all the way past the tree line, which was fifty yards away. Most of them were stopped from blowing into the field by the remains of a fence and the weeds. The rest were over a hundred-fifty yards away, falling just short of the wall the forest made along the west and north sides of the field.

I picked up over four dollars in cans, matching up with the thirty-pack we drank, and what was left of the second one.

[This was an average night of drinking- one to two thirty packs of 5.9 percent alcohol by volume. At this rate a guy (me), can drink about four hundred and fifty bucks a month. That was taking into consideration, the beers Joe drank, and, that my average, alone, is thirty. Let’s not forget smokes and weed, which would be another two hundred and fifty bucks a month, for a total of approximately seven hundred dollars a month.

Strangely enough, that’s about how much money people get from the government who are receiving Social Security and other compensations- like monies for Native American peoples. So, you can see where it would be cost effective to grow your own “smokables” and brew your own Hooch.

Just food for thought for the underachievers in your life because this needs to be said by someone, and I know, for a fact, that unless they’re using this for study materials in prison or rehab, they aren’t reading squat except for…

Oh whom am I kidding? I don’t care what they read. Many of them spend their reading time trying to figure out how to “get down” on someone.

As far as I’m concerned, at this very moment I write, I am “getting down” on them by not sharing what little knowledge, or understanding, I have.

Now, if they search for it, that’s different.

Knowing stuff isn’t for everyone. It’s for sharing with your children, loved ones, your team members- whoever they are.

That makes me sound a bit dictatorial but you can only share knowledge with those you are bound by moral obligation to, and to those who seek it in earnest. Or, reconsidering the options, share with those who can evade the bullets- and the dogs.

Where was I before my display of disgust for my, so-called, fellow man, and for my foolish desires, motivations, concerns with the prison environment that I am forced into… the cost of existence when you are consuming all of the things that keep you in the maze, frittering your life away while working to replace them on a daily basis, and, never getting anywhere in life accept the poor house, which happens to come with a tell-lie-vision. That way, you won’t miss “the big game.”]

Shortly after cleaning up the mess, Joe and I were having a cup of coffee, while watching the northern section of the property, when we saw an Eagle flying over the trees to the right of the trail that led to the bayou. It was carrying a large stick in its talons.

Joe explained how Eagles are constantly building onto their nests, and that they will occupy them for a very long time.

As he spoke, the Eagle flew westward.

The area the Eagle flew towards was the forest that lined the corner of the field where I had just picked the cans up.

As I scanned the top of those leafless trees, I backed up to the camper, watching for a change in the direction it was flying in as I went feeling my way for my binoculars- grabbing them and zeroing in on the Eagle.

Then, I looked at the treetops for a sign.

Through the limbs, there was a dense looking area where a bunch of branches came together in one spot. I had found the Eagle’s nest!

The nest was the largest nest I had ever seen, the size of an upside down Volkswagen Beetle.

As I marveled at the sight of the nest, the bird flew around it, landing on the edge of it.

Just then, a head popped up. There were two! It was a functioning mated couple, and, it explained the pieces of animal fur that were scattered all over the morass around the perimeter of the bayou- (handing the binoculars to Joe so he could view the sight).

At that moment, Jerry cruised up on his golf cart- stopping, and getting out.

He wanted to know why we tried burning the woods down last night, exclaiming that we needed to be more careful with the fire pit.

After apologizing for it, I quickly tried to hand him the spyglass to see the Eagle, mostly to take the subject control away from him, and schmooze him over a little bit.

Jerry said that he had seen them before, that they were planted out here by the DNR as a rebuilding project, and, that there was a nest somewhere nearby that he has been unable to find.

Offering him the spyglass again, while I explained that he could see the nest pretty easily.

He snapped his head around to look where I pointed, saying that he had been here for years trying to find it.

His comment that I had come to find it in two days revealed a bit of animosity, and, didn’t help in building a good report with him. I sensed my troubles were already beginning with this man. And, between the speed limit, forest fire, and now, the eagle, my fate was almost certainly sealed.

Great. Wait until Sandy gets here. The rumors are sure to fly when they see us together. And they did.

Chapter- Orientation

It was snowing and cold, with a below zero wind chill, the day Sandy was arriving at the Kent County Airport.

The morning was off to a late start, since I had a habit of drinking myself to sleep for fear of my nightmares but I had enough time to be where I needed to be to receive her.

It was a weekend, and there wasn’t much traffic, as I headed onto the highway from Coopersville.

As I went along at sixty miles per hour, in the 1986 Ford Econoline 150, (without a blower motor working to get heat in the rig), I noticed the engine temperature gauge quickly climbing past the normal operating range. It steadily climbed further and further until a loud popping sound, followed by a cloud escaping from the hood, forced me to pull over.

It wasn’t even two miles since I had merged onto the East bound lane of I-96. Now, I was broke down, parked at a most inconvenient time.

My heart started racing because I knew that I was going to be late now because of it.

Knowing how Sandy had just been dealing with a very bad situation in her life, it wasn’t hard to understand that she was going to be quite cranky and unyielding, especially since it was a little too early for the airline stewardesses to be serving drinks on the flight.

When I got out to look at the radiator, there was slush inside of it, and, the radiator hose had popped off of the water pump flowing into the top of the radiator.

The first thoughts I had were, that there wasn’t enough antifreeze in it, or that the thermostat was bad but I saw the disconnected hose and reattached it, thinking that it was just not tight enough.

The antifreeze was low for sure now, since it had blown out of the hose, and, the fact that there was slush inside told me that it was definitely in need of being drained and filled back up with the correct amount of antifreeze.

The gauge fell after twenty minutes, so I tried to start the van again but it wouldn’t go. I kept cranking the starter until the battery lost most of its power to turn it.

My cellular phone was going to be handy now, along with my AAA auto insurance- with roadside assistance.

This wasn’t the right time to be putting the service to the test but I was about to find out how reliable AAA, and my cell phone, would be in this circumstance.

Making a call that took me through an automated answering service, finally, took me to a service representative whom asked a series of questions, and if I could be put on hold while the few cars that were on the road passed me by.

As I explained that I was using a cell phone, and, that I would rather not be put on hold. The person heard no part of my statement. I began to hear the sounds of recorded music through the earpiece- getting an earful of Yanni.

The call was dropped within six bars of the music score.

Making the call again, I was reconnected with the same person I had spoken to. She got on her computer and started locating a tow truck in my area, placing me on hold again, as my battery showed the symbol of battery life dwindling.

Several minutes turned to half an hour, while my cell phone battery petered out to a trickle.

The call was lost again.

The third time I called, I was told that the tow trucks were all busy, and, that it would be three hours before one could be dispatched to aide me.

Now my phone was dead and I couldn’t plug it in to the accessory power outlet because the battery was too low in the van.

Lighting another cigarette, and working myself into a panic, I tried the van again but got only two full cranks on the motor before it started clicking again, the way Fords do.

I turned the key off, and hoped it would recharge itself enough to start it.

Now my bladder is full, my feet are freezing, my phone is dead, and, my mother and friends are all within six miles of me.

Help is all around me but there is no way to get to them.

I can hear Sandy screaming at me in my head, assuming that I had, “been up partying all night.”

Just then an Ottawa County Road Commission truck is coming up behind me in the distance. He is scraping the roadways, and dressing the ramps with the salt and sand mixture that they use.

The truck pulled right up behind me and stopped.

A man got out and approached my vehicle. He had stopped to offer some help.

Thank God for the few good people there seem to be left in the world.

Explaining what had happened to the van, he said that it had just frozen up in the radiator because of the wind chill, and, that it sometimes happens to their rigs, which is why they put the covers over the grill in the winter. Then, telling me to try it again- that it would probably start, which it did.

Relieved, and late, I thanked him for stopping to offer help, resuming my mission to the airport.

All I could do was continue on my mission, while thinking that this was a great way to start the day, and, to begin Sandy’s new Homecoming Celebration.

Too bad my phone had died. She could have called me to find out what had happened.

I limped the van all the way to the airport, which seemed like a hundred miles away but it was closer to sixty, only stopping once, at a filling station, to check the fluid in the radiator.

Finally, pulling up in front of the area where people wait with their luggage, and, for their transportation to arrive, it was pretty difficult for me to discern that it was Sandy standing there among a small group of people.

The scowl on her face had distorted her from recognizable, having never seen her face contorted in such a way.

Most of the individuals she was standing among were women, who, judging by the looks on their faces, were forced to endure listening to an authoritative tirade of explicatives about me the whole time.

She was heavily cloaked in anger and vehemence, sharing the heaviness of it with me exclusively, now that we were alone- while all I could do was nothing but sit still to endure her expressions until the opportunity finally arose to make amends enough to offer my apologies without triggering more negative energy.

Having thought little enough about the situation to ask me what had happened, she assumed I had been flying high and was unable to get up to handle my responsibilities.

Sandy would hear nothing of my situation with the truck and kept screaming to be sure of it, berating me most of the way home.

It was odd that it was so normal because here I am grown up, beyond the physical control of my father but still in an environment that was identical to what I had experienced throughout my life.

It seems we don’t feel normal unless we are receiving that type of treatment to which we have been oriented.

Things only softened up after stopping at a liquor store, and, she smoked some weed but how soft…. I didn’t save any mental notes about that.

The Camper

Our camper was a real novel thing at the time.

It wouldn’t be until after we sold it, that I would learn of the pot I had stashed in it when I took the precautions of anticipating being pulled over while in tow to the RV Park, on Thanksgiving Day.

The possibility was pretty good since the camper had not been registered or plated.

It was not unlike me to hide things, and then not remember where I had stashed them- hiding them from myself in effect.

There was no heat in the camper. Only because the gas line leaked somewhere, and, I was more concerned with drinking than fixing anything as menial as the source of heat in my home, besides, I could do it tomorrow.

On top of that, there was a bit of a bonus: when I got home, my glass, from the night before, still had ice in it.

As for heat, I bought a twenty-five dollar Mr. Heater at Meijer’s a few nights before Sandy came home.

The heater was one of those electric jobbies- just taking the frost off of the place.

Hell, we’d light a couple candles, and, between us, the cat, the booze, and the cigarette embers, it would get it up to forty five or fifty degrees in there. We were happier than, well, a well-lodged Tapeworm.

It will eventually prove to be detrimental to my health, from the winds blowing through, loosening the filth and fiberglass from the walls, and, the heavy concentration of second hand smoke.

It wasn’t until too late, that I, finally, realized the filth we had been breathing, on top of smoking non-filtered rolling tobacco.

Oh well, I have to live with it now.

[I am just thankful to be able to tell the story, partially made possible by my thirteen-month Vacation at the Jackson Penitentiary, where I got the idea to segregate myself by occupying my mind with whatever I could get that would expand my knowledge, adding to whatever I had already stockpiled as an artist of sorts.]

Sandy returned two days later, on a Monday, to her job at Vitale’s.

We drove into Grand Rapids together, where I would return to work with Salih.

After work, I would carouse around to visit with friends until she got done at eleven p.m. It went on like that for another two weeks, until one day, when Sandy had the day off. She insisted joining me in Grandville where Salih and I were putting an addition on a home.

Salih's wife showed up at that project around noon. She berated him for about twenty minutes, mentioning of their sex life, and, his manhood, to which he replied something about the Grand Canyon.

It was very soon after, that Salih and I had a falling out due to the impact that his wife had on our work environment. And, needless to say, with Sandy’s observance came even more difficulty in dealing with the Drama.

I just couldn’t take it anymore.

With Sandy on the sideline, influencing the situation with her sentiments on the relationship, the decision was made for me to quit.

He really needed me at that time since the workers he had were mostly unskilled, and, Salih was more of the coordinator, being that I was the lead man, making all of the field calls- the construction decisions needed to complete the projects.

He really depended on me.

When I didn’t show up, letting the calls go to voice mail after telling him on the phone that I had to quit, Salih headed out to the park to try to talk to me about it.

He couldn’t accept it, and had no real understanding of what the reason was, unable to tell him anything further than the first phone call that I was allowed to take from him.

When he got to our camper, Sandy had barricaded us inside, forbidding me to open the door or respond to him in any way.

I felt extremely bad for what I had done to him by quitting, and even worse for not being able to talk to him. In my heart, I knew that he deserved an explanation or an apology but I couldn’t do it without making mention of his wife, and, her hatred towards me or without Sandy being involved- all of which would have only made things worse, for both, Salih and I.

The chief problem was something that I was not willing to focus on at the time, Sandy’s Possessiveness and Jealousy- taking full control of everything I did, and everything I was going to do.

Chapter

It was nearing Christmas, on the twenty-first of December, when I took Sandy to work. It just happened to be my Anniversary with Mindy.

Someone had given me a Smelt basket, which I accepted- reheating it in a gas station microwave oven while refueling.

Arriving back at the Vitale’s, my stomach began to wretch, rejecting what I had eaten.

Pulling into the parking lot, I opened the door of my van to puke as I drove, hoping that Sam Vitale was not watching on one of his many surveillance cameras as I did so.

It was a hope but highly unlikely, while going to the sports bar next door to have a drink, and to use the bathroom.

Twenty minutes later, going to the van to take a nap, seemed like a good idea.

Sam’s cameras were in the sports bar as well.

When I awoke, I turned the radio on in the van just in time to listen to an emergency weather report that stated everyone in the area was to remain indoors, and, not to drive anywhere, unless it was an absolute emergency, because of “Black Ice”.

The temperatures dropped dramatically, and, freezing rain were certain to create hazardous road conditions.

At about eleven p.m. closing time, I went inside to warm up and wait.

Sandy was drinking her fill from the serving station, having the perfect excuse to taste the drinks as she made them, for quality control purposes.

When I told Sandy that we should stay at a friend’s house that night, she refused the idea, saying that she intended us to return to our camper.

The warning about the “Black Ice” was not important to her.

She suggested we just drive slowly, and, carefully, taking the highway because there would be no stopping and starting, and, less traffic.

Well, with no one else on the road, we left as she insisted.

We made our ritual stop at the liquor store for tobacco and alcohol on Plainfield Avenue, just a mile from the on ramp.

Whether it was vodka, rum or gin, I cannot recall but I can recall making drinks in the parking lot, for the ride home.

We entered the empty westbound highway of I-96 tiptoe slow, heading for Coopersville-making it all the way to the Marne exit without any slipping or another vehicle on the road.

Four miles later we passed the Forty-eighth avenue exit, still, without any signs of another car on the highway going either way.

Everything was nice and smooth, and, I was relieved to be only five miles from our home in the park.

In a few minutes, we would be sitting at our dining table with the heat blowing on our toes, while Zoey the cat was soaking up her love from us for the day.

As the thoughts of being home waltzed through my head, I felt the van sliding for the first time.

Our van was an older model but it was in nice shape. The tires were great. The rims were aluminum mags. It had running boards, and was furnished with a seat that folded down into a bed, a table with swivel bucket seats- four Captain’s chairs.

There were some tools that I kept inside because I had nowhere else to store them, along with a bag of concrete, and a slide compound Hitachi Miter Saw used primarily for Finish carpentry work.

When I noticed that the van was sliding, I looked around for the lights of any other vehicles but there were none in the blackness.

The rear slid slowly around to the right, turning around one hundred eighty degrees.

We kept sliding sideways, off of the road and into the median of the east and west lanes.

When the wheels stopped sliding, the van continued to move, rolling over onto its passenger side.

My tools flew from where they were stowed, and my saw bounced around, along with the bag of concrete, which had broken open.

Our drinks were spilled, and the bottle of booze was tossed- rattling around in the cab.

Sandy complained of neck pain as I tried to open the door but the weight of it was extremely difficult to move from the position I was in.

Repositioning myself, I managed to get my door open and climbed out.

The first thing I noticed was a dark Jeep Cherokee parked on the side of the highway.

There were no lights on of any kind except for the glow of a cell phone in the cab.

Approaching the vehicle, I noticed that it was a man behind the wheel, and, that he was wearing a Kent County Sherriff’s patch on his coat.

He seemed to be making a call on his phone.

He answered my question regarding what happened with a statement that, “a little blue car” had hit me and took off but I knew there was no little blue car.

He and I knew that there was no such vehicle.

I had been keeping my eyes on the mirrors and entrance ramps for other vehicles, especially cops that like to sit there when shooting radar or looking for people.

As an accomplished drinker, and someone who smokes pot, I am always aware of my surroundings. I kept an eye out for these things. If there is something there, I know it before they think I can see- the epitome’ of perfect vision.

As I went back to the van, foolishly hoping to flip it back over, I thought about the whole situation.

We had been alone the entire time since passing Alpine Avenue. We were snuck up on from behind. He had been waiting for us at the entrance where 48^th Avenue crosses over the I-96 highway. There are entrance ramps for both, East and West bound traffic. We or should I say I, had been monitored along the way via radio by officers posted up at every entrance ramp. When I got into the area, the cops pitted me, arresting me for child support.

I do not remember how long I was in jail that time but I do remember that I was never told what the warrant was for.

They said that the reason for my arrest wasn’t one but “fifteen thousand of them,” which ended up being the bond amount that I was unable to post.

I gave my wallet to Sandy immediately, knowing that they would take what little money we had.

The officers, or deputies, denied me the opportunity to use my phone to call a tow truck or my own insurance company, which ended up costing me a lot of money for the flatbed they arranged. They also denied me to call anyone at all regarding this matter, taking my phone from me when I tried to call my mother, who lived near by.

Memory doesn’t serve the details but I am sure that the documentation is available to back this all up- though falsified, just in case I ever got smart about it.

There are files in my possession that support this story.

Sometimes I imagine that I keep these things in case I ever go on a rampage that ends up with gaining some kind of notoriety, the kind of thing where they decide to do a bio.

Funny thing is, I always likened myself to the great men of our past, and to be in the history books since I was old enough to think of tomorrow, which I am told was pretty early. Only, it was probably more like: “tomorrow I will kill them.”

The move, on the State and County’s parts, was illegal but I haven’t the capital to pursue it especially with them denying me to call my insurance company. To me, that would be a witness to the situation.

I should have sued but how can anyone fight without money?

If they were smart, they would have written the accident up as a routine weather condition incident and issued a drunk driving charge but they never gave me a Breathalyzer or mentioned my alcohol use to me or in the police report.

(Certainly, lawyers everywhere should easily see a gold mine here.)

Sandy used every bit of the hundred and fifty dollars to pay for the tow truck that brought our van back to our camper.

It was this incident that ended up costing her the job she had at Vitale’s but since we had our bills caught up, and I had family in the area, she was able to get by until I returned home.

We used to walk back to the north end of the RV Park, to the river bayou, to fish.

Along the way were a few campers that people had stored (in the back of the property, out of the way of the park). Some of them were for sale.

We entertained the idea of getting a new one or one new to us. And it’s funny because someone else was thinking the same thing.

One day, in the fall, we asked Jerry Pannon, the park manager (an ex-FBI agent) about the other “units” because we had become interested in upgrading.

He made a comment about being glad we had asked because he was just about to come and tell us that our camper was “too old” to be in the park for another season.

Whether that was true or not had nothing to do with why he was going to tell us this.

Jerry tried to sell us a modular cabin but the price was beyond ridiculous, and it was meant to be. He really didn’t want us in the park.

It was apparent that the other park residents had been discussing us too. Probably out of boredom.

Jerry then tried to rent us one at a price that he felt we could afford, making it too easy, which scared us a bit, and rightly so.

We were sensing being set up for something but we couldn’t tell what it was.

What we ended up deciding was that we wanted to buy a camper, so he reluctantly showed us the ones that were for sale, starting with the most expensive one.

The prices on all of them ended up being more than we wanted to spend or could afford.

During this time, we were targeted for our campers antiquity, as well as, being “undesirable.”

We had gotten to know young woman named, Katrina, who worked at the store in the park on the other side of the river- Conestoga Camp ground. She filled us in on a lot of the dirt about the park, and it’s people.

The rumors were, in fact, flying in the park.

It came out that Jerry didn’t care much for us but there was nothing he could do about our being there since we complied with the park rules, and paid our bills on time.

One of the stories was that Sandy was my mother, and, we were an incestuous couple.

That story made me laugh out loud.

Sandy was appalled.

The typical people that reside in these RV parks, come to find out, are mostly on fixed incomes. They live in the RV’s because it’s inexpensive compared to traditional housing options, like senior citizens with no family members who are caring, or stable, or willing to give back to them.

There are many people who have child support demands that prevent them from living any other way, basically living in whatever is big enough to hold whatever it is that they have left in life.

There are many people, who are so much into chemical dependency, that they have adjusted their lifestyle to accommodate their use. We were really no exceptions to the rule.

It was a sad reality in the RV Park we lived in. And there we were, doing much the same thing.

Don’t get me wrong. You can’t discount the people passing through, the tourists, hunters, and the nature lovers. And then there are some, shackled with the leg irons of a modern society, unable to afford themselves the leisure and luxury of traveling in order to explore the Wonders of Our Country.

There are those who keep an RV (or camper) year-round or seasonally to have as a get-away, that don’t want to buy property or can’t find what they want.

Then there is the management.

The managers always seem to be some tyrannical control freaks that are the Dictatorial Hitler type of person, as far as I have ever seen in my limited experiences.

One day, as the snow was beginning to melt at the end of Winter, Jerry came to tell us about a camper at the other camping and RV Park- Conestoga Campground, on the north side of the river; a last stitch effort to get us to move out of the park, which would provide a great comfort to those who were afraid of outsiders coming on the scene to learn their secrets.

Conestoga was being prepared to open for the season since it was not a year-round park.

Conestoga was owned by the same man who owned The River Pines but it was ran by Jerry’s son who had a camper parked there that they had rented out from time to time.

The camper was on a lot right next door to the managers unit.

This was a decent looking camper, appearing to be in good shape.

It was a thirty-two foot 1984 Jayco Bunkhouse that slept six people.

There was a nice little bathroom with a shower, a queen sized bed, a new fridge and furnace, as well as, a new water heater. It was a beautiful camper. To us, having been living in the Little Gem for the winter, it was a palace.

Jerry claimed to own this camper, offering it to us for two thousand dollars, which he would finance, of course.

He drew up a payment plan that was a land contract type.

The camper would remain at Conestoga Campground until it was fully paid for, while payments were to be one hundred thirty seven dollars and change per month but if we missed one payment we would lose our entitlement, and all of our interest (money).

We happily agreed, knowing that we would easily be able to make the payments, making arrangements to have Jerry put our Little Gem in the back with the others that were for sale.

After placing a sign in the window of it, we hoped for it to sell quickly.

Now, Sandy was ready to call Richard to claim her stuff back that she had inherited from her father- the stuff that vanished when she got to Michigan.

Chapter-

Sandy kept on about the coo-coo clock and various antiques- her possessions that Richard and Angie kept tucked away, including many guns. She kept on about it until we decided to call her son to ask for them.

A threat had to be imposed in order to get him to comply with her request.

These items were all stored in his basement, along with the pot he was growing. The very thing that he had suggested I broke in to get at.

Richard refused to give up the items, saying that they were his, which fueled a battle that lasted for days until I got on the phone, threatening to turn him in for the pot if he didn’t give his mother what she was after.

He hung up at that statement, only calling back about an hour later to say that he had checked his perimeters, and that he was willing to concede to Sandy’s argument.

The next day, we met him at his house, retrieving a van full of stuff. It was packed to the gills with just enough space to get back in and ride home, stopping off at our storage unit to unload the items.

The van had over heated from the haul and wouldn’t start when we went to leave, finally starting after about two hours had passed.

Jerry moved the Jayco to a site we picked out at Conestoga but it didn’t have a full hook-up, meaning the sewer, which required hauling a thirty-gallon honey pot back and forth from the tank, to the dump station, in order to drain it manually.

His son said to, “just run the grey water out a hose and down the hill” into the Grand River, stating that was what a lot of them did with the grey water, which is a separate holding tank apart from the actual sewage tank.

Chapter- April Fool’s/The Cleaning Lady

It was the first of April when we moved into the Jayco.

The lot we picked was on the very end of the row along the ridge, facing south, overlooking the forestry below where it met the bank of the Grand River as it flowed westward to meet Lake Michigan in Grand Haven.

Our lot was also next to the graveyard- a very old graveyard. I remember worrying about the very large oak tree that was standing on our North side- a mere six feet away.

The tree had a huge limb (that was more like another trunk) hanging a big threat that stretched precariously out over our trailer.

All I could think about was, a story that my close friend, Arek Clark, told of from when he lived here years ago:

A man was lying in bed but then got up to make a bowl of cereal. The tree that was next to his camper suddenly broke and fell onto it, landing right where he had been sleeping. It destroyed his camper, and, would have killed him if he had not gotten up to eat.

This was an especially haunting tale, being that we were located right next to the graveyard, reminding us of death almost every moment of the day.

The storage facility, in Allendale, where we kept many things, was right next door to a gas station where I liked to acquire Drum rolling tobacco.

I would always get two pouches from the rack, then to the drink cooler, where I slipped one down my coat sleeve. Then I’d approach the counter, go through my act of pulling out my wallet to see that I didn’t have enough money, then to return the pouch to the rack.

This was almost always too easy to pull off, unless the person behind the counter was someone I had done it with recently but since the store had a big employee turn over, and always pretty busy, it was fairly easily done. Sometimes I could do it two to three times a day but at least a couple times a week, which was enough to get by.

This was a technique I used at the places that sold beer as well, grabbing two jumbos but slipping one down the sleeve of my heavy coat.

We didn’t go a day without drinking.

Sandy wouldn’t really discuss not drinking. Her emphasis was just on me not drinking. And, I agreed but not drinking wasn’t something easily done on the one-way street of a relationship.

Strength is in number, yet we remained divided in many ways.

One morning, she opened the cupboard doors- beer cans spilled out everywhere.

It’s funny, for a person who claimed to be a hippie, and, always talking about Jehovah and the Kingdom Hall, she was a nonstop consumer.

She’d always say things like, “there’s nothing to have,” but we would spend money (that we had to sell things to get) to buy gas in order to risk driving all the way to the city (drinking both ways) to buy a small amount of pot.

We ended up spending thirty bucks for a ten-dollar bag of grass- smokes, drinks, gas and pot.

What a waste.

We could have just grown our own pot.

None of it was that serious but it was to her.

We would scrape the pipe at least three times a week, hating it every time she asked me to do it.

This evil would remain veiled by her home-making skills, deceptiveness, charisma, and, her charm.

Being so Love starved, I was blinded completely; blinded by her wiles and my own drinking, and, psychological issues, that I couldn’t even see myself to find my own errors for correction.

It’s a complex thing to understand- how things can compound so thick and fast, stealing you away from the future with the moments.

For the most part, while with Sandy, I had forgotten what I was doing and what I wanted in life- having become brainwashed with the promises of love, giving up my hopes and dreams to follow someone else’s. She was a siren but I didn’t know it yet- always mocking me about my dreams and aspirations of becoming an entertainer, musician, and a writer, telling me:

“There’s no time in this system. Jehovah is creating a new system for you to do it there.”

My dreams of musicianship were rekindled when I had met Danny but they were lost when we became separated by a situation caused by lack of money, coupled with his despair from his afflictions- all of which were caused by alcohol and fundamental familial deficiencies (no father).

After a week in the new trailer, I had a fit of paranoia fueled by Sandy’s own- tearing out the radio and speakers that came installed in the trailer.

Since Jerry was an ex-federal agent with the F.B.I., we were concerned with eavesdropping.

One of the things that motivated my concerns was a very large and powerful looking two-way radio antennae.

Sandy was always an instigating factor for suspicion and evil doing, which got me pumped up pretty badly, especially with my having severe anxiety disorders, so-called.

When we got down on our luck we would drive around looking for returnable beverage containers on the roadsides. It was while on one of these excursions that we stumbled upon one of Cobb Stiffe’s Home Builder signs.

Cobb would put me to work doing whatever he had going on at the time until his alcoholism and demeanor contaminated our work relationship again.

The main problem was that it seemed he couldn’t be man enough to deal with his personal frustrations on his own time- taking advantage of using me as his punching bag until he couldn’t stand it any longer.

Mostly, he was ticked off because I wouldn’t lose my cool on him.

After a while, I would end up calling Tom Stuin to ask him for work. He had me come out to a project in Jenison, where he was building a house for the Parade of Homes, offering me twenty-five dollars an hour.

At that moment all was well. That is, until Sandy got wind of the Cleaning Lady.

My first big standing cabinet was a four-person locker bank with a boot-box seat- standing eighty-four inches tall by sixty inches wide, built from birch plywood, made with bead-board inlaid doors- all painted white. I have pictures of it somewhere.

Tom also had me build the staircase, especially since he had witnessed some of the work I had done in the past; how solid the newel posts and banisters were, the accuracy in the miters, and the meticulous attention to detail (“Christian” builders hated me for this).

The house was to be in the Grand Rapids Parade of Homes, which meant that it was doomed to heavy bombardment and buffoonery of morons yanking on the staircase to see how well it was built, being the defeat of many who claimed to be a carpenter.

Now, this staircase has to be the neatest one I have ever done. And I was proud to be the one to build it.

The main newel posts were site built out of Maple.

The balusters and spindles were wrought iron with a painted finish, and had decorative pieces that slid onto them to be fixed in a position with a hidden set screw to make up a collective pattern that, the artist assembling it felt, would be most aesthetic and pleasing to the eye- using a clear silicone adhesive since it was “finish complete” except for the maple.

The newel posts were monumental, rigid and solid. And, when struck, they reverberated throughout the home. More compliments were made on that staircase than almost anything I had assembled in my life.

So, feeling very proud of myself, I took Sandy to the jobsite to show her my accomplishments.

Sandy continued complaining about not being able to go along with me to work. She wanted to do the cleaning after the work was all done. I explained that Tom had someone he always used on his projects. So, she asked if she could help them with the task. I said I would ask Tom about it, which I did but Tom couldn’t make it happen.

For a while, she kept on about the teachings of the Bible, trying to manipulate me into taking her to babysit me, for fear I was doing something wrong or that she felt she should be included in.

It was her intention that I understand, God gave man woman for a helper, and that I acknowledge that, and always have her as my accompaniment, according to the Scriptures.

We arrived at the project and everything was fine.

Having never seen a lot of my trade, she was amazed at what I had been working on, taking a few pictures of the staircase and the cabinetry.

Around noon, a van pulled up and someone got out. It was the cleaning lady.

When she walked into the house, she greeted us with a smile and cleavage, along with a radio, plugging it in right away.

Sandy’s body language said it all: “What’s with this precocious little skank?”

I mean, the cleaning lady was blonde, cute, maybe thirty years old- trying to appear sexy with her mannerisms and style of fashion, and, she was flirtatious.

She was everything she needed to be in order to work feeble men over for money and opportunities- it was clearly her M.O. (gold digger).

That afternoon the guys showed up to do some punch list work, last minute details.

The cleaning lady was washing windows inside the house, chatting away with Tom and whom ever she could engage in conversation.

The decorators showed up with furniture and ornamentals to dress the place up for the showing in the Parade, pushing items they happened to have for sale in their store.

The speakers in the boom box were blaring, “It’s getting hot in here, let’s take off all our clothes,” and the cleaning lady was singing along.

An emotional volcano built up pressure inside of Mount Sandy.

As the song ended, the cleaning lady turned and said, “I need to wash the windows outside but I have to climb the ladder. Zach, will you hold the ladder for me?”

The top of Mount Sandy found a crack and she finally exploded; turning crimson, screaming a series of cuss words, stomping out of the house, knocking things over and slamming doors as she returned to our van.

Tom came running out of one of the back bedrooms asking, “What happened? What was that noise?”

I explained Sandy’s Jealousy, and that she lost it when the cleaning lady asked me to help her with the ladder while she washed the upper windows on the backside of the house.

Tom muttered something about Trust being important in a relationship, which was funny to me because he was selling cookie dough for the cleaning lady- telling me not to tell anyone about it. I suspected he was having an affair with her.

Anyway, on this day lots of things came together about this group of people. For instance, Tom wore a baseball cap because he was bald but for a small wreath of hair that stuck out from around his hat. He took it off that day to scratch his head in confusion over why I even brought Sandy to the job. The male pattern baldness didn’t go well with his Napoleon-like stature, making him look even smaller than before.

Tom was married to an accountant who had shown up at the job with his son- a blonde haired child of about eleven.

Tom’s wife wore the look of years of suspicion and a bad marriage, where a husband is rarely ever home. I could tell by her aura that she was extremely unhappy.

John, Tom’s right hand man, was an alcoholic who had a lot of familiar problems as well but he managed to stay working for Tom for a long time, though off and on as the drama caused by the constant drinking would always do.

It didn’t stop Tom from drinking routinely with him after work, which had some purpose but I did not know what. I think Tom may have appreciated this relationship with John due to distracting himself from his own problems in life.

The cleaning lady was married, also working for Tom for a number of years.

She had brought her son to the job as well, which looked almost exactly like Tom’s own son but about four years younger.

It came out that the cookie dough was hers that Tom was selling, when she asked me if I would buy some, saying that it was for her son’s class at school. It was to help raise money for an upcoming class excursion.

She spent a lot of time with Tom throughout the day, chatting about everything, and, flirting with anyone who would reciprocate.

Every time I walked into a room, they were there, acting as if they were busy with their duties. Her, with her expensive undergarments riding high above the waistline of her jeans, and, her blouse unbuttoned, down to the bottom of her sternum, exposing much of her breasts.

Now, whether the cookie dough was really for the school or if it was to offset child-rearing expenses, I never concerned myself much with determining. However, I did determine that her and Tom had something pretty big going on.

I could not get the image of Tom’s wife out of my head. I felt so sorry for her, and I could only imagine all of the broken and empty Promises, the shattered Hopes and Dreams, and the feelings of betrayal- all of this Drama because of the concerns of a man and his penis.

I couldn’t help but think of how he told me that his wife couldn’t find out about the cookie dough, and how the look on her face said there were too many lies, and enough poorly kept secrets already. And there I was in the mix.

I felt her pain, her frustration, her broken heart and her anger- a poisonous situation that was poisoning my own life even more than I poisoned it myself.

Throughout the coming months, Sandy would administer a dose of abuse whenever she had a problem with me by mockingly mimicking the words of the song that the cleaning lady sang that day.

The day we completed the job, I accidentally busted in on them “working” in the lower bathroom together.

Her g-string stuck out in plain view from the back of her pants, as if her pants were hanging lower than they should have been.

It became very clear why they were always working in the same room, away from the rest of us.

On this day, we all went to Jenison- to a Brann’s Steakhouse after work, where he threw hotel room keys at Johnny after buying him an excessive amount of drinks that would require him to sleep it off, knowing full well that Johnny is an alcoholic but needing a scapegoat for the room.

Some routine small talk verified that Tom’s wife was an Accountant, and, that she was extremely suspicious about his expenses.

I must admit, Tom was clever but not clever enough to get what he wanted without any hassles.

Oh God, what a pain in the neck I had from all involved.

All I wanted to do was practice my trade and receive compensation for it.

A week or so after the job was over, the Sandy wind stopped blowing so hard.

Within another three weeks of the job, I was called to another project- this time up at Crystal Mountain Resort.

Naturally, I agreed to do it.

Having some money to work with, Sandy and I rented a car and were off, eager for the road trip.

Now, it’s hard to do things when you don’t have a partner that contributes in a comprehensive fashion, which is why I took so much clothing and tools that I really had no business taking- like, bringing an antique Italian revolver that looked like it was found after lying for eighty years in a river somewhere while fishing.

The revolver was all rusted and frozen up, though intact enough to clearly be a pistol. At first glance it looked like you may be able to fire it, although for the last time, before exploding in your hands.

This was not at all practical, and with a clear mind now, it’s easy for me to see- hindsight.

Luckily, I never made it fire or else the demons that Sandy and I had haunting our lives would have forced the bullet to find her fate or mine.

We arrived at Crystal Mountain to find a very prestigious little community nicely tucked away in a Pine forest.

Ski slopes were revealed through the trees, at few points, which would be a comfort to people like Judge Peehole of the Thirteenth Circuit Court or Mr. Hoboe- my joke of a defense, since I am sure that there are people who would love to take a rifle shot at them.

This place would be a secure area in that respect.

My eyes were wide as the log style look of the homes caught my senses with their grand features extending out port style over horseshoe driveways, like something you’d come to expect to find in Colorado.

A golf course wound through the forestry, cradling the loosely scattered homes, here and there, a flag indicating a putting green.

It was great. It was magnificent.

After several lazy turns of the road, we found the project, easily identified by the two trucks and large enclosed tool trailer.

The tool trailer was pretentious, yet petty and anal retentive, revealing more about Tom.

Inside it were nicer kitchen cabinets than the majority of homes being built in the affluent communities I had worked on in the past. These were for keeping tools in.

I felt it was an example of how important his time with his wife or his own children was to him.

He probably used it as a makeshift dwelling when his wife threw him out of the house, which I am sure happened a lot- just another self indulgent egotist to add to the list of piss-poor examples of men I had dealt with, and what a list it was until I realized it’s a disease of men and that most are afflicted, although willingly.

I was no exception.

We spent that day building onto the house until early evening when Tom handed me a room key, saying something about my probably wanting to “go to the womb.” I am sure it had a lot to do with seeing me show up there with Sandy, and the fact that she was so much older than I.

It seemed clear to him that I had “mommy issues.” And, whether that’s true or not, the reality was, she had issues of her own that didn’t allow for me to be out of her sight, however blurry.

Tom and Johnny had a room down the hall from ours, if not each having their own. They came by later for drinks, and then, a short while later, we went outside for a smoke while Sandy insisted on preparing something for us to eat.

That’s when I took them out to the car to show them the stuff I had in the trunk, mainly, the revolver.

Sandy’s eyesight came up in conversation, saying that she must not be able to see very well.

Maybe it was another crack at her age, I don’t know but I just replied with that being the reason I rarely let her clean the weed- because she can’t see well enough to get all of the seeds out of it.

The three of us laughed pretty good at that comment, knocking back the rest of our beers for another round. And, Oh man, how we drank that night.

We went back inside to eat some food but instead of eating, I broke out the bottle of Cherry Kijafa, putting that on top of the thirty pack of Milwaukee’s Best Ice I had been drinking on… and the weed… and the gin.

As if five point nine percent beer wasn’t enough.

After they left for the night, we started fighting.

We fought for much of the night.

Management came twice or maybe three times, to quiet us down.

The police came, at one point but couldn’t do anything because I seemed to not be a problem when they arrived.

At some point she attacked me- biting one of her breasts in the scuffle, leaving a nasty bruise.

I drank so much that night- passing out, urinating all over the bed, which was a very nice bed, causing her to get out the hide-a-bed to sleep on.

The next morning we tried to clean the place up.

Sandy found the hair dryer, trying to clean up the bed but it was useless.

I was still drunk but that didn’t stop me from opening a beer that morning which must have been when Sandy decided that she was taking the car, leaving me behind.

She packed up the rental car and took all of my money, leaving me a twenty-dollar bill that I was too drunk to find in my wallet.

She took the booze and the pot, except for what I had in my pocket that was rolled up from the night before.

My glass marijuana pipe got hidden somewhere during the drunken madness of the evening with the expectation that the cops were coming- left behind to be found by the cleaning staff or person who owned the room, wherever I had hidden it.

She loaded up the food we had brought, and finished by loading up all of the empty beer cans.

I followed her out a moment later, after finishing my beer, my arms full of my belongings.

Sandy was already in the car as I set them down to open the trunk.

Then she turned the ignition, put the car into gear, pulling out of sight.

She just went to get gas, I told myself, expected her to be coming back to hurry me along, and, take one last look around for the pipe or something we may be forgetting.

I waited there while drinking another beer, saying out loud, “maybe it’s just a threat. What happened last night anyway?”

Moments went by before I realized she had no intention of coming back.

I had a momentary lapse of reason, deciding that I was in no condition to see Tom and Johnny after what had happened last night.

In a panic over being seen by any of the resort staff or being seen sitting out in the parking lot at all, I started walking with all of my things.

Fortunately there were only about one or two hundred people that could have witnessed my display, reminiscent of Steve Martin, in the movie “The Jerk,” drunkenly, and slovenly, walking down the street with my arms loaded with pure junk- my clothes, my tools, a broken pistol, and, a Zip-lock baggie full of whatever it was that she had made the night before.

“Maybe she just went to the store,” I thought.

I kept telling myself that she was going to turn around and come back for me in a minute but the minute kept renewing itself to a new minute that I would have to wait through all over again.

The thought renewed of what she was doing, like she had just gone to clear her head or get some cigarettes.

While on the “heel-toe express” I dreaded every fully exposed and hung-over step of the way.

As my feet were shuffling, I wondered WHEN she would be coming back for me. And, if I walked the right way for her to be able to find me when she did.

I mean, how could I get very far with a big bag of crap and all the rest of the junk I had with me?

How far could I get before I ran into the cops like this?

They would surely stop and ask me why I was in the area looking like a vagrant.

I had weed and I was inebriated.

I had a gun, working or not, it’s still a gun.

And, I am hiking on a highway with a difficult load to carry.

Getting picked up was a huge risk and it motivated me to push on quickly.

I am sure it was a sight to see.

Before too long, I located a gas station in my view up ahead- recognizing the place from the day before.

We had stopped here to purchase alcohol and supplies- as opposed to supplies and alcohol.

I went in to ask for directions, buying some tobacco with some change I had in my pocket- still unable to find the money in my wallet.

The clerk pointed me in the right direction, stopping outside to roll some cigarettes.

My arms were so tired I knew I couldn’t keep carrying the stuff any longer, so I took in a good visual of my surroundings.

Up the road, I spotted an intersection with a lot of forestry along it- spotting a good spot to enter the woods, heading toward it with my stuff.

There was no traffic when I entered the forest but I wondered if hunters would stumble upon my booty, if this were where I left it- looking for something that I would easily recognize when I came back to the area. As it was, all I needed to do was to find the gas station again to locate the spot.

Now all I needed was a geographical oddity that would be a good secondary marker- finding a large felled tree, knocked over by a storm.

There was a depression in the dirt with lots of limbs and leaves lying around the area.

The bag of clothes, the gun, the tools and the food, everything except for my tool belt with my hand tools in it, was left in that spot- buried in leaves and limbs.

Now, I was liberated or so it seemed.

The leaves of October crunched under my feet as I exited the forest with confidence that I would easily relocate it.

One of my last worries was of wolves or coyotes tearing up my buried treasure.

After a pretty good handful of miles, I happened upon a liquor store where I, finally, was able to find that twenty dollar bill in my wallet, so I poisoned, I mean, treated myself to a small bottle of whiskey to find the realm of familiarity I was lost in while in my abandonment.

Many cars passed me by on that road.

Feeling rejected and helpless, it was easy to temporarily abandon my abandonment to take a breather under a bridge where a creek ran through.

This was a great place to smoke some weed. It was out of the wind, and out of view.

The sound of the flowing water was much needed, as was the time off of my feet, giving me time to think about things and recharge a bit.

The distance I had hiked after that is uncertain, though I am sure it was quite a ways because the sun got to a point where it was no longer morning, nearing sunset, before I finally got a ride from a young couple that happened to have been in Traverse City at a family gathering.

They had a tray of Hors d’oeuvres that they offered me to eat from- finger foods like onion wraps and veggies with dip etc… while driving a light blue Ford Blazer, saying that they had just left one of their parent’s homes and were headed to the Alpine area off of U.S. 131 in Grand Rapids.

Perfect, exactly where I was going.

I thanked them profusely as I climbed in, offering to compensate them if they could get me to my trailer, just twenty miles from where they were going.

They drove me right to the Conestoga campground where I found the trailer to be locked.

It wasn’t hard to get in, by climbing in through the utility hatch that was on the side near the access to the holding tanks.

The hatch went in under the bed and the bed lifted up to expose storage space underneath. I still can’t believe I did it.

Had it not been for my being so thin from drinking so much, I probably would not have been able to do it but I was so angry that Sandy had left me behind that anything was possible.

Opening the door to let them in, a car pulled up just then. It was Sandy.

Sandy was all smiles and cheer when she saw me there, nonchalantly stating how she had stopped and got a room at a Motel Six to catch up on some sleep, just as drunk from the night before as I was.

It was as if we had met back at the trailer after a much-needed vacation, like nothing dramatic had happened at all- a sticky sweet interlude but had I not shown up when I did, the trailer and her would have vanished completely, I am certain.

I had a strange feeling that she was on a trip in Life to somehow get revenge for things that happened to her in the past, like losing a mobile home in a bad break-up, something she felt she was entitled to. All she needed was the right situation, which I pretty much gave her in the events from the night before.

My memory of all of these things may not be as fluid, as far as any time-line or chronological order goes but it’s pretty damn good. Actually, I am amazed that it is as good as all of these stories make it seem.

It should be only a blur from all of the polluting I did to myself, drinking some of the worst drink and my using the finest poisons. Oh well, call it a Gift and be Thankful.

So, I’m not sure how things were that next day but I know things were quiet that night. And, I know that I never worked for Tom Stuin again.

It was several weeks before I got paid for the work I had done but when I finally did get paid, he had his wife meet me off of Alpine Avenue at a Dentist where she was already, having taken her son for an appointment.

Tom’s wife handed me a check that was nine hundred dollars short, telling me that they were forced to deduct it by their insurance company because I had no liability insurance policy to cover me being on the project.

What good was it to even try to argue with her about it?

It’s not like I was going to be able to get her to write me a check for the difference.

Tom had made no mention about this huge detail. Clearly, he sent her as a buffer, and I, working paycheck to paycheck, needed the money days ago. It was a typical scenario for a sub-contractor in the construction business. But it’s possible that the nine hundred was for the repairs to the hotel room and replacement of the bed.

We still haven’t spoke and I have yet to return for my treasure.

All Sandy cared about was getting some pot, and going back to the camper to pass the time by getting high and sucking down some booze, pretending we were all by ourselves on the planet.

I was fit to be tied. My grief was compounded from all sides and there was no place to go to find a single person to confide in over anything.

All that my mother would say anytime I tried to talk to her about things was, “You people sure have a lot of problems.”

This, from a woman who had a complaint about everything and everyone, having worked at the post office for a number of years- the exact kind of person you hear about on the news going “Postal.”

If anyone were ever suspected of “going postal”, it would be her though it never happened, as far as I know.

Yes, that’s what she would say if she took time to acknowledge me in my distress.

Eventually I ran out of money and resorted to my old’ standby- picking up cans for their ten-cent deposit.

I remembered the night I caught the Allendale grocery store using illegal labor as my elbow ached while combing the roadside for beer cans: I had been drinking all day, and I was fighting the end of it, so I jumped in the van and limped to the store for another thirty pack.

When I got to the store it looked open but the doors were locked.

A young man saw that I was trying to get in. He came to the door and opened it with a big smile.

As I hurried for the beer cooler, I noticed that the store was being cleaned and that everyone was Latino, and, that they were actually closed.

This issue was in the news a lot in the prior weeks- illegal labor from over the border.

My only concern was with getting a box of beer before the store manager realized I was there, planning on swiping my card at a self check out- blasting out in a flash.

My feet marched me right to the cooler where I grabbed the beer and raced back down the aisle to the register. Then my feet magically slipped out from under me.

On the way to the floor, I put my hand out to break my fall but had my arm locked, which jammed my elbow, slamming me into the floor and aggravating my back and neck injuries.

The floors were wet with fresh wax.

The machines being operated shut off- several people who spoke no English coming to help me up.

That’s when the manager came around to see why the machines had stopped running. She chided me for being in the store since it was closed, then asking me how I got in.

When I explained that the help had opened the door, she ordered me out. She was pretty startled at my being there in a precarious position to observe what was going on there with the illegal help functioning as employees.

It’s too bad I was drunk because I could have blackmailed or outright exposed the store for it. Too bad I messed that up. Live and learn, I suppose.

Chapter

These things we had of Sandy’s father’s proved to be valuable, calming our needs and wants.

After a while of pawning things, starting with the two salamander kerosene heaters belonging to Tom Stuin, we had a big sale at a friend’s house down the road from us.

On the third day of the sale, a person came by telling us not to sell anything until they brought their brother to see about buying some of the stuff, giving us a fifty-dollar bill to hold it. He came that night, looked around, offering us fifteen hundred dollars, buying every scrap.

Sandy was relieved to have it gone because she felt it was all bad to have versus the money that actually just gave us back what we had spent in storage fees to keep it.

Now, it wasn’t just Sandy’s, and my own, once again, broken dreams that clouded my perception. There were other people who had damaging impacts.

I am not making excuses for my drinking, which I did know was a problem. It was a familiar comfort that I had discovered when I was a teenager- surviving a badly broken home.

Cobb Stiffe was a factor in my struggle to overcome during this time, as he had been in and out of my life since immediately after the truck accident, which happened just a handful of months before my own family became to be destroyed in 97.

As I think about it now, I wonder if it wasn’t his twisted aura that poisoned my own?

Cobb had his house up for sale, while building himself another one that was very much like it.

The only person who became interested in it had no credit of any use, unable to get financing for the purchase of the home.

Cobb, needing to unload it, had a discussion with his loan officer about his little problem.

The fact that this particular loan officer was known as “The Loan God,” was what made Cobb seek out his confidence in regards to how he could unload this house.

The arrogance and vanity of this particular loan officer was evident by way of his vanity plate on his automobile.

The vanity plate on his car read “Loan God.” His manipulation included instructions to Cobb that he needed to bring the money that the potential buyer was required to have in order for the loan and purchase to be made possible. This meant that Cobb would have to bring fifteen thousand dollars cash to the table, placing the pile of money in front of the buyer as if it were his own money, which he then slid toward the loan officer as if he were paying it.

The deal was sealed and Cobb could now move on with his plans.

The whole thing is fraudulent and is part of what is plaguing us this very day.

Part of Cobb’s browbeating of me was to throw these things in my face, like I was nothing, insignificant- always saying that I needed to start small and work my way up, stating that he got what he has in life because he took it.

Myself, I am not like that. All I could do was to pretend to listen intently- as if he was some kind of teacher, and, to some extent he was, and is, as I contemplate things.

He would inundate me with these kinds of things throughout the day.

My theory was that he could not handle his own conscience, needing to drown it out by ripping on me constantly.

Lucky for him, I was use to it since my so-called father was much the same, constantly beating me into submission, which I stubbornly fought from the beginning, much to his dismay.

No matter how much he beat me or smacked me, I would get back up.

He would refuse to listen to something I had to say, swatting me in the face and telling me to “tick-a-lock” but I would keep on.

No matter how many times he hit me, demanding me to shut up, I would continue- forcing him to work harder at it.

Just as much as he could dish out, I would provide an amount of resistance equal to or greater.

My tolerance for pain is extremely high as a product from that abuse. That is a triumph for myself. No one can hurt me now.

By the time I got home from work with Cobb, I was a useless heap of flesh. I couldn’t talk very well, stuttering my words, and, becoming harder to string them together in sentences.

My hand would curl up in an odd way that I’d only seen in invalids.

During the day I would be subjecting myself to a barrage of abuse, things like semantic lectures, and statements such as: “My kids got me…for Father’s day. What did your kids get you, Daddy?”

And, “You must not have been that great of a husband or your wife would have never divorced you.”

And, by taunting me- calling out to my ex-wife’s new husband as if to be hunting him: “Peetah, oh Peetah...” Peter, being his name.

Never, have I received closure for the decisions Mindy has made, and it continues to haunt me to this day, more than less as I observe the truth of my son’s reality.

Cobb had a way of starting the day off as a confidant, which, having no father to confide in, I desperately needed in my life.

As the week progressed, he would take that which I had told him, and twist it into his own brand of torment.

I would continue to persevere and do my best work for this man, constantly trying to prove my worth, sometimes on a minute to minute basis and just as often, I would secretly forgive him.

The abuse I endured would only be the cork that seemed to keep me tucked in the bottle, especially after telling me things like, “Maybe you just don’t know how to suck up right,” which implied that I should be serving his intimate perversions- to put it lightly.

Back at the park, I was content in my trailer.

My mother even came to visit, sometimes bringing us pork sausage made from hogs that her boyfriend had raised and slaughtered.

It would end up being that I worked for her, pouring my heart into whatever it was that she wanted done, as I always did, and it was a great opportunity to mend our relationship.

Sandy and I, had been having trouble with the van, and it would get worse, running out of gas all of the time because of so little money, and the defective gas gauge- typical of Fords from the eighties.

The season came to an end at Conestoga, forcing us to move back to the River Pines since the camper was not paid off yet.

I scrambled to get it winterized.

The entire bottom needed to be wrapped in skirting before the cold weather, which put me under the gun because the cold was already upon us. I had no choice or assistance to get the work done before the snow started flying.

One freeze could create so many headaches for us that I couldn’t begin to calculate the potential expenses.

Making a call to Cobb, hoping to find work that would, once again, back me up financially, and, to make it known that I was living in my own home fit for the occasional guest, was tough to swallow. He would call it my “hut” in the “tin ghetto.”

One day, we had scraped the payment together that completed our purchase of the trailer. We were sitting inside celebrating as the sun was going down, having just given the last payment to Jerry’s wife, the receipt still in our hands.

Jerry came tearing into the lot we had, and came pounding on the door, seeming upset, which we were used to.

We opened the door to an irate shyster, saying that we lost our agreement because we messed up on the payments.

What he was really upset about was that he had no intention of us paying it off, knowing we were cash poor, and, banking on us having a hard time doing it.

We were supposed to mess up. He was working at making it impossible to make that last payment, if none of the others, by not being there to accept it or write us a receipt but his wife was home at the right time for us to do so. He figured it would be like shooting at dead men and he knew we wouldn’t be able to fight him in court over it.

This was a money scandal of his, and not the only one.

He had made a bet and lost, and, boy, he was angrier when he left, slamming the door so hard that it shook the whole trailer, knocking stuff off of our walls, jamming the door so hard that it wouldn’t open back up to get out of.

We just smiled and laughed to each other. We had Finally Won Something!

Come to find out, Jerry had been caught with his hand in the park till- caught renting out the modular units that were for sale, pocketing the money.

Only Jerry knows how much money he embezzled.

He was ousted from the managing of the park, forcing him to take up residence in his own motor home, a brand new Bounder.

Chapter

Money sources were about exhausted and the lot rent was becoming difficult for us to maintain.

We still had not missed any trailer payments or electric bills, and had no phone bill because Don Doyle had given me a phone as part of the money I earned but never got due to his purchase of a Harley Davidson Fat boy, which used up the money he had been paid for the contract to finish the Log home for the Taintster family.

Don repeatedly denied any wrong doing but taking into consideration, the things that Mark and Connie had to say about what they paid him for the project, I am not sure that Karma was going to let him slip by unscathed for his seeming violation of our trust.

This took place while I had become to be involved with Michele Shackleton, just before I met Sandy- another flash back:

Out of my desperation for an income, and my innate ability to extend trust to anyone for a chance to earn their own, my insight failed to recognize the paid meals and few dollars, now and then, instead of a check, as part of a scam.

Don kept promising the pay would come when we finished the project, while he petered out a few dollars each week to keep us hanging on for as long as he could.

This is a classic carrot-and-stick tactic that is commonly used in the construction business to take advantage of sub-contractors and their labors.

I like to call it the “West Michigan Trade Robbery,” hosted by The Dutch Mob, mostly.

Never mind that I was happy to be working on a log home with people whom I felt were my friends that I knew from the past.

That small detail helped to keep me completely blinded to what was really going on. Keeping on at my trade, and trusting Don, I whistled the song in my heart.

Other than Don Doyle, Bill Bilgepump, and a young guy Don had working with him for quite some time on his various projects in the past several years, he also had his son, Donny junior, and his daughter, Mandy, helping him off and on as he needed them.

Don kept managing to land gigs, like this carpentry gig, while working as a licensed electrician, servicing run-down mobile homes and small businesses that used antiquated warehousing spaces to run their shops out of.

It was at one of these dilapidated buildings that Don ran in to Bill, while Bill was performing plumbing tasks for a crook named Gary McQueen, who only kept Bill around for inexpensive under-the-table cash labor (even though Bill should have been paid the going rate for a highly experienced plumber).

Don’s son, Donny, was working with him from time to time, instead of steadily, due to substance abuse issues that interfered with work demands.

Donny would be slowly replaced by his oldest sister, Mandy, who, at twenty-six years old, had just been released from a lengthy jail sentence for substance abuse related charges.

Mandy would work a few days a week, when she didn’t have furthering education classes.

It would end up being my job to work with her, training her in the carpentry trade. This was mostly because her father lacked the mindset, and had little patience or ability, to effectively communicate with her or anyone else who was without any skills that he tried to use as help.

Being a patient parent, and a happy teacher, I corrected her efforts as she worked, rather than blow a lot of wind trying to “teach” her, which took a lot of time away from my own productivity.

This was the right way to go because I could continue working while observing her, letting the tools she used do the talking, telling me what her instruction needs were.

The table saw would holler or sing after a tag team primer lesson.

My ears could always tell me what I needed to know.

“Smooth continuous feed on those boards- it leaves less blade kerfs to remove and gives less strain on the motor,” I would tell her.

Mandy was a good student, always eager and very earnest- enthusiastic about learning the Finish Carpentry Trade. She was also motivated since she was a mother of two, and needed to provide to them without having any help from the children’s fathers, unfortunately.

[End of flashback]

One evening, a year or so later, around nine o’clock in the evening, while Sandy and I were enjoying cocktails around our fire pit, I received a phone call to come and do some emergency repairs at the Gezon Building in Grand Rapids, near the corner of Plainfield Avenue and Leonard Street.

Apparently, someone went through the building, busting down doors of some of the most active musician’s studio spaces, where they stole anything of value.

For some reason Don Doyle gave them my number, which I am glad he did because I could use every dollar I could get my hands on at that time, especially since I was still feeling the sting of being robbed on the Taintser’s Log Cabin project.

Sandy and I immediately jumped in the van and dashed out to perform the repairs, and, collect the money that was being offered.

One day, while at that same studio building about a year or so after that, I was told of how Don Doyle’s daughter, Mandy, had been found dead of an overdose in her apartment.

I was told that evidence was found in her apartment that indicated her body had been violated after her death, as well as, violating one of the children in the home at the time.

Apparently, this evidence supported blatant sexual misconduct to both of them.

I instantly became weak, and my knees buckled, collapsing me to the ground. My stomach wretched with dry heaves, and my eyes flooded with tears as the news sunk in.

It was as if she was my own child that had died, and it had been my own grandchild that suffered this terrible atrocity. Mandy was only twenty-nine years old.

Don was my oldest daughter, Sarah’s, uncle.

Sarah’s mom, having been the victim of sexual abuse as a child by her father and several other men, had become a man hater. She had accused me of “hitting” on Mandy back when we had first gotten together, when Mandy was a young teen.

Unlike a good doobie, it was another twisted up family in the world.

Sarah would prove to be the only one on her mom’s side of the family to do anything with her self, like graduate high school, not get knocked up, and, to become enlisted in the military. Because of her grades, she was offered an opportunity in the Air Force, where she tested out high ranking and was offered placement in Intelligence.

She made the final decision to go into Meteorology.

Thanks to her Great Grandmother Lawrence, Sarah went to a Catholic school on Bridge Street, and was looked after by her Great Grandma Lawrence most of the time. This proved to be a significant influence- Great Grandma Lawrence’s’ involvement, not necessarily the Catholic school.

Sarah’s mother was known as, “Crazy Mary,” by her whole family and everyone who knew her.

I didn’t think much of it until she started accusing me of having sex with everyone she and I knew.

She got me fired from a good job once because when she called to speak to me, a woman answered- the boss’s wife.

Mary accused her of having some kind of relationship with me- sex mostly, and began to force me to drop my pants to smell my genitals in order to determine for her self if I smelled unusually clean or like another woman.

This was when I met Bill Bilgepump, while working with Mary at Florentine’s Italian Restaurant in Grandville.

Mary’s antics drove me crazy, and I used anyone I could as a convenient buffer to spend my time with, especially for drinking or getting stoned.

I could no longer stomach going home to Mary.

I could no longer handle her without drinking.

I was miserable but had no idea how much or what a relationship was suppose to resemble since I came from a broken home myself.

The fact that she became pregnant with my child was a total shock.

I thought my testicles were damaged from a bicycle accident that ripped a large gash in my scrotum.

We had been together for over two years, having unprotected sex the whole time, so I was sure I was sterile but I was also just a clueless kid.

The fact was, her level of acidity in her bodily fluids made my sperm sterile.

Was it clue from God that I was in the wrong place in Life?

One day, after Mary had gotten me fired from Florentine’s, for accusing the waitresses of trying to steal me, my mother picked me up from the Wheeler family’s home where I stayed at the time.

She took me to meet a friend of hers that she new from the American Legion on 44^th street and South Division. His name was Bob Bilgepump- a plumber. His son, Bill, had just gotten out of rehab earlier that month. This was in 1988.

Bob was the owner of Midwest Plumbing and had a habit of finding apprentices every once in a while, that were nothing more than someone to be available to drive him to various bars around town. He always had this story that he needed to collect money from people that owed him from jobs he had done for them.

Bob would dispatch Bill to plumbing jobs that would come up, things like repairing or installing carbonic systems and water heaters at bars and restaurants.

They were always small jobs from repeat customers.

The truth was that the business had been bankrupt for some time.

Bob always sent me with Bill, as his assistant, and Bill and I soon became very close friends.

I quickly learned of Bill’s addiction to cocaine and alcohol, which he drank everyday.

It was a routine I became accustom to and continued, ironically enough, until I turned twenty-one years old.

The music was always blaring loudly from a shrine of a stereo system that Bill had built.

The speakers were one of his many accomplishments that he would routinely show off, along with his extensive knowledge of the music that he paid daily tributes to.

We were like brothers in many ways, and everyday was a party.

Since I was eighteen at the time, it was a welcome environment. I came to spend a great amount of time there with him.

By 1991 Bill and I would part ways after my meeting Mindy, who became pregnant the first night we were together. It was her that pushed for sex that night.

Anyway, Bill would end up spending over three years in prison for drunk driving charges where he also punched a cop.

It was one of several drunk-driving charges Bill had accumulated.

This all happened right after Paul had to cut him lose from our trim carpentry crew because of his drinking and using coke on the job.

Bills performance slowed way down because he was constantly tending to his use instead of working, occasionally calling one of us in to the room he was suppose to be working in, for a line of cocaine. He was always sweating profusely because of it.

It wouldn’t be until the spring of 2002 that I would see Bill again, after running into Don whom Bill was working for.

Don quickly scooped me up to help him on the jobs he had going on at the time.

After a few weeks, we began working on the Taintster project. That was when I saw Bill again.

It was like old times with Bill, and I was happy to see him. Soon, I became to understand that he was worse off now than he ever was. Alcohol had almost complete control of him, if not entire control.

The funny thing was that Don was a devout A.A. guy but he just watched Bill dying there, right before his eyes.

Maybe it was a reminder to him self to not begin drinking again, since he too, had spent time in prison for alcohol related charges involving criminal sexual misconduct with his daughters, which two of them were his stepdaughters.

This was the final straw in the marriage he was trying to maintain at the time.

Anyway, Don paid for the phone through his service plan that he had with a well known, over priced company called, Verizon. It had been his son’s phone before he quit working the kid.

The day I became separated with having the phone was while fishing on the Grand River at Conestoga Campground, kicking it off of the dock when I stood up to leave, by stepping down in the wrong place (alcohol related).

Since my back had been injured in the automobile accident in 1997, I had many issues that made me clumsy, drinking or not- and, having cognitive problems from the head injury that also contributed to my many dysfunctions.

And who brings their phone fishing, anyway? It kind of defeats the purpose of escaping the monotonies of daily life.

After the phone was lost, everything went to hell but I am ahead of myself a bit.

[Yard sale flashback selling Sandy’s junk collection she got from her father.]

One day, we got the idea to have a yard sale, taking the Yamaha 650 Special (that I had bought with some of the money from the Tom Stuin project), and all of the junk Sandy had inherited from her dad, to her friend’s house a mile to the west of us.

This friend was the one that Sandy has developed when I was in jail for nonpayment of child support. He had a brother that only wanted to get in her pants, offering her rides back home, only to frighten her with his driving dangerously in exchange for not putting out.

Mainly, this friend was a source for Sandy’s chief concern- marijuana.

It would be about five days into the yard sale before someone would stop to look at our junk and say that they were sending their brother back to look at the stuff, asking us to hold off on selling anything else.

There were lots of tools and tool chests, antiques, a lot of model trains, and the stuff that goes along with them.

There were quite a few old record albums, long guns, and an old coffee grinder that stood twenty-six inches high- having been completely refurbished by her father.

There was a pretty cool chrome police siren from the thirties or forties- the kind that went on top of the vehicle.

There were all kinds of unique items, and every bit of it was antique.

The value of everything, if it was sold individually was probably close to twelve thousand dollars.

Never mind that it cost us ten times what he offered her, in grief, and three times that, in moving expenses to get it here from California. Not to mention the storage fees at the mini storage.

ARGH!

The sale of these goods was not a moment too soon. We were in need of lot rent, and we weren’t sure where the next beer, I mean dollar, was coming from.

We slept in the van for a few weeks, including the parking lot of a local church, and, at a boat launch on the river, just miles from the Conestoga campground.

It was the end of the season and they were winterizing the park to remain closed for the winter, which meant that we needed to come up with the lot rent to be put back over at The River Pines RV Park until the trailer was paid for. They had already kicked everyone else out and we were left scrambling for the money to get in there even though they didn’t want us back in that park.

Our leverage was that we still owed on the trailer and hadn’t defaulted. Jerry had no choice but to let us back in, and we didn’t have a choice either. We came up with the money byway of the yard sale just in the nick of time.

Now, my only problem was getting the trailer ready for the cold and snow, which was coming fast.

Having no help to do it, was what made it difficult. It was the kind of job where you need five sober hands. Sandy only had one that was helpful.

Our second winter in the park was nice with heat.

Cobb and I began working together again, mostly due to the fact that everyone else who worked for him would soon quit after realizing that they couldn’t stand him long enough to get anything done that resembled work.

Those that could stand him could only do so as long as alcohol was involved but since I am a father with lots of patience and a love for the trade, it could be done.

The drinking helped too.

Luckily, I hadn’t shot him.

[Rundown- flashbacks, flash-forwards… it’s hard to follow but when you get to the end, you will ride it again. It’s a new ride, and it’s my Carnival. Make some popcorn.]

Anyway, let’s re-hash this: Thanksgiving I was working for Salih, soon to end. It wasn’t long before going back to work for Cobb, on the Kurt Moran development near the RV park, which only lasted two months due mostly to Cobb’s level of maturity.

This was while we were still at the River Pines campground.

Quite a number of months went by before I would end up back to endure more of him for the money- then, calling Tom Stuin who was in over his head with the time frame of completing for the Parade, which would have been a hefty fine if it were not finished in time to make the deadline.

The fine would not only be a monetary assessment but it would also deny him his eligibility for the next Parade of Homes.

My mother helped me with some work that provided the money to pay my bills, like the lot rent.

It was spring when we got the Jayco, and that summer is when I discovered Cobb’s Home Builder signs on a road in the area that indicated the construction of homes for sale.

What interested Cobb? The Stuin drama stories were his main interest. [End of run-down]

Chapter

This Moran project started in the summer while at Conestoga, after stumbling upon his home signs after Stuin.

The Moran projects kept me supplied with steady work for the time being.

There were also the various projects that were going on in Cobb’s shop, especially building the cabinet doors and drawers for cabinetry that went into the houses Cobb was building in the area.

Cobb would continue to use me for his profits and pleasure, needing anything to avoid himself in conversations. He only continued to appear as though doing good things for the sake of his wife’s observance but when she was gone from the picture, the hood came off and the horns came out, an acute, and classic resemblance, of a man with two faces.

He started me out on the ranch style homes he was cobbling together, where he “let me” put in a hardwood floor after having me help with the paint finishes.

Little did I know, he was just amusing himself by keeping me around while he fought his own demons- venting his frustrations onto me.

Sandy was constantly nagging me about helping, so I finally had an opportunity to bring her along on a project.

The flooring product was real wood, a product that came prefinished. It was a beautiful looking product called “Dirty Maple.” It was three quarters of an inch thick by two and one-quarter inches wide, and of various lengths.

The flooring was to be “stretched” from the front door to the staircase, throughout the kitchen, dining room, down one hallway, into a laundry room, and, down another hallway into a bathroom, where it met right up to the bathtub.

This particular spot is where Vinyl should be placed.

I remember it very well, not because I had to manufacture my own turn around strips due to Cobb intentionally setting me up with stuff that was the wrong size in order to take my payout down on the installation! It was because of Sandy and her damned hiking boots.

Oh yeah, Sandy loved helping.

On the day the job was finally completed, we were cleaning up and filling nails holes when I happened to notice a small dent in the wood floor.

Bending down closer, I became horrified.

Everywhere in an area of at least ten square feet were dents, gouges, and scratches in the finish.

The replay of this area went through my mind. It was where Sandy was on her knees, racking together assortments of wood pieces for me to install.

Her boots had these metal rings and eyelets riveted to the top of them. They were your typical hiking boots.

She sat on her feet while working, gouging the flooring and carving long dents into the surface.

There were no visible scratches at the time, hidden by the sawdust and scrap pieces on the floor, nothing to indicate that this was happening.

My attention was focused on installing and cutting the end pieces to fit up to within a quarter of an inch of the wall in order to be trimmed out with the baseboard, (cheapening out on the shoe molding), for the finish.

Her and her footwear never occurred to be a possible problem to me. I was so pleased with having a project to make money on that it never occurred to me.

The worst part of it was that it was a section of flooring right smack in the middle of the room.

It was right in the middle of the entire field of work.

I silently blew a gasket.

Taking a long slow deep breath, I had to figure out how to handle the situation.

Having a certain amount of confidence in being able to handle it or somehow hide it, I loaded up the van and took her back home, telling her that, since I was done and it was still early in the day, I had to go to the shop to help Cobb with a few things, and submit my bill to get paid.

It was a small lie but the intention was to not attack Sandy, which would have been explosive.

Getting the tools back out, I realized that my work was really cut out for me this time.

Now was the moment of truth, to see if I was cut out to repair it.

Since Cobb was a Dutchmen first, and a carpenter last, he squeaked when he walked.

There was only enough of the flooring material to do the whole job, calculating out where the wood would go next as the pile shrunk, saving him on carpeting or tile expenses.

It was basically free flooring, having accumulated it, here and there, from past projects.

Luckily for me, I am an extremely conservative person when it comes to material handling. And, since I was told there was just enough material to get through the job, I had to be extra conscientious and methodical.

I had managed to use the right pieces of flooring which took me quite a bit more time installing.

After rounding all of the scrap up, there was just a little bit more than what I could use for a small fire.

The wood I had put in the closets would just have to get pulled up, no big deal.

The advantage I had was that my math skills were just two percent better than his, making me the only one who knew the truth.

It would have done no good to tell Sandy about it, and her helping fix it wouldn’t have made things better either. She had enough pain dealt to her in life, so I was just going to absorb this whole ordeal myself.

It worried me to death that someone would show up while I was in the middle of it, namely, Cobb. The end of hearing about it would never come if he did find out.

Sandy could never understand why she couldn’t just come along and help me on the jobs. I’d tell her, “It’s not about you, it’s about you not being covered by the liability insurance.” I would tell her, “The employer or contractor accepts the responsibility for certain people on the job. It’s not open to the public to come and watch.”

I could never use enough tact to get her to understand that, or maybe she just refused to hear it so, I caved and brought her along anyway even though I’d catch a whole world of additional grief because of her. I was risking losing a job that I needed desperately but I couldn’t win either way I played it.

This would seem true with every person I dealt with.

Grabbing a drill and a one and one quarter inch paddle bit, I strategically picked a spot in the floor and started drilling, while praying the whole time for Cobb not to show up as I worked at the repair.

My hammer and a chisel, along with a lot of hope, helped to extract that first piece.

I started drilling more holes, got out an extra hammer, placing the head in the hole, driving it out from where the piece was locked in with the other hammer. It was a bent over, drilling, chiseling, hammering task. I worked like a madman for a few hours, start to finish, all backside and elbows- one hundred square feet of flooring in total.

Now there wasn’t anything left but sawdust and a couple of pieces with the ends cut off that I could throw on the fire pile.

Right next door to this project was one of the last games I played with Cobb.

Chapter

While riding back from a project in Ada Township, Cobb received a phone call. It was Ricky, his excavator- just a drunken buddy of his that was calling about when and where he was to deliver a load of fill sand. They laughed and giggled back and forth like a couple of juveniles- Beavis and Butthead come to mind.

The conversation was very easily heard because the Nextel phone earpiece was audible from where I sat in the van at the time.

When Ricky asked who the “lucky guy” was going to be for their little game, Cobb was quick to say that he sat right here, turning to look at me as he told Ricky to put the sand in the garage.

When Cobb hung up, he told me that he needed me to install the drainage tile around the footing, and to place the sand in the basement, according to preparation for the concrete to be poured for the floor slab.

Naturally, I couldn’t back away from the job since I had to have the money to pay my bills. No one else was willing to work with me due to my unemployable status from injuries to my back, neck, and head, from the accident in September of 1997.

Cobb had me right where he wanted me.

Coincidentally, Ricky owned the land that Cobb was building the houses on.

The land was cut up into parcels, which Cobb had been buying with large amounts of money- in cash.

Cobb had me ride along with him to make the money drop, which was done in a church parking lot, on the corner of 68 Avenue and Leonard Street, around nine p.m. that night.

Bob flaunted the money in my face, having me count it out for him, as if I had never held that much money at one time. It was just another part of his constant head game he played with me.

Ricky showed up shortly after we did, handing over a white time capsule looking container that had a sort of combination lock thing that you had to twist to get it opened. It was a two quart sized unit that he buried in his yard somewhere.

So there I was, the next day, with little more than a utility knife and a shovel.

There was no wheelbarrow and the sand was in the garage just as Bob had asked.

To my surprise, this was located as far from where it needed to go as it could really get.

The only thing farther would have been the hole it had come from.

My task was to install the drain tile and take the sand from the garage, all the way around the back of the house, in through a window of the basement, to fill and level the area, for the floor.

One issue that I had to deal with first was that the tile had to connect with the tile that was around the footing of the garage- having to dig under the footing to locate it because it wasn’t sticking through the wall where it was supposed to be.

This was very frustrating because as I dug, the earth from above (sand) was caving in on me as I tried to work, creating an hourglass affect like being buried in the sands of time.

The sand kept coming and coming.

It seemed like forever while I struggled with the ordeal.

It occurred to me that this was how Cobb had envisioned me getting the sand in the basement, by draining it from the garage like this.

Surely it would drive me mad, as well as wreck my back, leaving me covered in filth.

He had expected that Sandy would be with me, and that we’d both be tortured by the exercise but the joke was on him because I left her out of it entirely.

Getting some boards for shoring, I began fighting to get them into the hole to stop the sand from flowing, managing to buy myself enough relief to actually get the tile installed the way it is supposed to be.

By the time I finished with the tile, the cement guys showed up to prepare the site for concrete delivery, remarking on the “idiots who put the fill sand in the garage.”

I started to tell them something about it when they broke out the wheelbarrows and began moving it to where they needed it.

I didn’t follow through with that comment because I had suffered enough humiliation. I didn’t need to risk their comments to further the degradation.

They said they were a day early but were in the area with a little time to work with so, they decided to get an early start. This was all part of their job, not mine.

The conversation, between Cobb and Ricky, was still playing in my mind about where to put the sand. They were just two bullies planning a dastardly scheme of impossibility, placing me there under-tooled to break my back. I had driven myself mad trying, all the while knowing what they had conspired, and refusing to let a couple of cheats beat me.

Here I was, a highly trained, and highly skilled tradesman, playing in the dirt for no reason but jealousy and hatred.

This had been a job for three to four unskilled laborers.

My stroke of luck was the concrete guys arriving a day earlier than Bob had planned on. My guardian angels at work again?

In the meantime, Cobb was on the north end of Grand Rapids, at the real job, installing decorative columns that I had built. His fear was that the builder would recognize who the real Finish Carpenter was, between the two of us.

The builder was anxious to meet me but Cobb wanted to keep me hidden from view, absorbing the credit, and the money, for what I had been doing in the recent weeks, the main reason for his efforts at destroying me in my mind, destroying my confidence, the confidence that he wished he had.

How sad it is to see the sicknesses of today’s men active.

It was easy to imagine the conversation he was having, the same conversations I had heard from him so many times in the recent past of others, and the things he had done directly, and caused to be done, to them.

He laughed while hiding his insecurities, reveling in duping the only guy that cared about life’s big picture enough to understand him, to forgive him, to fight back with kindness, while feeling sad for the love his wife must long to feel.

Sandy and I would eventually catch him in his deception and lies, red-handed that next couple of days.

I kept journals that have accumulated over the years. There are many things in them about my relationship with Cobb, lying dog-eared in dark cubbies awaiting my reflection.

The tides and tune soon changed and I ended up working for my mom more often, once again needing to pay the lot rent and to make a trailer payment, and, in need of a vehicle since my van had taken the toll of time and wear that I could not afford, especially after it was impounded by the Coopersville Police, whom had a hand in rendering it inoperable, which I found out when I tried to collect it from the impound yard.

The van wouldn’t start or respond. I don’t know what they did to it but what they did do was make sure I wouldn’t be sleeping in it anywhere around their little village.

Mom had a house in Conklin that I had been working on for some time, earning myself a small amount of money to cover my bills, eventually giving me the truck she had for sale.

We would finish out the winter at River Pines, enduring a constant battering of the negative energy that started with our own.

Mom agreed to help us get another lot at a campground somewhere else when we finally paid the trailer off, ending up at, the “Kozy Kountry Kampground,” north of Ravenna, just over the Muskegon border. [Note how it say’s KKK]

Sandy began working at a nursing home in Coopersville, where the staff would routinely help themselves to the drugs in the cart, and to the belongings of some of the residents. They would come in on their days off and say things like, “you don’t see me here.” We feared Sandy would be implicated when, and if, anyone ever caught on to what was going on there. We felt a felony drug charge always threatening her. She soon decided to quit after only working there about two or three months. Which was about how long we lasted at, the “Kozy Kountry Kampground.”

Sandy had taken the truck to work one day, leaving me there at the trailer with some beer.

I am not sure that the place wasn’t haunted. It may even be located on Sacred Native American burial grounds.

At some point, I began running around the countryside gathering greens to cook up, since it was springtime and there were plenty everywhere that could be picked.

The park management caught sight of me, calling my mother, saying that I was looking like a crazy man and that he was getting complaints.

She came out that night to have me pack up so we could pull out, taking the trailer to her property until we could find another place to take it.

Since I was already near the Conklin project, I would continue working there.

Sandy decided that I had worked enough and demanded that I stop, saying that the truck was more than paid for, and that my mother was taking advantage of me.

She would go with me, cleaning up around the living quarters my mom had occupied in the basement at that time, even though my mother told her to not mess with her things.

It wasn’t long before Sandy found some magazines of Tom’s, titled “Barely Legal.”

She went ballistic, shredding them and throwing the pieces all over the kitchen and sitting area, and screaming at me.

We argued for several minutes before she jumped in the truck and left to go back to where the trailer was parked at my mother’s property in Marne.

We had no money to speak of, except for a food stamp card and the empty beer cans around the area.

Wright Township, in Ottawa County had an ordinance that may still be effective to this day. It states that you cannot occupy a trailer without a permit, which no permits were being issued for such a dwelling situation.

This is probably due to a couple of factors, one being the sewage, and two being that it degrades the surrounding community.

The van was the only place we had to stay in that wouldn’t get my mother a fine.

Sometimes we would sleep over at a friend’s house, or in parking lots in our van around the local area.

One day, the van was impounded because we were busted for vagrancy, Sandy left on foot and I was sent to a shelter in Muskegon.

It didn’t take long for me to decide that, Muskegon and the shelter, was not the right place for me to be so, I set off for very long walk back to Coopersville the very next day.

Sandy and I tried to get the van out of impound but we realized they had disabled it to where I could do nothing with it but leave it there to be scrapped out.

My mother finally relinquished the truck to me because of it.

That night, Sandy and I stayed at the trailer, staying up late into the evening, discussing what we were going to do.

The next morning, I got up and left her to rest a while longer because we had been up pretty late the night before.

Quietly, I began sprucing the place up a bit while I waited for the day to begin for us. I took care of everything but for a radio I had sitting on a small storage cabinet. The plug was in the wall socket by the sink, which stretched across the hall from where the radio sat.

When Sandy finally got up, she walked to the rear of the trailer to get fresh clothing, stepping over the cord. As she tried this maneuver her foot caught the cord, where she tripped and she fell face forward to the floor.

Still, to this day, I can’t say why the plug didn’t just fall out of the wall or any number of things but I suppose it’s all relative to gravity, her footing, and the dynamics of weight and balance, along with having slow reflexes.

As she fell forward and went down, her arm caught the end of the bed, where a corner of it stuck out into the hall about four inches.

I heard the “pop” sound of bone breaking.

She lied there a moment and moaned, “Oh no! Oh no!”

That was that. Her arm was broken.

Helping her up from off of the floor, I could see that, from her shoulder to her elbow, the upper part of her arm had an unusual curve to it.

That forced me to immediately call mother because we had no gas or money for gas, and Sandy needed to get to the hospital.

What’s crazy is, that we had been fighting for days. The biggest and most recent was over the magazines she had found near the microwave and coffee maker area, in a pile of other like-sized paper items.

She went absolutely crazy when she saw them.

See, it was her idea to help by cleaning up all of the time. It was her M.O. to spruce up the house she was at for people.

She lacked the perception to take the hints from my mother, not to clean up her messes. And so, she found something that she wasn’t supposed to find.

Tom was pretty angry about it, especially since he sold the books to his buddy when he was done with them. It was an effort to get the money back that he spent for them- money he definitely couldn’t afford at the time. He expected me to pay for them because of what Sandy had done.

It was a few days after that blow-out, the morning that I drove her to the hospital, that I saw the words written in the dirt on the driver’s side of the windshield: “I Love Pussy Books.”

My eyes couldn’t believe it. And, I wondered how many people might have seen it while I had been driving around to various places in the days between the incidences.

I laugh out loud now but it wasn’t even on the same planet as funny when it happened.

My mother still, to this day, thinks I had something to do with breaking her arm.

Anyway, I took her to the emergency room and called Sandy’s son, Richard, only after I realized what they were going to do or not do, in order to get her the help that I was not able to coax them into giving her because of my inability to effectively or cordially, communicate in stressful situations since receiving my closed head injury.

Ever since then I have a personality disorder that is aggressive and seemingly violent at times.

It would only be about four or five days, after her arm became broken, before we would break up once and for all but that was only because on one of those nights I went to Danny’s loft to sleep on the couch, instead of sleeping out in the truck on the street-side in front of the Butterworth Hospital.

Butterworth Hospital was not going to fix Sandy’s arm. They were going to send her home maimed.

Her arm was very badly broken, lengthways- ending up with a Titanium rod, plates, and, screws. Had it not been for calling Richard, she would be crippled.

When I went to the hospital with booze on my breath, boy, was she angry.

After explaining that I had stayed at Danny’s, she was even more irate because I might have been doing some greater wrong, like playing music or just drinking without her.

From the first night at the hospital, there was a Possessiveness that I had failed to see fully until then.

She wanted me to stay with her in the room, which was not an issue for me to do at all.

It was the medical staff in her area that asked me to leave, saying, “It’s just a broken arm,” so, I went out to the truck and slept nights.

After a few of these nights of sleeping in the cab of the truck, I paid the price in pain, not to mention meter fees.

My lower back and neck proved to need surgery once I resumed going to doctors a few years later, and little did I know, I was leaking spinal fluid the whole time.

On one of the first nights, I ran into Danny at a liquor store. He was on his way to go back to his studio at the loft in the Gezon Building.

This warehouse was only a mile and a half from the hospital that Sandy was at.

The hospital was on Michigan Avenue, and the warehouse building was on Plainfield Avenue, by the Flying Bridge Fish Market.

It was the old Gezon building that Sandy and I had done the late night emergency repairs in.

It is amazing that we didn’t run into Danny on that night we fixed the doors.

Danny and I talked and drank, laughed, did some art works, played a little music, listened to some tunes, smoked a puff of grass, and that was where I stayed after that- Unfortunately much to Sandy’s disapproval. Or was it unfortunate?

Danny and I were very close friends. Out of all of the things that happened to me, and out of all of the situations, and people that I became acquainted with and went through in life, Danny was the gem of them all. He would prove to be the one person that I would end up recognizing and giving full credit to for my getting my life back to belonging to me, that is, if it ever did.

When Sandy got out of the hospital, I took her to Danny’s place to see for her self. Of course, all she could see was an orgy going on, as if it was a pad of male sirens luring women in with advertisements that “we could be had”, as Sandy would put it.

She went right to her son’s house, for a place to stay, that day.

The agreement was made between them that there would be “no more Zach.” That was fine with me since I now hated, loathed, and even despised going out in public with her, only to be accused of looking at other women.

I had to be drooling over them. They were there!

And she always said so, so, it had to be true.

It was only too much time wasted before I realized how truly Jealous, Insecure and Paranoid she was.

Yeah, if there was a woman within view, I was looking.

[Funny thing is, out of all the grief I dealt with, I felt sorry for her and women everywhere who had been abused and neglected so badly, (starting with their own fathers, in their infancies), that they didn’t know how to respond when someone was genuine and earnest.

These people become so accustomed to getting stepped upon that they are always ready for it. And if they don’t actually see it, that doesn’t mean it isn’t there. It’s always there. I wanted to take all of these people into my arms and show them that LOVE is REAL. It hurts me to see people bare the scars of abuse. It goaded me and fueled my thirst, a thirst that was already overwhelmed with the fuel from my own pains that were much the same, with the same scars that go unseen by the untrained eye and the untrained conscience.]

She and I would continue to speak, for a little while, in between working and living at my mom’s house in Conklin, where I slept in an old camper van that she had in the backyard. It had belonged to my Uncle Bill and Aunt Bernice. It was full of bees but I stayed in it anyway, with my wolf/German Sheppard mix, Dusty, accompanying me. This went on through the autumn season.

I only remember because one night I was going to the Pit Stop bar for Karaoke but I was going too fast and didn’t see the stop sign coming, missing my chance to stop.

The road didn’t go through so, there was only the left and right to turn on.

My wheels locked up on the slippery surface, sliding through the intersection and ending up stuck head first in the ditch.

It was a long walk back to Tom’s hog farm, where I had just been at but he came up with his truck to pull me out.

What we realized was that the ditch I was in was too deep, leaving only the tail end of the truck sticking almost straight up.

He had to go back to the barn to get his tractor.

Sandy had wanted me to give her the truck after she burned a bunch of important things in her friend’s backyard while staying there for a few days.

One of these things was the title to the trailer that we had just paid off.

She would fight me over my meds, trying to use them for herself. She would fight with me about my mother. She would fight with me about everything, breaking CD's that I liked or smashing things that were sentimental.

Hindsight, I was too foolish to see that a woman scorned has no hope or seems not to, that is until she can get over it. Unfortunately, there are some things that people never get over. You would have to know what being scorned truly is to understand.

We all get robbed in a way, especially robbed by someone who is close to us, but we forgive him or her anyway, for ourselves. It’s the only way we can carry on, fulfilling our obligations to those who are entitled to them, our loved ones.

The constant reminders of being victimized by my ex-wife, coupled with the loss of my own family, my identity, my business, and, my manhood, was the main source of fuel for the vehicle that slowly carried me toward complete destruction- a final release that I miserably sought for subconsciously- one drink at a time.

The words of my ex-wife would, and sometimes still, echo in my head like a movie that I am being forced to watch.

Visions of her and our children bombard me. Little did I realize, it was part of my medical condition, Frontal Lobe Syndrome, compounded trauma, P.T.S.D.- Shell shocked.

My days would come and go, unknown to me. I rarely know what day it is or what time it is. My life is sometimes a blur and I am a madman. Some one should have hospitalized me. Alcohol was the only medication readily available. It was as if I was a Marionette. I had little to no control of anything. Food had been, and still sometimes is, of no concern. Bathing and grooming were, and still sometimes are, of little or no concern. My only concerns were tobacco and alcohol, and, weed if I could manage them.

I didn’t drink to get high. I drank to die.

Chapter

Although I couldn’t outright bring myself to die in the here and now, it was all I could hope for because all hope seemed to be lost.

My soul was crying nonstop, and I had no one to cling to, no one to call, and no one who would take time to care, except for Danny, when I finally relocated him.

That was how I got involved with the people who lurked in the shadows, people who panhandled for change and cigarettes, outside of the college crowd bars, in Eastown, Michigan.

This bar area was where I ran to when Mindy announced her plans.

These people and their demons latched onto me in their ways.

The trials and tribulations of my life that would pose the biggest challenge to my evolving as an individual, and pose the biggest threats to my life, began here, at that point in Eastown, when Minderella destroyed my home, my family, and the futures of my children as they were becoming in that Reality that I helped to largely shape.

This trip I went on was a long strange trip, to say the least. I can only describe it at that moment, as a round trip that started on Earth and went to the far edges of space, to every galaxy at the speed of light.

It was extreme misery, a broken heart and failure that never would look away, staring me in the face like a showdown.

I pulled the trigger and watched as the bullet hung there before me, taking lifetimes to reach me in order to pierce my heart so, I ran toward it. And, it seemed the faster I ran toward it, the longer it took.

It was as if it only got further away as I tried to get closer to an end to my life, laughing as it evaded me.

Imprisoned in this new Reality, nothing could ever really hurt me further.

I was mesmerized by it.

It would be, what felt like, a lifetime to get through but would only seem as a blink of an eye in my past.

It proved that I was not meant to die yet but what was I alive for?

I smoked tobacco because I was nervous, and used pot because of my nightmares and anxiety. I consumed copious amounts of alcohol because I was miserable with pains- my back, my teeth, and in my heart and my soul. I used it all to make me feel better, to feel better until I could be dead.

And then I found Danny but I’ll get to that.

Celebration on the Grand was being advertised on WLAV FM, which was my favorite classic rock station.

It was on in my truck when I drove, and in my area of control where ever I worked at most days.

I heard it while working at Pearlspherlife as a mold and pattern maker for, Randy Baima, cousin to Doug Baima- the guy who had a hand in black balling me from area employment after my accident.

Doug was the developer I had, most recently, worked for as a subcontractor, installing the Finish Carpentry in residential homes throughout the region.

Maybe it was all a freak accident that I was struck by that Semi or maybe it was part of my destiny.

If I had only waited for another day and time to give my friend, and band mate, Ron Votes, window replacement estimates on his house, maybe this wouldn’t have happened to me but I did not. That would have changed the events that would end up robbing me of my health, home, family, and, livelihood.

The head injury that was sustained had altered my perception and my life, and would directly affect my ability to run my business, contaminating my business relationships that I had been maintaining.

All of my relationships changed, and I saw nothing better on the horizons of Life.

Was I meant to rebuild for something better? My Destiny?

Shortly after the accident on the highway, I would be “phased out” and “blackballed,” destroying my opportunities almost completely.

Coincidentally, Randy was one of the only people to respond to my resume.

He was the only person to offer employment but without proper medical services being provided, there would be no recognition made of the extent of those injuries that lie under the surface, yet to reveal themselves to the layman or victim- those around me and myself.

The whole ball of twine, that was my life, unraveled into a big knotted up mess that I would spend the next 22 years trying desperately to unravel and salvage.

The pile that lay at my feet only grew as memories, bits and pieces. And, almost all of the mess was lost in the panic to salvage my past, present, and what would become my future.

One of the many dreams, about the damage sustained, was of my performing a sort of brain surgery on myself.

With a few mirrors, and minimum tools, I cut the top of my skull off and attached hinges.

There was not a brain but a pair of Reel-to-Reel tapes, like the guts of two VHS tapes standing side by side.

The reels were off of their axis points and jostled from their placement. And, the tape was in a big birds nested wad, like a messed up fishing reel or something.

I tried and tried to unravel it but it was otiose.

Eventually, I admitted defeat and cut out the knots.

My concerns were of all of the knowledge and memories I had lost- the extent of it is still being revealed as I remember bits of that which I cannot restore.

The flip-top head image comes to mind a lot. That must have registered first after my repairs to the recording device that I attempted in my dream.

It was, what I think was, Randy’s pity on me that gained me the opportunity in his corporation.

Except for the seriously dry and dusty shop atmosphere, it was here, where I would gain a real friend, a gift that would be of great value later on, when I was nearer to finished and ready to give up entirely.

Everyone was genuinely friendly to me at Pearlspherlife. I liked them a lot and had a pretty good understanding of them all, for the most part.

We were a family. And, as a family does, I would tell them all about the family I had of my own- the kids, wife, and, Dusty, my dog. [Insert pic of Dusty]

Well, they were all sitting there with me, on break. We were talking and smiling, and happy.

Just then, she comes walking in or marching rather- Cody and Scarlett with her- Scarlett in her arms.

“Where’s your check?” she demanded.

Silence crashed down hard in the break room.

My co-workers were quick to conceal their discomfort by trying to go about their business, making it look as though they weren’t embarrassed for me- to have to observe this woman I was, just now, bragging about how fortunate I was to have in my life.

I was so naive, failing to see what was so clear to everyone else but I bought the tickets to dinner at the Celebration on the Grand, over the phone anyway, without a second thought.

We meandered around the downtown area, seeing the variety, and, taking in the atmosphere.

The band played on, at Rosa Parks Circle downtown, where Mindy said that there was something she needed to tell me.

I went into shock as the message was given, six years too late.

She needed to tell me that she didn’t want to be married.

She was given the choice immediately when she learned of the pregnancy but now she makes the announcement- at a celebration, of all places.

Shock took over as it sunk in.

Now she gets to change her mind?

Well, it wasn’t clear what she meant, and I am not 100 percent sure that I wasn’t happy.

She had to be joking, I thought. She couldn’t possibly think of leaving me now.

The part that bothered me, apart from her complaining about the fine establishment that the reservations were made for, and the patrons that dined there, not to mention that I spent my last five dollars on a cocktail for her, and not myself, was that, later she clarified that the scenario was, that she was simply removing me from the family entirely- not that she just wanted a divorce.

My kids, my wife, and all of my household, and everything in it, except for the dog, which was all I got besides my clothing and personal items. It was all gone for what I would later find out was another man that she had met in an A.O.L. chat room.

What a kick in the teeth!

I don’t believe I ever got over the reality of that humiliation.

Never has she apologized for what she has done- to me, to my family, to our children- to Cody.

I needed her to oversee the situation with the attorney involved in the lawsuit against the Grand Rapids Trucking Company, whom happened to be a friend of her family.

I needed to coordinate my medical needs, which were my going to speech pathologists and physical therapists, as well as, seeing the joke of a Family Practitioner that Blodgett Hospital referred me to- Dr. Marvin Smith.

Heartbreaking is only the introduction to the lengthy description for what it was, and still is. And, although I am in a much better place now, and finally happier, a recognition or admission would, at least, salve the wounds that re-open every time I am forced to see the damages in my only son or in all three of my children.

No wonder she made the announcement in a place so public. She obviously feared my reaction, and rightly so.

There are some who insist I should have beaten her a bit, earlier on in the relationship.

The problem with that is, when a person grows up with having to choke back on their anger for so long, it may become such a violent rage that it might not be controllable. It might not be something that you can stop.

I never wanted to see what my rage could become, and, therefore, kept it locked down tight for the fear that someone could be severely hurt or even killed.

How’s that for reality- knowing that you are in total control of something so volatile and potentially deadly? That’s the mark of a real man, in my opinion.

I bawled for months at the emasculating effect of her raping my heart- my home.

It got so bad that she decided we couldn’t just stay together in the same house, pretending that everything was normal, while she got up the nerve to throw herself at this man who wasn’t man enough to go out in public to win the affections of a woman, let’s say- at the grocery store.

How could a person put stock into someone who hasn’t the morals enough to think twice about messing around and violating someone’s marriage?

These people are cowards cloaking themselves in a digital age.

When would he show his face? To this very day, he has not.

Before she moved out she spent “our” money, going on a trip to South Carolina, as well as throughout the Gulf coast. This included attending a Lollapalooza Festival in Muskegon. I wasn’t invited on the getaway even though it was my life that had been severely disrupted, and myself whom truly needed the break.

My offspring were taken from me, to her parent’s house, to stay with them until she returned home.

She had went all over town, buying things at stores, using my name to open up lines of credit in order to stock up on “thneeds” for her new residence plans.

When she came home from her trip, boy, was I dumb, helping her with her luggage, while noticing she had smacked up the Plymouth Voyager that she had forced me to buy in order for us to go to a Thanksgiving Day gathering with my family in Bay City, instead of pooling in with my mother or sisters.

She just blew off the damage as no big deal.

I was overwhelmed with the feeling to look inside the suitcase before I even got to the door of the house.

Hoping to find a souvenir t-shirt saying something to the affect of, “My wife went to… and all I got was this stupid t-shirt,” but what I found was a red lace Teddy that I had purchased for her at Victoria Secret on some Hallmark Holiday.

I commented about it, saying that I thought it was odd to need a piece of extremely sexy lingerie for a solo trip to clear her head.

She turned white as she tried to back-peddle.

And, even though I didn’t have the mental faculties to understand it, denying she would do such a thing to me, it slowly sank in.

I became a bit hostile, asking why she needed this item, turning to her girlfriend, Mariah Schaller, whom had accompanied her to the music festival.

I asked Mariah to tell me what was going on, but she said nothing.

Silence slammed down again, as Mindy stomped around in a somewhat silent fit of rage, taking things from the house, placing them in the van, so she could go stay with her parents.

She asked her friend to help saying that she thought it would be best for her and our children to go stay “somewhere else.”

She would now be staying in her mom and dad’s lower level- the new phrase at that time, for the basement.

Mindy commented that they could live there comfortably, meaning more free from guilt.

Very soon after, she went there to stay, Mindy’s father, Marc, asked me if I would finish his basement.

I began working there in the evenings, and on weekends.

The work totaled four thousand dollars in value but I did it for free. It was a duel purpose- making it an affective way to see my kids, and get in her space in an attempt to resolve things between us.

The idea was to save our marriage but there was nothing to save since her heart had never been in it and I had known that truth for some time.

My sobriety had started and ended with her, having quit drinking to marry her after learning of her pregnancy. When she announced that she wanted a divorce my comment was simply, “I guess that means you won’t mind me having a beer then.”

That moment I went right to Mulligan’s Pub, in Eastown.

Even still, I was a glutton for punishment.

Maybe it was from being beaten regularly as a child. Who knows but I have a feeling that I would have outright killed her, had I not always been accustom to grief and pain.

Sometimes I catch myself wondering how long I would have spent in prison for ridding myself of her for real.

Chapter

Chuck Wood and I got along really well. We respected each other, becoming friends quickly, while working together at Pearlspherlife Incorporated.

He was with me in the beginning of the end, and he is with me in the beginning of the new ending.

He has seen my worst and he knows my best. And, I am one of the few people who him and his wife welcomed in their home.

It would be his friendship that would keep me going when I was at my worst.

Without Chuck, I would find no one, and anyone that may have been there to help was impossible for me to reach.

It wouldn’t be long before I would end up at my mother’s after Mindy left.

The decision to quit my job at Pearlspherlife was made at Christmas time.

The funny thing about that Christmas- the gift-giving season, was that the next shock came directly from my Father-in-law whom claimed to have begged Mindy not to go through with the divorce.

Only, his motives of seeming support were resting on a fact that I now learned, and that was, that I was actually renting the house at 738 Rosewood from him, when I was under the impression that he helped me buy it.

He was taking a profit from ME, taking away from my efforts, reducing his own house payment by combining two homes on one mortgage.

I tallied him onto my mental list, my “ridding” pile.

My mother would later tell me about Marc offering to buy her a saddle for her horse, and, of his desire to wear it while she helped him entertain his fecal fetish.

So, I ended up at my mom’s for a while, along with Stan, her worthless man-ling.

Stan had been recently fired from the Post Office. His error was his mentality.

Not everyone is employable. He constantly proved that.

One particular day, Stan took it upon himself to lighten his mailbag the most effective way he could think of, which was by throwing the bulk mail into the trash dumpster behind a McDonald’s.

Incidentally, the bulk mail, in particularly, happened to be the ADVO-system cards that have an advertisement on one side, and a missing child alert on the other. Out of all of the things, for a person, to throw away especially a parent!

An employee of McDonald’s had found the mail when they took out the trash.

Man, I would have loved to been a fly on the wall that day!

And how often was he doing this?

Stan had a trucking company now, resurrected from one of his earlier home-based business ventures.

The transport service was called “Top-Trans.”

The irony of that was that he was as close to the bottom as you could get.

Rarely could he find work. Nobody could work with him, and nobody could work for him.

Anyone that had hired him in the past wouldn’t even consider hiring him again. And, that was just sub-contract work.

At one time, he convinced some poor woman into marriage, and breeding with him, but that ended with tragedy as a result of his travesty of a contribution as a husband and a father.

This young lady tragically left him; killing the children and her self out of the sheer misery that he introduced and kept them in.

Our yard often smoldered in spots where Stanley had burned the material possessions that once belonged to his wife and children but that was just because he didn’t want anyone else to have them, especially the very people he was robbing and cheating in everyway he possibly could at that moment in time.

If he wasn’t burning things, he was chain smoking on the computer twenty-four hours a day, in a room that he took over and controlled in the house, even though my mother didn’t smoke or allow it in her house or around her, especially since her father had passed away from lung cancer.

When Stan wasn’t doing that, he was filling the property with pure junk at the immediate expense of my mother. It caused property devaluation and numerous complaints along with fines and harassment from the Wright Township office.

When he had idle time on his sick hands, he was running the washer and drier, with nothing in them, and flushing cigarette butts down the toilet in his campaign to ruin the appliances, cost excessive electricity use, ruin the septic system, and dry up the well.

I really can’t help but wonder what it would have taken to rid the world of him too.

How fortunate, for all of these individuals, that I am not a murderer. It would have been nothing to kill them but for my own principles, and added to the misery that would occupy me further with my own destruction.

They would lock me up and throw away the key if they knew how angry I could have easily justified being. For I know what the taste of blood is. And, I have been licking my wounds everyday of my life.

Now, let me tell you, no prison will ever compare to the prison that a child learns to live within without the inherent affections, and nurturing, that they didn’t ask to be here on Earth to have the need for.

It’s a curiosity I have. Was he was taking shots at my mother for his ex-wife’s actions?

Was he punishing her for the sake of making her suffer as he felt he had or was???

Strength is often, if not almost always, misunderstood: strength that it truly takes to be able to deal with these situations, and the memories- to control the bridle and bit on the beast of pain that runs rampant in the heart and mind, always needing to be channeled, giving energy to art- giving life to the art that I am living or dying to share.

Funny thing is, I go back and forth from wanting to share something with the world, to wanting the world to have nothing.

That the world, in general, does not deserve it but I tell myself that some forms of life on this planet exhaust themselves to give life to just one. If I can just give to one, other than myself, it will be worth the effort to catalogue things but even if I reach out to no one- in the end, at least I found something more to live for, while making myself happy by venting to conquer my pains.

It has been said, (and I am not sure by whom), that he who laughs the loudest on the outside cries hardest on the inside.

I have lived, and have to agree this to be mostly truth, for I have, literally, been in hysterics since the seeming subsidence of one of my earlier traumas.

So many people are in a state of hysteria.

Along with the attempts at taking the intentional risks that may cause death to a child, my stepfather invested a lot of time into terrorizing us, especially me. On top of that was the daily ridicule and psychological torments- often called an assortment of names, not in fun, like “turtle-neck” and “pout face” since I can ever remember, only to have Scoot and Scooter added to a list that would grow over the years.

That particular name started when I was learning to read and write, and had been so foolish not to save such an expensive vowel- for if I was ever on Wheel of Fortune.

My demonstration of what we were learning yielded the misspelling of my middle name. I would be taunted with this up until I was fifteen, coincidentally when he left.

The hysterics part started in late seventy-four when he took us to Six Flags over Atlanta Georgia, to see Jaws.

Rick, my stepfather, always loved to frighten us, genuinely frighten us.

Another strange coincidence is that Jenny was also traumatized by this film- only it wasn’t intentional. (Jenny is yet to come)

When the diver picked the tooth out of the hole in the hull of the sunken boat, and the decapitated head of a crew member rolled out, I went into shock- hysterical, with uncontrollable fits of screaming and laughter.

We were eventually ushered out of the theater when it was evident that I wasn’t going to calm down.

I would be maliciously reminded for a long time to come, that I pissed myself as well.

My childhood memories from then on, (because I only remember the lights on the ceiling from the day I was born) was none, to very small bits and pieces.

Most of the very few memories I have were mere moments, like walking the shores of Georgia’s Blue Ridge Lake, finding line and fishing lures among the rocks. My hopes were to find one with a big fish on the end of one.

Another was of playing with my sister at our Aunts hair salon, spending time in the pet store downstairs. The smell of cedar bedding is still in my nose.

Everything else has always been a blur- blacked out, though my wet sheets would be a reminder of the damage, and would remain a topic to be tormented with well into my teens.

Chapter- Stan’s Scandal

Now with Stan, he had his own way of protesting my existence, as if he wasn’t busy enough with his own tantrums.

After I found refuge at moms, he would do what he could to interrupt my efforts there. Like, when I built stalls for the horses because they were standing in a seeping sewage swamp, secreted silently in their stays.

The “office” addition in the shop end of the double length pole barn, that my mom had built, so she could live in it, needed to be finished. Her hopes were that Stan would move out entirely, as he had threatened to do if that was where she intended to move their domicile, only then to rent out the house that they had been living in, to someone who would actually pay her rent money.

She wouldn’t just tell him to get out because of the intimidation he used against her, like some prison tactic at running things, taking over the house and using her for all she was worth. She had hopes of a clean break.

The drywall needed to be hung, mud finished, flooring needed to be laid, and tongue and groove pine was to be installed to finish the ceilings (my favorite- “car siding”).

While this was going on, Stan began a new hobby of, nonchalantly, taking the tools (one at a time) and using me as the SCAPEGOAT, partly in his attempt to stop her from proceeding with her plan.

Stan had a semi trailer on our property where he’d place his treasures under lock and key. As I think about it now, his plan must have also been for new tools, to replace what he felt was missing from his own collection.

These tools Stan collected and swapped as he felt like it.

Viola! The tools would reappear but their replacements would disappear.

“Where did that come from?” My mom would ask.

“It’s been missing for weeks. Hey, wait a minute, now I can‘t find the saw I just bought!”

What a sorry little man.

It was otherwise a beautiful day when I witnessed his abuse of my mother, finally, in real time- yelling at my mother, telling her how stupid she was because he sent her to the auto parts store without enough information to get him whatever it was that he was making her buy, which was usually something senseless like nice clean plastic tubing that slips onto wiring because the stuff under the hood of his Semi had dust on it.

Stan Johnstone, living dead.

Where is a real-time smiting when it’s needed?

One morning, I awoke from the area where I slept on the floor of the living room to find that Stan was sitting in the room with a rifle or shotgun of some kind, while entertaining the idea of killing me.

I realize that, to an outside critic, I could be mistaken but there was no cleaning kit odor in the house, and he had never been seen at anytime with, nor did I have any clue that he ever had, any guns.

All of this, not to mention that it was “out of his area.” It would be like he left it lay in the yard.

Couple these deductions with the gift of clairvoyance.

He also had a small hydraulic rowing machine that he was using to build up his strength. It was obvious that he was working up to something. [FLATTERED!]

I am not mistaken, later learning of his intentions from the messenger- my mother.

The final motivating factor in Stan wanting to kill me may have been due to my having taken one of my mother’s cars out the night before- drinking and smoking crack cocaine with Muddy Water’s Niece, Hope. Then, on the way home, smacking the Ford Festiva up a bit.

My control of the vehicle was lost when exiting from the west bound highway I-96, at the Marne exit.

The exit has a very short and compact curve where I ended up too wide on the turn, and off of the road, taking out the road sign that indicated a train crossing ahead.

The signage must have ripped a hole in the gas tank.

I might have misjudged the distance and lost focus on my speed accordingly. Go figure.

I had recently gained employment at 84 Lumber.

By taking the train tracks in Marne, I could get to the job fairly easily since it was just off of the tracks near Sand Creek.

That was where I set up camp to live for a while- hoping to save some money to get back on track with.

This was a great spot because it was very close to my new job, making it easy to walk to work.

Camp was right off of the train tracks, and right on the edge of the creek, where I would refrigerate my beer- making a rocky enclosure in the water to hold it from being swept away by the current.

There was a felled tree right there that was over two feet wide in diameter, suspended up off of the ground by it’s root structure about three feet. This made for a pretty good shelter.

One night, in the fall, I had been at the old Silo Gopher bar, now called the Pickle back Bar, where I probably drank five pitchers of Killian’s Red beer.

Rinaldi’s sub shop was across the street, making it a great dinner option for around four and a half bucks for a beef and cheese steak sub. I went over and made the order, and then went back to the bar to drink until it was ready.

Well, I made it back to the camp with my food, almost.

It was not so moonlit that night, causing me to take the wrong trail to my camp, the one closest to the edge of the creek, where it ran along close to the edge of the muddy bank.

I slipped in the mud and darkness and fell in.

The water must have been five or six feet deep.

The new blue jean pants I was carrying, when I fell in, were never found when went back the next day on a salvage mission, thinking I threw them up on the bank before I climbed out of the frigid water.

Instantly sobered right up, I made the best decision I could at that moment.

My feet started marching the train tracks towards my friend Jimmy’s parent’s house, eating my sub sandwich along the way.

As I ate it, I appreciated how well they wrap them up because it was perfect. It didn’t get wet at all and was still hot as I ate it, contributing to fighting off hypothermia.

Jimmy’s parents house was a bit of a safe haven for me so, I knew I could go there in an emergency, which I felt this was.\

He was one of my only friends that I had, beginning in 1980, and going our separate ways because of his wife, and their lifestyle, around 1990- more or less.

We continued to associate from time to time until 2003, which is the last time I ever spoke to him. This was secondary to Glenda, but primarily because of Jimmy’s cocaine addiction.

When I got there they let me in, where I immediately stripped out of my wet clothes and passed out in a chair wearing a big bath towel.

The next day I awoke to being sounded about sleeping naked in a recliner chair. Apparently Jimmy’s sister Carol and her husband lived there with their daughter of about ten years of age.

That was when realized my mind reading ability must have been shorted out when I got submerged in the creek.

My clothes were dry so, I dressed and left without reminding them I had nothing else to wear.

I started off to go to work, where I would eventually be invited to stay at a co-workers place. He and his girlfriend lived on the west side of Grand Rapids. I cannot recall her by name, oh wait- it’s Laura. Her name was Laura Larson, and she had a son with this guy, which was about five years old.

At one point in the relationship, they had broken up.

She went away, met another man, who was from Brazil, and ended up pregnant with another child- a girl.

It was this little girl that stayed in the bedroom that was in the front of the house, in the first room on the right as you walked up to the front door.

The room had a couple windows, one facing the road, the other facing the neighbor’s house to the south. These windows were extremely messed up, to say the least. They covered in, what looked like mud or brown paint.

Soon, I learned about this room where the “man” had been keeping a bulldog puppy of sorts, and a lot of other information that was, to me, pertinent to the welfare of this child.

It would be several days to a week before I would digest it all. And I’m not convinced I wasn’t supposed to be there to help the child- sent by angels to save her life, I am sure.

Was this a test of my ability to care for others, while still dealing with my own misery?

The smell that came from that room was terrible and would keep me out of it until I had a better understanding of what that room was, and what it meant.

When I learned that the child was sleeping in there, knowing it was also used as the dog’s room, I really started working towards finding a solution.

Matt was unabashed about my witnessing his dog training techniques- holding the dog with one hand by the back feet, while smacking the Dog about the face. He would explain that he was trying to turn the dog into a vicious fighting dog.

A visualization of the scenario flashed in my head several times afterwards: the dog and child being placed together in hopes that it would kill her.

It would appear as if it was only a room the dog was left in routinely, and the child had accidentally gone in there to play with it. It would not appear as though it was also being used as the child’s room. It would look like she wanted to play in there with the puppy.

It’s amazing that she didn’t die from the fecal contamination!

There was a small piece of foam rubber that resembled a crib mattress. It was heavily soiled in feces.

Poop was smeared and caked on all walls, doors, and window surfaces four feet up everywhere.

In the meantime, the manling was getting his paycheck cashed and getting the word STRIFE tattooed across his upper back with what little money he had left after his steady diet of Coca-Cola and fast food.

He was intentionally torturing this little girl, and tormenting the household, mostly because he wasn’t man enough to accept his failures at being able to maintain and contribute to a household or to correct his mistakes and actuate his future, his destiny- or what seemed to be his fate.

He was angry at her for who knows how many selfish reasons but the most important issue was over her bringing another child, from another lover she became acquainted with after their break-up, into the scenario when he finally decided he wanted to try again or to use her again or when she decided. Either way… an attempt at salvaging what they once had as a couple for the sake of the children or their son or so it would appear.

We call them sore losers where I come from.

And as for the mom, Laura, it’s a sad day when a woman is so emotionally crippled, and lacking in confidence, and self-esteem because of the nurturing deficiencies in her up-bringing and relationships, that she fails in her responsibilities by getting knocked up regardless if she has the means to care for an additional child.

Man, he was, in Earthly form but this manling was just a piece of filth that hadn’t yet found his calling as a prison inmate.

Strange, just as the feces smeared all over the room, he was smeared all over those children and their mother’s life.

Her starvation for attention and affection was what would lead her to briefly throw herself at my feet, and that was when my foothold to motivate her to change the situation took place.

With my influence, and mentioning the child protective authorities coming and taking her kids, she would walk into that disaster to face it head on, as far as the “living condition” and the dog being housed in the same room.

The situation with the manling would be a whole ’other battle that she would have to deal with entirely on her own.

As I think about it now, I had an opportunity to have him arrested for negligence and abuse, at the least, but I didn’t have the hate or anger or maybe the ability to call the police, of all people, or the comprehension of the dynamics or to understand the big picture.

What I did know was that this child’s living situation had to be addressed immediately.

Whether she left or he left, I do not know but I think they did end up splitting up completely. It’s too bad it didn’t happen before the manling allowed his iguana to bite their son’s nose off.

This animal had no cage, sometimes also being kept in the little girl’s room. This creature was left free to roam around the house. Their son’s nose had to be sewn back on. It was a nasty scar left on his face, and something he has to look at and relive for the rest of his life.

This Iguana was large, which over four feet, in my limited education, is large for an iguana. I ended up proving that it was never taken care of and was “misplaced.” Later, it was found somewhere in the walls of the house, where it died. It must have been a nice surprise for their landlord the day that he found it.

My west-side adventure at Matt and Laura’s hovel was what led me to find Matt and Sara.

Capter

One day, I decided to try to buy a used guitar from anyone I could find one.

For some reason I began lurking around the payphone outside of Edzu’s Liquor Store, where I’d inquire to customers who looked like they might be artists or musicians.

Surely, this was an effort I thought would put a wedge in between my drinking and my occasional crack cocaine use, but it was more mysterious feeling than that.

I likened the experience to Salmon returning to spawn or a Mariposa Monarch on its journey to Mexico, taking three lives to get there, and three more to get back; a true wonder of the world.

It was a force that had been trying to guide me to something in my life since I was a child. I have always been, well, stubborn, I guess. I have always done everything the hardest way possible- blazing my own foolish trail in life it seems.

Destined to get there but taking the long scenic route. I don’t recommend that for regular everyday people, the psychiatrist would probably just say, “it’s remarkable,” which doesn’t generally interpret to a good thing, by the way.

It’s a coin toss, supernatural or chance. Either way, this was what led me to Matt and Sara, beginning our relationship as friends, and giving me another shot at learning something in life.

This would be about the time, at a Dairy _­Queen on the corner that I would get to see my kids for the first time since she took them away from me. Luckily, these children of mine were not at the John Ball Zoo, when the manling Laura was with put a rope out for the monkeys, which found their way out of the pit-style containment, only to attack people and children. One was bitten repeatedly about the face and head.

Matt was never caught or turned in but he boasted to me about this “feat,” admitting how he did it- tying a length of rope to the picnic tables along a fence lined area that overlooked the pit, directing the loose end into the area within reach of the monkeys.

He also bragged about some other crimes involving a sawed off shot-gun but guys like him speak of so much in their efforts to fit into their ego suits that you really can’t believe one word they say.

Strife, ironically enough, will be a large part of this manlings existence, which will, more than likely, prove to reward him for the rest of his life, just as he deserves.

Maybe you’d call it Karma, and the reward would be Strife.

My hope is for someone wise enough to recognize, in his errors, as well as my own, lessons for themselves. Necessary Evil, as they say.

The world is small, so I am sure the future will produce Ms. Larson, and her children, eventually. Maybe I will be able to see some good I have done for someone else, in them. It would be reassuring, and reinforce my faith in humanity, which I sometimes desperately need.

As for my relationship with Matt and Sara Howell, they were steady consumers of beer and weed, but I am certain that the beer was a substitute for her coke habit and it just became an everyday thing for them.

Eventually, Matt would discover a love for fishing that would pull him away from alcohol, which was a minute Demon compared to this woman he so naively called his wife.

Sara was a shock-jock. She covered herself in tattoos and wore very suggestive and revealing clothing-like items as an everyday thing to go out in public wearing. These were things you would come to find in a Frederick's of Hollywood catalogue. She did anything and everything for attention.

The Bistro Bella Vita, where she worked as a head chef, is a very high-end pretentious joint. How did she get the job? My guess is that the owner was bored and thought it was a disaster in the making that would earn him some kind of notoriety or social report with his fellow business owners down at the Chamber of Commerce, by way of the conversation piece that she insisted on making her self.

Sara’s co-workers would come in on their days off just to see what she was wearing.

Don’t take this wrong; she was an accomplished culinary artist with some kind of credentials from a place that I cannot recall.

She would design the daily specials herself.

Once, that I know of, she sent a busboy to pick crab apples for the days dessert special, from a tree she passed on her way to work that particular day. She was very creative, a character of her own- mostly.

Sara was a person whom had some things she kept secret, like her attempts at Witchcraft. She was the first person to try using it on me, that I know of, and was just the beginning of what would resemble a list of people.

At one point, Matt went out of town for something, asking me to stay with his wife and animals while he was away for fear of her coke addiction causing some great controversy of sorts.

They had regular menagerie in their home- dogs, cats, fish, lizards, snakes, turtles, and birds… I don’t remember what else.

The next thing I know, Mynadz, from the band Shpool, shows up on the first or second day. We drink, smoked and hung out.

Sara and I noticed him, at one point, peeling the Blue Pearl/Nag Champak from its bamboo incense stick form, balling it up into little marbles, where he sat on the couch.

She asked him what he was doing to her incense, and why. His response was only that he was going to sell it for “gank”, so he could buy some dope of some kind. I assumed he meant crack but I think it was heroine, specifically.

I never saw him face to face after that day, but the recordings keep coming out.

The next night, an old friend that she used to do coke with stopped by, bringing some synthetic coke for her to try. She must have called him, asking him to drop by.

Never had I met the guy before, or heard of him in conversation in the many months we had spent together.

Myself, having been clean for some time now, gave in to temptation. Synthetic coke sparked my curiosity.

After we bought some and I snorted a line. It set me off, causing for me to go on a binge that night.

Calling Hope, with the intention of her bringing me some rocks, I ended up running the streets all night long for the garbage.

In my search for friends and support, while dealing with my familial losses, this was what got hold of me.

Never, was it my desire or intention, but it became a product of the Demons that recognized I was in a state for them to feed upon- to prey upon. It would be a whole ‘other element to my battles and only added to my struggle to stay alive once I did finally realize what I was into.

It was my job working for Salih as a Carpenter, mostly performing a variety of roofing repairs and installations, helping me to carry on at those moments in my, so-called, life.

And it would be off and on employment for the better part of this period of time.

It was his irate, difficult, ungrateful wife that would insist on interrupting the work situation, causing senseless grief to him and all who worked for him.

About now I got an apartment on McReynolds, with Salih’s help, quickly taking in my oldest daughter’s mother’s ex-husband, (her brothers father)- Bruce Vachon.

Little did I realize that Bruce was mental or becoming senile.

Whether it was an underlying condition or relative to his alcohol and past drug use, I can only speculate (alcohol), but it would later surface, and cause for the loss of those items I did maintain from my broken marriage that were very near and dear to me.

This would add a whole ‘other flavor to my defeat and my heartaches. And no matter how badly I recognized that I needed to quit drinking and using- this only made it that much more impossible.

Anyway, when it was all said and left undone, Matt had an affair.

Per their agreement, the one that cheats leaves, forfeiting all but their most personal possessions, leaving the household items behind, which had to be a relief to Matt all the way around.

Now that I think about it, I wonder if he hadn’t hoped she would have an affair with me, thinking he’d get everything, but then deciding it was best this way? Either way, he left and I stepped right in to help out.

They had just recently moved into the upstairs apartment of the house that they were living in before their breakup, where I mistakenly went one night, while drunk off of my rear, mistakenly thinking it was my own apartment. Matt and Sarah took turns watching me through the peephole, trying to figure out which key was the one to the door, and then turning around to urinate in a potted plant that sat near the door at the top of the stairs. Finally, I realized I was at the wrong house.

Well, she decided to move into the house across the street, on the corner lot, when they broke up. And, with all of my foolishness, being so freaking stupid and starved of affection, I stepped right in to “save the day.” I did all the work possible in her move and was given a room in the upstairs of the new house.

The room would quickly accumulate cats, kittens, and, feces, as well as, all of the smells that go along with that.

Throwing myself at her feet, as I seemed to do whenever a woman within my reach was in need, but having always been too ignorant to discern which ones were worthy, I hoped for a relationship with her.

Never mind that I was not emotionally healthy enough for one with anyone, for that matter. All I knew was, that I desperately needed a relationship of some sort, of any sort.

After having researched this, and, attributing my condition to not receiving any attention, affection or love from my own mother, is what gave me the wisdom needed to correct my path. I could see her but not touch her, like a carrot on a stick.

She finished (Sarah) with me and tried to do some magic to rid her of me. This became clear one day when I was drawn to the room used as the library/study, where I snooped to find a book of Spells.

This book brought itself to my attention more than I searched for it, revealing what I needed to know. It wasn’t possible that she wanted me to learn what I had learned but I am still confused as to why she didn’t just ask me to be gone.

At some point, in my refusal to read the writing on the wall, she called for a pizza, and, ended up seducing the poor schmo on the other end, in a last stitch effort to relay to me that she wasn’t interested.

Eventually, I got it through my thick head, but by the time I had returned to McReynolds Street, it was too late. Bruce had blown the money I had left for the rent.

On, what the money got spent on, I can only wonder.

Bruce’s only concerns were cheap beer and rolling tobacco so, how four hundred and fifty dollars ended up gone is still a mystery, and, though I am not interested- it’s a mystery just the same.

After escaping, I realized, what would later be recognized as a new beginning, with the end of her in my life entirely. Some time later, she would resurface in a junk store, on the west side of Grand Rapids, tempting my reality with her re-entry into it.

After offering Sara one of the CD’s, that I was promoting at the time from my residual band, The Bandana Brothers, I never really thought of her again- until now.

At this point in my life, I had gotten through a lot of bad situations. These situations tempted my patience and willpower, and, my very life, reshaping my existence and potential future into the needs of the people I was surrounded with.

The coke and degradation was an everyday thing, a re-run. It was like the movie “Groundhog Day,” with Bill Murray. Only, on one of those mornings that I had hoped to awaken in my death, I awoke to find Life, and fought back in a whole soul effort, and what I thought was, finally, meeting a female companion to help me to save me from my self.

Little did I know, I was about to order a beer, and, meet someone who would prove to be the only good thing I had found in Grand Rapids since my selfish, arrogant, ignorant wife took my children, destroying my family empire, my identity, and, my heart, refocusing the sights of my reality to the bottom of a pit.

The only things that I felt prevented me from killing her were my children and my love and grace. It’s been a bit of an unsettling thing to deal with. It is frightening even, when you come to learn how easy and instinctually familiar it is to you- seeing the images of the act of killing. And, seeing yourself handling the body, feeling the various sensations from the emotions, from the exertion, the sting of the sweat in your eye, the smells of bodily discharges, and, a smell like wet rusty steel.

And there is the splattering and taste of the blood- like copper, the stickiness of it on your hands and between your fingers. And then, the sensation of it as it cools and the water moisture evaporates, causing it to thicken in a short time. And then, there are all of the ways of disposing of it or of them, cutting it up on a band saw after having had it in a freezer for some period of time. And then, the burning of it, dumping the ashes in the river or even, a blow to the head that would indicate a slip and fall that resulted in drowning while they may have been hanging out on the river, alone, while extremely intoxicated.

Then there is always the old way, feeding the pieces to some pigs or the dogs. And then, my favorite sensation: the feeling of my hands around her throat, the sounds of her last struggle, the feeling of her body twitching and finally going limp as her head changes in form, from round to flattened on the backside, becoming softened as I repeatedly pound it on the pavement like it’s a coconut and it’s all I have to use to stop the Earth from spinning.

These are all very dark images, I am well aware. The funny thing is that I even imagined my imprisonment for the crime/s. No part of it bothered me any more than my usual nightmares I have. These thoughts had become to be, just another thought playing on another of the multiple theater screens playing in my head. It was, just another day that I had to live through. And, out of all that I have lived through, been through, and was forced to endure, it would be learned that this would have all been expected.

These images really paled in comparison to my nightmares. But who was I to interrupt her fate in my hands by resisting?

Well, I have always felt that I had a purpose, a gift, a calling in Life on Earth, and no matter if I found it or not, I do not want my donations to Humankind to be ignored or rejected by something as petty and as self serving as satisfying an itch for wrath on such a deserving individual. It was only because of the Children, that I didn’t do it. Had I done this terrible thing, they would have hated me, but had she never given birth, this would never have been a torture that I had to feel. I accept, that I’ll never be given credit for my restraint, but a large part of me would like to hear a “thank you” and an apology. One I do not expect in any foreseeable future.

In the meantime, I spend a lot of time keeping my sharp things sharp, my aims accurate, and my self in shape or shape-like. The only thing that gives me anything to worry about in a time of need remains to be my lower back and neck. Other than that, I really have no concerns. And, with nothing to lose, I am going out fighting.

[“Die With Your Boots On.” Iron Maiden]

It doesn’t take a very smart person to be able to tell how healthy a person is. A caring, well-tuned person can easily see it in the eyes of another- the hurt, the pain, the damage done by a loved one. I can’t help but wonder if my damages were revealed to Danny, that day, at Konkle’s Bar in the winter of 1999.

The barkeep handed me a draft beer, one of the booths on the wall invited me to sit, where I did, lighting a smoke. The person with me was a guy that I was letting stay in my apartment on McReynolds Street, him and a buddy of his. They were a couple of guys I had met, when I was out smoking crack, on a recent night of stupidity. He was quiet, probably wondering when we were going to get some dope.

Still, plenty disgusted with myself from the last crack-about, it would soon be a moment or two in life before I realized the error of my ways, as they say.

My immediate attention was on a young girl in her early twenties. She wore a Beret, and had a way about her that sucked me in. Later, I would realize that it was her plan, to suck someone in, trapping a man’s affections in order to use him for whatever she could get.

We would speak, and even dance together but not sit together. She remained with a seat at the bar. At one point, my ears perked up on the words “Billie Holiday”. That really stopped my twisted mind in its tracks because Konkles bar was full of, what seemed to be, uncultured persons.

Konkles was a place where a guy could feel like a Star. If you sang Karaoke, you were great. Compared to the other people that frequented this place, my teeth were fine, and I was very good looking. There would be the occasional reminder of how smart you were, a psychological booster shot so, you can see why I’d be surprised to hear about Billie Holiday in the conversations at another table.

“What do you know about Billie Holiday? I asked them.

A man who sat with the two women, and another man, said, “We’re members of WYCE.” This man was Robert McCoy, and I would learn of his craziness soon enough.

Just then, the other man interjects, “Yeah, and I’m an artist and a musician.”

I responded with my being a musician, to which he stated, “I’ve got a studio. Let’s go record.”

As best as I can recall, that’s how it went, but either way, the statement was, “Let’s go record.”

Of course, we left promptly, but it was tough, only hesitating since I had just received another beer. It took a second to slam it down. And then, we all piled into Danny’s Jeep.

Well, when I got to Danny’s studio, my senses were in a bit of shock- more positively than they were accustomed to at that time in my life. In time, ironically enough, this place would prove itself to be haunted too.

There were creations everywhere. Watercolor paintings, sketches, sculptures, musical instruments and equipment, were everywhere you looked, like a battle of the Arts had taken place, and continued perpetually.

There was a fireplace, like I had seen only in movies and books displaying Victorian style Castles. You could fit a large tree stump or two within it.

Later, I would learn that this Heritage Hill district home, at forty Prospect NE, was once a Mansion, complete with a Ball Room floor. This property overlooked much of the city of Grand Rapids. There were five apartments carved out of this place, of which Dan’s was on the actual Ball Room floor, the second floor of the building.

The kitchen was small, a simple galley style, where a rear-service staircase entered- once used by the servants. I doubt that the kitchen had existed before, and if it had, it was probably just for making an Hors d'oeuvre, and drink preparation- a wet bar.

We would soon use this area for another aspect of the Arts- our own culinary efforts.

There was a screened in porch-type nook that was just a kind of a box that hung out off of the south side of the house. It was a nice place to sit and listen to the elements of nature, while reading, smoking, drinking, listening to or playing music, writing or just passing out.

This overlooked the parking area and the wooded portion of the property to the rear of the house, where he had an outdoor Art gallery set up in the past summers. We would transform it, once again, entertaining the community and ourselves until Mother Nature protested.

The yard sales were always a treat, placing a slew of items out for sale, only to embellish upon them as if they suddenly meant more than we realized. Dan called it the “anti-sale” saying, “Oh, well, I shouldn’t sell that…”

He would then add how it had some sentimental aspect, having been handed down to him by someone in his family or past, making it all the more interesting or curious to the potential buyer, to the point where they would offer him much more for the item than he had originally priced it. We would laugh and giggle about it after they had long left, tickled to get so much money for something we, either dug from the trash, found at a thrift store or came across while cleaning out after evictions.

All of those classes, at Kendal School for Art and Design, paid off at these sales in small dividends that would yield us more gin, cigarettes, and even more entertainment.

In addition to the music, photography and Art classes, Danny had studied psychology, just enough to become a bit of a hustler. It was a new world to me, one that I had been searching for since long ago, and finally found, fully loaded- including it’s own Demons.

A baker’s rack held many electronic stereo components that added up to be a sound system for doing anything you could want with sounds.

There was a four track Tascam Port-a-studio, a Yamaha keyboard, a Fender Stratocaster, mikes, amps, pre amps, lights etc… There was everything but an audio slave for lights, and a CD burner.

It was not a big elaborate system, nothing at all like what I thought that I would find in a “studio.” It opened up my eyes to a new reality, one where a guy didn’t need anything much more than the “want to” in order to create recordings that were pretty powerful.

It’s always amazing to me, when I see something in its raw form that I had thought was something different- something more difficult or more intricate.

Danny made it look too easy.

And along with all that he would show me, while we became to be close friends, I would learn of what kept him so deeply immersed in Art and alcohol as well… his health.

If ever I am stricken with Alzheimer’s, I don’t think I will ever forget that first day I met Danimal or when he popped a tape into the Tascam, adjusting a knob or two, while handing me the Shure SM58 microphone, saying, “Here, put lyrics to this.”

And, me, having no clue what I was listening to, and no idea in my head- beyond,

“Microphone, lyrics?”

After listening to a few bars play, I just started in where I felt the spot was to start. It was almost as if someone else was driving. It may have been spiritual even, now that I think about it. As if I was a medium for a spirit just then, having no idea where it was coming from. It was like my conscious mind had been out to lunch from my body forever, and I had just gotten home to myself, like I didn’t even know me. Well, maybe I didn’t.

Whatever I was doing got Danimal excited. He picked up the Fender Stratocaster and began playing leads.

Little did I know, the tape was rolling, which meant that he was recording the music we were making. Nine minutes later, he’d play the tape back. It would become one of my most prized possessions, proving to be a Gift. And, it was a Gift. It was a Gift of my Rebirth of Mind.

Music was my oldest, closest friend, and I had been, finally, reunited with her. I had been kept distanced from her by Mindy, tormented with the view of her. The unobtainability that was hard to bear thought of.

Once a month, I was allowed to go play music in a basement, for an hour or so, with friends. At home, it was a different story.

I could get no personal time to play at all. Her fingers would silence the strings during my attempts, in order to remove my guitar from my moment of attention. Only to replace it with some menial task that had little to no importance, merely her demand.

Red meat was not allowed, nor was I allowed to watch any action films that featured men such as Clint Eastwood or Sylvester Stallone.

It was so ironical to me, how I had married a Jewish girl, who was so… Hitler-like.

She would later satisfy some of my unrest with the knowledge of her unhappiness that I learned of in the near future to this moment- this moment in life when I had become reunited with music, and, in a growing Friendship with Danny.

That same satisfaction was a detriment to my children, especially my only son, Cody. She continued to punish me, for no reason at all, through him, and now, he is living with the damage for me to have to, painfully, observe.

When Cody was five, he wanted to learn how to become the President of our country. He was released from prison on August 24^th, 2014, according to Michigan’s Offender Tracking System, on the Internet [at this moment in January of 2013].

This particular weekend, I had spent at Dan’s, was four days long. I am sure we drank at least six fifths of gin and rum. The bottles were there to prove it, and, had enough residual booze droplets in them to make us both a drink, which, in fact, they did.

There was also Amy and Jen- the lesbians. Later, I would learn that Dan had met one of them or both, while in Rehab. They were both Heroin addicts.

[Here’s where I have to put it out there, that it is not a very good idea, to make any new Best friends at Rehab. This is, simply put, a future stumbling block. Take note.]

I awoke, on one of these first few days at Danny’s house, and couldn’t find my weed. I was certain that it had been taken. My frontal lobe syndrome caused suspicion to point to the girl with the Beret that I had brought with us from the bar. It wasn’t like I openly accused her but, boy, was I sure it was her that took it. After a while of searching like a madman, I found it tucked in between a chair cushion and the wall of the armrest that I had been sitting in the night before. Whoopsie-

It wasn’t that I actually pointed fingers. It was my body language that screamed out the statement for me.

Authors note

[Not until a little time out, at Jackson Prison in 2011, would I realize that my “bamaged” self can only endure a few hours of the normal stress of everyday life before symptoms, like confusion, stuttering, inability to concentrate, and, “people stealing my stuff” becomes disabling. Now, after focusing on recalling my past for a couple of hours, I lose things, always wondering if they were stolen, but before I find myself wrongly accusing someone- creating discomfort in our close quarters, I dig around and always find what I it was that I could not. Fourteen years later, I am finally identifying some of my handicaps, and, learning to cope, but still fighting for my compensation and proper medical attention to suit my needs. The other important thing to note is, I have been removed of all interference, meaning television, media, advertisements etc… This is the reason why I was able to begin writing this story, and I am very thankful to have done this. I feel it is an important offering in the betterment of Humankind. Call me what you will. I am certain that there are Educators out there that are very Appreciative.]

Somehow, I had found out that this girl (wearing the Beret) was squatting in an abandoned house.

Why I got it in my head to “help,” by taking her in at my house when I could barely help myself, was typical of me.

So many things went on, that I have a hard time remembering it all. Maybe part of the problem was because I had spent so much of the time, as drunk as I could possibly afford. Things like, how soon after that, that I let the lesbians Danny was caring for, talk me into giving them money for heroine...

As I said before, and it is like this for all of my recollections- I can recall few things the way they were, some things with accuracy, and, no sense of time, and other things in a generality, but eventually, if I think hard enough, for long enough, I can remember the details I am looking for. Sometimes it will pop into my head a few days later, and sometimes the answers come to me a few years later. Like, the last name if Jen, it’s Rusmassenski.

Anyway, one of the problems I deal with is, that these memories are sometimes on a loop, always playing, as if my mind was a multi-screen theater- open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, with shows on that I don’t want to pay money to see. It’s a lot like the tell-lie-vision.

My sleep is continuously disturbed by nightmares from the past, mottled with morbid graphic images, and, horrific situations. These things were issues before the substance and alcohol use, issues that I maintained at bedtime with marijuana, for several years and all during my marriage, but no matter how hard I tried, with or without drinking, sleep could only be avoided for so long. My habit would be, to drink until I was unconscious.

I began to call on Danny, as my free time permitted, usually on the weekend, since I was working for Bob at this time. My trips to Dan’s house were a fast paced hike on the heel-toe express. The girls, as Danny called them, were home and seemed upset. Dan was not there yet or he was at the store, I think, soon to arrive but not until after I gave them the fifty dollar bill.

Anyway, Jen was crying about the court and child support, and, about the threat of going to jail because of the money that she claimed she owed. Knowing first hand about the scenario, and having some money, my malleable heart gave in to them. They thanked me profusely, and skee-daddled with Mr. Grant.

When Dan got back, he asked me where they were, only to add that I better not have given them any money.

The room gloomed over instantly. He was so upset with my having given them money- and the fact that he now was forced to tell me their secrets.

My heart sank, for I had just contributed to a possibly fatal disaster in the making. I went from Hero to Zero in a split second.

When they arrived back at the house, Amy was dragging her girlfriend up the stairs and into Dan’s house, where they were living. He scrambled for the bathroom to fill the tub with cold water. Now there was a mess, and the mess really hit the fan.

Dan would throw them out in another day or so. And Danny, having just now completed his hoop jumping for a DUI- it was a possible fatality that would be sure to bring cops and investigators, a whole can of worms about to be spilled.

Now what did I do?

It would come out later, how Tin Foile, a local Radio Celebrity for WLOV FM, had lived upstairs in the recent past. He had a girl over who had overdosed on heroine and forced him to solve that little problem without drawing attention to his own activities that would surely become strewn about by the Media. The Grand Rapids Press would have had a hay-day with it. It is possible that WLOV would have had their attorneys step in the clean up and quiet down the mess without any attention but who knows what would have been done until it happened. If it were my self in his shoes, I’d be praying that I had a, larger than life, reputation to pull the real strings on the situation. That would definitely be when a person like him would find out just how important he is.

Well, you guessed it, being such a big sucker and a glutton for punishment, I brought the girls in to my apartment too. I have no real clue how long it took before everything, that could go wrong, went wrong at my place. It didn’t help that these girls recruited an ex-girlfriend of Dan’s to “help.” This woman just so happened to drop in to Dan’s a day or two after this all went down. She was an Elementary School Teacher with a huge drinking problem and no fear or shame with taking it to the streets when she needed money. I can only assume that they bought dope with the money because, for some reason, we got a hotel on the edge of town, very close to Marne. It is easily remembered because this woman and I went there, ending up being thrown out of the Pit Stop Bar by the barkeeper, whom was a friend of mine, for dancing without my shoes on. In a few short days, she would be gone and I would finally lose my cool with the rest of my strays.

Chapter

It was a day when I had just gotten home from work. As I settled into my favorite sitting place in the living room, I discovered that the girl in the Beret was in the front bedroom with one of the strays, which not only made me angry, it confused me because if he fell into a barrel of tits he’d come out sucking his thumb.

They were just using me for my apartment, my money, my property- everyone in the place was. They were there by my undeserving Grace, and, had taken me for a huge sucker. This happened just as I had realized how obvious it was that nobody would be contributing to the household. It would become clear when I found my weed and booze gone regularly. These were items that I shared with them when I was home. They must have figured that it belonged to the house, as a part of my unusual hospitality.

The World’s Biggest Fool, was my self for the moment, but that was about to become an impression that I was going to demonstrate a correction of.

Right about now, I discover that the girl in the Beret was trying to practice Witchcraft on me. As I am reading them the riot ac,t and telling him that he was leaving, she came out of the kitchen with a small saucepan that had some strange looking mixture of ingredients in it.

There were small vials, containing some types of extracts, in the pocket of her smock, as well as strewn about and on the counter in the kitchen. It was clear that it was done frantically. She was urging me with a sudden suspicious affection, to ingest the mixture. It wouldn’t be anything but a waste of time and energy for anyone to try to convince me that I may be wrong, for you should always trust your instincts and the messages that you are in tune enough to receive, however late they may come to your attention.

At this very moment, putting words like these in ink, I am curious if a deity of an evil kind wasn’t something that had become a part of my reality years ago, and continues to follow me until I become destroyed, I wonder…?

Where was I, Oh, the girl was a big mistake to bring home! For some reason, I decided, in all fairness, to give them a certain amount of time to vacate my apartment the next morning. They must have thought that I didn’t really mean it when I had told them to leave the night before. I was right in the middle of giving them the count of ten, to gather their things and leave, when Cobb pulled up to pick me up for work that morning.

Maybe I had already gotten to ten because I recall him mentioning something about the stuff that was strewn about in the front yard, like clothes and hangers, along with a couple of old sea chests and a foot locker… When I had gotten to the count of five, I went to the front picture window and opened it as wide as it would go, to let them know it was real.

The guy she was in bed with- the stray, I call him, was crying saying, “Why Zach, why?” It didn’t begin to soften my fury, and only enraged me that he had the nerve to insinuate that I was in the wrong. When I got to ten I grabbed the biggest package I could find and launched it out the window, into the yard below. Some of the things bounced out into the street among the cars that were parked along the road.

Right after launching the second chest out the window, the Beret attacked. She came at me, like I would imagine a full-grown lioness, in a wild rage. Wow! She put up a real fight- one hundred times more than anyone had ever came at me with before.

All I could allow myself to do was, to minimize what harm could come to me by blocking her, wrestling her to the floor in an attempt to restrain her, overpowering her into a nicely rolled up ball.

She was like holding onto a huge spring that I had compressed, waiting for the slightest easing up on the pressure, so that she could fly apart.

We were both breathing extremely heavy with exhaustion- hormones and adrenaline flooding through our veins. It was exhilarating, sexual, as if we had been through a series of rigorous sexual acts sought out by those who hungered with lust to make their wildest fantasies come true.

Now, I gave the other guy two weeks to find somewhere else to go, but he gets up, as up as his stump of a frame could raise him, squaring off in an attempt to fight me. I really didn’t want to fight with him at all. When he made motion to grab at me, I placed my hands at the shoulders along his biceps, just above his elbows, twisting him down to the floor, like I was laying down a one hundred sixty pound cabinet, saying, “Don’t make me hurt you. I gave you two weeks.”

With that, I took a cigarette out, lit it and went down to the van to speak to Cobb briefly about leaving for work.

Bob had a nervous air about him, not knowing what to expect, and having witnessed the eruption from the upstairs window, out into the yard, as he pulled up in front of the house.

“I need a couple more minutes,” I said to him, “I’m almost finished.”

He just chortled a bit in complete surprise, and with a bit of disbelief over what he had witnessed. As I think about it now, I am wondering if she wasn’t part of the group from the beginning, but maybe that’s giving them all too much credit.

Anyhow, on the way out to the van, to finally leave, I stopped at their car, finishing my protest at being duped by puncturing all four tires on their Plymouth Horizon sitting behind the house. Maybe I did it at some earlier point in my fit of rage, either way; it sure put a stick in the spokes because now they had no vehicle to leave with.

Lesson learned? Respect the vehicle and learn to recognize what a vehicle for change is. They take many forms. I had immobilized a vehicle for change in my life and now that much-needed change was going to be more unlikely to satisfy my desires.

Well, I had no idea how that little loss of control was going to affect me, but after work that day, I ended up going to some other little dive of a bar, on Leonard Street, Slackers Bar. How appropriate, considering.

Stumpy, having just got off of work for the day, had ran into me on the street and wanted to talk so, we went inside and grabbed a beer.

He was in the habit of wearing a black over-coat, like he must have thought he was a Warlock or something. It was the kind of coat that you see these wannabe Goth kids wearing or flashers at night on the city streets of Chicago or New York City. His job was working at Louis Padno’s Scrap yard through a day labor company that places like these cheap screws use to undercut their regular wage expenses.

Anyway, while we were sitting there at the bar, the female bartender starts giving me a bunch of crap- an attitude that was almost as big as she was. It wasn’t like me to not say anything to her about being rude to a paying customer when the place was in so dire need of patrons so, I sounded her about it, explaining that the place wasn’t exactly flourishing with business, and, that I was a paying customer whom tips, not a punching bag, which was ironic because while I was taking another sip from my mug, a punch makes contact with the side of my head- landing squarely on my ear.

What kind of guy hits you in the ear anyway?

Sparks lit up in my sight in a blazing flash. This punch was from Stumpy, and it was a big mistake because I was still lit with a good amount of fury still residual from that morning.

Maybe he got his ego bruised when I overpowered him. I didn’t mean to do that to him, and was only trying to avoid hurting the guy. I didn’t want to have to hurt anyone, and I never really have before. I only wanted them to contribute or get out. Or, maybe he was getting back at me for throwing his friend out or puncturing the tires of the car or for throwing the girls trunks out of the window. I didn't feel bad about any of that.

Well, upstairs or not, whatever it was, I was thankful I hadn’t seriously hurt one of them or had sex with the girl, for that matter. That would have only added to my serious confusion.

Now, I don’t like getting hit. And I don’t like spilling booze, especially when at a bar with so little cash. And I hate getting wet, unless it’s my idea so, when I got hit in the ear, causing for me to spill my drink on myself, I was firstly- in disbelief, and then feeling violated by someone whom I was extending myself out to help. Then I was, though quite rare, in another fit of blinding rage.

All three sensations or emotions were easy to lament, denial-violation-rage, even though it was all in under a half of a second. Never the less, I reacted. Bar stools went flying as we were both heading to the floor.

Next thing I knew, I had shown him to the Jukebox. Fortunately the connection to my ear was the only one or the only one that I noticed. How he fared really wasn’t a concern of mine, not like getting out of the place and disappearing before the cops came, as quickly as I could render him motionless.

My ear soon turned black. It must have ruptured a blood vessel or something. I have no clue how long it stayed that way either, since my ear-ripheral vision was out of order at the time. Otherwise, I would have ducked when he was about to sucker punch me.

The situation was efficacious because when I got home, all three were gone. Now, all I had to do was rid myself of the rest of them, little did I realize at the time.

Soon after this came the Notice of Eviction. Bruce’s spending of the rent allocation had caught up with me, not to mention, him showing up on the police radar in the area. I cannot recall how it happened, but I think it was a psychotic episode or a senility thing. When the police took him off of the street, asking him where he lived, and how long he had been there, he had told them that he built the house, hauling it to it’s location with his car! Though I suspected it before, it comes out that Bruce is out of his mind. How he managed to keep it to himself this long is still a mystery.

All of these people, and the situations around them, just go to show you that you cannot help those who aren’t taking the initiative to help themselves.

Helping myself seemed to be a great difficulty, but I managed to continue finding work to finance my activities- despite my dysfunctions. What would have been smart, right about then, was to finance a replacement Michigan identification card because being evicted created a bit of a problem.

Why didn’t I call Danny for help?

Even though I had just met him, he would have helped me, but out of guilt over the situation with the girls, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I was forced, or so I thought I was at the time, to rent a storage unit from a place on Leonard, right next to the Arnie’s Bakery, and since I had discarded my ID card, it was necessary for the girls to put their name on the paperwork. They were all to eager to take advantage of that situation, to help, of course. What a costly mistake for me that would turn out to be.

We moved everything but the couch. This couch was a gift from Cobb but most likely his wife, Cheryl. When I moved it in, it required some disassembly and was a bit tricky for me because I had no experience with couch manufacturing, and, had little clue how to do it. Bruce proved to be handy for this task, but it was a bitch, which [ha-ha, bitch witch] is why I bailed on it when it came time to move it.

Jen's homosexual son, Ethan, drove us around in his little baby blue Ford Ranger until we found a place to rent a room that would charge us on a weekly basis. I think it was the Econo-Lodge near U.S. 131 on 28^th Street. At two hundred dollars a week, it was anything but economical.

Since we had a storage unit there was plenty of room for my computer, one of many that I lost in the past fourteen years. This way I could continue to write the materials for my books that I fantasized about writing and publishing- mainly as a last will and testament to my children.

The guitar I had at that time, given to me by William “Zig Zag” Goode, was claimed to have been given to him by Ted Nugent, along with a beautiful pair of black and white sculpted cowboy boots that he managed to find for me at a garage sale; all probably given to me to insure that I would be providing the booze for a while- which I often did.

William was a sad case.

One night, we were out on a walk-about, looking for people who might need help drinking their booze. We must have not had any money because I remember walking with him to the train track crossing on Bridge Street, for a nickel that was embedded in the overly tarry blacktopped asphalt. It was about eleven o’clock at night. He couldn’t get the nickel up out of the tar, and with nothing to pry it with, but another nickel, it remained embedded in the tar. It reminded me of the sword and the stone. I guess he wasn’t the one that was meant to have it.

The back-up plan was to go into a bar called, “Our Tavern”, which we did.

The bar was pretty empty that particular night, all but for two couples, a lone man, and the barkeeper- all sitting at the bar. It must have been fairly busy recently because the tables were a bit disheveled, several having empty glasses and pitchers on them.

Bill told the barkeeper that he’d clean them up, in hopes that he would be rewarded for his efforts with some alcohol. He set right to gathering the glasses and pitchers, emptying the ashtrays and pushing in the chairs, as if he worked there regularly.

A few of the pitchers had a little beer in them. He poured it all together setting a couple glasses down for the two of us. I could hear them quietly discussing this whole scene- a guy and his wife, who were laughing about it, ordered a pitcher for us.

Guilt and embarrassment consumed me- for Bill, for us, but mostly for me, I guess, because I wasn’t drunk enough to have no shame. It was probably because of a mixture of Bill trying to help out all of the time, and me, having told him earlier that I had no money to buy anything to drink that day. And, being his friend, when he had so few, he was just trying to help me out the only way he knew how.

I mentioned to the people giggling about him, in his defense, that he was hard to reason with, and that since he was drunk, I was just trying to keep him company until his wife might let him come back to the house. This should have sunk in as a possible future for myself, but maybe I was too preoccupied with my memories of the last, and, only time that I had ever been to Our Tavern, to see it.

Bill Bilgepump and I, had been called out on a service call to repair the bathroom plumbing, about ten or more years ago. We showed up there and went inside, with the instructions of whom ever took charge of the bar at that moment.

The men’s urinal wouldn’t flush, only to spill out onto the floor every time someone tried, which, despite the mop bucket, and the sign, saying, “Do Not Use The Urinal,” they did. We checked every fixture in the room, inspecting the entire plumbing assemblies before we settled down to the one particular object of concern.

One of the toilets liked to run on, and sure enough, the urinal was clogged. With me holding the tool tray up off of the urine stained floor, Bill lifted the lid to the tank on the throne. He burst out laughing! That was only because it was always comical to find a brick in the toilet tank.

It’s a valiant effort to want to conserve water, but regardless of whether or not a brick saves water, the solution is within the mechanics.

The float-bulb is in the water tank, connected to the water valve, by a threaded rod. The threaded rod is made of a soft copper, but sometimes it’s soft steel or aluminum. This bulb controls whether the valve becomes on or off by the downward and upward motion of falling or rising water in the tank. If you bend the rod in the middle- so that the bulb sits lower in the tank, it will shut off sooner, using less water per flush. It’s not Rocket Science or Magic.

The urinal, on the other hand, had… an organic problem. When we yanked the urinal from the wall mounting plate, we found out why it wouldn’t drain.

Apparently they drink so much beer, so fast, that it doesn’t become digested or broken down by the body. The drain port had a collection of gelatinous residue, from the beer, clogging it to the size of a quarter- when it was a two and one half inch piece of drain pipe. It looked very much like Tofu or maybe even a Jellyfish sewage monster or maybe… well, let’s just move on.

It was one of those jobs where you thought your chances of getting a disease were pretty likely. This always runs through my memory banks when I recall anything to do with Our Tavern, and it had to be a distracting thought that night, while I was there with William- distracting me from receiving the messages that were there for me to take in.

Anyway, one, of all the things that I had with me at the Econo-lodge, which were all important to me at the time, was my computer. I cannot remember where I had gotten it from, but I do remember it did not like to work with it’s casing on the hard drive. It took me a while to figure out that it quit working when I put it back on, but that’s as far as I ever got with it, continuing to use it with the guts hanging out of it. I had written on it with a black Sharpie: “I Only Work Naked.” This computer was nothing to me but a simple tool for writing, for focusing on writing my stories with. The only thing of value in it, to me, was that which I had written. Now, that I edit this, I recall that it waas from Danimal, having belonged to his mother, Eleanor.

At this time, in the turmoil of the events and people in my life, I clung to the idea of writing, but not for the sake of writing, for the sake of my very dear children. These writings were to express myself to them in any, and every way, I possibly could, to tell them how much I loved them, and how much I grieved over our separation. The writings were to share the things I had gone through in my duress and the strange dichotomy between wanting to die to end my pain, and wanting to survive to see the day I had them back in my life. They would serve to be my final testament and an expose’ of the truth of their, so-called mother, and the terrible thing that she had done. So, when I wasn’t in an alcohol-induced coma, I would write.

Now and again, I would lament a hope that I will be reunited with those songs, stories, and those morsels that I had spilled out through the keys, but my perspective of Realism say’s that they are gone forever because the girls would vacate the room, taking the unused payment on the room, along with all of my possessions, disappearing with the entitlement to the storage unit- all of what was left of my entire life, and, my attempt to rebuild it.

Of all the things I had been separated from, the one thing I am saddened by the most was a cardboard box that once held Paslode Framing Nails in it, re-purposed to hold every photograph that I had ever taken of my children- or had been allowed to take. These photos that I took I had to beg Mindy to allow me to accumulate, since she thought nothing for our family’s need for a camera.

Other than photos, the most peculiar and significant thing about that box was the actual blood that was sprayed, and splattered, on it- human blood. It was evidence of the reality of my struggle to find my way back in life.

Chapter- Howard robbing me for crack after Mindy left.

That little detail just spun the clock back on this yarn, to before I lost the house to Minderella’s father.

The company I had become associated with, led me into a lot of unusual situations that may or may not be typical of the crack cocaine scene. This company went by the name, Howard. I met Howard when I found myself off of Franklin Street, between Eastern and Madison Avenue. My mission was, to score fifty dollars worth of cocaine. He and an associate of his were working the streets, hustling by hooking people up with dope or taking their money entirely. I was one who got ripped off. Instead of fifty dollars worth of dope, I was left with a crack-head who did everything he could to stay by my side- Only, it was in hopes of me buying dope, so that he could smoke some.

Howard fed me a bunch of sob stories that caused me to end up bringing him back to my house to use my shower and eat something. It wasn’t until much later, steeped in the environment, that I would learn of his social status, and, the intentions of an addict for an unsuspecting victim, especially someone love starved, friendless, and being psychologically and emotionally impaired.

He would coach me on how to smoke the drug, always doing what he could to insure that the next hit he had would be doubled due to the dope I tried to smoke running down the pipe to the other end when it became liquefied from an inappropriate amount of heat being applied. Howard would shove the screen to the other end, load it with another piece, and blow out a huge cloud of smoke. Becoming sick of his instruction, at one point realizing what he was doing, and why, shouting at him to shut the hell up.

“You graduated, baby,” was what he said to me at that moment. I was suddenly disgusted and sickened by what I had gotten myself into, and sickened by the reality of the drug I was dabbling with, and all of the people associated with it. [Kent County Operation]

Without anyone from my past around to see, I slipped deeper into the grasp of the Demons that I allowed to torment me.

Although a part of me knew it was bad, a part of me still said that I could do anything I set my mind to, which was walking into the caves of seriously dangerous Demons, taking what was mine, and walking back out with my life. This reality had absolutely nothing with my drinking. This reality was being exposed to me- a direct education made possible by way of my alcohol use, which I, unknowingly, was using as a tool for infiltration of something very, very big and important. The things that I have discovered will be revealed in these writings- Conspiracies that will be investigated by someone of power.

Despite my anguish and misery, I still reached out to help people like Howard, asking them questions like, “Is this how you want to die?”

At some point in my “delusions” I even wondered if I might be Jesus incarnate, coming back to try to stimulate a change in Humankind. It’s crazy, I know, but I wondered that just the same. I was desperately searching for a reason why I had gone through such changes of events and circumstances in my life.

How could I go from being a successful business owner, with everything I always cared to have for myself, to the edge of the grave?

There had to be something more to it that I did not understand. I couldn’t just simply be stalling from my death, could I? Kind of like, “Screw it, I might as well, I am dead anyway.”

One night, around nine, we were approached by a group of kids, asking us to buy them booze. Howard took up the collection and went into the store.

Moments turned into minutes when the kids decided that it was time to vandalize my truck because Howard wasn’t returning. They grabbed up steel pipes from a vandalized chain-link fence and proceeded to trash the cap on my truck.

These kids were, eventually, arrested for the Vandalism.

Howard had ripped the kids off when they had attempted to buy some booze. The money ran through Howard’s fingers and led him right out the door to the next dope house, which was right around the next corner. My truck paid the fee for the evening. Howard, on the other hand, had only gotten about ten dollars.

Howard would introduce me to his child’s mother, whom I would find out was another addict. Her name was Selena. A little while later, I would end up at her place, where she lived with a roommate named Diamond. There was a man there who had been beating them up, but I had no clue as to why. He wasn’t there when I got there, but would be returning soon. She was scared, asking me if I had any friends she could stay with so, I took her out to my truck, which had been idling in the snow and ice covered parking lot for about twenty minutes.

As we got to the truck, this guy, that they called Grey (short for Grayson), saw us and came running towards us. We got into the truck, but he jumped into the bed, trying to attack her through the window. I was trying to drive away when he got in the back, opening the slider window.

Why she didn’t beat him with any of the tools I had in there, I don’t know. All I could think to do was drive, trying to fling him from the back of the truck without running into any of the other cars or people that were in the parking lot. How he managed to be removed from the truck is not a recollection I have, but the truck did overheat in the process, blowing a radiator hose on the top end of the engine. I parked the truck down the street from my house that night, thinking he might come looking for me, identifying my truck at the house.

What I didn’t expect was for her girlfriend, Diamond, to rat out her whereabouts for a twenty-dollar piece of dope. (“Twenties” are about one quarter inch squared.)

How late it was, when I finally went to sleep, I do not know, but when I woke up it was due to her screaming. I tried to get up, but I was attacked from behind, beaten about the head, and punctured in the upper left side of my back with a shard from a bowl that he had broken when he threw it at me.

Exhaustion was dominated with an Adrenalin rush, motivated by the persistent screaming of Selena. I rolled off of the mattress toward the wall, grabbing the mattress and rolling it over with me, standing, using the mattress as a shield.

Now, I got a visual and moved to shove him out of the room and down the staircase with it. When he realized that I was coming at him, he fled the scene. That’s when I saw the other guy with a gun in his hand. He fled right behind him, after making eye contact with me. He knew I was now a serious threat.

I looked down at Selena, who was still screaming, and now I knew why. Her face was busted up pretty badly. Her top lip was split in two pieces below her nose, all the way to the gumline. Blood was all over her. Blood was all over the entire room. It looked like a slaughterhouse, sprayed all over the floor, walls, ceiling, and us. We must have been having a heart to heart about addiction, life, and kids because my box of pictures was there in the room with us, now splattered with blood.

It was the neighbors who called the cops, bringing an ambulance that arrived ahead of them. Selena and I both ended up at Blodgett Hospital, where we received care for our injuries. Both of us needed stitches- her far worse off than I. The situation was on the front page of the Grand Rapids Press (Never, did they interview myself or her prior.)

Mindy showed up to see me, telling me about all of the different chemicals, ending with “caine,” that were found in my blood.

This was how I ended up learning of how many different ways I had been robbed. Robbed by myself, or by others, it didn’t matter. I needed to somehow remove myself from where I was, to elevate my social class but seeing the mother of my children only added insult to my injuries, and was anything but uplifting.

Now here I am, two years later, coming away from crack, but cavorting with heroine and living with addicts all over again. Cobb had been entertaining himself under the guise of helping, by finding things for these girls to do for him. In his wife’s eyes, he was a hero, but the truth is, that he was so miserable in his own silence, that he grabbed onto anything that he could gossip about- probably to comfort himself in his questionable sexuality. I don’t believe that the girls having money did anything to offset my financial burdens, ever, even in the slightest sense. It seemed that I continued to pay for things despite their working for Cobb.

Anyway, Cobb didn’t want these girls to work this particular day, and me, being so trusting, even though having trust issues, I left them at the motel- without a second thought. I assumed that it was so he could bitch at me for the situation that happened a few days earlier, where the girls were painting a gable end on his house, but couldn’t reach the peak area, complaining to me about needing me to help them do it. Well, me being a show-off, I went up to show them how, and they went down to the ground without considering the need to hold onto the paint bucket for me. Though I was on an entirely different task in the shop, I took time for this.

On the roof of the garage, I am doing my Mighty Mouse routine, or better yet, my Underdog routine, trying to help out a lot lesser than a Sweet Polly Purebred, when in my haste, I knocked over the pail of Cabot’s Stain. This stuff goes running all over the roof, down into the eaves trough, just like it’s supposed to do when it’s spilled on a rooftop. My first reflex was to use a rag to dab at it with, only because it seemed like a splatter but I realized it was not going to work. One good thing about this was, when I sent them up with the paint, I only sent them up with a small amount of it, so there wasn’t really that much. This was a job for the hose, only after getting it and trying to wash it off, I realized it was an oil base product. I did manage to rinse it off, once I got it loose from the surface, but it left a heck of a residue behind.

When Cobb finally got back, he saw that the yard was wet, then he saw the stain on the shingles (that he had installed with a one inch crown pneumatic stapler)- he lost it, mostly screaming and yelling at me for the contamination of his little garden in the clay. He was upset because I had used the hose that was out- water from the softener that he used to wash his precious Corvette.

This land in Ottawa County is all clay. Hardly anything grows on it at all. And he is the last one to give a crap about the Environment, but now, I have ruined everything for him. If he was a rational person, even in the least, this wouldn’t have been an issue, and I would have left the paint on the shingles to be dealt with on another day, but since he was such an irrational person, I was too scared to be able to properly deal with it- starting with helping the girls, and, reading the can to begin with. I was simply afraid of his reaction, which, I am sure being abused by my father was a major factor in my confrontational disorder. [Take notes.]

Anyway, Cobb and I are almost to the job, that day, when his phone rings. He answers the phone and then say’s, “I don’t know,” giggling and turning towards me. “I don’t know? Zach? Where do you want your stuff?”

It was Amy and Jen. Suddenly, I start freaking out, wondering why I would want my stuff anywhere, but at the room where I had left it?

It hadn’t dawned on me, that they would cash out early, taking the money to feed their addiction. They had recently explained to Cobb, how I was, “A ray of Hope,” in their lives.

It didn’t seem like it, but I was shooting craps in life again. Here, would have been a great time for Cobb to drive to meet them, in order to salvage my interests, but Cobb was so pretentious that he didn’t stink, and, if he did, it was only fitting that everyone else had to smell him because nobody was fit to breathe the air as it was. My days with him were much the same everyday, most likely reserved for him to express his perpetual vehemence at his mommy, abandoning him to his hateful father- dear old’ daddy.

Cobb grew up in a rural setting, on a large farm property that was just another nonchalant junkyard, where dreams that once belonged to someone else were bought, hauled to, and cut up into bits. It would become a result of old man Stiffe’s junk in the yard, that no one in Wright township could have anything that resembled junk in their yard.

Blame cannot lay only on people with the items in their yards, believed to be or expected to become, monetarily valuable. It gets to be distributed, as well, to the morons who want to take farms and transform them into high density residential property- upon them inheriting it, only to bulldoze the farm and everything on it, cashing it in as a housing development, which happens to be right next to the highway, only separated by a parallel running set of train tracks. This would be his last laugh at his dad for not ever showing him love.

Funny thing is, Cobb has a brother who did not escape the familial devastation, and actually ended up on the worse end of the suffering, having struggled through life in some hard luck situations. Moe would watch, while Cobb did what he could to dupe a woman from a well off family into believing that he was a loving family man, all the while just a thief. And Moe would grab at the world’s straws, trying to find himself a decent life.

Moe ended up in a situation involving cocaine, where he allegedly managed to manufacture some checks, only to cash them in to buy dope. He went to jail and served his time at a work camp, managing to pay the money back. Somehow, his wife lost the kids, whom Cheryl spearheaded getting the custody of, leaving Moe to be forced to pay Child Support to Cobb and Cheryl.

It’s odd how Cobb beat his brother up with the system, all the while mean-mouthing the children to me, while at work all day.

Cobb was such a hypocrite, bragging about his drinking and pot smoking, while humiliating poor Moe over the pitfalls he had found on his search for happiness. Without Cheryl, Cobb would just as soon continue in his self indulgence and deviant activities, all the while drooling over other women every other second of his time out in public- a travesty.

Frequently, he would have me get him pot, only to throw it in my face that I was a dope-head, while he would be drinking and driving. And, ridiculing me, on top of it, about my drinking problem, and, how big of a problem it was for him to have to deal with, while he came to work religiously with a hangover, only to abuse me until he felt better, which was quitting time- when he could start all over again. It was the price I had to pay for having an understanding of him. All the while, he remained ignorant of the least of my Charity, as well as, my Forgiveness for him.

There was one day that I recall quite frequently because I have a separated shoulder to remind me of it. It was a day that I worked in his shop, at his house in Marne. This particular day was a Saturday, and we were drinking beer, pretty much all day long, along with smoking weed as well.

At one point, early in the late afternoon, he said, “Hey, let’s ride the dirt bikes.”

The boys wanted to ride, since he had promised them earlier that they could take the Fat Cat and three-wheeler out on the trails. He climbed on the Yamaha IT 250 Enduro, and gave me the Honda 100 Enduro to ride. Naturally, I got on the bike, while the boys followed us.

There was a trail-head near the house. It went out and around a farmer’s fields. At one point, Cobb stopped, ordering me to ride the 250, taking the bike I was on for him self, saying, “Here. Ride this if you want to beat on something.”

Well, I jumped on and took off, racing along through the gears. I think it was about six seconds, if it wasn’t eight, until I came up onto a sixteen or eighteen inch lump of earth in the trail resembling a small jump. When I hit, it was like I ran into a wall. The bike mule-kicked me straight up in the air to a height of, what seemed like one hundred feet but was closer to fifty, causing me to activate my Wonder Twin powers into the shape of a rocket- coming straight down from my ascension head first into the well packed earth.

The bike flipped over the jump and continued flipping in an “endo” fashion, all the way down the trail repeatedly, with quite a bit of velocity, as would be expected since I was at the end of the wick, and, up to fourth gear. It flipped rear over front for approximately forty yards, if not fifty, judging by the amount of flips it did, hitting the ground twelve times at the least.

I wondered ever since then, if the house overlooking the crash site might have contained any witnesses since it had a clear shot. It had to be quite a sight to see.

Cobb came up to me, only to run past the heap I made, towards the heap I had successfully made of his bike, exclaiming “My bike! Look what you did to my bike!”

His childish concern for the bike, ignoring my physical health, especially in the presence of the adolescents, spoke volumes.

The bike he was so worried about was an acquisition he made by taking advantage of people, running his own one-way pawn service. I was in a bit of shock, and there was a dull sting in my shoulder.

Along with that sensation was a message that told me it was just popped out of the socket so, I slammed my arm down into the ground several times, trying to pop it back in. The doctor would later say that it was separated, requiring me to come back in two weeks to “talk about it.” I have been around enough to know that I wouldn’t be having my arm repaired due to not having any insurance.

(Keep in mind that I was eligible for Disability all along, but without support to obtain it. I was just being gleaned of my Education for the profit of others.)

I never went back to talk about it. My mother was the one who took me to the hospital that day. They all thought I exaggerated the story of what happened, saying that I was “overly animated.” I could have sued Cobb for the medical expenses, especially in light of the fact that he made me pay for every single repair to that bike, using the most expensive bike shop in town, Shawmut Hills Honda. I never brought up the entire situation and story to his wife.

It was just another episode where Cobby unfairly took out his stored up anger on me, the only person, other than his wife, to truly put effort into whatever kind of relationship we had.

Yes, I could have said no, but who would deny a dirt bike ride, especially in Marne, just because they had been drinking? That’s blasphemous. Every Marnian knows that.

Cobb knew of my head injury and of the psychological conditions I was dealing with, not to mention, my problem with alcohol, and, all of my accidents in the past. He knew better than to offer me booze, while at work, and he knew better than to put me on or give me the opportunity, to ride his motorcycles, let alone force me to pay for the damage to the bike. It’s not like I asked to come and borrow it. I was there to make money. I’m not sure if it’s needless to say or not, but come Monday, I was right back at work, cutting parts and assembling a stained Oak staircase, one handed, and by myself- single handedly if you will.

Chapter- (Wayside motel, to move in with Ron Groipul soon)

Bob and I were working on newly built houses for, Ancil Mitchell, who was a preacher for a church called, The Grand Valley Voice of the Pentecost. This man built simple homes and duplexes for financially disadvantaged people wanting to get out of the city, and, away from the potential hazards that went along with life there.

Knowing Ancil would have been extremely helpful after Mindy left, which happened to be when I found out that the house I had been living in wasn’t mine at all.

Soon after our separation, I would end up being thrown out by her father, Marc, when I could no longer pay him the rent, which was seven hundred and fifty dollars per month. Marc, along with Minderella’s sister, Amy, (so Mindy claims), packed up what was left, after Minderella had her way with everything of any use or value despite the judge’s fifty-fifty ruling. Trash bags suited this procedure because that’s how they treated my belongings. Some of which were heirlooms that I had received, that were to be handed down to my children- heirlooms like their Great, Great Grandmother Lindner’s cookie jar.

My Great Grandma Lindner was always known as the cookie Grandma. After her death, since I was the oldest Great Grandchild, the cookie jar was presented to me. This particular jar was a mother Pelican with a small baby Pelican on her bill, which happened to be the lid. The baby made the handle. Minderella had already smashed it once, in the not so distant past, during one of her Infamous tantrums of Princess-like temper. Using my crafting skills, and wounded sentimentality, I glued it back together, filling in the missing areas with plaster to sculpt it back into wholeness, while trying my best to hide the fact that it had once been destroyed. I should have stripped the familial reigns, that I had placed trust in her to hold, from her hands that very day.

Why I didn’t divorce her, for that alone, probably had a lot to do with the children and my Love for them- along with the great Hope that I had for her to, one day, embrace her role in our relationship, and become everything she was expected, and vowed, to become. The beloved cookie jar was an item synonymous with Cody and Scarlett's very dear Great, Great Grandmother Lindner, but was now marred with the scars of what seemed, to me, to be a loveless marriage. The thought of it now, still aches my heart.

When Cody was born we were five generations living. To my mother’s family as a whole, that was a pretty serious thing for our family history. We photographed the event.

Looking back, those mistakes were a dreadful thing. Or, is it dreadful to see how the solutions were always overlooked, and, so simple, leading to the most difficult situations and the most needless suffering?

None of it had to be the way that it had been but when you are alone in life, with no one, and, nothing to count on, you are forced to make all of the mistakes that you could have learned from others having done them before you. But there are those who would rather you made them instead, out of spite. After all, it didn’t kill them.

Oh well. I didn’t know Ancil at this trying time in my life, but I did know Chuck. And when I was out on the street he tried to help, by taking me to the only place he knew of where I could find a bit of hope or just a room to stay in. One of those places, was at Ronald Jackstone’s apartment. This is the same place, where sometime after this, I would plan to take Selena as somewhat of a safe haven, but became interrupted that morning when we were attacked. And incidentally, it was not the right place for either of us to go. The drug issue was about to get worse because this guy was a daily crack cocaine user. It’s probable that I was taken there due to the fact that I had been using, and Ronald Jackstone was a user who was always calling people for a little cash, so that he could score more. Sort of like, the buddy system for drug user’s.

At one point, while living at one of Ronald Jackstone’s apartments, I managed to find the Independent Living Services in the phone book so, I called them and spoke to a woman named Tina Tilney, who did come to speak with me. It was a desperate attempt, on my part, to get out of the environment after I realized how bad it truly was and is. She was clearly overwhelmed because she had never followed through with finding me a home for “highly functioning individuals,” as she had discussed with me. She also mentioned various jobs that she could get me involved in, and some therapies to learn how to cope with my injuries and state of duress. She took all of my files that I showed to her and vanished it seemed.

Living at Ronald Jackstone’s apartment was turning even more ugly as the drug use continued on by the minute. In a desperate attempt to change my environment, I went to Ron Votes house, asking him to rent me a room. It just happened to be that Ron Groinpul showed up shortly after my arriving.

After Ron Groinpul mentioned that he was moving into a house owned by his Aunt, I explained that I was looking for a room to rent. He was quick to ask me to come and share his place.

When I went there to start moving my stuff in, I had ran into Salih, owner of Native American Builder’s, he offered me another job that lasted for a few months, eventually ending once again. Only this time, it was because of the problem becoming of my knowing more about there marriage than his wife wanted me to. It was one more time that I had to call Cobb for work.

One day Cobb came to pick me up for work at his shop. We had been working through the week for Johnny Van Soest, who was building new homes in the Rockford area. There were a few projects going on in the shop, where Cobb was building a few items to go into his house. Things like, a sow’s belly draw- a standing cabinet for potatoes and onions, and, a small desk for the mail, keys, and charging packs for cellular phones.

As I was trying to keep going with the momentum that I was being pushed to maintain, I made a poor decision to use a small piece of scrap wood to cut a part from, rather than an ample sized piece to work with. My thumb got cut on the table saw, while trying to rip this board to size. It was a board that I knew was too short to cut on the table saw when I was doing it, but out of my wanting to keep Cobb happy, by letting less material go in the pile for the wood stove, I nearly lost one of my hands. And, although I was a very highly skilled woodworker, my head was twisted up with the treatment I had been enduring from Cobb, along with the residual affects of the substances that I had been using the night before.

The saw blade became pinched by the twist in the wood, as the board became separated into two pieces, caused by the nature of the wood grain as it had grown around a knot. The blade yanked the board, and the force I was using to push on it let the weight of that force fall forward, into the area of the blade, catching a piece of one of my fingers on my right hand. Had my senses not been compromised by a hangover, I would have been able to achieve it, as I had become known to do the improbable, routinely.

As the board went flying, bouncing off of the wall, my hand was struck, vibrating with a high frequency vibration. My fingers felt hot from the blow. It was my first reaction to grab the struck hand with my other hand, and grip the fingers tightly, as if to hold them together. The pressure applied was to stop the blood flow that I knew was there. It was also to hold the pieces together. Fearing the extent of the damage, I just kept squeezing until I could stomach to look at the wound.

Cobb took me home shortly after. I grabbed a half pint of Seagram’s Seven and a couple of pain relievers.

Having thought that it was minor, I realized that it was quite a bit worse so, I got on the telephone, calling around for someone to take me to the hospital, but no one was around to help. Then, I go the big idea to call The Independent Living Association, to see if Tina Tilney could help me, and, continue our discussion about my life's situation. The way I saw it was that she would see that I nearly cut my hand off, and, would then recognize, that I truly needed the help of her organization.

Tina Tilney did come to the house, taking me to the hospital to be treated. While we were there, I told her about a story that I had been writing, and a few nightmares I had been having. She didn’t really listen to me, it seemed, possibly thinking that I was delusional or crazy.

There happened to be a friend of my ex-wife’s there with her husband but she never said a word to me, only to relay her observations back to Mindy shortly after she had left the Hospital. Later on in the coming months I would hear how Carrie was there with her son, and with the impression that I was out of my mind. Later, I would learn that they had gotten their son a sex change so, who's crazy?

Within a few months and weeks, Cobb would land my room mate, Ron Groinpul, a job working for a friend of his who owned a heating and cooling business, as well as, an auto-body and mechanic’s shop. This time things would get bad around the house with Ron, especially since he had an income now. His drinking had gotten so bad that I would question my own. Eventually he would end up losing that job.

Chapter-

Cobb and I were trimming houses for Johnny Van Soest at the time. One day, Johnny called Cobb to a private luncheon, leaving me at the job site, where I continued to work, eating my lunch as I went along in my details. The thing about me, I am told, is that the work I do is exemplary, setting the standards of those around me, and would be expected of a well-trained Finish Carpenter, which most people hated me for. Cobb, on the other hand, was an imposter. “Fake it till you make it,” he would often say.

Cobb’s accumulated skills gave him the resemblance of a carpenter, but he was not. It was more accurate that he was a general laborer. Truth is, he had such an attitude, (much like Stan), and was so snide, that nobody could stand him long enough to get any kind of work done at all. At the same time, when he wanted something, he could be real sweet and seductive.

He was so insecure; anyone getting the attention of the superiors, other than him self, was targeted to be subtly, and slowly, whittled away at with Cobb’s tone. It was all fun and games on the surface, but it was malicious and deviant in it’s intent; cowardly passive, yet aggressive attacks, veiled in humor. This is one of the purposes he had for my craftsmanship, passing my work off as his own where ever, and when ever, he could get away with it… until now. The Throne belongs to me.

Cobb would soon come back from his little private luncheon, at The First Wok on Northland Drive, to make light of, what ended up being, an outright confrontation. John discovered that my work was what he had been promised, in affect, but with Cobb on the job, trying to maintain a dominate grasp on the contract, while fearing me taking over- the truth spilled out for the only one who mattered in the scheme to see… the man who signs the check.

Cobb’s insecurity constantly rewarded me with information. If it hadn’t been for his uneasiness and guilt, emanating from his disability of not being able to handle silence, he may never have told me what was said at that luncheon.

Instead of a discussion about the next house or a price negotiation, Johnny flatly stated, “I don’t think you take pride in your work.”

I was a bit shocked that Cobb shared that with me, but maybe he needed me to help him make light of it, so he wouldn’t feel the psychological sting, and the threat. Cobb and I both knew who’s work they all hired him for, and as they would learn that it was mine, he would paint out a gruesome picture of me- making himself look like a star for dealing with me. As long as he controlled me, he could benefit from my work, keeping me on the weak end of the pay scale to insure that I was starving enough to keep performing- and paying for his Corvette, while constantly beating me down in my mind, extinguishing the flames of desire that burned in my heart, that gave me the spirit that I had. He would toy with my life as if I were a lab rat or a fly, only to torture me and keep my wings from being able to lift my self back up to the heights of who I had been in the recent past.

His mouth would leak things that it never should have. He was his own worst enemy in that way. He is one of the first people you’d shoot, if he were in your crime family because he would run his mouth off and cause your inevitable ruin. And, he ruined a lot of people. Let's see how-

At one time, he was an employee at a dowel company in Marne but quit when they scolded him for performing excessively in his position, denying him a raise that he had been pressing for. This didn’t wear well with his rejection issues. Before he left, being a deviant, and a Psychiatrists Dream (or maybe I am the Dream?) he altered all of the company’s production jigs! This malicious act caused a huge problem, and was a devastating blow to the business. It would end up robbing the employees of their security by going out of business because of this act.

This was a problem in the Marne area because there were few jobs around that contributed to the local community- and the Economy. 

 

This would be bragged about every once in a while, just for the sake of inflating his own ego, subtly letting me know that he owned me.

Occasionally, he would remark to me that I, “just don’t know how to suck up right.” This implied that maybe I should be submissive to his lust. Later, he would reveal a problem at home involving the computer, mentioning the discovery of gay porn being viewed, evidence that was found in the browser history. He suggested that it was the curiosity of the younger of his two charges that were being cared for in his home- his brother Moe’s kids. The boy was around thirteen at the time, and very meek, more than likely fearful of Cobb. How convenient it was, to use this poor boy for a Scapegoat. Cheryl would now giggle a bit over the discovery, and continue to monitor the traffic on her Internet service, thinking the boys were being boys, as they say. And, me, I had no clue that I was dealing with a Narcissist. My Education had not yet become to that, until now.

Here is where I need to thank the Coopersville School system. Maybe not the system- The Teachers that began Educating me when I arrived in 1980. Thank You Very Much!

Chapter- Abducted and held for Ransom

At one point, while staying at my mother’s house after my separation, an acquaintance convinced me into meeting him to go out and “party.” He picked me up, as I walked down the street away from my mother’s house, and then doubled back to his apartment- the same building that Selena and Diamond had lived in. I did not want anyone knowing where my mother lived.

When we got to this ratty, run-down three-story apartment building, north of Butterworth Hospital, east off of, College Avenue, I realized I had made a mistake. It was full of dope and addicts.

Apparently, this guy owed money for dope and had just taken me hostage. The plan was, that I would give them money in order to be allowed to leave. I spent ten hours trying to figure a way out of this situation without giving them what they wanted, but ended up calling Cobb to come and get me, using some of the money he owed me to fund these dirtballs for their precious crack. Just knowing that they are in their own hell is satisfaction enough, I suppose.

Yes, it was another convenient situation for Cobb to use to his advantage. Not too long after this is when I lived by the creek, saved Laura and Matt from losing their kids, and then got a job working for the carnival, which is a very interesting story, especially since it took about a year or less from the time Mindy left, until I left with them on my suicide run.

I had just left 84 Lumber and was trying to get my job smoothed over. I think I was fired that day because as a Sawyer, I cut the parts for the trusses we manufactured, but almost all of my cuts were wrong. With my brain injury dominating the situation, and alcohol compounding things as best supporting actor, everything was all mixed up.

As I crossed the highway overpass, going towards town, a guy driving a white king cab pickup truck stopped and asked me if I needed a ride or a job.

People don’t just stop and ask you if you need any sort of help these days, and I should have been weary, especially since I was already in town.

I got in, of course, only to find myself on my way to the carnival with a man who had to run for potatoes to use in his food wagon that he operated there. He explained to me, that they always needed schleps, and me- I nominated myself. What a typical Pisces.

It was the first day of the carnival, which was still in set-up mode. Jerry’s Concessions were providing the show.

The work I was assigned to do, was running a ride called, The Force Ten. This ride was the feature on this midway, going in circular fashion, lifting high and tilting, spinning at a speed that generated a G-force in excess of three G’s. All of this, while several pre-amps, and over two-dozen speakers, blared music that I felt was appropriate for the rhythm and the intensity of the ride. It was up to me to decide what music to use. 

 

Metallica happened to be the best to choose from so, I selected “Battery” as the main track to use. The intro is kind of long so, I played it, while loading the buckets on the ride. I would load a couple buckets, and then jog the machine. Then, I’d load a couple more, jogging it around some more, while burning through the introduction. When it got time to go, I would hit the run button, choreographing the music and ride for the rush and thrill- compounding the effect.

What a Blast!!! People couldn’t get enough of it.

The ride was drawing crowds of one hundred people or more that would watch. My costume helped a bit having long crazy two-tone hair, from a dye-job that I let some crack addicted woman talk me into. She had a vagina that you could park a car in.

The music would fill the grounds and I would thrash my hair about, while playing air guitar. I loved being on a stage, especially five feet off of the ground. It was my own show that put two hundred and fifty dollars in my hand, per week. This was a huge pay cut, from the seventy thousand I made as a Finish Carpenter, to the fifty thousand per year I was making at Pearlspherlife, but it didn’t matter anymore. My whole life was destroyed, and all that was left was garbage. Little did I realize, I was now a volunteer prisoner, serving time on death row, in every possible sense of the phrase?

One of the first couple days, while working for the ride owner, I was asked if I would be interested in leaving with them- to go to the next spot.

“Sure,” I answered.

The very next question was, “Do you have any warrants?”

This should have indicated the reality of modern day slavery, but my common sense was completely out to lunch since my accident. I was on a suicide run, with that intention.

That night, at close, I got a twenty-dollar tattoo of a runaway marijuana cigarette on my left shoulder, and threw all of my identification in the nearest trashcan.

The Dynamics-

The customers or ‘mark’s, would come back after riding, a lot of times with “tips” that ranged from money to drugs. I was instructed not to accept them so, I let my alter ego handle that department. Sometimes, people would pay me to get on- deciding to go on a ride after all, but not wanting to go through the hassle of buying any tickets.

There was a young guy, with a crippled arm, that ran a food wagon, who told me that he would watch a joint at each spot- studying the traffic and business. He would tell me that my little freak show was getting all the ratings at the Berlin Fair, saying that it was the most interesting and entertaining thing he’d seen since he had been on the circuit.

Feeling proud that night, but not feeling proud enough of myself to want to live, it was a momentary thing. Maybe it was ego, more than pride or maybe it was blind stupidity, but there was plenty of stupidity on the carnival circuit so, I blended right in. Only they don’t call it stupidity because it’s not at all recognized as anything but normality.

George Orwell may have written about it already or Hunter S. Thompson, but I am going to try to explain it anyway:

Working for the carnival is just like anything else in life. There are maybe three sides to the politics. There are ride jockeys, food vendors and barkers, and then there is the management, which would be the governor or dictator.

The rides are mostly owned by the management except for some privately owned rides that follow along either by invitation or bid.

Management sells tickets. Each ride collects them, each paid a percentage of the tickets it draws.

Barkers run the games in the same type fashion, only it’s cash from the marks, directly into their hand so, even among those with no honor, there is an honor system to split a percentage with the management.

So, you should be able to see how the jockeys and barkers are competing for the same monies.

Food vendors are always neutral because everyone has to eat. The food vendors are like Cleopatra’s in the carnival.

Fights often break out, between the jockeys and the barkers, and it’s always due to their frustrations with getting money out of the marks.

Either they are just pissed off because people aren’t spending money at the games, like they used to, or expect them to- blaming it on the rides, or they claim they can’t be heard well enough, over the noise of the sirens and sounds that are used to add a layer of attraction or Saliency- calling the attention of the potential riders.

At then end of the night it’s party time- drugs, booze and sex. Eleven P.M. comes and then it’s all too crazy. The clans group up and who knows what will happen next.

Someone almost always gets beat up.

It’s like the freaking jackals or hyenas on the African plains- just a bunch of beggars around me, biding their time until they are completely freed of responsibility as earthlings who are sick of having to wash up for supper, even!

Biding time until death was mostly what I was doing, but I wasn’t dying from anger and hate, I was dying from a broken heart.

It was typical of me, to get mixed up with the dregs of society because I was born, inconveniently. And being aware of that, as well as, being socially scarred because of it, placed me right where misfits end up a lot of times- on the streets.

Tom Kloosterhouse worked with me at 84 Lumber, where I met him. After I joined the Carnival, he landed a job working with me.

Now that I look back with my experience on Earth, this time, I see how we both thought it was a good idea- we both had our bells rung. My bell got rung six consecutive times in the collision with the Semi, and he got his bell rung when a stack of Trusses fell from their foolishly upright, stacked position. So, we both were dealing with concussions. And, now that I have been educated on what concussions are, and what PTSD is, I clearly understand why we did something so utterly stupid.

They got rid of Tom over the workman’s compensation suit, and they got rid of me because I was having serious issues with my mathematical computations- being a sawyer and cutting the truss parts, my head injury was a serious issue. My numbers were always incorrect or misread, as if I had Dyslexia. That was fine with me because I had seen enough of that operation anyway. Seeing my mistakes was a constant source of frustration and aggravation that only made the drinking and using more consistent, routine, and, copious. Even though it would appear as though I was partying, I was miserable and hated everything that I was doing to myself, which only compounded my misery all the more.

So, there we were, him and I, and our demons.

One night, being locals, we let someone talk us into finding them some cocaine, one of the other jockeys. By the time we got back to the lot, we were pretty lit.

In the bunkhouse room we were assigned, Tom gets out the coke he had gotten for us, putting down a couple of lines. I passed out right in the middle of trying to snort one; my head fell forward onto the mirror. Tom just grabbed me by a wad of hair and scraped the coke off of my forehead with his identification card. It was just an average night in the life of a Carney.

We’d pull out in a day or two, and head for the next spot… Gladwin County Fairgrounds, where I’d end up getting fired from the carnival. It wasn’t really a secret that I was playing a drunk, but it would be the reason I was given- a simple truth, but not the real reasons for getting the axe. It was okay with me, I had seen enough.

The truth was, the guy who ran the bulldozer game was irate over the horns and sirens, and the sound system on the Force Ten. He was aggravated because his game was placed right next to this ride, for what I saw was the second spot in a row, drowning him out and frustrating him in his efforts to draw players. He took this out on me, especially since the female he worked with was admiring what there was of me to admire, while he was intent on getting something from her that was not available to him- regardless of if I had any interest in her or not.

At one point, he crawled under the ride and, all but silenced the siren, by stuffing a rag in it, but me, being a take charge kind of fool, I crawled under and found the reason for the sudden change- removing the flannel shirt that was stuffed in it.

The electrolysis of the big picture made me the Zinc plate on this vessel that was almost certain to sink. And, being that I was so green, as Captain, I had no idea of the type of tact to use to Escape The Despondent Sea. It was his mutinous attitude, I’m sure, that made the management of Jerry’s concessions decide to keep placing him where he had been placed- probably trying to get rid of him altogether.

Chapter-

The day I was fired was definitely interesting, with my first vomit case to deal with, and a drunken lot lizard. Oh boy.

Just before lunch, the day was just getting started, that's when the kid threw up on the ride. Puke went flying everywhere, but it was quickly hosed down, and made ready for the next wave of riders.

There weren’t really many people around to want to ride, except for a couple kids, two fortyish looking partier types and a woman that had stumbled from the back lot, where the campsites were for the crew in the show. This woman was pretty loaded, having a hard time walking.

After a long-winded session of her begging, I let her on.

When the ride got into full swing, she was writhing in the bucket like she had a broken neck so, I was forced to stop the ride, but it wasn’t stopping in her mind. I opened the gate on the bucket while there was a county cop observing- apparently, he had watched the whole thing because this woman was a community drunk with mental problems, that had been all over the park the night before, combing the place to suit her agendas among the people in the campsites.

She stepped down, falling into a flailing heap, what looked like tumbling in place.

People who hadn’t seen the whole episode, had made me out to be an abuser. The cop would explain her to me before driving her off of the lot, taking her home.

Fortunately, for me, I had made an impression on the kids in the community. The man who hired me said that he was going to drive me back to Grand Rapids.

Quickly deciding that was not my intention, I told him that I had family in the area, and, that I would just go there.

When I hit the streets, the neighborhood kids took me in. For a while, my home was with an eighteen year-old kid with handicaps, both mental and physical. They called him “Mike on a bike,” having his own apartment at a complex not too far from the fairgrounds. It was an apartment, on the second floor, that his father managed to get for him.

A very many people were social security recipients at this complex. His father said, Mike was born handicapped due to his exposure to Agent Orange, while on tour in Vietnam, that affected his sperm.

This was the first time I had witnessed a lot of new things that, looking back now, I wish I had sense enough available for any of it to mean something to me. Well, maybe it was all to be taken in for this- to contribute to an unforeseen purpose.

At some point, in my excursions with Mike, we were at a Pamida grocery store near a Veterinarian, where we ran into a married couple that he knew, and had done odd jobs for, in the past. They arranged for us to come out to their house, where they were doing work to prepare the place to be their full-time residence, having been relocating there from Bay City. One of the tasks for the day was, going on one last moving run.

Now, this would have been an excellent opportunity to just have them take me to a relatives house in Bay City, but my step-father destroyed all familial security with his taking us far from anyplace where his failures and his many under achievements could be viewed by any of mom’s relatives. I only know that now, where, I could never put my finger on it before.

As for what was important to him, self-indulgence- Golf, mostly. He invested all of his time and money into Golf.

Of all the years he was with us, he rarely spoke to any of his ten kids from his previous marriage. He, actually, spoke more often of his ex-wife, Gloria, than all of them combined, for whatever reason. There isn't a day that goes by that I don not think about my children.

Now, I see how typical this is of today’s so-called man. Yet, it wasn’t his fault, entirely. For, my own failure at helping myself had created a disaster that I was just too blinded by my own actions and grief to see. I was too busy feeling sorry for myself, and too willing to give the control over to alcohol and whatever or whomever else was around. My binge drinking and misery would not allow me to see my options in the least.

It’s really too bad, and a lot worse than I thought at the time because, little did I know, people that loved and cared for me were there suffering with the complications of growing old, and in dire need of help and support that I could have easily provided. We could have helped each other at a mutually difficult time in our lives.

Chapter- Love Hurts

My Aunt Bernice Russo had been afflicted with Polio when she was a very young girl. She was struck down and forced into a wheelchair, where she sat for the rest of her life.

My Uncle Bill met her when they were in school together, which is when they fell in Love. They were High School Sweethearts. He had been placed in a convalescent home with Alzheimer’s, and in-home nurses and such were at home tending her to. I would learn they passed away twelve hours apart, but that would not be until about six months after the fact.

I recall my mother mentioning the situation, of Uncle Bill and Aunt Bern, around the time of my divorce (in 1997), but due to never receiving anything that I understood as Love and Affection, I was unable to respond to their needs.

So poisonous, the regret is, over wishing I had responded to Aunt Bern’s need for my help, but I failed us both. It was not possible to receive the messages that Love and Intuition sends, primarily failing because I was polluting myself with whatever I could get, while dwelling in Self-Pity.

Now, Lobotomized, by the closed head injury and alcohol, I remained ignorant. Ironically, of all the loss giving me worlds of grief, I was about to lose more, and quite possibly two of the last Loving Family members I had left.

With Polio, at age 7 or eight, and leg braces and a wheelchair, Uncle Bill never left her side.

They were both smokers in high school, and in their younger days, as many were. Most likely a product of the WWII promotions, smoking Camels way back then, but they both decided to quit one day, as far as she knew. Being confined to a damned wheelchair, she was left only to roam the main floor and deck, which was always odd to us kids because Uncle Bill was extremely inventive, if not ingenious.

Uncle Bill had an air compressor system that he had built out of some automotive parts. And, he engineered and manufactured his own boiler system that provided heat and hot water for their home. He also had a 1969 Dodge Charger R/T. God only knows when he bought it, but he kept it alive, driving it right up until he couldn’t drive it any longer.

Everywhere he went, someone would offer to buy this car, literally, begging him to sell it. People would ask him to race, and to see under the hood, really lusting after that car. It was the same make and model that was used on the “Dukes of Hazard” show.

Uncle Bill wasn’t selling. This car was being saved for me. He had told me this himself, when I was maybe twelve years old. The car is now gone. Nobody knows where it went, but one thing I know is, I was never invited or informed of the funeral.

The funny thing about Uncle Bill, with all of his inventiveness and genius, never built a lift for Aunt Bern to climb the stairs to the lower level. Come to find out, he had his own pad down there, complete with a kitchenette, and an exhaust system in the chimney- so he could smoke cigarettes.

It wouldn’t be until too late, until Aunt Bern has been long gone, while here at Jackson Prison, that I would finally realize what it was like for her to be imprisoned in that condition, and feeling as lonely as she must have felt. 

 

She would mail letters to us, quite frequently, that would always contain pictures and articles from these tabloid type newspapers that you find in the grocery store checkout lanes, within reach of her wheelchair: Largest ball of twine unwinds; Thirty nine pound cat eats whole pizza; Man with no legs climbs mountain.

There was always a “can-do” aspect to everything she shared with us. The problem was, having been going through the motions of life with a dysfunctional family, we were never motivated to write her back, that I can remember or maybe the thought was overridden with traumas from the past or a beating, replaced with the hungers children have for the Love they are starved of.

My poor Aunt Bernice was a sweetheart that showered us all with hugs and kisses, but having never received them, they were strange to me, and I would cringe and try to resist, like an animal that never has been in human contact.

Odd to look back on, the sheer irony, that I have been literally killing myself, in my search for a place to be in life, and in my head- searching for Love and Affection. And, the very people that had it for us kids died before we could become wise enough to understand what they had, which denied them of the Love they deserved just as much.

All I have, of my Aunt Bernice, is a picture of her- seated and smiling, spectacles and shawl- the silver in her hair matching the blue colors yarn.... 

 

Extremely saddened with the truth in her memory, I realize now, how very, Very Important, Love Is for Our Children, and for one another. It’s the main message in almost every religion, and the Bible: God is Love. Love One Another… 

 

Stealing from our Children brings pain to us All, in that Moment, in their Tomorrow, and finally, to us when we look around and find they’re not by our side, when we are transitioning into the final phase of Life- our Death.

So, I failed in all respects. That is, if any of it is respectable. It was a perfect opportunity for so much, to come to her rescue, as well as my own.

[I would later hear of how the in-home nursing assistants were unable to move her around without hurting her. She really would have appreciated it if I could have been able to stop feeling sorry for myself long enough to see that I was truly needed; another irony since I am a Pisces.]

It was a perfect opportunity for me to find my safe haven. It was another perfect opportunity to have Love and Support that I so direly needed. It was a perfect opportunity to position myself to take over the familial reigns, replacing my grandfather- becoming the pinnacle.

I couldn’t help but wonder if having a father to talk to, in this very tough time, would have changed any of it. Even still, I am not without the understanding that the drugs and alcohol compounded everything, making it all far worse than it really was or needed to be. Stupid me.

I can still hear my Aunt Bern’s voice echo in my head: “Rutabaga soup! Rutabaga soup! That’s all they fed us at damned the VA Hospital!”

Between the memory and a photograph, that’s all I have of my Aunt Bern, and from what I’ve witnessed after the deaths of loved ones these days, it’s probably the best thing I could have.

Chapter- Gladwin You Get here, Glad When You Leave!

Yeah, Gladwin is where I spent some time trying to find my way.

Instead of going to my relatives, we stopped at Long John Silver’s on our way back to Gladwin with the household items we had retrieved from their old residence. I only knew this because I got drunk and vomited all over the floor, right where my notebook laid. Even after cleaning it all up, the pages of my notebook were oil stained. Mike answered my question about what I ate that was so greasy, the next day. 

 

On one of my trips, to and from their house, I stopped in at Master Bator’s Auto Repair, where I filled out an application. They were steadily busy, repairing exhaust systems, and were in need of help, mostly because the owner of the shop was in prison on cocaine related charges- leaving behind his wife, to try to manage the business.

It wouldn’t be until too late, that I would realize I messed up, yet, another opportunity to get off of the street and into a refuge long enough to get pointed in the right direction to reposition myself in the game of life, instead of playing life’s games.

She hired me on the spot, but my inability to read the writing on the wall would soon get me arrested for trying to walk six miles back to Mike’s instead of going to her house. Impaired with over indulgence, and Budweiser’s, provided by numerous dollars, and plenty of dancing with the women they came from, I made the bad decision to stumble all the way back to Mike’s place.

With my shoes in my hand, I started off down the highway. It was dark and cloudy so, I used the yellow lines in the center of the road to guide me. There was no traffic.

At one point the trees were making a bunch of really cool colors, but I would quickly learn that it was because the bubbles on the top of the county Sheriff’s car were putting them there.

When the cop grabbed me, I stumbled, which resulted in a resisting and obstructing charge, on top of the public endangerment charge. When they asked me if I had any weapons, of course, I said no, but my shirt was not tucked in. If it were, it would have revealed a legal belt knife. That added a concealed weapons charge that comes with a five-year max- a felony charge.

Well, being a bit annoyed, and a wise ass with gluttony for punishment, I added a comment that was something to the affect of me being, Bill Clinton. They threw me in the car and headed for the pigpen, which gave me time to think.

Now, of all of the stuff I could have, and should have, been thinking? I was stewing on the flagrant abuse of authority, trumping up the charges against me, and keeping me distant from any rational or practical thoughts.

They asked me for a name again so, I made up a good one. I started to give them Tom Kloosterhouse’s name, but changed it to Kloosterman, in an attempt to keep him off of the radar. My reason was, that if I gave them my name, they would be sending me back to Grand Rapids, which I was trying to get away from because of the crack- and, the Kent County Court.

Even during the booking process, it was obvious that I made up the name, but the deputy just brought up a printout with all of the information that went along with the name, for me to copy down onto the paperwork. 

 

At this time he asked me if I had seven hundred dollars. He stated that if I did, the whole thing could go away. It was not for bail. It was an attempt at extortion, which, in this situation, I was willing to play along. I did what I could but my efforts were useless. The woman I was working for wouldn’t be putting up any money to help me out.

Imagine my surprise, thirteen years later, to run into Nate Bloke in prison, not just run into him, but to be sharing the same cell after having met him that night, in the Gladwin County Jail.

Nate, and the other eight men in Gladwin's ten-man cell, would later ridicule me and reject my attempts at trying to convince them of what I had done with the “fake” name. He began calling me “Goldilocks” because of my long blondish hair, being quite jealous, and the instigator of the taunting since he was at a total loss of all hair, having Alopecia since the age of eight. Not to mention the fact that he was in jail on cocaine and criminal sexual conduct charges.

When I went to court on my several charges, I tried to explain the name issue to my Court Appointed Attorney but it was useless. He left it alone and that was that. There would be no convincing the court, in any way, that I was not the person they understood me to be. The whole thing was covered up, and, would later resurface in the media by way of the Bay City Times Newspaper.

It ended up being a six-month sentence in the county jail, which resulted in three entertaining months- day for day. They released me at seven in the morning, on a very nice sunny day, at the end of September.

In an attempt to face my problems, armed with a renewed sense of purpose and a little jailhouse bible study, I found the main road and started throwing my thumb out to any vehicle LEAVING Gladwin. My plan was, to head south towards Grand Rapids. 

 

Chapter- Hiking Home

The first ride I scored was from a young couple, whom lived in a Geodesic Dome house that was poorly assembled, and, seemed way too small for a couple with three children, which it was, but they were very friendly. Despite being low-income survivors- they rustled up some change for my pocket, and, a pack of cigarettes.

When, and, where they let me off at, I can’t recall, but I did the same thing I always did when I needed to get someplace- I just kept going in that direction.