"The Love Or Money" from Escaping The Despondent Sea by zachery polk

Anyway, I got the next ride, ride number five, which carried me all the way to Grand Rapids. After asking me where to drop me off, I see that it’s going to be a trick because traffic is heavy and it’s a very busy spot on the highway at the 131/I-96 interchange near Alpine Avenue. Just about the time I get to the top of the entrance ramp heading west to Marne, a Michigan State Police officer pulls up and scoops me off of the road. My instincts were telling me to hike through the bush a ways but I figured another hitch would come along right then- not the authorities. Just imagine my surprise when he runs my name to find that Ottawa County has a warrant for me. All that way just to get picked up by the police and put right back in jail! This was my final ride. This was ride number six.

In a way I was relieved- getting right back in the ring to fight things out to the finish or maybe punishment from the spiritual realm for drinking so quickly after being clean and sober for three months. Either way, or both, it would speed things up with my tasks. Mostly, I considered it a prep-course for what lie ahead, re-uniting with my dreams of music because during that thirty days I would become acquainted with my cell-mate who played music, wrote lyrics and recorded in his own home studio. We spoke about these things ninety percent of the time, yielding only to familial topics. This got the brain train moving along, and with all the freight mine carried it was now unstoppable.

They did experiments involving prisons and institutional settings, where some of the participants were made inmates and some were made guards. It was a very powerful and informative psychological documentary. Here I am, in the reality of that particular study, on the inside. I feel like Jane Goodall in a way, only the monkeys that I am observing are a bit more serious issue: TODAY’S MEN.

The mentality in motion, on the part of those who help run the Ottawa County Jail, involved a little game with the “systems” people. There I am, waiting to be picked up for my release, all the while my people are cruising around outside in their efforts to get me but they cannot find the entrance. The grounds are set up with instructional road signs that are intentionally confusing in their implications and configuration. It seems they do not like helping people, contrasting to the “serve and protect” mantra that they are sworn to uphold.

State workers, especially turnkeys, which are largely disgruntled, get off on taunting and humiliating people (It surprises me that Bob isn’t a turn-key). Most often they become prison guards because they couldn’t pass the psych evaluation to become an actual police officer but they end up in the institutions working with people anyway, which is unbelievable and makes no sense.

So, after you follow the directions of the sign saying “Ottawa County Jail Visitor’s Entrance”, you find all the other signs. These all say “wrong way” and “do not enter” and “authorized personnel only,” leaving you with no way inside the compound. Yeah. Real funny. I’m sure some Napoleonic twerps get a frequent laugh about that but it is nothing compared to the thrill they get from getting into arguments with people because of it.

Looking around, I see the male specimens surrounding me and feel relieved that my life isn’t so lacking- left with time to imagine what life must be like for these pitiful fools. Fortunately I have better things to do but while doing some of those things, I find myself saddened with the fact that I have no real men for friends, which leaves me without anyone to call for help when I need it or anyone that I can hang out with, or have over for a card game with my wife and I.

At the moment I can’t recall if I ended up released or if I was transferred to the Kent County Jail for an FOC warrant but somehow I ended up back in Grand Rapids, on the West side of town. I am pretty sure I went back to work for Salih but it wouldn’t last very long. His wife was still too much to deal with.

It wouldn’t be much longer before I’d be back to work for Bob. I’m sure they spoke about what to do with me being that I couldn’t go back to mom’s due to Stan’s Ego, and so that’s how I ended up in a room at the Wayside Motel. Bob would just deduct the rent from my pay. One of the problems I had with Bob was that he took it upon himself to pay me so little that I was starved in effect. So much so, that once I was involved, I had no choice but to stay where I was at unless I wanted to go back to the streets. I didn’t really have enough money to do the things I wanted, like go out to the bar in search of a companion or buy dope of any kind. I had grown accustom to earning over two thousand dollars a week, now only being paid two hundred a week.

There were reasons why I was getting shorted. Most involved Bob’s scandalous nature of milking the jobs out. The profits he earned, that were rightfully my own, paid for his Corvette- an acquisition he flaunted in my face whenever he got a chance to. Little did he allow himself to understand is that if he would have listened and learned important trade secrets and techniques that I was willingly trying to share with him he could have paid me one thousand a week, enabling me to take my ex-wife to court over defrauding me, my children and the courts, and regaining my life, and have bought himself two Corvettes. But humble in the smallest, he was not, and I’ve finally become rewarded with that which I have sought so long and hard. Kids somewhat included.

Anyway, the Wayside Motel was an okay little place except for the narcotic affect of the room environment, either depressing or lacking of oxygen, I am not sure which- maybe both. Trying to keep myself busy, I took it upon myself to work in the backyard repairing the Horseshoe pits.

There were plenty of things to keep me busy, like working for Ancil Mitchell, at the church he ministered to. He needed a Baptism pond built, something other than the galvanized thing they were using. This was the same thing used to feed or water livestock with on many farms across the United States of America.

Ancil propositioned Bob to create the Baptism pond but rather than further his knowledge in the engineering and artistic scope that makes up more than half of the skilled carpentry trade, he nominated me. It was probably a decision he made because of the fact that it would end up being a low paying gig- if any pay at all. I feel like he did that to keep himself from being exposed but mostly he just couldn’t do it. There was too much thinking involved, a curious situation because my thinking faculties were compromised because of the head injury I had received from the accident with the Semi, and my newfound lifestyle after my divorce. Either way, I really appreciated this because it kept me busy and away from myself- consuming my time that would normally be spent drinking, especially since I was exhausted from carrying an excessive amount of emotional baggage. This pond ended up being a very, very cool thing, and it may possibly have been Bob’s attempt to help me get away from the destruction I had been doing to myself. With Ancil on the sidelines, and a team of volunteers- I let the project lead me along, helping me find whatever I had left in myself for the world. It was a confidence booster.

Outside of the fiberglass liner, the fabric, paint, and various fasteners and adhesives, I manufactured every part of it, even the mechanical hardware assemblies. We needed a lid for it that could also be the floor of the podium, concealing the pond beneath, in which to “bury your sins.”

Some calls were made, magazines thumbed through, and a day or two later I had information to use for proceeding. We found a company, on the east coast of course, that manufactured this lid component. They called it a “stress-skinned panel”, and it cost around ten grand, shipping included I imagine, which would take approximately eight weeks. It was a no-brainer for me, being it was my project. After a short contemplation I decided that I would engineer one of my own panels.  The one that I made was under an inch and three quarters thick and took me about two days to make. When it was finally installed you could park a full size motorcycle on it. Proud of that achievement, I glowed for weeks.

The initial phase involved removing some of the floor, cutting out some of the existing load bearing beam structure, and re-engineering it all to accommodate a new joist system that gave us the lowered finished height we needed, without having to rebuild the existing stage ensemble. Making the upper portion slide, roll, and lift was another small engineering feat accomplished with minimum hardware that was constructed using one inch threaded steel pipe and some bearing roller parts I acquired from a fitness store that I had worked at in the early nineties- Viking Leisure Products.

The people who made up the congregation were always there to lend a hand or just spend their time doing whatever needed to be done. A good amount were recovered from the streets and clinging to the church out of their earnestness in keeping away from those things that robbed them of life. Many of them were single mothers, divorced parents, and fatherless children who found alcohol and drugs, and in some cases even prostitution and the edge of their graves.

Ancil was known as a Saint- a healer. Many persons had been healed in his church, leaving behind their crutches and various braces and even wheelchairs as a testament to their healing. Even if it was the mere decision to truly choose good to end a charade, they were healed just the same. His own son and daughter were not strangers to the world’s games involving being hounded and bamboozled by persons interested in separating them from their money with any of the highly habit forming and dangerously addictive salves that those who lost all but hope to find the goodness in life will try.

His son was recovered from full-fledged junkie status, having a lengthy history with intravenous drug use that all but claimed his life.

One of the young ladies in the congregation had her eyes on me but I was no where near recovered for a relationship- merely struggling with the reality of trying to find my way back to what was important to my whole existence. I could have cleverly manipulated this woman for selfish reasons but, thankfully, I am not really the type and had been just sober enough to not prey upon her, having the realization that there was respectability in keeping my grief my own. I loved her by staying away, not to share my poisoned existence with her in her efforts to keep her family intact and to be a mother to her children. Though it was something I yearned for in the deepest pit of my heart and soul, I was just honest enough with myself or dare I say wise enough, to know that it was wrong.

Aside from working on the baptism pond, I attended the services at the Grand Valley Voice of the Pentecost on the weekends, even became baptized in the pond that I helped them to create. It was a great experience at that time in my life, and I think about it once in a while with a smile, while wondering if I should find the time to visit and see what kind of maintenance the pond needs to reflect the love, care and craftsmanship that went into it’s creation. My heart was poured into that project as I had poured it into every project. And even though Ancil told me to come to him for money on it, I declined even the smallest payment. How could I take money from a church that showed a mere forty or sixty dollars in the offering plate? Even still, to this day, in such a time of my own dire needs- facing hardships and uncertainty, I am still satisfied in that decision. Money wasn’t what I needed