Carney, continued. (currently editing)

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 I was so green, as Captain, that 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.

The day I was fired, was definitely interesting, with my first puker, and a drunken lot lizard. 

The day was just getting started, when the kid threw up on the ride. Puke went flying everywhere but it was, quickly hosed down, and 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, who 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, even. 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 campsites. She stepped down and fell 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 and drive 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 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,” and he had 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.

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 underachievments 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 on 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.

Now, I see how typical this is of today’s so-called man. But 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.

Escaping The Despondent Sea is available on Amazon Kindle Unlimited, and is receiving 5 star reviews on Goodreads.com