"Dusty" -edited 6/7/2017

The real estate thing proved to be another scam, preying on people with the lure of seemingly easy money: “Come get a real estate license. You can make big commissions. Our courses are only 2500 dollars!” Arrgh! I suppose that’s what you get when you take the way out that seems easiest- and that’s closer to broke.

Nobody seems to have a sense of pride or respect for honest work anymore. My hard work was really getting me nowhere but my foolish pride and my resentment towards my ex-wife, were killing me slowly but surely. It was no secret to me that I was no better than those I criticized.

My labors earned me a room of my own in the basement, which I converted into a music studio. In reality, I had been assigned a task to turn a utility area into a usable den but my fantasy of having a career in the media, conveniently replacing Danny’s loft space studio, kept me from seeing that. I think The Fabulous T-Birds were playing in my head while I set to building a bulkhead around the ductwork of the furnace. The framing needed to be built in order to drywall. It needed plenty of soundproofing and some carpet. Julie had me build a closet that she could grow pot in as well. Danny helped me build some counter space, appropriate for the computer, keyboards, and appliances, which included a Tascam Four Track Analog recording system that he had gifted me.

One day, while Danny was making plans to move out of the building, Andy was making plans to move in. He quickly befriended Sean Adams, and his band mate, Mike. “Ace music Dave” was there bringing orders of guitar strings to musicians that day. Mike’s girlfriend, Laura, was painting a recreation of Vincent Van Gogh’s “Starry Night”, on the walls of their studio space. It wasn’t hard to tell that she was there spending time trying to save their relationship. I think I was the only one that picked up on life budding elsewhere in the room. Taking it upon myself, I tried to warn them about Andy but they were already under his spell. The guys were snowed.

That’s when Dave changed the subject, telling me about a guy interested in selling his DJ business. Julie agreed that, since it came with a listing in the Yellow Pages, it was a good investment. Danny and I weren’t interested in the DJ business. We only wanted the P.A. system that was for sale. It was a great buy, and we happened to need it for the upcoming Memorial Day show. The guy selling it wanted us to go do a DJ gig for a wedding reception, saying he’d loan us the speakers to do it with, and that we could think about buying the business. We said we would do the gig, and that we would think about the prospect of the DJ business. Julie called him back two hours later, saying we’d take the business off of his hands, and asked where to meet up with him to do the transaction. Now, it appeared as though we were the owners of “AA Bands and DJ’s”.

The wedding gig was on a Saturday, and was being held at a Country Club, in Jenison, which threw up red flags to me but Julie said there was absolutely nothing to worry about. She said it would be an easy two hundred bucks.

It seemed like I was the only one around the day Andy actually moved into the building, so it was me that ended up stuck with helping him move his things, which also meant helping him move his things from the woman’s house he was leaving. Judging by the looks on her face, she had been mistreated for the last time.

There were many pieces of musical merchandise, mainly brand new electric guitars that still were in their boxes. Every bit of it was hot. Chet, his boss, was storing a lot of this loot in the basement of his home. The story was, so Andy wouldn’t sell it all for drugs while he was supposed to be getting clean from Heroine and Crack Cocaine- just another con job on Chet. It worked well for a while but Chet was just as much of a crook, robbing people with a smile and some paint equipment. Andy swore that he was no longer using but everything, other than his words, said something else entirely. One of those things that spoke to me was the motor home he left for abandoned in the lot at the building we moved him into. It was eventually towed to the impound yard and sold for scrap.

As people progressed toward leaving the building in the weeks that followed, Andy was liquidating the things he had been accumulating. Story was that he had to move back to Florida to help his mother, meaning he wouldn’t be there very long. He had survived shooting a near fatal dose of bleach into his arm almost two years ago, and now was on his way to spend time with his mother while his body was yet to realize he was walking dead.

He offered to sell his P.A. equipment to me for seven hundred bucks. The lighting system, a good size mixer, amplifier, a pair of one thousand watt Yamaha speakers, light cans, miscellaneous lines and patch cords, etc. It was a great deal that I just couldn’t believe- too good. He knew Julie had the money to pay for it, and I was right in the middle of gearing up for the show. It just made sense at the time, so she bought it for me. She liked the music room so much that she bought a mini fridge with a tap handle and a carbonic system for a pony keg to put in there too. Yeah, I really thought I had things made now.

Julie went with me to do the wedding reception gig in Jenison. The father had called beforehand to explain what music tracks they wanted, and when they wanted them to be played. It was pretty exciting for me even though it was a wedding reception, which almost every band dreads. I had spent days going to thrift stores, buying all the music tapes and CD’s I could find that might be good additions to a DJ library. I just couldn’t remember, did he say NO Hawaiian shirts or did he say WEAR Hawaiian shirts?

We arrived and set up. I first smelled a rat when, after an hour, we were never offered a drink or any type of hospitality. Having never done a wedding gig before, I was under the impression that it’s a celebration regardless of whether you are “just” the DJ or not. Not even a glass of water was offered to us.

At one point, some of the girls came and gathered around to have their pictures taken with me. Little did I realize, they were sent by the father of the bride. They were gathering pictures to use against me.

The next day I received a phone call from an irate Dutchman who felt like stiffing someone on his wedding expenses. He was yelling, demanding his two hundred dollars back because I showed up wearing long hair and a Hawaiian shirt! It didn’t settle well on me, since I had just been woke from sleep, so I was irate as well but more so.

Julie took the phone from me and somewhere along the conversation, agreed to refund him his precious money. This only confirmed my fears, and I was quick to chalk it up to one of the reasons nobody likes doing weddings, moving on with my renewed opinion about Jenison.

Now my attention was on satisfying myself over the DJ service purchase by calling the guy to discuss the Yellow page listing, which was tied to his phone number. I smelled another rat. The problem I now had, was that my life had become so infested and overrun with rats, a simple extermination wouldn’t work well enough. He ended up stiffing me on the whole transaction and walking away with the money we gave him, and the DJ business. This was going to require something more drastic but I didn’t know what.

It seemed like a good idea to focus on my work with Bob, and with making woodcrafts from the scraps on the floor, among the so-called waste. The magic in my artistic vision spotted the table leg scraps that had been made when they were cut to length recently. I cut the four sided, hollow blocks into cubes, and transformed them into a pair of Dice. They made a desktop pencil caddy that I found pretty darn cool, looking just like Dice frozen in action.

There were some cedar pieces among the scraps from the fabrication of round top window casings that, to me, looked like birds flying. It was an abstract vision that gave the artwork to me. It happened to be Julie Wickman’s birthday, so I took to making a wall mount shadow box display using the “birds”, and some scrap beadboard for the back panel. A glow of pride warmed me that afternoon as the artworks took shape.    

A birthday party was planned to be held in the bar portion of Holly’s Landing- a hotel on the Grand River, off of Ann street. A Blues band was playing that night, surprising me when I got there. It wasn’t very busy, which made it nice because the crowd was fairly small, having about forty people but then again I wasn’t really paying close attention to the crowd.

My focus was on presenting my gift and getting into party mode with the music, dancing and beer. The cardboard box I had wrapped the shadow box in had something that I had written on it, which was something to the affect of it not being a Mel Gibson Blow-up Doll. It was my attempt at being funny because Julie was a big Mel Gibson fan at the time.

When I presented it to her, I took her into a side room to do it. A few of her friends, in their curiosity, followed us to be part of the unveiling. Hoping for a big reaction, I didn’t want to just leave it for her to open later. Perception, having been contaminated with alcohol, was that she didn’t really think much of it.

Maybe it only looked nice to me, sort of like a new parent with their infant. Oh well, it wasn’t going to stop me from what I would do later on, which was throw myself at her once again, especially since she was such a good person, and the perfect representation of everything I wanted in a partner for life. She had a job, owned properties, had a child, and a crafting hobby, and she wasn’t an addict. That was the big one, and exactly the reason she didn’t want me around for much more than a place to crash when I was too drunk to find my way to my own part of town. She trusted me in her home, and with her adopted son, Simon.

Occasionally, she would call to have me service her home or rental property or to bring her some delight. It was like I was looking in the window at something I wanted but could not afford for myself. Life went on.

In the meantime, I was at the end of the rope with everything. My court battle regarding the enforcement of my, so-called, visitation was won but after only a few visits, it all blew back apart. Before actually winning, Mindy had agreed to allow me to see the children but only under her supervision. Having her chaperone the children didn’t stop me from taking advantage of the opportunity to see them. We had a mediation at the Kent County Friend of the Court building, where we spoke with the mediator but when I had my chance to speak, Mindy was rude and impeded on my communication, to which I exclaimed that she needed to “shut the phuk up”. The facilitator did not approve of this, recommending that I go to anger management classes. 

Mindy had gotten me into this before after busting our home in  fit of rage.

The police arrested , because that is what  do in Michigan. The man always goes  jail, regardless. Thanks Governor. 

Well, after laughing it off, to my self and a few friends, I was threatened to comply. I never did nor will I ever again.

When I had attended, and this is funny, I was shocked at the caliber..or lack of, of the "men". It became obvious that I needed to form and deliver my own reprimand...

So, I sent the court a bill for my time, pro-rated at a reasonable fee, only after they sent me a bill for the course. The problem was that I had paid a fine, which should included all fees. What they did was bill me. They wanted me to pay for the class that I should have been teaching. What they had made it appear as was, shifting the money remitted to them for the fines, to the class. Clever.

I was then forced to pay the fines, AGAIN! That's the #dutchmafia of Grand Rapids. It's a very real thing.

In the meantime I have a second family court battle. My oldest child’s mother, Mary, came by the house to push off her youngest child, Heather, onto me as if she was mine. She had steadily maintained that I am the father of Heather regardless of the fact that I have had a Vasectomy since 1994, when I was married to Mindy. This added to my feelings that the wolves were trying to tear me apart. It was only natural, and convenient, to numb my pains with alcohol and camaraderie while grieving over one more nightmare, which served as a convenient excuse to continue self medicating.

Really, I don’t think I ever dreamed of being so popular with women. A paternity test was finally done. Several weeks went by before the results came back. It wasn’t until then, that I was released from that accusation. Now, Mary is fully cared for in a home for a Psychiatric illness that plagued everyone in our families for so very long. The bad part is, Sarah, was negatively influenced by her mother all those years, which constantly chipped away and destroyed my attempts at nurturing our relationship. It continues to be an obstacle that I hope time will, someday, heal.

The good part is that Sarah’s Great Grandmother influenced her positively, thank God. Sarah was the only one on her mother’s side of the family that ever graduated, never becoming pregnant or involved with drugs, and went on to get accepted into the Air Force. She was tested and given the opportunity to go into Intelligence but decided to become involved in the weather, as a Meteorologist.

My consolation prize is that she became very well educated, and takes after me, so I am told, despite my attempts to gain custody of her before Mindy compromised my life by using my Attorney, Betty Bronkema, in that custody effort. She secured her to handle her divorce from me after my accident. This complaint has never been properly filed. It wasn’t until recently that I discovered how to file a serious complaint against an Attorney or Judge.

Cody and Scarlett were thrilled to be able to see their father. Our first meeting place was at a park down the trail from our home, on the Rogue River. The kids were ecstatic to go there, especially since I announced that we were to fish, bringing Dusty along with us. Mindy ignored her though, and Dusty knew it.

Dusty was not able to understand why Mindy did not give her any sort of acknowledgement, while I set the kids up to fish. Scarlett showed huge excitement, a bit more than Cody. It was obvious that she did not get to go fishing much, if ever. So while they casted and giggled, I took pictures and shot video with Julie’s camera.

Dusty was in obvious pain, so I decided to take the dog for a walk through the river, taking the camera to get some pictures of my kids from the opposite bank. We found a shallow spot to cross upstream, wading in to some deeper areas along the way back down to where we could get a good shot.

The cold water flowed around Dusty’s hips, supporting some of her weight, as it became a bit deeper. Dusty became a bit more lively with the joy she was experiencing from the therapeutic effect of the water, cooling her hips. It must have helped to relieve her pain. It seemed obvious in her radiance. Dusty smiled and smiled.

Scarlett and Cody continued to fish but there was no action at that time of the day for them. Cody wanted to get his feet wet with Dusty and I, while Scarlett wouldn’t put the pole down for anything. She didn’t care if she had caught one or not, having so much fun just going through the motions of being able to fish.

Scarlett continued to cast and retrieve her spinner, while her mother sat in the grass with a book, and her allergies. It was nice to see her endure the aggravation she had, sneezing and hacking, scratching and tearing. It was all part of my plan for my time with the kids, and to make it inconvenient for Mindy, since she was making an inconvenience upon US. The prize for the day was when I climbed up the bank from the water. Dusty carefully climbed out too, only instead of shaking off the water where she was, she walked over to Mindy, stopping directly in front of her to shake it off there. She was an arms-length away with her book, sitting in the weeds, as Dusty made her testament against her “mamma’s” cold heart, covering her with the river’s mud and wetness. It was biblical. Julie was filming the scene as it happened, capturing screams and all. Never, since the divorce, had I been happier to see Mindy than that moment.