"Death's Benefits" a synopsis of the carnival. unedited

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 and 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.

If you want the truth, or my version of it, it's because everyone is so overly self endulgent to be able to make ends meet- blaming their financial strains on anything but the alcohol, gasoline, drugs, and various forms of un earned entertainment they freely shove down their throats- sucking the phallus in their face yet homophobic just the same. 

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, ..

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, 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 issues.

 My numbers were always miswritten or misread, as if I had Dyslexia. That was fine with me because I had 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 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 and puts 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 it 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 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, witnessing  entire ordeal, 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 under-achievments 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.

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 she was at home being tended to by in-home nurses and such. 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. 

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 eight or ten, and leg braces and a wheelchair, Uncle Bill never left her side. They were both smokers in high school and 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 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 Hazzard” 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 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 bluish 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 the damned 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.

Thanks, zachery scott polk 

4/24/2017 updated

"Choices" unedited (beginning of carnival)

Bob and I were trimming houses for Johnny Van Soest at the time. One day Johnny called Bob to a private luncheon, leaving me at the jobsite 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. Bob, on the other hand, was an imposter. His 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. 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 Bob’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.

Bob 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 Bob 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.

Bob’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 the 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 Bob 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. Bob 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. 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 past.

His mouth would leak things 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 what might be the strangest part of it all is that him and I were a lot alike. My filter has been broken since the accident and I can't, for the life of me, help it.

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, he altered all of the company’s production jigs. This malicious act caused a huge problem, and was a devastating blow to the business, that would rob the employees of their security by going out of business because of it this act. This was a problem in the Marne area because there were few jobs around that contributed to the local community and it’s Economy. 

This would be bragged about every once in a while, just for the sake of inflating his own ego and 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 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 Joe’s kids. The boy was around thirteen at the time, and very meek, more than likely fearful of Bob. 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.

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. When we got there, I realized I had made a mistake. 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 Bob 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 Bob 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 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 circle 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 I let some crack addicted woman talk me into. 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 Permalife 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 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 doobie on my left shoulder, and threw all of my identification in the nearest trashcan.

"Voice of the Pentecost" unedited (before ron groenlier)

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 trailhead that was near the house. It went out and around a farmer’s fields. At one point Bob stopped and ordered 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.

Bob 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. 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 Bob 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 Bobby 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 where I come from. It’s a bit of a pre-requisite for dirt biking. Every Marnian knows that. But Bob knew of my head injury and 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.

(Wayside motel, to move in with Ron Groenlier 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 who wanted 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. I used my crafting skills, and wounded sentimentality, to glue 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? It 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 Charles. 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 Jackson’s apartment. This is the same place, where sometime after this, I would plan to take Selena as a 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 Jackson was a user who was always calling people for a little cash so he could score more. Sort of like the buddy system for drug user’s.

At one point, while living at one of Ronald Jackson’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 and despondency. She took all of my files that I showed to her and just vanished.

Living at Ronald Jackson’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 Vokes house that ask him to rent me a room. It just happened to be that Ron Groenlier showed up shortly after my arriving. After he 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 her problem was that I knew more about there marriage than she wanted me to. It was one more time that I had to call Bob for work.

One day Bob 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 Bob was building a few items to go in his house. Things like a sow’s belly draw 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 Bob 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 residual affects of the substances 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 and vibrated 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.

Bob 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 and called 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 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 and took me to the hospital to be treated. While we were there I told her about a story I had been writing and a few nightmares I had been having. She didn’t really listen to me, 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.

Within a few months or weeks Bob would land Ron 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 because of his alcoholism, which is ironic because all of he people involved were drunks. Talk about the pot calling the smoker stoned. Or maybe it was because it put light on, and gave a voice to, their own issues. You always get rid of the person making you look bad... Serpico.