Sandy, part 1

It was almost time for the public schools 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, condoms, and cigarettes. 

It wasn’t much later that I realized she was just another drunk to add to my long list of distracting acquaintances. I am certain 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. She 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 spruce up the house a bit. She did little things that a person appreciated. I very quickly appreciated her greatly, especially since nobody ever did anything for me except smoke my “smokeables” and drink my “drinkables”. In essence, they merely prayed on my “emotionals” to spend my “spendables”, 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, had 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, who was about thirty years old, and looking very much like Goldie Hawn. The part she rented was the area that was most affected by the haunting. The adjoining residence was in the rear and was occupied by an older man who lived with a couple of friends. It was him who 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. Of course, she clipped another vehicle and sped 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- (AND a huge convenience for me since my place was inhabited with maniacal crackhead/drunks). 

Project rehab was part of, Michel's, rehabilitation ordered by the courts. This was a joke in itself, and anyone who has been through the program can attest to that.

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 a 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”. She 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. She explained 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 and was 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, and Angie, his pretentious wife, and Sandy’s grandson. Sandy had me sneak up the stairs in sync with her footsteps so that her son would 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 apart. He may have been a few months younger or older. He was very protective of his mother or so it appeared but I was not sure exactly why. Regardless of his opposition of me being 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 a head injury, and the Kent County Friend of the Court. She would be the one that got me into the doctor’s offices and got me the attention needed to begin tending to my many needs. I am pretty sure getting locked up, eventually, for child support, and my unhidden 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 to live with his family, 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. And how she hadn’t seen many of the key items of that inheritance since the move. And how she handed them several thousand dollars to fund the endeavor. Having a poor education resulted in her having weak math skills. 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. He sexually molested her, abused her, and neglected her. He was a 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 had performed. Sandy's mother 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 in California near where 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 cool 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 years gathering, topped off with store bought emotions and the poisons that help trick people into getting along and 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,"(Bob Dylan)- 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 to help her sister, to try 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 came 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 and taking pleasure in our little hiding spot. It was reminiscent of something we did as kids back where I grew up- pool hopping when no one was home. The sign in the window said 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 and away from people who find pleasure in involving themselves in everyone’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. Salih’s 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. She had sabotaged the vehicle by slicing the serpentine belt with a razor but not all the way through, 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 it wasn’t. We walked back from the store with the battery and belt, taking small breaks every block or so along the two-mile trip but we were 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.

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. We had just smoked a joint when Richard and Angie knocked on the door. He 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, as he went on to inform his mother of a phone call, saying 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 so that she could fly out. There was money coming in yet 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 for 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. 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, I contemplated my options, considering 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 so 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. I stashed a quarter ounce of weed 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. 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 lead 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. I chose the site closest to the bath house 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. I went right over to Arek and Ruth’s house to surprise them with the news that I am living two miles away from them.

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 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 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. I have 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 didn’t recall stashing a sack of grass in the camper either.