Sandy part 7 unedited

I remembered the night I caught the Allendale grocery store using illegal labor as my elbow ached while combing the roadside for beer cans: I had been drinking all day and I was fighting the end of it, so I jumped in the van and limped to the store for another thirty pack. When I got to the store it looked open but the doors were locked. A young man saw that I was trying to get in. He came to the door and opened it with a big smile. As I hurried for the beer cooler, I noticed that the store was being cleaned and that everyone was Latino, and that they were actually closed. This issue was in the news a lot in the prior weeks- illegal labor from over the border. My only concern was with getting a box of beer before the store manager realized I was there, planning on swiping my card at a self check out and blasting out in a flash. My feet marched me right to the cooler. I grabbed the beer and raced back down the aisle to the register but my feet magically slipped out from under me. On the way to the floor, I put my hand out to break my fall but had my arm locked, which jammed my elbow, slamming me into the floor and aggravating my back injury. The floors were wet with fresh wax. 

The machines that were being operated on the floors shut off and several people who spoke no English came to help me up. That’s when the manager came around to see why the machines had stopped running. She chided me for being in the store since it was closed, asking me how I got in. When I explained that the help had opened the door, she ordered me out. She was pretty startled at my being there in a precarious position to observe what was going on there with the illegal help functioning as employees. It’s too bad I was drunk because I could have blackmailed or outright exposed the store for it. Too bad I messed that up. Live and learn, I suppose. 

 These things we had, of Sandy's father in storage, proved to be valuable, calming our needs and wants. After a while went by of pawning things, starting with the two salamander kerosene heaters belonging to Tom Bruin, we had a big sale at a friend’s house down the road from us. On the third day of the sale a person came by telling us not to sell anything until they brought their brother to see about buying some of the stuff, giving us a fifty-dollar bill to hold it. He came that night, looked around, offered us fifteen hundred dollars and bought every scrap. Sandy was relieved to have it gone because she felt it was all bad to have versus the money that actually just gave us back what we had spent in storage fees to keep it.

Money sources were about exhausted and the lot rent was becoming difficult for us to maintain. We had not missed any trailer payments or electric bills, and I had no phone bill because Dan Doyle had given me a phone as part of the money I earned but never got due to his purchase of a Harley Davidson Fatboy, which used up the money he had been paid for the contract to finish the Log home for the Minster family. Dan repeatedly denied any wrong doing but taking into consideration the things that Mark and Connie had to say about what they paid him for the project, I am not sure that Karma was going to let him slip by unscathed for his seeming violation of our trust. This took place while I had become to be involved with Michele Shackleton, just before I met Sandy- another flash back:

Out of my desperation for an income, and my innate ability to extend trust to anyone for a chance to earn their own, my sight failed to recognize the paid meals and few dollars, now and then instead of a check, as part of a scam. Dan kept promising the pay would come when we finished the project, while he petered out a few dollars each week to keep us hanging on for as long as he could. This was a classis carrot-and-stick tactic that is commonly used in the construction business to take advantage of sub-contractors and their labor. I like to call it the “West Michigan Trade Robbery”. Never mind that I was happy to be working on a log home with people whom I felt were my friends that I knew from the past. That small detail helped to keep me completely blinded to what was really going on. Keeping on at my trade, and trusting Dan, I whistled the song in my heart.

Other than Dan Doyle, Bill Bolthouse, and a young guy Dan had working with him for quite some time on his various projects in the past several years, he also had his son, Danny junior, and his daughter, Mandy, helping him off and on as he needed them. Dan kept managing to land gigs, like this carpentry gig, while working as a licensed electrician, servicing run-down mobile homes and small businesses that used antiquated warehousing spaces to run their shops out of. It was one of these dilapidated buildings that Dan ran in to Bill at, while Bill was performing plumbing tasks for a crook named Gary McQuaig, who kept Bill around for inexpensive under-the-table cash labor.

Dan’s son, Danny, was working with him from time to time, instead of steadily due to substance abuse issues that interfered with the work demands. He would be slowly replaced by his oldest sister, Mandy, who, at twenty-six years old, had just been released from a lengthy jail sentence for substance abuse related charges herself. Mandy would work a few days a week when she didn’t have furthering education classes. It would end up being my job to work with her, training her in the carpentry trade. This was mostly because her father lacked the mindset, and had little patience or ability to effectively communicate with her or anyone else who was without any skills that he tried to use as help.

Being a patient parent, and a happy teacher, I corrected her efforts as she worked, rather than blow a lot of wind trying to “teach” her, which took a lot of time away from my own productivity. This was the right way to go because I could continue working while observing her, letting the tools she used do the talking, telling me what her instruction needs were. The table saw would holler or sing after a tag team primer lesson. My ears could always tell what I needed to know. “Smooth continuous feed on those boards- it leaves less blade kerf to remove and gives less strain on the motor,” I would tell her. Mandy was a good student, always eager and very earnest and enthusiastic about learning the Finish Carpentry Trade. She was also motivated since she was a mother of two, and needed to provide to them without having any help from the children’s fathers, unfortunately.

One evening a year or so later, around nine o’clock in the evening, while Sandy and I were enjoying cocktails around our fire pit, I received a phone call to come and do some emergency repairs at the Gezon Building in Grand Rapids, near the corner of Plainfield Avenue and Leonard Street. Apparently someone went through the building, busting down doors of some of the most active musicians studio spaces, where they stole anything of value. For some reason Dan Doyle gave them my number, which I am glad he did because I could use every dollar I could get my hands on at that time, especially since I was still feeling the sting of being robbed on the Minster’s Log Cabin project. Sandy and I immediately jumped in the van and dashed out to perform the repairs and collect the money that was being offered.

One day, while at that same studio building about a year or so after that, I was told of how Dan Doyle’s daughter, Mandy, had been found dead of an overdose in her apartment. I was told that evidence was found in her apartment that indicated her body had been violated after her death, as well as violating one of the children in the home at the time. Apparently, this evidence supported blatant sexual misconduct to both of them. I instant became weak and my knees buckled, collapsing me to the ground. My stomach wretched with dry heaves, and my eyes flooded with tears as the news sunk in. It was as if she was my own child that had died, and it had been my own grandchild that suffered this terrible atrocity. Mandy was only twenty-nine years old.

Dan Doyle was my oldest daughter, Sarah’s, uncle. Sarah’s mom, having been the victim of sexual abuse as a child by her father and several other men, had become a man hater. She had accused me of “hitting” on Mandy back when we had first gotten together, when Mandy was a young teen. Another twisted up family in the world. Sarah would prove to be the only one on her mom’s side of the family to do anything with her self, like graduate high school, not get knocked up, and to become enlisted in the military. Because of her grades, she was offered an opportunity in the Air Force, where she tested out high ranking and was offered placement in Intelligence. She made the final decision to go into Meteorology. Thanks to her Great Grandmother Lawrence, Sarah went to a Catholic school on Bridge Street, and was looked after by her Great Grandma Lawrence most of the time. This proved to be a significant influence- Great Grandma Lawrences’ involvement, not necessarily the Catholic school.

Sarah’s mother was known as, “Crazy Mary,” by her whole family and everyone who knew her. I didn’t think much of it until she started accusing me of having sex with everyone she and I knew. She got me fired from a good job once because when she called to speak to me, a woman answered- the boss’s wife. Mary accused her of having some kind of relationship with me- sex mostly. Mary began to force me to drop my pants to smell my genitals to see for her self if I smelled unusually clean or like another woman. This was when I met Bill Bolthouse, while working with Mary at Florentine’s Italian Restaurant in Grandville. Mary’s antics drove me crazy, and I used anyone I could as a convenient buffer to spend my time with, especially for drinking or getting stoned. I could no longer stomach going home to Mary. I could no longer handle her without drinking. I was miserable but had no idea how much so, or what a relationship was suppose to resemble since I came from a broken home myself. The fact that she became pregnant with my child was a total shock. I thought my testicles were damaged from a bicycle accident that ripped a large gash in my scrotum. We had been together for over two years, having unprotected sex the whole time. I was sure I was sterile but I was also just a clueless kid. The fact was that her level of acidity in her bodily fluids made my sperm sterile- a clue from God that I was in the wrong place in life maybe.

One day, after Mary had gotten me fired from Florentine’s for accusing the waitresses of trying to steal me, my mother picked me up from the Wheeler family’s home where I stayed at the time. She took me to meet a friend of hers that she new from the American Legion on 44^th street and South Division. His name was Bob Bolthouse- a plumber. His son, Bill, had just gotten out of rehab earlier that month. This was in 1988.

Bob was the owner of Midwest Plumbing and had a habit of finding apprentices every once in a while, that were nothing more than someone to be available to drive him to various bars around town. He always had this story that he needed to collect money from people that owed him from jobs he had done for them. Bob would dispatch Bill to plumbing jobs that would come up, things like repairing or installing carbonic systems and water heaters at bars and restaurants. They were always small jobs from repeat customers. The truth was that the business had been bankrupt for some time. He always sent me with Bill as his assistant. Bill and I soon became very close friends. I quickly learned of Bill’s addictions to cocaine and alcohol, which he drank everyday. It was a routine I became accustom to and continued, ironically enough, until I turned twenty-one years old.

The music was always blaring loudly from a shrine of a stereo system Bill had built. The speakers were one of his many accomplishments that he would routinely show off, along with his extensive knowledge of the music that he paid daily tributes to. We were like brothers in many ways, and everyday was a party. Since I was eighteen at the time, it was a welcome environment. I came to spend a great amount of time there with him. By 1991 Bill and I would part ways after my meeting Mindy, who became pregnant the first night we were together. It was her that pushed for sex that night. Anyway, Bill would end up spending over three years in prison for drunk driving charges where he also punched a cop. It was one of several drunk-driving charges Bill had accumulated. This all happened right after Paul had to cut him lose from our trim carpentry crew because of his drinking and using coke on the job.

Bills performance slowed way down because he was constantly tending to his use instead of working, occasionally calling one of us in to the room he was suppose to be working in, for a line of cocaine. He was always sweating profusely because of it. It wouldn’t be until the spring of 2002 that I would see Bill again after running into Dan Doyle whom Bill was working for. Dan quickly scooped me up to help him on the jobs he had going on at the time. After a few weeks we began working on the Minster project- a log home. That was when I saw Bill again. It was like old times with Bill, and I was happy to see him. Soon, I became to understand that he was worse off now than he ever was. Alcohol had almost complete control of him, if not entire control. The funny thing was that Dan was a devout A.A. guy but he just watched Bill dying there, right before his eyes. Maybe it was a reminder to himself to not begin drinking again, since he too had spent time in prison for alcohol related charges involving criminal sexual misconduct with his daughters, which two of them were his stepdaughters. This was the final straw in the marriage he was trying to maintain at the time.

Anyway, Dan paid for the phone through his service plan that he had with a well known, over priced company called, Verizon. It had been his son’s phone before he quit working the kid. The day I became separated with having the phone was while fishing on the Grand River at Conestoga Campground, kicking it off of the dock when I stood up to leave by stepping down in the wrong place. Since my back had been injured in the automobile accident in 1997, I had many issues that made me clumsy. Besides, I was having cognitive problems from the head injury that also contributed to my many dysfunctions. And who brings their phone fishing, anyway? It kind of defeats the purpose of escaping the monotonies of daily life. After the phone was lost, everything finally went to hell but I am ahead of myself a bit.

Yard sale flashback selling Sandy’s junk collection she got from her father.

One day we got the idea to have a yard sale, taking the Yamaha 650 Special that I had bought with some of the money from the Tom Bruin project, and all of the junk Sandy had inherited from her dad, to our friends house a mile to the west of us. This friend was one that Sandy has developed when I was in jail for nonpayment of child support. Mainly, he was a source for Sandy’s chief concern- marijuana. It would be about five days into the yard sale before someone would stop to look at our junk and say that they were sending their brother back to look at the stuff, asking us to hold off on selling anything else. They were certain that he would be very interested in everything we had for sale.

There were lots of tools and tool chests, antiques, a lot of model trains and the stuff that goes along with them. There were quite a few old record albums, long guns, and an old coffee grinder that stood twenty-six inches high and had been completely refurbished by her father. There was a pretty cool police siren from the thirties or forties- the kind that went on top of the vehicle. There were all kinds of unique items, and every bit of it was antique. The value of everything, if it was sold individually was probably close to twelve thousand dollars.  When the guy showed up he offered us about fourteen hundred bucks for everything without even walking around the whole display of goods. Sandy was ecstatic. Never mind that it cost us ten times what he offered her, in grief, and three times that, in moving expenses to get it here from California. Not to mention the storage fees at the mini storage. ARGH! The sale of these goods was not a moment too soon. We were in need of lot rent, and we weren’t sure where the next beer, I mean dollar, was coming from.

We slept in the van for a few weeks, including the parking lot of a local church, and at a boat launch on the river, just miles from the Conestoga campground. It was the end of the season and they were winterizing the park to remain closed for the winter, which meant that we needed to come up with the lot rent to be put back over at The River Pines RV Park until the trailer was paid for. They had already kicked everyone else out and we were left scrambling for the money to get in there even though they didn’t want us back in that park. Our leverage was that we still owed on the trailer and hadn’t defaulted. Jerry had no choice but to let us back in, and we didn’t have a choice either. We came up with the money byway of the yard sale just in the nick of time. Now, my only problem was getting the trailer ready for the cold and snow, which was coming fast. Having no help to do it was what made it difficult. It was the kind of job where you need five sober hands. Sandy only had one that was helpful.

Our second winter in the park was nice with heat. Bob and I began working together again, mostly due to the fact that everyone else who worked for him would soon quit after realizing that they couldn’t stand him long enough to get anything done that resembled work. Those that could stand him could only do so as long as alcohol was involved but since I am a father with lots of patience and a love for the trade, it could be done. The drinking helped too. Luckily I hadn’t shot him, only because Dale Earnhardt’s death had prevented him from returning in time for me to get the gun that I had the opportunity to buy. The man who had it had a deadline to board a plane for his new job and home in California.

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