Sandy pt 6 unedited- as usual

Now, it wasn’t just Sandy’s, and my own, once again, broken dreams that clouded my perception. There were other people who had damaging impacts. I am not making excuses for my drinking, which I did know was a problem. It was a familiar comfort that I had discovered when I was a teenager surviving a badly broken home. Bob Smithe was a factor in my struggle to overcome during this time, as he had been in and out of my life since immediately after the truck accident, which happened just a handful of months before my family became to be destroyed. As I think about it now, I wonder if it wasn’t his twisted aura that poisoned my own?

Bob had his house up for sale, while building himself another one that was very much like it. The only person who became interested in it had no credit of any use, and was unable to purchase the home. Bob, needing to unload it, had a discussion with his loan officer about his little problem. The fact that this particular loan officer was known as “The Loan God,” was what made Bob seek out his confidence in regards to how he could unload this house.

The arrogance and vanity of this particular loan officer was evident by way of his vanity plate on his automobile. The vanity plate on his car say’s “Loan God.” His manipulation included instructions to Bob that he needed to bring the money that the potential buyer was required to have in order for the loan and purchase to be made possible. That meant that Bob would have to bring fifteen thousand dollars cash to the table, placing the pile of money in front of the buyer as if it were his own money, which he then slid toward the loan officer as if he were paying it. The deal was sealed and Bob could now move on with his plans. The whole thing is fraudulent and is part of what is plaguing us this very day.

Part of Bob’s browbeating of me was to throw these things in my face. Like I was nothing, insignificant. Always saying that I needed to start small and work my way up. Stating that he got what he has in life because he took it. Myself, I am not like that. All I could do was to pretend to listen intently- as if he was some kind of teacher. He would inundate me with these kinds of things throughout the day. My theory was that he could not handle his own conscience, needing to drown it out by ripping on me constantly.

Lucky for him I was use to it since my so-called father was much the same, constantly beating me into submission, which I stubbornly fought from the beginning, much to his dismay. No matter how much he beat me or smacked me, I would get back up. He would refuse to listen to something I had to say, swatting me in the face and telling me to “tick-a-lock” but I would keep on. No matter how many times he hit me, demanding me to shut up, I would continue- forcing him to work harder at it. Just as much as he could dish out, I would provide an amount of resistance equal to or greater. My tolerance for pain is extremely high as a product from that abuse. That is a triumph for myself. No one can hurt me now.

By the time I got home from work with Bob, I was a useless heap of flesh. I couldn’t talk very well, stuttering my words and becoming hard to string them together in sentences. My hand would curl up in an odd way that I’d only seen in invalids. During the day I would be subjecting myself to a barrage of abuse, things like semantic lectures, and statements such as, “My kids got me…for Father’s day. What did your kids get you, Daddy?” Or, “You must not have been that great of a husband or your wife would have never divorced you.” Or by taunting me with calling out to my ex-wife’s new husband as if to be hunting him, “Peetah, oh Peetah...” Peter, being his name. Never, have I received closure for the decisions Mindy has made, and it continues to haunt me to this day, more or less.

Bob had a way of starting the day off as a confidant. Having no father to confide in for myself, I desperately needed such a figure in my life. 

As the week progressed, he would take that which I had told him and twist it into his own brand of torment. I would continue to persevere and do my best work for this man, constantly trying to prove my worth, sometimes on a minute to minute basis and just as often, I would secretly forgive him. The abuse I endured would only be the cork that seemed to keep me tucked in the bottle, especially after telling me things like, “Maybe you just don’t know how to suck up right”, which to me meant that I should be serving his intimate perversions- to put it lightly.

Back at the park, I was content in my trailer. My mother even came to visit, sometimes bringing us pork sausage made from hogs that her boyfriend, Tom, had raised and slaughtered. I would end up working for her, pouring my heart into whatever it was that she wanted done, as I always did. We had been having trouble with the van and it would get worse, running out of gas all of the time because of so little money and the defective gas gauge typical of Fords from the eighties.

The season came to an end and we had to move back to the River Pines since the camper was not paid off yet. I scrambled to get it winterized. The entire bottom needed to be wrapped in skirting before the cold weather, which put me under the gun because the cold had already upon us. I had no choice or assistance to get the work done before the snow started flying. One freeze could create so many headaches for us that I couldn’t begin to calculate the potential expenses. I made a call to Bob, hoping to find work that would, once again, back me up financially and to make it known that I was living in my own home fit for the occasional guest. He would call it my “hut” in the “tin ghetto”.

One day, we had scraped the payment together that completed our purchase of the trailer. We were sitting inside celebrating as the sun was going down, having just given the last payment to Jerry’s wife, and the receipt still in our hands. Jerry came tearing into the lot we had and came pounding on the door. He seemed upset, which we were used to. We opened the door to an irate shyster, saying that we lost our agreement because we messed up on the payments. What he was really upset about was that he had no intention of us paying it off, knowing we were cash poor and banking on us having a hard time doing it. We were supposed to mess up. He was working at making it impossible to make that last payment, if none of the others, by not being there to accept it or write us a receipt but his wife was home at the right time for us to do so. He figured it would be like shooting at dead men and he knew we wouldn’t be able to fight him in court over it. This was a money scandal of his, and not the only one. He had made a bet and lost, and, boy, he was more angrier when he left. He slammed the door so hard that it shook the whole trailer, knocking stuff off of our walls and jamming the door so hard that it wouldn’t open back up to get out of. We just smiled and laughed to each other. We had finally won something.

Come to find out, Jerry had been caught with his hand in the park till. He had been caught renting out the modular units that were for sale, and pocketing the money. Only Jerry knows how much money he embezzled. He was ousted from the managing of the park, and forced to take up residence in his own motor home, a brand new Bounder.