Yeah, Gladwin is where I spent some time trying to find my way. Instead of going to my relatives, we stopped at Long John Silver’s on our way back to Gladwin with the household items we had retrieved from their old residence. I only knew this because I got drunk and puked all over the floor where my notebook laid. Even after cleaning it all up, the pages of my notebook were oil stained. Mike answered my question about what I ate that was so greasy the next day.
On one of my trips to and from their house, I stopped in at Wally Gator’s Auto Repair, where I filled out an application. They were steadily busy repairing exhaust systems, and were in need of help, mostly because the owner of the shop was in prison on cocaine related charges- leaving behind his wife to try to manage the business. It wouldn’t be until too late that I would realize I messed up, yet, another opportunity to get off of the street and into a refuge long enough to get pointed in the right direction to reposition myself in the game of life, instead of playing life’s games. She hired me but my inability to read the writing on the wall would soon get me arrested for trying to walk six miles back to Mike’s instead of going to her house. Impaired with over indulgence, and Budweiser’s, provided by numerous dollars and plenty of dancing with the women they came from, I made the bad decision to stumble all the way back to Mike’s place.
With my shoes in my hand, I started off down the highway. It was dark and cloudy so, I used the yellow lines in the center of the road to guide me. At one point the trees were making a bunch of really cool colors but I would quickly learn that it was because the bubbles on the top of the county Sherriff’s car were putting them there. When the cop grabbed me I stumbled, which resulted in a resisting and obstructing charge on top of the public endangerment charge. When they asked me if I had any weapons, of course, I said no but my shirt was not tucked in. If it were, it would have revealed a legal belt knife. That added a concealed weapons charge that comes with a five-year max- a felony charge.
Well, being a bit annoyed, and a wise ass with gluttony for punishment, I added a comment that was something to the affect of me being Bill Clinton. They threw me in the car and headed for the pigpen, which gave me time to think. Now, of all of the stuff I could have, and should have been thinking, I was stewing on the flagrant abuse of authority, trumping up the charges against me, and keeping me distant from any rational or practical thoughts. They asked me for a name again, so I made up a good one. I started to give them Tom Kloosterhouse’s name but changed it to Kloosterman, in an attempt to keep him off of the radar. My reason was that if I gave them my name they would be sending me back to Grand Rapids, which I was trying to get away from because of the crack and the court. Even during the booking process, it was obvious that I made up the name but the deputy just brought up a printout with all of the information that went along with the name, for me to copy down onto the paperwork. At this time he asked me if I had seven hundred dollars. He stated that if I did, the whole thing could go away. I did what I could but my efforts were useless. The woman I was working for wouldn’t be putting up any money to help me out.
Imagine my surprise, thirteen years later, to run into Nate Book in prison, not just run into him but to be sharing the same cell after having met him that night in the Gladwin County Jail. Him and the other eight men in Gladwin’s ten man cell would later ridicule me and reject my attempts at trying to convince them of what I had done with the “fake” name. Nate began calling me “Goldilocks” because of my long blondish hair. He was quite jealous, and the instigator of the taunting since he was at a total loss of all hair, having alopecia since the age of eight. Not to mention the fact that he was in jail on cocaine and criminal sexual conduct charges.
When I went to court on my several charges, I tried to explain the name issue to my Court Appointed Attorney but it was useless. He left it alone and that was that. There would be no convincing the court, in any way, that I was not the person they understood me to be. The whole thing was covered up and would later resurface in the media by way of the Bay City Times Newspaper.
It ended up being a six-month sentence in the county jail, which resulted in three entertaining months- day for day. They released me at seven in the morning on a very nice sunny day at the end of September. In an attempt to face my problems, armed with a renewed sense of purpose and a little jailhouse bible study, I found the main road and started throwing my thumb out to any vehicle LEAVING Gladwin. My plan was to head south towards Grand Rapids.
The first ride I scored was from a young couple who lived in a Geodesic Dome house that was poorly assembled and seemed way too small for a couple with three children, which it was but they were very friendly. Despite being low-income survivors- they rustled up some change for my pocket, and a pack of cigarettes.
When and where they let me off at, I can’t recall but I did the same thing I always did when I needed to get someplace- I just kept going in that direction. The only real problem I had was a result of sitting around in a jail cell for several months. The fast pace of my stride soon made my feet raw. My calves became swollen and aching, and my head ached from squinting in the sun. Starving and lonely, and wanting a cup of coffee in the worst way possible to want one, I kept moving on. There were some carrots that I found laying along the roadside that relieved a bit of my hunger, probably having fallen from a harvest truck on the way to the co-op. “The lord will provide.” I kept thinking. I wondered, “Would it be possible for a cup of coffee?” Several hundred yards later I stumble upon a small convenience store where they had coffee that had just finished brewing. I took out the change I had, some that I had found on the roadside between carrots but it wasn’t enough. I pleaded with the clerk, explaining my plight, to allow me a large cup of coffee with what change I had. A customer that was in front of me heard what I was saying as he left- only to come back in with the ashtray from his vehicle, giving me all of the change that he had accumulated in it. Was this the answer to my request?
Not long after I had finished sipping my super-savored cup of mud, a blue four door Oldsmobile zips past. The driver’s head turned, scoping me out as they went past me. A few minutes later the person came back, driving by me, and turning around to pick me up.
Driving the car was a much older woman than I, maybe early sixties, who’d been out at garage sales that morning. Her face was haphazardly made up. She had fresh lip paint, and gobs of mascara hanging from her lashes, looking very much like she had plans for me and hurriedly made herself up to increase her chances. She startled me with her seeming intentions. My only defense was discussing the Bible, and it worked like a charm. She had lunch with me that day but it wasn’t cream of some young guy. It was cold chicken salad sandwiches from a Convenience store-type gas station near the off and on ramp of U.S. 131 highway.
Once I made it to southbound entrance of US 131, a guy stopped and offered me a ride. It wasn’t even three minutes later but there I was, drinking the beer he had offered. What a huge mistake for an emotionally crippled person with a concussion disorder. For three months I had dried out, sobered up, tuned in and reasserted myself. The worst thing I could do was to start drinking again, before tackling and resolving, the issues that caused me to get lost in it. I knew it at the time but it had been such a long walk in the blazing sun, that my senses were compromised and I could not resist the temptation. In my experiences and realization, now, I would have refrained for most of the ride until I could decide whether I really wanted to or if it was merely an impulse- to, “sleep on it,” as they say. Even still, I could see that my work in life was really cut out for me.
When I started out that morning, I made a prediction that it would take six rides to get me back home. It was just a bonus adventure to beat an aged cougar off with the Bible that day. She did, however, leave a claw in by giving me her address- if I needed a place to stay. And NO, I never took her up on any of it but, as you can see, I never forgot either.
It’s funny how your memories work, how your psyche works, by blocking out the traumatic events and replacing them with a lack of memory. Then things that are so silly or absurd, memory takes these things and places them before the traumatized parts. It would be like a navigation system. The subconscious seems to always push for a better understanding in order to control emotions, and conquer anger and fear- helping steer us to destiny that we relish to find. That is, if we don’t lobotomize ourselves with alcohol and substances or with other people’s views, intentions and schemes- trading away ourselves for a glimpse of some painted up sell-outs thighs or for a Coke and a store bought smile.
The last few days, while rebelling in my own ways at the things I like to observe so-called “grown men” doing, I have given a bit of thought on the old tale about the sword and the stone. Maybe I’m just thick but I finally understand something about it. The sword wasn’t in the stone; the sword was within the stone- the stone was the sword that conquered the people. In order to have a fighting chance at their oppressor’s, they needed to have swords which meant making them- the sword “in” the stone. The man who can give the people the sword for strength would be the man that they would crown. It’s all so simple. We are the stone that the sword is in, and we are the ones who can get it out, giving our power to ourselves with the empowerment that knowledge and ambition brings.
Anyway, I got the next ride, ride number five, which carried me all the way to Grand Rapids. After asking me where to drop me off, I see that it’s going to be a trick because traffic is heavy and it’s a very busy spot on the highway at the 131/I-96 interchange near Alpine Avenue. Just about the time I get to the top of the entrance ramp heading west to Marne, a Michigan State Police officer pulls up and scoops me off of the road. My instincts were telling me to hike through the bush a ways but I figured another hitch would come along right then- not the authorities. Just imagine my surprise when he runs my name to find that Ottawa County has a warrant for me. All that way just to get picked up by the police and put right back in jail! This was my final ride. This was ride number six.
In a way I was relieved- getting right back in the ring to fight things out to the finish or maybe punishment from the spiritual realm for drinking so quickly after being clean and sober for three months. Either way, or both, it would speed things up with my tasks. Mostly, I considered it a prep-course for what lie ahead, re-uniting with my dreams of music because during that thirty days I would become acquainted with my cell-mate who played music, wrote lyrics and recorded in his own home studio. We spoke about these things ninety percent of the time, yielding only to familial topics. This got the brain train moving along, and with all the freight mine carried it was now unstoppable.
They did experiments involving prisons and institutional settings, where some of the participants were made inmates and some were made guards. It was a very powerful and informative psychological documentary. Here I am, in the reality of that particular study, on the inside. I feel like Jane Goodall in a way, only the monkeys that I am observing are a bit more serious issue: TODAY’S MEN.
The mentality in motion, on the part of those who help run the Ottawa County Jail, involved a little game with the “systems” people. There I am, waiting to be picked up for my release, all the while my people are cruising around outside in their efforts to get me but they cannot find the entrance. The grounds are set up with instructional road signs that are intentionally confusing in their implications and configuration. It seems they do not like helping people, contrasting to the “serve and protect” mantra that they are sworn to uphold.
State workers, especially turnkeys, which are largely disgruntled, get off on taunting and humiliating people (It surprises me that Bob isn’t a turn-key). Most often they become prison guards because they couldn’t pass the psych evaluation to become an actual police officer but they end up in the institutions working with people anyway, which is unbelievable and makes no sense.
So, after you follow the directions of the sign saying “Ottawa County Jail Visitor’s Entrance”, you find all the other signs. These all say “wrong way” and “do not enter” and “authorized personnel only,” leaving you with no way inside the compound. Yeah. Real funny. I’m sure some Napoleonic twerps get a frequent laugh about that but it is nothing compared to the thrill they get from getting into arguments with people because of it.
Looking around, I see the male specimens surrounding me and feel relieved that my life isn’t so lacking- left with time to imagine what life must be like for these pitiful fools. Fortunately I have better things to do but while doing some of those things, I find myself saddened with the fact that I have no real men for friends, which leaves me without anyone to call for help when I need it or anyone that I can hang out with, or have over for a card game with my wife and I.
At the moment I can’t recall if I ended up released or if I was transferred to the Kent County Jail for an FOC warrant but somehow I ended up back in Grand Rapids, on the West side of town. I am pretty sure I went back to work for Salih but it wouldn’t last very long. His wife was still too much to deal with.
It wouldn’t be much longer before I’d be back to work for Bob. I’m sure they spoke about what to do with me being that I couldn’t go back to mom’s due to Stan’s Ego, and so that’s how I ended up in a room at the Wayside Motel. Bob would just deduct the rent from my pay. One of the problems I had with Bob was that he took it upon himself to pay me so little that I was starved in effect. So much so, that once I was involved, I had no choice but to stay where I was at unless I wanted to go back to the streets. I didn’t really have enough money to do the things I wanted, like go out to the bar in search of a companion or buy dope of any kind. I had grown accustom to earning over two thousand dollars a week, now only being paid two hundred a week.
There were reasons why I was getting shorted. Most involved Bob’s scandalous nature of milking the jobs out. The profits he earned, that were rightfully my own, paid for his Corvette- an acquisition he flaunted in my face whenever he got a chance to. Little did he allow himself to understand is that if he would have listened and learned important trade secrets and techniques that I was willingly trying to share with him he could have paid me one thousand a week, enabling me to take my ex-wife to court over defrauding me, my children and the courts, and regaining my life, and have bought himself two Corvettes. But humble in the smallest, he was not, and I’ve finally become rewarded with that which I have sought so long and hard. Kids somewhat included.
Anyway, the Wayside Motel was an okay little place except for the narcotic affect of the room environment, either depressing or lacking of oxygen, I am not sure which- maybe both. Trying to keep myself busy, I took it upon myself to work in the backyard repairing the Horseshoe pits.
There were plenty of things to keep me busy, like working for Ancil Mitchell, at the church he ministered to. He needed a Baptism pond built, something other than the galvanized thing they were using. This was the same thing used to feed or water livestock with on many farms across the United States of America.
Ancil propositioned Bob to create the Baptism pond but rather than further his knowledge in the engineering and artistic scope that makes up more than half of the skilled carpentry trade, he nominated me. It was probably a decision he made because of the fact that it would end up being a low paying gig- if any pay at all. I feel like he did that to keep himself from being exposed but mostly he just couldn’t do it. There was too much thinking involved, a curious situation because my thinking faculties were compromised because of the head injury I had received from the accident with the Semi, and my newfound lifestyle after my divorce. Either way, I really appreciated this because it kept me busy and away from myself- consuming my time that would normally be spent drinking, especially since I was exhausted from carrying an excessive amount of emotional baggage. This pond ended up being a very, very cool thing, and it may possibly have been Bob’s attempt to help me get away from the destruction I had been doing to myself. With Ancil on the sidelines, and a team of volunteers- I let the project lead me along, helping me find whatever I had left in myself for the world. It was a confidence booster.
Outside of the fiberglass liner, the fabric, paint, and various fasteners and adhesives, I manufactured every part of it, even the mechanical hardware assemblies. We needed a lid for it that could also be the floor of the podium, concealing the pond beneath, in which to “bury your sins.”
Some calls were made, magazines thumbed through, and a day or two later I had information to use for proceeding. We found a company, on the east coast of course, that manufactured this lid component. They called it a “stress-skinned panel”, and it cost around ten grand, shipping included I imagine, which would take approximately eight weeks. It was a no-brainer for me, being it was my project. After a short contemplation I decided that I would engineer one of my own panels. The one that I made was under an inch and three quarters thick and took me about two days to make. When it was finally installed you could park a full size motorcycle on it. Proud of that achievement, I glowed for weeks.
The initial phase involved removing some of the floor, cutting out some of the existing load bearing beam structure, and re-engineering it all to accommodate a new joist system that gave us the lowered finished height we needed, without having to rebuild the existing stage ensemble. Making the upper portion slide, roll, and lift was another small engineering feat accomplished with minimum hardware that was constructed using one inch threaded steel pipe and some bearing roller parts I acquired from a fitness store that I had worked at in the early nineties- Viking Leisure Products.
The people who made up the congregation were always there to lend a hand or just spend their time doing whatever needed to be done. A good amount were recovered from the streets and clinging to the church out of their earnestness in keeping away from those things that robbed them of life. Many of them were single mothers, divorced parents, and fatherless children who found alcohol and drugs, and in some cases even prostitution and the edge of their graves.
Ancil was known as a Saint- a healer. Many persons had been healed in his church, leaving behind their crutches and various braces and even wheelchairs as a testament to their healing. Even if it was the mere decision to truly choose good to end a charade, they were healed just the same. His own son and daughter were not strangers to the world’s games involving being hounded and bamboozled by persons interested in separating them from their money with any of the highly habit forming and dangerously addictive salves that those who lost all but hope to find the goodness in life will try.
His son was recovered from full-fledged junkie status, having a lengthy history with intravenous drug use that all but claimed his life.
One of the young ladies in the congregation had her eyes on me but I was no where near recovered for a relationship- merely struggling with the reality of trying to find my way back to what was important to my whole existence. I could have cleverly manipulated this woman for selfish reasons but, thankfully, I am not really the type and had been just sober enough to not prey upon her, having the realization that there was respectability in keeping my grief my own. I loved her by staying away, not to share my poisoned existence with her in her efforts to keep her family intact and to be a mother to her children. Though it was something I yearned for in the deepest pit of my heart and soul, I was just honest enough with myself or dare I say wise enough, to know that it was wrong.
Aside from working on the baptism pond, I attended the services at the Grand Valley Voice of the Pentecost on the weekends, even became baptized in the pond that I helped them to create. It was a great experience at that time in my life, and I think about it once in a while with a smile, while wondering if I should find the time to visit and see what kind of maintenance the pond needs to reflect the love, care and craftsmanship that went into it’s creation. My heart was poured into that project as I had poured it into every project. And even though Ancil told me to come to him for money on it, I declined even the smallest payment. How could I take money from a church that showed a mere forty or sixty dollars in the offering plate? Even still, to this day, in such a time of my own dire needs- facing hardships and uncertainty, I am still satisfied in that decision. Money wasn’t what I needed.
chapter
It wouldn’t be long before a guy would move into the room next door to my own, bringing the cocaine I was struggling to get away from into my reality again. It was my inebriation with alcohol that undermined my own defenses. Compounding the circumstances was my need for camaraderie, being in a state of psychological and emotional weakness and unable to focus in on the big picture. Once again, I would fail to resist temptation, and I ended up cavorting with addicts again, namely, Ronald Jackson.
Ronald grew up in Allendale. He went to school there and also rode dirt bikes as a teen. He had a chance to be a pro rider but somehow got separated from that dream. His mother and sisters raised Ronald. His father was an addict who still roams the streets today. As for how Ronald’s father became an addict, I cannot say nor do I know but in regards to Ronald, I feel it was his father that introduced that poison into his life. As a whole, my guess is that it’s mostly environmental- conditioned by forces that will never show them selves to be prosecuted. Drugs, particularly cocaine, destroyed Ronald’s marriage. Ronald’s son is now a young adult who’s playing the same games like being a small time dope peddler, and wannabe gangster, slowly evolving into a full-blown addict, and slowly poisoning all those around him. Being a dope peddler is a convenient way to have the drug at your disposal, which is the premise behind those who “share” the drug with anyone around them. Ronald, much like his father did in my speculation, probably turned his son on to the drug by-way of mixing it with marijuana, the first step to turning one on to it. Nostradamus said that the cities would poison all who inhabit them.
Ron would spend what money he could pool together to use the drug. He would then call around the city, to every relative, friend and acquaintance, trying to accumulate a couple dollars from each one. The story was always the same: that he needed money for bus tickets to get to work. He did this so often that the phrase, “bus ticket money,” had to be understood by everyone he contacted. If I could have only gotten a handle on my drinking I would have never allowed him or anyone else, to know of my safe haven at the Wayside Motel. Ronald would drive out to get me in a stolen car, knowing that I had been working and had a few dollars, only to re-awakening the demon that I was trying to make sleep forever… bad associations.
My biggest failure was the alcohol- a door that I had left wide open, while trying to close out all of the bad people and bad things that I stumbled on while lost in life’s game. The final straw at the Wayside Motel was after the motorcycle crash that took place at Bob’s. I had been examining the mushrooms in the yard behind the motel- looking for psychedelics but the manager saw me and mowed the yard down tight.
Thrown out of the Wayside Motel soon after, I ended up at Ronald’s house, having nowhere else that I could see to go. It was soon the end of summer again because I recall it being Cody’s birthday. His birthday had motivated me to write him a special Birthday song. Ronald had a phone, so I called his mom’s house in Spartanburg South Carolina, only to sing it to an answering machine that would quickly end up erased after Cody had gotten to listen to it:
“I- ’m singing Ha-ppy Birthday, t-o my favorite little du-de. I’m ho-ping you don’t gro-w at all, as I look at pictures scattered ‘round of you. Just look around your room, you’ll see me smiling at you in that oak sun carving I sent home with you. Ha-ppy Birthday, Happy Birth-day. Happy Birthday Cody, I Love You.”
His mother told me that he smiled big as the world when he heard it, which only makes sense to me why she destroyed it now that I look back. And as angry and hurt as I have been since she took them, I am happy because it only gives that much more value to the power and significance of the love that I have to share. And it makes me happy that I survived the tests and strains. I won. You can’t kill me. You can’t destroy me. I have been strengthened by the hardships, hardened, tempered but my heart is intact. Thank God. I still can’t believe I am alive sometimes.
It was while staying at Ronald’s, on Alpine Avenue, that I would cross paths with Salih again, and regain my job performing roof repair and carpentry. It wouldn’t be very long before my substance abuse would interrupt that again. The question I now wondered the answer to was: “Why would Salih continue to offer, yet another chance at employment?” The answer is fairly predictable or maybe not. You see, Salih was one of a number of three or four brothers, him being the youngest. Their parents were deceased- killed in an automobile accident, if I remember right. I envisioned the movie, “Westside Story”. Alcohol quickly became a routine in their lives, which led to some serious drug use. Dependency soon took over and destroyed what was left of the family. But that’s a bit vague. To put it more clearly, cocaine almost killed them all.
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