Part 23 from "Escaping The Despondent Sea"

Shortly after we arrived back the truck would drop its gas tank and drag from underneath by the remaining steel band that supported it. Evidently the other band had not been refastened when the fuel pump had been cobbled- a “miss-repair” done by our good friend Jimmy Huckleberry. Someone pulled up to us to tell us what was going on under our truck since we were unable to hear the sound of the plastic tank being worn away on the asphalt over the sounds of the exhaust system and the radio. When I got out to examine the situation I noticed what the problem was and tried to slip the band back onto the gas tank, where it had jiggled from because of the looseness. It was a bit difficult since the five gallons of fuel we had just put in it made it seem heavy in relationship to the awkward position my body was in to achieve the task. A hole had been worn through the corner and was leaking the fuel. Luckily we only had about four blocks left to go to get back to Prospect Studio, where we salvaged the leaking fuel by placing a plastic tub under it that’s designed for the wallpapering process. Previously, we had to take care to only fill the tank half way because of a crack in the seam of the tank but now it needed a tank for sure. I think that was ol’ Nancy’s last drive.

Fortunately, for Danny, his mother had no real need for her car at that time, so we borrowed it until we could figure out what to do. We soon decided to fetch RB’s old Ford Camper Van from where it was stashed behind Dan’s Uncle’s house where Eleanor lived in Standale. Dan and I spent an afternoon getting it ready to run and travel, which was nothing more than a repair to the exhaust pipe and a battery- typical.

Dan’s Uncle hooked him up with a project to work on, which ended up being another run-down apartment building, on the west side, just a few houses down from the Broadway Bar. Now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure that it was to enable Danny to pay them back for all the expenses she and his Uncle had absorbed over the past couple of months. Danny would incur more expenses with his drunken antics and impatience, while we were working on rental properties on Coit hill.

We had the van and were in the process of salvaging some stockade fencing from one place, to use on another. Nobody thought of removing the rusty crusted spikes from the rails, so when Danny jumped out to assist us with putting the sections of fence on the roof of the van, one of the nails caught his left forearm, ripping the skin loose. The tear was about four inches long and made a V shape like the third of a pie- 120 degrees. It never bled a bit. It was just a flap of torn skin exposing the underlying muscle tissue and sinew. He went to Butterworth hospital, where the doctors “insinuated” he was dehydrated, giving him a great number of stitches to close the wound- forty seems to come to mind.  The fact that he never bled told me that he was, in fact, dehydrated. He wasn’t just dehydrated. Danny was severely dehydrated. Alcohol does that to you. Why do you think you get up in the middle of the night and drink a quart of water? Ever since then I have learned to check myself by pinching the skin on the back of my hand. If the skin doesn’t lay back down flat, drink more water. This also helps your brain do its many tasks, and lessens the discomfort from arthritis but whatever.

The project that Danny’s Uncle turned us on to was a corner lot, two and one half story apartment building, and boy was it ugly. I wouldn’t realize it until the end that a woman living next door made it a point to occupy her front porch the day we started. She sat there with a cooler and a book, drinking beer, watching us, and staying where she could be seen. Dan made friends with her that first moment of the day we started. She became part of our social circle, and The Broadway Bar became our office.

The siding on the apartment building had rotted away so much that the whole top half of the building was finally covered in cedar shake shingles in the recent past, which happened to be an inexpensive repair that hid the real issue. The shingles on the building had become so badly eroded that the eves on the building had finally rotted to the point where someone decided that it would be a whole lot less work to just cut them off. Now the rain just ran right down the sides of the building, eventually rotting the siding to the point where the cedar shakes were put on top of the rot, which takes us to where my job began. Now, large areas of the cedar shakes were falling apart, and in need of replacement, which I did. The south and east sides were shedding paint chips so bad that I ended up being set up with a power washer to prep the surface for paint.

Here lies the lesson in building maintenance: The roof is the most important part of a building- secondary only to the foundation. The cost of roof replacement can be a hard number to choke down. Many landlords will just slather tar on the leaking areas, sometimes even adding granules to match the existing shingles but not very many will go to the trouble of spending a few more of their precious dollars to take that step. Shingles are approximately fifteen to twenty dollars per package. It takes three packages to cover one square of roof- ten feet by ten feet. The square footage on this building was about twenty-five hundred square feet for a shingle expense of fifteen hundred dollars, plus flashing, caulk, roof tar, and the occasional piece of roof decking. Labor for a building that is two and a half stories is about seventy dollars, to one hundred dollars per square- twenty-five hundred dollars. The higher it is the more the cost. At the most, we are looking at about five grand for the roof to be replaced. 

Now, since the roof wasn’t replaced, and the eves just were cut off, the siding had become ruined, starting with ruining the paint job. The cost to paint, considering the windows, doors and trim, and the color variation, is about four thousand dollars. The siding is another six thousand dollars, the rotted windows are another twenty-five hundred dollars, and doors and trim are another fifteen hundred dollars. The total cost of the damages, at this point in the negligence of the building, is nineteen thousand dollars. That does not count the damages to the interior, such as plaster, woodwork, paint-finishes, flooring etc… This all could easily add up to another twenty thousand dollars. That’s when the landlord puts the place up for sale, dumping the property to someone else who will do minimal patching up to the place so that they can rent it out again. The end product is a whole section of town that looks like crap, and drives the esteem of the community down in the process, so you get a whole bunch of addicts making up an entire side of town. It’s not rocket science. It’s the monetary system, where the most important thing is the unspent dollar. That is what we are trading our families for, and it is what we are teaching our children.

So, anyway, right as we are beginning this project the clutch went out in the van. Danny and Jimmy now had the perfect excuse for me to end up doing all of the work on this run-down apartment building. It really didn’t bother me that much because it was a whole lot less stressful to work when people weren’t bitching and moaning. The girls started off helping but quickly bailed. The Joe Grimminck came in to help, only to end up going over to work on a project for someone who was paying a lot more money. That left me alone to handle the mess.

After replacing the missing cedar shake shingles and miscellaneous woodwork, and after blasting, scraping and spot priming this ugly monster of a building, Danny finally made himself available to help. It happened to be time to blast paint on using the airless sprayer. Pulling the trigger was the best part of the job because that is when the real transformation takes place. This part was the part of the job I had earned but I ended up doing more of the grunt work- being chased by the triggerman. Someone had to run around with the spray shields to stop the windows from being over-sprayed in the process. The spraying didn’t help the cars parked in the area one bit. I’m not sure how many cars we had to clean up but I know we had at least one- the woman’s roommate next door.

Up until then, I received quite a bit of attention, especially from the barkeeper who gave me free beer quite often. Everyone knew who was doing all of the work and they continued to express their gratitude for the improvements being done in the neighborhood. Aside from booze and cigarettes, my pay came in the form of an instrument.

Danny had decided to buy an Electric Fender Bass from Rainbow Music. The bass was my payment, and was an addition to our band equipment. I didn’t get to play it as much as I expected to. Dan ended up taking it from my hands to play all the bass lines him self. It didn’t bother me. I understood how he was when it came to composing, and I can’t say I blamed him. What bothered me was a little bit later on, when he turned around and sold the bass back to Rainbow Music in order to use the money to buy booze and smokes.

In the end or just from the beginning, I never made a penny from the job where I did the majority of the work. It hadn’t occurred to me that he really bought the bass for himself, and I don’t think it mattered to me. It was merely a comfort that made me content with just having a place in life to be. That is mostly just the essence of dealing with alcoholism, in yourself or in someone close to you. 

Danny was my brother, and I loved him. And at that point, seeing his mistakes only highlighted my own. Besides that, I was the vocalist, lyrist and Harmonica player- absorbing the blow for Dan’s stage fright. It was okay with me to play the parts he had given me to play.

A short time after we finished the project, Danny and I would go to Chicago with our Mountain bikes and the camera. This was around Halloween. The clues were all revealed in the photographs proving the fact to me since I was so polluted I do not recall much of it. The order of the Lamprey was an interesting group that was coordinated and ran by one of Danny’s friends in Chicago. We took a pretty good amount of photographs of this, and of all of our trips.

This particular house was a definite, and important, link to Danny. It became obvious where he got some of the ideas used at 40 Prospect NE. The backyard was a sculpture garden that was walled in eight feet high with cement blocks. It was an escape from the city. We pretty much biked everywhere, visiting the art district, copping complimentary drinks at the various open studios that were having displays. It made sense to me, how this tied in with the Jazz scene.

After making our rounds, we went out club hopping. One of the places I recall was… well, I guess I can’t recall it but I do remember drinking Rum Runners all night and finding our way back. It could have been different that night, especially since the women sitting next to us kept dropping hints about wanting cocaine. So, passing out in the van was probably a reward in comparison to what could have happened that night. The next night I was sent to stay at Tim Dashenaw’s place because it wasn’t safe to sleep in the van, so I was told. Truth might have revealed something different but the story I was given was fine with me because Tim’s place was pretty damn cool.

Tim lived in an old bar, complete with the actual bar in it, all the stools fastened to the floor around it, even some booths that he had his tools piled in.

At some point we went to the old Cermack building where Danny and numerous other artists had once had flats or studios until they were all ousted and the building was turned into commercial warehouse use. This was now Tim’s place of employment.

While touring through the Cermack building with Danny and Tim, I happened to notice a large piece of machinery that I worked with in the past, at Tadd Industries- a panel machine. “Hey, a panel machine,” I said. It is basically a jig for clamping various wood assemblies until the glue is cured, used for making wood panels like for cabinet door fronts or door slabs. On one of these, you can make a wood panel that measures almost four feet wide by nine feet long. Tim was surprised that I was familiar with this apparatus, stating that if I ever needed a job he could get me in there because of my knowing what that piece of equipment was. I really had no business in Chicago, even if I could live near enough for long enough to need a job but I really had a great time in Chicago with Danny’s companionship.

One of the high points was smoking half of a joint of some killer green while riding the Giant Ferris wheel on Navy Pier. Now, with my head injury, the bloodstains on the rooftop of the buildings below us were a pretty disturbing sight. We took some pictures of them but it wasn’t until several weeks, actually it may have been months, before I realized that the stains were part of the Halloween décor. At least I think they were. We shot a lot of film while at Navy Pier. Some images I can still see clearly in my mind, like the bloodstains on the rooftop.

After returning from the trip, I had an experience that still frightens me- one that makes me wonder… what else happened to me that I am unaware of? For some reason, I went to the west side on my bike, stopping at Konkle’s for a few drinks. My only place to sit was a booth that was already occupied by a man who welcomed me to join him. Someone had some pills that I put in my pocket- taking one. It wasn’t long before I figured out why he told me to be careful with them. Methadone is pretty powerful stuff. My head started to nod, and after a while the guy I sat with offered me a ride home. When I awoke my eyes focused in on the cobbled crown molding on the ceiling of the dimly lit room. A thin sheet covered my naked body but it did not yet dawn on me that I had no idea where I was. Right about the time I am realizing that I don’t know where I am, a guy comes into the room and see’s that I am awake. He tells me where my clothes are- adding that I am welcome to use the shower.

After showering and dressing, I went into the living room area, where the bar separated the kitchen from the dining area. As I am lighting a cigarette, I notice that it’s nine in the morning. He is drinking a rum and coke, asking me if I want a drink. As I sit there collecting my thoughts he says, “I hope you don’t mind but I sucked you off last night.” My heart stopped for a moment, and an eerie chill washed over me. In a moment of shock, I took another methadone pill and grabbed the half-gallon jug of rum to make myself a tall drink. It was definitely needed after that.

Only a few minutes passed before I collected myself and made my way to the door, finding my bike on the porch. Within ten minutes I was having a very difficult time of managing to travel on my bike- falling, slamming into the pavement on my shoulder each time. It had to be the addition of a half pint of rum on top of the pill that affected my balance. My head kept echoing with the words he had said to me as I thought, “How could I have polluted myself to the point of becoming a rape victim? What have I done? What am I going to do? What am I going to say? What else happened to me? HOLY SHIT!” And then, SLAM! I’d have to get up off of the sidewalk again.

Of all of the things I was trying to erase from my memory, now there was this terrible thing. How often did stuff like this happen to me? Memory of the first time that I knew something like this happened was when I was fourteen or fifteen- waking up from the disturbance: I was with my friends, Jimmy Zemiatis, Steve Klein, and someone else that I can’t remember the name of. The kid had a small silver Volkswagen- a Rabbit. Steve suggested that we go to this friend of his to hang out there and drink, saying that this man would purchase booze for us. He happened to live above a funeral parlor and mortuary, where he worked as the Mortician. He may have owned it, I do not know. The place was in Eastmanville, near Coopersville, west of Marne. Steve arranged it but I think it was planned.

Jim and I had just come back from a trip to Petoskey with his mother and sisters a day earlier. We went fishing while we were there, hoping for some German Browns but didn’t catch anything. On the way home we had managed to get a pint of Jim Beam. The idea was to cut a hole in a watermelon we had bought at a roadside fruit stand, and put the booze in it.

We took the melon with us to this friend of Steve’s, and It wouldn’t be long before we were messed up to the point where I had to lay down. Steve walked me to a small room with a single bed in it. Here is where I would sleep it off, that is, until a hand startled me awake. The hand was not on my shoulder. It was in my pants. The hand had stimulated me to an erection. Between being a fourteen-year-old boy and being drunk, who knows how long this was going on before I woke. When I realized what was happening, I froze, scared to death. Where were my friends? What had he done to them? Oh God! I’m in a funeral home. He might kill us and stuff us into coffins with people waiting to be buried! The only thing I could do to defend myself was to play Opossum. Despite panic and shock, my body did what comes naturally to that type of stimulation. That was the most startling, and caused me to lose control of my reserve, blurting out, “What are you doing?” He said, “I’m jacking you off.”  “You’d better not be or I’ll be jacking you upside your head!” I exclaimed. It was all I could come up with, and that was just a natural thing for a young teenage boy to say.

Now, I can hear the muffled laughter in the other room. Having become so upset about all of this, I didn’t know what to do. My body was shaking from the adrenaline and panic. “How could Steve do this to us, to me?” I wondered. This must have happened to him and this was how he was dealing with it, by getting others involved so he wouldn’t feel so much like a victim- alone. I got up and stormed out of the room and confronted the guys. After a short argument I went out to the car, threatening to leave with it if they didn’t come with me. They eventually followed me out, got in the car, and we left. It was never mentioned again after that night, after telling them what was going on there. They never mentioned it either. Steve was not part of my social circle after that.

So here I am, fifteen years later with the same situation but what was that? An immoral perverted man? Or was it my own poor judgment of actions and possible consequences? Or, was it that I was finding myself in bad situations because of my trying to fill an emotional void with substances that only lead me further away from that which I so very desperately searched for? But that wouldn’t be a realization until almost completely too late.

After finding a peaceful living environment and reaping the rewards for some of the sober choices that I came to make, coupled with the decision to do what I feel may help me evolve, (like a certain amount of reflection), I can finally see and feel my own personal growth.

The idea behind this manuscript is not, “Look at me! You don’t know what it’s like! You don’t know!” It’s an example of personal growth that can be gained through that reflection.

Wisdom, that develops through reasoning and understanding that cannot be made possible until the mind can be freed from prejudices and defensiveness with honesty and sincerity enough to comprehensively extrapolate those nutrients, needed to grow in order to serve the needs of my loved ones.

Last night, at an A.A. meeting, this is a certain amount of what I communicated. A reference that I made to a thing that happened to me because of drinking, and the act of trying to poison it ,(and other things), from my memory, had silenced the room. It didn’t have to take twenty-seven years to understand. Or did it?

Something keeps coming to mind lately: “Why does a mountain climber climb a mountain?” The answer used to be, “Because it’s there,” but now I have a different perspective and can see that answer as an obstinate reactionary answer. The truth is, mountain climbers climb mountains because that’s what they do. That’s what defines a person who climbs mountains. They see it and it interests them, so they persevere. The moral to the question is to pick something and do it. Maybe that’s why I went out with Helen. The beautiful part of it is that I was finally aware enough to read all of the signs that said, “Don’t do it Zach.”

Helen was a mess. She had erected, and constantly maintained, a shrine to her late husband, Mike, in the basement of her Kentwood home. She offered to buy Danny’s Jeep for me- to put it in her garage for me to work on it there. Oh, and the performance. She started talking about her problems with her yard- the erosion, and how she was just a woman. Oh! And the tears she shed. Geesh!  A few more drinks and a bit less of a warning from Danny, and Super Zach would have flown in to be the Hero. Thank God for what small amount of sense I had in my employ. And even though I’d pass that test and move on, I hadn’t enough sense to avoid some other situations that were far worse than Helen.

That was the same summer I became acquainted with a number of bums. Nominated for Super Bum was, Andy Flynn. Andy was, and still is, a real “A number 1 American Dirtball”. A number of people would have killed him if he weren’t already dead. This was the year 2000, I think. It was the year I finally felt a spark of happiness. The problem was that I discovered I was targeted. The non-stop drinking and the assortment of bad associations that were trying to get a piece of me were being realized as a real problem- a threat. It was the fact that I had an income source and that I was kind enough to be generous- routinely providing a certain amount of weed and drink, that I was preyed upon. 

Incidentally, Danny and I were almost exactly alike- people took his kindness for weakness also.

Andy used us bad. Who knows how much he stole from us to feed his habits, and the habits of the girls he brought around. We had the whole second floor of 40 Prospect, since the other apartment was vacant on that floor. And since Danny had the keys to the building, it was accessible. When we met Andy, we had no idea he was anymore of a bum than he appeared to be. I thought, “Just another guy, another artist with very little need for much in the way of material possessions.” I mean, look at me: on the street without a home or car or much of anything but I had all that and more not too long ago. It didn’t really mean anything really. Or did it? The truth was that he had traded it all for dope, sealing the deal by beating his wife, and the women he attracted.

You can go to treatment and counseling but when you smack a woman up you can forget it. If you lack the control to do that you’ll probably do anything because you are truly weak.

What he didn’t trade were the lies and deceit that he had stashed and accumulated in the basement of his employer’s home- Chet. Chet was a crook too, who taught Andy how to rob people with a paintbrush but I don’t need to drag another demon into my arena. These items were things that Andy siphoned from his household income while imitating a farcical rendition of a husband and a father, only to destroy a woman and the future of the children she had by turning her onto dope and using her for what he wanted, when he wanted it. He is the kind of guy you’d love to read about someone finding dead in a burning bed with his severed penis placed in his stash box smoldering in a heap next to him. Men, largely, make me sick.

The three of us played quite a bit of music together until we ostracized him, working on songs like “Harley Davidson,” and some other ideas. We got into some recording sessions one day, where Andy insisted on using one of the rooms in the vacant apartment as a sound room, having the room mike and an acoustic guitar off in the distant corner of the house, far away from us, under the pretense that the isolation was for the recording quality, which made logical sense. We didn’t suspect a thing.

It would be weeks before we discovered the signs of what else he was doing in there, right after we were all working on a painting project in Crystal Springs. He ended up robbing us of fourteen hundred and forty-eight dollars. We were having a great time before we realized we were screwed. But isn’t that how it goes? We were having cocktails and playing Frisbee golf at Brewer Park on our lunch breaks everyday. We were laughing the days away while doing something we loved to do, paint. It was a beautiful thing.

One day Andy mentioned a couple times, how he could spray the hell out of some paint while on Heroine, so it wasn’t long before some bare foot lookie-loose rich kid started coming around… who wasn’t painting. Next thing we knew, we had a house with paint all over the driveway and a wretched smell inside. It was soon clear that someone, only God knows who, puked all over one of the rooms in the basement. I wonder how that came about??? Well, that was the weekend that we didn’t get paid, and when Andy went into hiding. We never saw him again. What we did get out of it was a new friend or two.  Brad Lake was one of those guys.

Brad lived in Grand Haven with his wife and two children. They were “Seven day Adventurer’s”, as he stated. He had a crew of guys from the Eastown area- slacker hippie types who soaked up the kind bud and the music scene. In the past, Brad had worked with Chet, breaking out from under Chet’s wing in order to start his own crew. They were still associated, working the Crystal Springs development on the south side of Kentwood, past Sixtieth Street. In the past, when I worked with Paul Jensen, we had performed a lot of trades there. It was a farm that they had turned into a private Country Club, selling lots to be built on, and houses- big houses. They were all bought up by business owners, like the car dealers and restaurateurs- the better-established people with a history in the Grand Rapids area. I like to think of them as segregationalists because they created their own community separate from the rest of the city.

These segregated communities were sprouting up all around the Surrounding Grand Rapids area. It was a boom in the early nineties. But now, here I was again, working behind hacks. Pulte Home Builders were responsible for quite a few of these homes. Being a finish carpenter, I had a position to critique the woodwork I was prepping to paint. A section of baseboard, not more than three feet long, had twenty-nine nails in it. They were easy to count, as I had filled each one with putty. It is a wish I have, that I could say it was an anomaly but that wish proves to be only that- a wish. What I will say is, if something like this was done by me or one of my crewmembers, not only would we have been back-charged, we would have been completely out of work in the area. The problem is- that’s just what you could see. What other problems were concealed within these sheeted walls? It doesn’t matter, as long as you can keep it pasted together until one year after completion.

The homeowner is the pawn, and it’s only a chess game to get the money. There is little pride in workmanship required. Just ask Bob. Today’s Builder and Tradesmen have little to no respect, and this is true of the majority. They do not appreciate the value, the worth of anything but the dollar in their pockets and the beer or thneeds it will buy them. But hot damn! It better be the best they can get! Oh boy.

 Joe Grimminck was one of those guys that we got along well with. He was eager to perform, eager to learn, and reciprocative. Joe knew when to ask questions, and although he was unskilled at that point, he was teachable which made him a value. We became good friends with Brad and Joe.

Brad, incidentally, played the Bass very well. They would find their way back to our place on Prospect Street, where we’d do what we did: hang out, play music, do art- whatever. We’d find ourselves in Eastown, at the coffee shops, where Joe and his friends hung out, playing chess and resting up for their tomorrows. It was while in East town that we would meet musicians like Ralston Bowles and Billy Edwards.

Billy told us about a small festival happening at Riverside Park near the Veterans home, where his band was hosting the Open Jam. “Beats Sittin’ Home,” he said. A clever pitch, his bands name as well. Of course, Dan and I went. We were going to be playing Frisbee golf there anyhow.

That was the day that I ran into Beverly Knopf, my ex-wife’s Aunt. Being pretty lit up, I lit into her with some of the sting I was feeling over Minderella’s destroying my children’s household- my life, although I don’t know what I said, like it matters. It was later my regret for causing her to feel upset. She never did anything that I know of, to harm me but the fact alone that my family was not repaired meant, to me, that she did nothing to help. And being drunk on top of harboring anger and resentment didn’t win me any favors.

My favorite advice from a successful person is from Warren Buffet: “You can always tell someone they’re a jerk tomorrow.” Which, in this case meant, “Don’t run your mouth when you’re drinking because it could cause irreparable damage.” Once something is said, no matter what it is, you can’t un-say it. It would be too long after this event that I would decide to stop drinking, at least for a while.