I had a friend some years ago who studied snakes. His facination with snakes was’nt just a simple thing-he was interested in what he refered to as ‘hot snakes’.
He made money collecting venom-milking the snakes poison into a jar for sale to whoever makes the anti-venom….he’d take one of these things out of thier space,in most cases a carboy was thier home,and he had these special jars that he’d put their fangs into and they would react and release the deadly poison.
I cannot explain how I can describe my friends rattlesnakes as cute-in all crazy things to say is that even in the wild a diamondback rattler is really quite cute. You just have to observe it from the distance-because they are’nt that cute.
It just is something about their heads and how they kind of poke them up to get a look at whats around-and at the sense of any threat those rattles start-but they start slower than what you ever see on the nature shows…a sort of gentle shooshing sound at first-the slight not really concerned warning they give. Oddly-as dangerous as a diamondback can be they are really quite safe if you know how to act around one.
That was the problem with Misty.
The day I met her she was living in her car with her two kids-they’d been traveling from way up in Minnesota and ended up on a section of a farm near here.
I learned about this womans situation and because I was planning to embark on a long trucking trip I offered this woman my home to serve us both-to protect my things and to offer shelter.
The first was quite a commotion. One never thinks into the future when trying to help someone else-not always knowing the consequence of what is about to be. Misty moved her car to my place and she and her kids settled in with out much ado because they had only a few trash bags filled with clothes hastly packed in clumps in these sacks.
I might have heard the rattle softly making its sound but I had fallen in love so quickly that I must have not paid any attention.
Misty told me and my friends she had cancer and had about six months to live…and she had fled their home and her husband in the north so she could spend her last living days alone with her children.
On a quick listen-absorbing all that about cancer…it all rang to make sense-she had added that her husband was a bit on the touchie side and liked to hit her alot and she really convinced all of us she was a poor helpless sad sick woman.
Many of us had given our blood at the medical center to add to the national data base to find out if we had compatable blood cells to donate bone marrow( all based on her information ) to her to keep her alive-but her name was’nt on any registry and eventually it all came to us clearer and clearer as the days and weeks went by
this was one clever lier…and by then we were able to include theif to her resume becuase with in weeks of her being in my house things started arriving that had never been there before and certainly could’nt have come in the car with them but yet she had a way of getting you to believe it had. Those things came to truth when the sherrifs office came to arrest her for burgleling a neighbors house….we were stunned.
For awhile I had postponed the long hauls and took a job with a local outfit hauling timber-this decision because of her ‘cancer’ and the collection of stories she built around that and so it was to be my duty to be there when she died to attend to her childrens future.
Then one day I came home from work and the kids were gone. She sent them back to their dads…???
Then things went from fast forward into overdrive.
Theres bunches and bunches I can tell about the days leading up to her sending the children home. Standing in a tornado would be easier than trying to describe that part of time.She had me so convinced that I actually married her so that we could do the legal thing for me to adopt her kids so they’d have a home when she passed on-and then two days later the kids are gone.
So-we decided to get in a long haul truck and go….and go we did!
I was hopeful that getting away from our area things would improve…Misty had taken a friend at home that could’ve been more sinister if they had tried and those two would stay up all night and smooth the edges off a gallon of whiskey,why not she’s say? I’m going to die anyway!
I was a deer with my eyes in the headlights. I had fallen in love with her so badly that I sucked it in and believed everything-cancer and her defense that the stolen property was really hers and the cops were mistaken-and that she needed to drink to forget she was going to die…and her friend,well-that person was really a scarey little lady too-very rough individual that made anyone around her uncomfortable.
So-the highway was the answer and off we went. And it was great a lot of the time. Misty was with out a doubt an intelligent person-she had a mind but was’nt able to percieve that she could use it better for good could the way she was useing it.
There are too many stories to tell about life with Misty-but one of them is about the night in Atlanta while we were parked in the Petro truck stop for an over night there.
About midnight she disappears-gone…vanished,and in the deepest part of one of the worse neighborhoods in Atlanta. I searched that truck stop all night,until I found the note-a small tidbit of paper stuck into the drivers door of our rig….a two word adios-GoodBye!
She was gone a better part of three months-no word,nothing…the outfit I was driving for made sure I had the Atlanta police fill out a report-which they did and ever so often I’d get a message to call them to talk about a new Jane Doe they had at the morgue there.
Then-as swift as she was gone she turned up at her sisters house in New Hampshire and wanted to return to the trucking life with me. So that happened.
About two weeks went by and Misty’s sister sent us a message to get in touch-she was angry about what Misty had done there….a small town near Keene-a real small town. Misty told the owners of an Inn there where she had gotten a job-that her son had been kcked by a horse and was in critical condition in the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota and he was’nt expected to live. The owners of the Inn gave her a few hundred bucks to get to her son ( all of this a lie-of course) but in turn she hooked back up with me.
The sister in New Hampshire had learned the owners of the Inn were planning a benifit to raise money for this kid-and so the sister goes to inquire and everyone is dumbfounded to learn that Misty had lied about this tragic thing that could’ve-but did’nt happen.
It was a final reward when I had my stroke Misty fangdangled money from my insurence policy and went around the area here and bounced a few hundred dollars in bad checks-took the car…and left me stranded out here in the woods with no money-no source of money…no way to go use the money-she left me high and dry.
That was almost 9 years ago. I have’nt seen her since.
Archive for January, 2007
my rattlesnake bride
January 17, 2007Sir & Wickie
January 15, 2007
My grandparents on my fathers side were my favorites. It was’nt as much as they were the ones that offered more of a blast when you visited-no,it was they were different.
We called my grandfather ‘Sir’….everyone,I came to learn,called him that.
He married my grandmother when she was 17 and he was 32. This is thier wedding picture-it is spliced back together,I think my grandmother had cut it in two at one time. I don’t think it was as perfect a marriage-I recall as a kid that ‘Sir’ had told my grandmother to shut up and that happened to be the first words he had said to her in twelve years…true story.
We called my grandmother Wickie.
She was an old southern Louisiana gal from Morgan City-but lived a lot of your younger life in New Orleans-where my father was born.
In my life of being around my grandparents they lived in downtown Washington DC. My grandmother lived in the same apartment for nearly 40 years and as long as I had known her she stayed reclusive and indoors all of the time.
Sir never drove a car. As a matter of fact they never had an automobile. There was’nt much need Iguess-the street cars ran in front of thier building and after they died out the buses did the same-so transportation was right there.
But whenever it was a special reason a taxi was called.
I remember as a wee boy thinking my grandfather was a special man because all of the taxi drivers called him ‘Sir’…and he called them ‘Buck’…if they were black drivers,which most of them were back then in the fifty’s. I later learned my grandparents had a terminology regarding black people which was the reminants of thier life and time-Wickie…her mother,who was called ‘Gump’,grew up around black children whose parents indeed had once been slaves and remained on to work for thier once master-now had Gump for a boss,and my grandmother grew up in a very segragated time-as did Sir.
I can’t recall Wickies birth year but Sir was born in 1899.
My grandparents lived in Washington when Martin Luther King gave that special memorable speech…”I had a dream…” I remember being there at my grandparents then-where as before my cousins and I would be given bus tokens ( they called it ‘car fare’) and we’d be sent out of the way to downtown to the Mall where all the big buildings and the Smithsonian were. Not this year-we were confined to the building-thats what they called the apartment building-and forbidden to go out for fear some ‘Buck and a She’ would grab us. Thats what my grand parents called black people…Bucks and She’s. How calous I feel loving two people that refered to human others as such a derogatory term…how much I hated it when I realized I was being raised in a bigoted way-I had no idea until I stepped out into life alone.
There was this little kid I was in elementry school with named Coy. He was a colored boy my age-we did’nt care…but one day we were walking home from school and a pick up truck with some men went by and one of they men threw a piece of a brick at Coy and it hit him in the face and cut his cheek real bad and Coy fell to the ground and cried and held his bleeding cheek….and the pick up truck had turned around and came back to add more injury.
There was Coy-the men taunting with his name ” Coy Coy the nigger boy”….we were all frightened-we were just wee kids,second or third graders.
And then one of them started in on Coy about was he so stupid he could’nt get out of the way of the flying brick,all Coy could do was cry-all of us were crying by then. And the man could’nt understand Coy between his sobs and trying to answer the question….and thats when the man started yelling at Coy…
“you call me SIR” …”you call me SIR”.
It was very confusing times back then.
I looked at that ugly human being and wanted to claw his eyeballs out for using my grandfathers name like that.
I remember back then watching the television and seeing all the stuff in Alabama and Mississipi-seen more than one should had to see-the violence whites put on the blacks-the cruelty…the intentional cruelty. Its that vision that sticks in my head everytime I see some hip hop guy wearing those goofy shorts/or pants? and thier base ball cap on side ways and thier underwear up above the belt line…I see all the violence and struggle the old south went through to find an equal meaning to being born equal.
I was in high school when Reverend King was shot. We lived right out side of DC then-I stood in our back yard and could see the glow of the flames from the riots in the city. It was tremendous seeing that.
About a year later I marched with Reverend Ralph Abernathey being in the lead of several thousand people circleing the nations capital chanting to end the segragation of the races and end the violence.
My grandparents were’nt bad people. They grew up in an era we know hardly anything about except the history-we have no idea what it must have been like to be Wickie as a little girl growing up in a huge old southern mansion and being around the little children of the once slaves and then later house servants…and not being able to play with them.
Carl and the rest of the story…
January 11, 2007
I’ve spent the last few days pondering the request to quit teasing and get down to it and tell the rest of the story!
How is it there is an end?
I am a man who life and past cannot be put down in words that will bring it to an end-or give the rest of the story….as much as I would like it to.
I was’nt much older than the kid in this photograph when I first saw a human remains in a casket-it was my sister,she was 11.
I was’nt even eleven when my playmate and I saw our neighbor blow his brains out in his cellar.
I was sixteen and getting ready to go out on a date when while standing by my bedroom window I saw the little boy in this picture get run over by a car. He was my little brother Carl.
I’ve written about all these things earlier…but yet there is always more to tell about all of these things….like the night my baby brother was killed I snuck a fifth of whisky out of my dads liqour cabinet and got right drunk-and later puked all over one of our neighbors brand new shag carpet before I passed out . The following morning the woman told me she was sorry about my brother but that I was never welcome in her house again.
This photograph was taken the day before Carl was killed-my mother was a teachers aid at our other brothers school and they allowed Carl to sit in during the class photos-he was a cool little guy and red was his favorite color.They buried him in a red jacket.
We lived outside of Washington DC in the suburbs when this happened. We had lived there about a year-it was’nt a great year beside my brothers death. My story talks about how things n another school in another state were really bad-I had run away from home to escape the things that happened there…and later became close to being like a school shooter because I caused a automobile accident by throwing things off of a school bus at cars-to try to get kicked out of school…..it worked,but with consequences.
But-we moved a year later and in the new high school was a girl from the school in the other state and when I saw her I decided that things were’nt going to go on like they did before so I began skipping school.
It was a cool era and a cool place to be able to skip school-only a city bus ride to the District of Columbia where I could escape into the museums day after day.
I got caught a lot of times and was always in trouble with my family and when my brother Carl was killed we buried him in Pottstown Pa.,and followed the hearse with his little coffin in plain view for 200 miles…all the way there my mother kept saying it should have been me-after all,I was such a bad boy.
I had an opportunity to join the Navy at an earlier age of 17…I had to wait until I was 18 to do active duty,so this was some kind of reserves. Viet Nam was going full blast-and it was an insane time to join the service….but I wanted to do something to prove my worth to my family-my father!
Navy was the best until I got stationed with my oldest brother Frank. Things went to the worse and for NO REASON AT ALL this young sailor was sent to a detention barracks-and there I was attacked and beaten up and raped.
My life was F-blank blank blanked up from there on.
I cannot compress the days and months and years of everything into one or two of these blogs entries….I have seen and done things that many folks only maybe get to hear about. Drugs-selling drugs….getting sick on drugs and trucking,and drugs….and crazy crazy days and nights until I nearly died and saw a light. I got caught up in America’s Most Wanted and was’nt even trying for the spot! Shoot me please! I wish it was over today….but,that ain’t my choice and that means theres more to come.
Stay Tuned.
C’mon
January 10, 2007
I remember as a little kid whenever I would find a puppy and bring it home and give it water and a name and love it-the puppy would always disappear by the time the sun came up the next day. There was always the excuse…”well,puppies have a way of finding thier way home”! ,and that would be that.
I must have been in my forties when my old mother told me the truth how my father would go out later at night after I had gone to bed and woud take those puppies and drive them some where and dump them.
That explaination had really taken me aback because the week or two after my little brother Carl was killed our father brought home a wire hair fox terrier puppy from a pet store somewhere. It never figured??
Yesterday I recieved a comment from someone who called themselves “C’mon” and that comment said for me to ‘quit teasing and tell the rest of the story’…and really-it is’nt a story that has an en,so I can’t finish the story. I can only go along with what it is….and say it how I see it.
All of these pages-I think theres 80 or 90 now?….they are a mix,a complete mix of the mix my life has been. I don’t have some set plan how to explain it-it just has to come as it is and at a desire to be able to explain the events of my life….the life of just some guy who seemed to get it handed out to him different.
Theres no end. There will be the end but it will be one that I cannot write. I look forward to it though because I’ve been able to ‘see’ theres better in ever ever land then there is here in never never land. Sadly-I personally have no control over when that transfer takes place…so,the end of the story is still in the works.
These things I’ve been writing about are honestly all the truth as I can only tell it-these stories have all been a part of my life and for once I have found a way to tell countless ammounts of people about the things the length of my life have had done to it,God knows my own family was never interested.I just need to put this out to get it out of me and to say to anyone that see’s it that I hope it helps and helps you get help or to seek the reasons why. I can’t tote it around alone no more!
funny stuff…
January 8, 2007
There are things in life that you just can’t fully rationalize. Like for example-how come it is one killer can end up being defined as a monster and then in the same society another killer can gain our sympathy and become a hero of sorts.
The article about this man was printed in the same newspaper-the hometown paper…of five innocent college students who were brutalized and raped and murdered,the same newspaper that told us there was a monster loose. That monster was Danny Rollins.
But then there must be another kind of murder? Heres the article that suggests why I must feel that way. The man in the photo was the fiance’ to ‘Rose’…the Americas Most Wanted woman that my path crossed with in 1998. He helped her hide-finding a place so secluded where they could live in quiet peace,which was at the end of the road where I have lived for 30 years-the same road where one of those five murdered students lived as a growing girl.
It is strange to me-when you read the article you do want to feel sorry for the person…but whats missing here is the points that this man gave me 2000 dollars. At first I thought it was to buy my silence-but a day later I learn it was intended for me to become a part of the so called ‘mafia’ that was keeping ‘Rose’ safe and hidden;they wanted me to rent them a new hide away. I refused. Then it became a request to rent a automobile…no again! Then came a request to buy a pound of pot!
The newspaper left these things out because they did not pursue the full story.
Another thing not told was how this poor man which the article wants us to pity wanted nothing to do with my offers of a handshake and a neighborly hello and yet turns around and hands me two grand?
Somehow the article must not have noted that this man hired a private investigator who went from each one of my ‘friends’ to try to dig up something illegal about me…oh,they also forgot to tell you how that private eye made up a story about me burying a dead guy and the story kept the sheriffs office busy for two days interviewing me about this-a waste of everyones time….the story the private eye used was a twist on the funeral we held for ‘Big Mike’. The sheriffs investigators spent eight hours of time with a truth twisted into a lie….and the newspaper article overlooked that point..
Another thing they did’nt tell you about this poor sad man…how he harrassed me for weeks and weeks until I finally had to get the sheriffs office to take him aside and have a conversation with him-especially about his parking at the end of my drive and stareing at my house!
Funny-I heard he was trying to get ‘Rose’ to sign over the rights to her story for a book he was writing,how sad….listen to me-I’ll tell it to you here for free! I could’nt even stand to keep the money the FBI gave me-how could I settle to earn off of this poor womans life?
(note:I gave the FBI money to a missionary in Malawi and helped some others out too)
I also believe the paper forgot to say how after ‘Rose’ and her fiance’ came to my house and confided in me and left me the cash that this poor chap began a daily evening visit to my house telling me all about the ‘mafia’ that was involved in keeping ‘Rose’ safe and hidden-lies about a movie to prove her innocence-lies about a book that tells the truth-lies about a twin sister,the evil sister-who really pulled the trigger and emptied the gun into a man,a father….all of these revelations adding to my own fright of the situation I was rapidly finding myself in! The newspaper probrebly did’nt write these things because they took sympathy with a murderer-only because the murderer was clever enough to keep free for twenty years,otherwise the whole story would’nt have been worth a flop! No thrill !!
I all honesty I continue to think this person is dangerous. He was given a heros ticket when they lauded him as a poor sap that found salvation through this woman….did they ever consider if that he was so broken about the loss of his wife then why was it he had a new woman living in his house-‘Rose’?.
And when the law told him they did’nt have any need to arrest him foor knowingly harboring a fugitive-they gave him an open door saying you is above it all-and he was’nt afraid to come and park at the end of my drive and stare at my house! The law was’nt interested in him.
Really? What is it about our society? How come we in Florida could’nt wait for the day we got to execute Danny Rollins-he did such vicious
things beyond only just murdering. Why is it we can watch on television everyday the criminal trial of Scott Peterson and end up with such hate for the guy and yet on another day we can applaud the life on the run of another murderer-and boost up the details of that sad life by telling the story of another sad individual.
It does’nt make sense!
I do think he let his hair down for the photograph….ruffled it free and draped it over his shoulder for effect.
blank…blank!
January 6, 2007
I don’t know what it is about depression. I go along and I’m feeling fine and then all of a sudden it is as if a giant dump truck loaded with huge cinder blocks comes along and whoomps the load right on top of me. My body feels it-thats what people don’t seem to understand…the body of a depressed person hurts. Depression is not sadness-it is a sickness
.
I have to confess…I never wanted a computer in my house nor did I want anything to do with one. But things changed.
I became angry about my life being made into a source of humor to an office staff of people who were supposed to be representing me as mediators in my claim against the United States Navy because I was raped while in a US Navy detention barracks.
To be honest-the thought of challengeing the Navy about this never entered my head until I began treatment at the Veterans Hospital for post traumatic stress disorder…after 37 years of living with the damage someone finally is telling me what the damage is…PTSD.
My therapist there is the one who suggested I appeal for compensation for the damage done….it won’t pay for anything,how can it?
Well-I did. I must have forgotten what it feels like to get slammed in the face with a brick-because thats about the way it went! I had to give the details of my most private secret in my life-that as a young sailor I was repeatedly raped by several men over a long period of time-days and days. The man I had to tell this to was a veterans advocate-he wore sneakers and a ball cap…and made stupid comments like quizzing as to how come homosexuals need to rape each other….what?? What does that mean? Oh,the other choice question…were they black? huh? What is that supposed to mean? It means I’m having to confide in the mind of a bigot.
I bought this stupid computer to use to contact who ever I could-the US Congress…the VA…news programs,who ever I could find to say “this is so wrong”.
There has been very little response-at best,polite response…but thats about all.
The interesting thing is this ‘blog’ idea. I swear to you it was the farest thing away from my mind….I thought it was actually as stupid as the idea of owning a computer. I have been wrong.
The number chart offered by WordPress.com has been some sort of energy giver-to see that in four months almost 3000 people have looked at my blog,although I don’t think all of the 3000 have read it-but the small few of you that have responded have been like a good medicine….and have been uplifting and helpful in my own healing by saying the things that you have to say.
This whole thing is about change! I need to change-but more so the way the population in general see’s people like us,the depressed-considered mentally ill…those like me who are PTSD and sense how people respond when we allow them to know-they recoil as if we are dangerous. The way we center rape and sexual assault as a womans only crime-it is not! The fact that males are victims too-the population does not see that it is so.
My quest is to draw attention to the abuse experienced by veterans while in service to thier country-that is foremost,but not the only want that I have. The public needs to be educated more and more about this serious crime-we need to take it further away from the thought of it being a sexual thing….rape is not sexual,and yet the lay minds of people see it that way-and that is ignorence compared to how the south once was back in the days of segregation.
Is rape a dangerous crime-indeed it is-it murdered my life,my normal life and it is the same for any other survivor of this violent act.
self portrait
January 5, 2007
Living in an isolated way as I do it takes a while to find out who is who in the world-for example,I only just learned Bruce Springstein has been a rock and roller for as long as Dylan has and I think it could be any day for me to learn who Brittany Spears is….is she an actress? I’ve never seen a ‘Survivor’ show…and have no idea who ‘Simon’ is. I’ve never seen an image of the twin towers falling,and will not-it’d be too much.
I live in the middle of a forest-six miles from the nearest town ( a place with one traffic light and a bar ). I do have neighbors but this place is so rural that I’ve lived next to someone for nearly 30 years and have’nt a clue what they look like. My companions are two small chiuaua’s,one of which has a doberman attitude-a five pound meanie…but the truest source of love I have.
I am a survivor of a crime that has never been considered by any one else but me-the only person I ever reported it to pretty much laughed at what I was saying. Although this took place 37 years ago it continues to trouble me to this day.
I am a male rape survivor.
My rapes happened while I was in a detention barracks-so while being kept there for nearly two months I experienced humiliation and abuse and from it I earned a fear of people and relationships-finding it nearly impossable to maintain friendship…finding it hard to find trust,something which was damaged the most.
This whole event stayed quiet with in me-my secret…although over the years I did tell some,there again-very few….trust,but about two years ago I began therapy for my post traumatic fears.
During my therapy it became a point where it was suggested that I report this again…a huge mistake where things were said that angered me-and made me want to do something way unusual for me,fight back!
I bought this computer. My intent is to write about my experiences and my life in hopes to reach others and more important-to hopefully raise awareness to the FACT that there are male survivors too,and more specific is my quest to draw awareness to the problem of these crimes being commited in the military and the unjust way veterans are treated.
Until yesterday I had not really thought of how deep the ignorence is regarding male sexual abuse…not males that abuse-but males that have been assaulted sexually as a victim! I look through the ‘blogs’…and the internet to find information and others to contact to start an awareness and bring out a voice-and I found a place with the topics of feminism…and realized the problem is even worse because feminist take the attitude that males are a danger to females and we are the rapist…nearly as bigoted as the Florida veterans advocate that assumed my assailents were black men,and that we were homosexuals.
Rape-everyone…is not confined to the derelect mind of some man who is out to harm a woman. Rape -everyone-is a genderless crime,seriously mistaken as a sexual act…it is not! Rape is a form of violence and control and to me should be regarded as serious as murder-because to live in the aftermath is degrading and full of fear and shame.
Rape is NOT confined to woman….and in truth the feminist movement should be offended that rape is being so isolated to females when there is nothing further from the truth.
I am not waving a banner-being proud of my being a male survivor…I’m pointing out that now it is 2007 and not 1957 and it is time to recognize the aged definition of woman are the only victims. I’m only speaking up for the men….we also need to realize that children are being assaulted too-and that any unwanted touch is in my opinion an assault,but to narrow the crime of rape into a lane that concludes rape is only a crime that victimizes woman is wrong.
I do want to observe that the United Kingdom appears to be ahead of the United States in recognizing and treatment for male victims-that is edvident from my tracking things down on the internet…the most I could find from the USA is that a rape is reported every six minutes and every fourth criminal attack is by more than one assailant-no mention of these numbers as to how they are divided,or are all rapes reported confined into a gender box?
another year…
January 4, 2007
It will take a few days until folks wear down from the greeting of ‘Happy New Year’ and hopefully that will be the end of that until it rolls around again….I hate hearing it.
I’m always going to know what new years means to me-I’m never going to forget it,the beginning point of the personal prison I got placed in that date in 1969.
After ‘Rose’ it added more of a burden-since her arrest came on the first day of December (1998) because of all the crixmix crap that begins full blossom and sings out to remind me of the dates-although the dates are’nt anything special except to magnify the events in my memory…I always recall the events daily but they become more enhanced hearing the reminders-seeing the tinsel.
People have insisted I am a hero who did the right thing about turning ‘Rose’ in to the authorities….I wish they could wear my mind for a minute and see how it makes me feel. I am not a hero.
It is crazy- these personal prisons.
Here is the story of a woman who was able to elude the law for 20 years. She murdered a man in 1969…I was not associated with any of them-I was in boot camp when she murdered the man she was convicted of killing,and escaped prison four times to flee her conviction.
Shortly after ‘Rose’ was returned to prison…again-I had met a young man named Pee-Wee Mercer who was a high school rodeo champion who favored riding bulls…a position that ended his walking life. Pee Wee broke his neck getting tossed from a bull some years ago-he’s been bed ridden ever since unable to move even a finger.
I thought it interesting how I went from being the one who fingered ‘Rose’ to one who became aquainted with this man whose fingers could not move. It became further interesting to me to learn this young man shared the same birthday that ‘Rose’ had in April. I saw it interesting how this young mans family was put into a ‘prison’ of having to always be on hand to ensure thier sons breathing machine did not fail-always being confined to the interior of thier house to moniter thier sons life,a life of his own prison-his only view is of this small place on his ceiling.
It interests me how a woman shoots a kills a man over 30 years ago and even as long ago as that is the crime still effects a man today…me,and I was not even involved-until 1998. And her actions add to the emotions of a person who is already a wreck because of his own experiences of his own brief incarceration in 1969-70,and for her to bring me into her life to be a friend and then turn around and put me in a position to be her judge….well,it just does’nt make sense.
I could’nt maintain a friendship with Pee Wee. I really would have tried-but it was such a hardship watching this bitter young man who willingly mounted the 1000 pound creature that broke his neck and locked this family away-his own father suffering too as he encouraged the sport on his son.
It all molds together-at least I can see it! Heres this woman-‘Rose’,free from the chains that bound her and me bound by the chains from being victimized years ago…the same date there about that ‘Rose’ commits her crime and then in the present comes a family unkown to either of us who encourages thier born son to climb on a monster of an animal that in less than 8 seconds breaks this families freedom into misery-the father sitting in guilt ,his personal prison-the mother,her only world is at the kitchen table and goes no further than her sons room….and ‘Rose’,I have heard she is locked in a cell that is with in a cell,my finger print still on her forehead.
There is a section of state forest behind my house-it’s where I met ‘Rose’…where we walked at times. I have gone down there and sat on the ledge of the dirt cliffs by a lake and watched the birds and wondered about all of this….’Rose’ in her prison cell unable to see the birds;PeeWee in his bed….unable to see the birds.
And here I can sit-and see the birds.
Another year….for all of us!
leaping into 2007…how weird!!
January 3, 2007
The road that divides me and the neighbors across is the county line-once refered to as the ‘county grade’ but its finally been paved so its now known as the ‘grade now paved’,go figger? Anyhow-its the county line!
It has always been kind of strange to me living on this invisable line-theres no fences that divide us from county to county and certainly no check points,merely a sign at its borders on each state highway that runs into the county line.
The whole idea seems so majestic and huge,for some strange reason…to be able to just stretch your legs and walk across from one county to another-or from one state to another….or like in Laramie-walk right into Mexico,another country.
I think thats what going from life into death is going to be like-smooth,a mere pass into one thing from another-the fear we range of death comes from the sight of tragic circumstances,or seeing some old grandfather gasping for his last breath in a ICU somewhere. We tend to startle ourselves for nothing,its just like going from 2006 into 2007.
Back in the late 1980’s all of our remaining group of hippies had a friend we knew as ‘Big Mike’…he had cancer and battled it until he lost in the fall of his last year.
Hippies had this weird way of doing things that was ersatz of the normal ways other society does them-so we kept true form and arranged to have a hippie funeral for our pal ‘Big Mike”. It was a day he would have loved-the guy had a sense of humor and a laugh that was contagious,and the events of his burial certain caused a few laughs.,one that the coffin we stood up all night to build the guy (all of us drunk and mourning our pals loss) but no one thought to measure the back door of the house to carry the thing in and out…it was too big,so we had to carry ‘Big Mike’ out to it.
Now this guy did’nt shrink when he was sick-he was a huge man all through life-and as a dead man he was….excuse the phrase-dead weight! Also-he might not have had too many chances to poop in his last days…so as we struggled to hand carry the corpse ‘Big Mikes’ bowels cut loose from the motion and he began to reek to high heaven quickly which made our pace go into a slight jog and from there a faster run until we reached the waiting coffin-sitting on the lawn in the back yard surounded by about 100 waiting friends who swiftly backed away as we exited in our fast pace ( our faces green with stink from ‘Big Mikes’ bowels busting loose)…and we sort of thrumped him into the box and each of us ran to find a private place to heave!
Like I said-‘Big Mike’ would have given a pearl of a laugh at that.
So-we get him buried and every one heads to the only bar in town and procede to have a great send off to our old pal…and I get drunk!
The following morning when I awoke to the call for ‘first appearence’ at the county jail where I ended up later that night-I recognized the person from the county courthouse who was rousting up all of us jail birds to get us ready for the judge. He recognized me too and learning why I was in jail this fellow gave me some advice on how to please the judge and make things easier and cheaper and a lot more better than they could be…so,I took his advice-told the judge that I was guilty right there and plead for a chance to do community service in exchange for my admitting guilt-I was drunk and trying to drive!
So the judge went for it and my friend back at the jail had recommended my doing community service at a home for wild animals hat people thought they could make pets of-and learned that idea was more then they bargained for.
I met Colin there. He was a true Florida panther raised from a kit by hand to the large adult you see in the picture-Colin was as gentle as a collie dog,sweet and just one of the guys!
Funny in an odd way-the death of a friend is gently transitioned into the meeting of another. Colin would hear my Jeep when I drove up and he would start to cry out-and his sister Cristin would join in and she would’nt quit until I walked myself over across the compound where they were caged and greet them. They were that capable of love.
a males life after rape 