coolzen for cousin…

coolzen-cousins

Originally uploaded by jayfherron

The day is almost on us-my cousin and I…and as usual I have been intending to spif up the old joint to at least not let the old cuz think he’s camping instead of staying in a residence. I should have began a number of days ago-instead I waited until yesterday.
Theres no carpet on the floors. The reason for that is because this area is known as the sand hills…its like living on the beach because you are consantly bringing sand in on your shoes. To beat that problem I have kept my floors painted and avoided the sand absorbing carpets,so every so often-out comes a gallon of paint and roller and all the furniture goes awry and askew…and damned if the dogs dont always seem to want to walk over there-now! But it keeps the floors looking clean for a day or two.
Ive had visitors come this to edge of the world-some,mostly the ones from the cities,tend to get a little concerned as the sun sets. Often I’ve had guests say sorry and end up in a motel…its not uncomfortable,its just desolate….and I guess city folk have some kind of instinctive fear if street lights dont go on all up and around everywhere. Many ask what those stars are in the sky! Hardly any have ever heard the tree frogs sing and after dark those little critters can make it out right loud,but boy what a beautiful sound. And an owl can be quite spooky.
I had some friends stop by last night (now you can tell how rural this is) everybody is hungry for a new person and new face to come around-we are all bored with each other and people in nearly a ten mile radius are as excited for my cousin to visit as I am-even jealous…to show a guest around this place from the local perspective,not Disney…none of that-but the real back roads of Florida! You have no idea on how we all have been wrestleing to find the perfect spots…to do all of the ones on the list would take more then four days. Its taken me 30 some odd years-and I still aint seen it all.
Its too bad we did’nt have a chance to do this way back in the 1970’s when this place was still the real Florida and you could still meet people who knew Marjorie K. Rawlings and still lived the way she wrote about them in ‘Cross Creek’. A more quaint and rustic lifestyle seemed to exist then-a lot more gone than was.

Usually each year on my birthday I try to drive out to the shore to get a fix on that kind of air and those special sounds of the waves coming up on shore.
Last year as I drove I became saddened by the removal of an old cracker house to be replaced by a CVS store and think that not many people are left that remember that old house-in one town near here they put asphalt over an old unused cemetery to make a parking lot for a fast hamburger place and one place that was a great place to sit and visit the shore became a high rise condo.
There are still places-yes thankfully…and most all of them have crossed my mind over these years as a wish…I wish my cousin Dave could see this!
Its kind of what I was saying the other day about children and their resiliance…how they fall and burst out in tears and two minutes later it is a forgotten thing and off they go. To me to have my cousin visit is like a return to the days we had interupted by having to become adults-the confusion of the 60’s and 70’s and going into what life brought us….its like a big huge long slow motion fall-and now its two minutes later.

…the soon reunion!

pathetic me and meOriginally uploaded by jayfherron

Children to me seem so resilient. I’ve seen my grandaughter fall and blast into tears…for about a half a minute and then…bingo,right back up and in action too!
I dont know at what point we begin to remember more specific details of our pains and our joys. I have always held it in my mind that I can remember the very moment I was aware of my mother-I think it was the time my seeds mingled and worked with the other seeds…I’ve always ‘seen’ this moment in my deja vu and my recollection is that of a very ‘Maxfield Parrish” kind of scene-somewhere in a very beautiful space. What ever it looked like I can tell you that the availability of that memory is only a mere few seconds long,but perfect each time I view it.
I know that in my life there were many things that were fun and happy and I had summers with mornings that my little energy could not get asleep fast enough to greet again for the thrill of it-it was the resilience of the child in me. I don’t know exactly where that resilience wore down…
As a boy most of my summers were divided into two places-half in Washington DC and the other half in Pottstown Pennsylvania. Grandparents!
I looked forward to both visits-at one time in the city my grandparents would allow us children to catch the ‘car’…at that time street cars and electric buses ran through Washington so a handfull of dimes and a sack full of sandwiches and we’d be off to roam the streets of downtown! It was considered safe then-although there was the ever solid warning “stay away from Lafayette Park”….that my friends is a way other story!
(which can be realized with some research-hint:the flower pansey and how that park and WW2 made that name synonymous with things that went on in that place)
Those liberties dwindled down after President Kennedy was shot and things became heated over civil rights and the Viet Nam war.
However-those summers became more better with the freedom of Pottstown and to spend the other half of my summer playing and exploring with my cousin,who was just a year older than me.
I never talk much about Pottstown and my grandparents there…not much,perhaps I’ve hardly mentioned them.
Our grandmother was a cadillac…she was large woman who my cousin and I both conceded this last month that she stank! But she was a sweet old gal-the birth of where I learned old woman die their hair blue..she always did-I’d been to the beauty parlor with her and seen it done.PopPop was a grumpy old man who showed our little asses how the wire end of a fly swatter can wreek havoc on a boys backside-he somehow had this way of showing you how things worked by being the hard ass on you. I remember once he was trying to teach me to catch a hardball in a mit and I was’nt doing it right and so he made me hold my arms to my side and he went back to his spot and threw that ball right square in my face. I dont think I played ball after that.
However…there was my cousin and we both hooked up immediatly and we traveled Pottstown on foot-which was easy to do because our grandparents lived on Beech Street just blocks away from the main drag-High Street. You just have to know Pottstown in the 50’s and 60’s to understand.
Our teenage life was different,my cousin and mine-although it was all the same..times were’nt the same,our adolessence became a hurdle-although it was my brother to be buried up there…just a few blocks from cousins house-it was family…all family.
And the Viet Nam war was humping on the high list those days-our simple times had grown into an awareness we were’nt used to…the hippie movement grew into masses who marched on the capital of our land…then,so unheard of in the ranks that it was taking place-black Americans were outraged too. It became a different atmosphere,and these two little boys (cousins) grew up in through it and into it.
My last vivid recollection of being in Pottstown with my cousin as a lad was around our 17th year. Things were really changing.
It was’nt a time of fishing in the Manatawney or going to Sunnybrook to swim….it really went down as we closed in on our adult lives.
We saw each other around five years ago. My older brother Frank had recently died and I had taken off on a road trip-to Pottstown to hunt up my cousin-we promised to stay in touch,but we all know how those things end up sometimes. This last trip the reality of the only thing good that came out of it was to reunite with Dave again. We realized we had so much more in common than we ever realized…other than having been like brothers as kids-we thought many things that were simular and we recalled things that made us want to cry-and we realized that we had so much more alike than we allowed to know through these years gone from when we entered the military until now. We realized a great variety of lifes patterns that were typical and matched…and made us realize the bond we had was important to renew now.
As boys we always had our birthdays around the same time. He’s in June and me next week-almost to the day one month apart. It had been just coincidence that the trip up there last month was right at his birthday and after all these years I got to have a chance to be there with him and his daughters and grandsons…twins!
So the promise was made the last night…”Jay…I’m coming to Florida”…”one of these days-I’m coming to Florida”!!
Your darned right you are!
This Thursday I’m driving to Orlando to pick up my cousin. He’s only traveled to few places…boot camp and I think to the west coast once-but not much of a travel type trip. I’m going to have the thrill of giving a man my age who has lived in the same place longer than I have lived here…and at times I worry about the length of my own residency-but,to have never seen Florida-and not Disney nor Sea World-but the real deal that AAA forgot to tell people about because the resorts draw in more cash then the old oaks with spanish moss and miles and miles of open prairies with tall palms and the way the sun sets over the Gulf-and he has never seen the Gulf. The speed of the resorts dont give you that view.
A week Monday we will driving down to Citrus County and hop on an noise polluting machine of maximum perportions-we will be mounting ear phones to protect us from the sound of the propeller and the huge Chevy engine thats going to push the airboat we will be riding across the marshes at the base of the Homosassa River right smack up on the Gulf of Mexico!
….a boy from Pottstown will be grinning from ear to ear!

things are’nt always the way they appear-it seems!

shands hospital

Originally uploaded by jayfherron

I will be honest here-I still am not sure as to how to write what I am about to write,I have been pondering the way to explain things all this week…and still,I am not sure how to get it right!
In this photograph I chose for today there may be a way to help make sense-although,the photo does not make much sense to those who have’nt walked by this space as many have over the years-yet if you have you’d know the very spot….and the picture would not be so confusing and would make perfect sense.
But,then again…I am having a difficult time trying to figure out a way to explain that things are’nt always as they appear!

I began to write these memories and thoughts of current events to express the way a male rape survivor has made it from the point of victimization to today-37 years later. Not only am I explaining things that are relavent to express failures in certain systems put in place by our government…and there they sit,yet also to say to anyone and everyone-men are victims too.
As I am writing these things I am being as open as I can about everything-how the seriousness of what happened to me was overlooked and not even cared about from where it should have mattered-my family. Honestly,I am writing these things in hope to purge myself from so much poison kept with in me all of these years from having to tote this around alone for all of these years…these years-these years-these years!!
There is much I have not said. I tell this to you as I have also said it to my therapist-we have met weekly for going into three years…and we have not even scratched the surface,and this-my therapist,is perhaps the ONLY person who knows everything about me.

It is obvious that from the things I have said-my family is rather disfunctional ( ‘rather’ being used to tone it down,I suppose).
There is no way I can explain to anybody what it was really like in barracks D…what my personal Navy experience was like then and how it has haunted me every day of my life…every day! Theres no way I can express what it was like to end up homeless-eventually finding a piece of property to permanantly set camp on only to have persons report me to the county and have me and my youngsters evicted (from our own place) and to scramble to find something…anything,which eventually got me this place,where I am definantly settled in camp.
I cant explain what is has been like to be treated like a liar and regarded with suttle laughs and teasing or what it was like to have your own mother say it should have been me that got killed-instead of my baby brother (over and over and over) and to be thought of as useless…by people who were supposed to be your love and support-and know nothing…absolutley nothing-about me! And,say they love me such as my brothers widow who called me several months ago and said “…if you love me you will call your mother”!!
If I love her?
That was the phone call…all must be well,I’m filled up with that love! Its overflowing…
My brothers bride-just three weeks ago…confideing how shes read all this stuff and understands me. I feel the remarks as insulting now,she was merely ‘eating cheese’.
I may not have it all written in a way you or anyone but myself can understand. I can tell you that even though it was over 37 years ago in barracks D…I remember it better than anyone can! The same with my brother Carl-sliding underneath the Chrysler New Yorker and the tire cracking his head open…him bleeding in my fathers arms,the scene later after he finally died from his injuries-I can replay it over and over at any time in my mind.
None of my family can ever appreciate that I walked morning after morning after morning two miles out to the paved road-six miles in to Archer…eleven miles into the city-walked across the city to 441 and hitched the last miles to a job where I worked hard and dirty all day…and turned around and did that to get home,rain or shine!
And-there is no one who can understand the agoney my very heart is going through by the scene of the failure to love one son is going to be redeemed by the love shown to two buried siblings-by digging them up and putting them all together where my one day dead parents can ‘protect them’ ?? I find the whole idea as sick…
And how can I explain these things? How can I explain the million times my mother had to ask me if I loved her..how much that hurts and worsens each time she asks me to judge her….”I have’nt been a good mother,have I…?” Those stupid painful questions could have gone away years and years and years ago,but every time-EVERYTIME I am around her….”judge me,tell me I was not a good mother! Humor me…tell me you love me” ! The one time that hurt the most was when my mother finally succeded in realizing something happened to me in the Navy….after all of those years I felt a pang of love when she asked “what really happened”? only to have it crushed and wadded like an old newspaper…when I got to the real point she began making a shushing noise with her mouth to keep me from going ahead.
Why I have chosen to use this photograph to head up this days writing is to point out that what you are looking at is exactly like it is if you were there-theres nothing trick about the phot except that it is framed in the lens to show this part of the building I am in and how it serves as art…but this picture does decieve and confuse-but its point is to say that you have to look at what you are seeing,and not to question why some of the bricks are verticle-and some horizontal,or question any aspect of the photo-the point is how the building itself creates the abstract!
Lets look at a fence. Driving down the highway and mile after mile of fence posts and fence wire-and then,all of a sudden-there’s an apple on the fence post,and its so out of place. If you stop the car-you stopped because you are going to look at the apple….not the fence! You’ve been going by the fence for miles….and thats all you’ve seen.
I am trying to relay this point to one of my commentators (especially) -one who stopped because of the apple…but looked at the fence!
My most recent post-about snakes and trust,is an example…
I’ve been corrected on my own history! I’ve had responses to several things I’ve written…problem is,the critic has commented-or remarked,on things that have absolutly nothing to do with what I’ve written-a if the point I was expressing was not included in the words I wrote and used to enhance a point…but in return the responder writes things totally in the distance and have nothing to do with the actual point. I’m kin to this critic…but like most of my kin,personal contacts have been distant (yes,this lady came to visit over a year ago…but that was the first such visit in years and years,the first I had seen her since her dad died (my brother Frank). She was a small child-nearly a diapered infant when these things happened…barracks D,for one-my brothers death…another-and my sister,well…she only knows my sister lived and died,she certainly knows nothing other than what she has been told….but yet there have been several times where what I have been writing have been given a remark of correction?….my own life-and I stand corrected!
Yes-perhaps my finger slighted over and hit a 7 and not an 8. But you only have the right to be critical if you were standing there looking out the window as your baby brother went bouncing across Bel Pre Road into the grill of a car…his body.oh so small,going beneath that huge machine that crushed him. I’m not sorry to be so…I’m feeling defeated by your remarks-you point out corrections that you have no clue as to what you are really saying!…or me! What I am saying! These things I am writing are not individual riddles for you to figure out…these are revelations of a man who’s life has eaten shit from almost the get go-I point out my father carried buckets of coffee to the Hoovervile people…my commentator corrects the history and carrys the point to an extreme that has no bearing on what I have said-at all. She remarks at the beginning of her critic of my last entruy as a guess…she says,okay-what are you trying to say here? Read the words!! I’ve read it over several times-theres not much there thats hard to comprehend…
I realize much more then I’m letting on that this is a special individual-one I have great respect for because of her own life,this is a special individual…but I come to a place where I have to say it is troublesome to have been so distant for so many years and even at times…not even there,and yet can correct what I say.
I know this is someone that has been on my side about the wrong that came about during my brief life n the Navy….but this is also someone who only knows about this from what she has been told-not from being there.
This ‘blog’…or,to me,my journal-this is about a man who has had an extraordinary life,my life…my life that has been over and over disfused and disregarded by my immediate family…my father,my mother….and my brother. I wrote them a letter-THEM a letter…states in it that if they dig up-exhume…dis-inter,remove…replace (how ever you want to look at it) DISTURB my brother and sister and told them (my father-my mother-my brother) that if this happens never to contact me again! I wrote -or sent – a copy to my cousin because they have an interst in this too….his daughter is buried in between my siblings,his family tend to those graves…visit them regularly for holidays-birthday-death day. We -my family – have hardly ever gone to visit those graves-I’ve only been there three times in the past thirty years. So I wanted my cousin to be aware of how serious I am in feeling so sick by this idea….who cares why my cousins daughter was buried there? It seems so okay to me…so to debate that-which is not the point!
My commentator made a remark that I did not send her a letter too….ding dong?? What does it have to do with her?
….the point is the apple-not the fence!
My parents-they want to do this…not you!….besides-why send letters to people who don’t contact me anyway? My brothers widow? and her remark….if you love me? What the hell does that mean? Dont people that say they love each other communicate-call frequently…and say,I love you-not, IF YOU LOVE ME,or as my mother always says “Jay,do you love me?”
You may be my supporter-I greatly thank you for that,but I dont need you to back me up…you see,I have the truth! And even if the truth fails me on this side of eternity…I have God as my advocate ALWAYS,and my truth…my truth-my truth! The truth….the truth!!!
It is my truth!

something about snakes…or,how to trust?

snake in tree

Originally uploaded by jayfherron

I can honestly tell you that I have no interest in herptology. I do find it interesting that this reptile has ‘cousins’ that go through a life crawling on the ground and appearing almost surreal as they move along…looking alike-yet some are docile,and others can kill you with their bite-or squeeze you to death by their strength
The day after I was raped-putting it more clearly…that morning after my interviewer,a Navy intelligence officer,told me to get used to it-meaning , get used to the environment and que sara sara. His exact words were “get used to it,where you are going to go you’re dance card will have already been punched” (a reference that they were considering putting me away for five years). This was an officer…at that time he was representing authority,the law. Something you are supposed to trust,someone you are supposed to trust.
I walked back to barracks D in a state of shock and fear and had only -if at all…a minute too think of what was going to be and how to live through it. The fear in my body at that time was the fear one would feel if they were put through the door of a room filled with snakes…I liken the men in there as snakes and each one of them have a hand for a head and they were all reaching out to grab me.
I was asked an interesting question the other night-why did’nt I just leave?…it was a detention barracks,one didnt ‘just leave’.
I have felt that fear for the rest of my life since-although it has gotten more easier to negotiate the feeling over the years-never the less…the feeling of mistrust of another individual,or the feeling fear when in a room full of others calculates to the same feeling as being locked in to a place with snakes from wall to wall.

I found the operation of a computer reluctantly a few years back-like the television,I didnt want anything to do with it-it was almost like someone was going to hand me a snake…my seperation from the electronic world. But then a friend insisted-being tired of me asking him to ask it for an answer my friend sat me down and said “this on and this is off and you can’t break it unless you hit it with a hammer…and please don’t”. So-the same way I learned to drive a clutch I learned about this thing,the computer…now a tool.
If you ever read a book by Viktor Frankl entitled ‘The Ultimate Meaning of Life’ you would learn that guys like me (and female victims too…I must assume) are afraid to speak. Frankl’s book comes from the experience of a man locked into a concentration camp-a prisoner…and I was locked in this barracks-and deeper than that,I was locked in as the possesion of a man-the leader of the three,so my jail was twice as deep….so,I have this fear of speaking.
And yet a strong desire to get it out.

Two weeks ago I returned from the trip that I described as disturbing-the trip to Pennsylvania with my aged parents to observe a gruesome plan beginning,and to see the results of age taking over both my mother and father….and all of this is so hard to explain,the trip was eventful. My mother fell and my poor father caught her and went down with her and popped his head on the pavement-we were at a car rental return at the Philidelpia airport and other patrons were returning thier cars and regarding my parents with inpatience as they lay there on the ground in every ones way. Moments later in the mens room with a meager first aid kit I wiped away the blood from my fathers wound and never in my life thought I’d ever be this close to him and now it happens in a restroom.
The trip was a distaster after returning back to Florida-my car had dead battery,my dad had a head wound that needed attention…we flew four hours before he could have that. So I grab a cab…a car rental would have been cheaper-but then my mind was not in order,so an 80 dollar cab ride got us home.
My brother got him off to the ER and I visited with his wife.
We had a chat-a good long chat…the first I’d had with her since our last long chat some 20 years ago. She confided she has been reading what I write and has learned so much about me…a very touching conversation-I know I had to wipe tears from my eyes regarding my feelings about my parents-the journey-thier age-my dads failing health…my past,she even made comments about my past-the barracks…not knowing,but now understanding.
Those years ago-our last conversation…actually,it was our first ever conversation-I had only then met her that night. She confided that as my brother-then a sailor-was out at sea for six months. The conversation turned candid,her remarks were candid…and I gave her some advice on those comments. I should have left it alone there…but for a fools trust I wrote the woman a letter adding to the advice.
What happened from there I have no idea-I only know my mother telephoned me and I was in the shit tank…a place not unfamilier to me,but this time it was over the letter and the directive was that my brother wanted nothing to do with me and I was to have nothing to do with them. That lasted many years…in some ways I think it has never gone away for her because she learned how to use it and manipulate with it. She was a snake.
This voice I have found-here in the computer…has given me freedom to explain myself to who may be interested and for what ever reasons they might be interested. I’m getting to tell someone-anyone…finally-about what my life has been like,good or bad. I’m getting to the things my own family never opened an ear to.

My father is ill. I can in a mysterious way feel his body dying inside of me. I’m in tune with it because my soul and heart has wanted moments like those we had in the rest room two weeks ago-over and over and over again. No,not to have him hurt and bleeding…but to touch him and care for him-hopefully extract love from him.
A few years ago I realized my father was not a good driver anymore and I telephoned my brother and said ‘we three’ ( our oldest brother was still alive then) ‘we three should go to Dad and stop his driving’.
What happened after that is unknown-except my youngest brother went and moved my folks right there next to them. They still drove…
Where they are is almost two hours drive from me.
Now my father is sick and I can tell the toll it is taking on them…but that was what they must of known that when they moved them to be so close and with out consulting the others in the family-so,theres not much one can say…is there?
When were in the north and my father was refering to this and that with the various business’s we traveled to to negotiate the gruesome duty my father feels is neccesary…I was there the whole time and everytime it came to somebody being in charge,or any reference to other family it was always ‘my son…’ and the folks we were doing business with would look at me in confusion and one even followed me outside and remarked I looked too young to be my fathers brother-I sorted that out,and then the confusion deepened where as I had to explain that I am the ‘black sheep’ of the family…my brother is the prince he is refering too,sir!
My father traveled all the way to France with my sibling and his bride…they’ve been to Williamsburg together as a family. They went to my favorite Grandmothers funeral together…a funeral I waited two weeks to learn where and when-only to be lied to and being it was only my father and mother,very private…? I was told they went to visit Williamsburg after that.
My father was cordial to me on this trip-the gruesome task trip…thanked me when I brought them coffee in the morning and it was like getting a gift when my brother relayed the message to me that my father said I was very compitent on this trip….he could’nt call me-his son?
I learned this past weekend my father was in the hospital…ICU so I was told. My son was here for the weekend-bringing me a replacement phone for the one I lost in the north when my parents fell. He came down from South Carolina…thats my son! On his return he stopped to visit his grandparents and learned my dad was in the ER. So he drove over there and sitting in the waiting area was the woman that just two weeks ago hit me with sorrows and praises and regrets because she’d been reading about my life and was understanding and even told me about some personal things that made it easy for her to understand me…some things about how much I was loved.
The snake jumped out of the chair and expressed a venomous statement to my son as what loozer…loozer with a ‘Z’ I really am!

the weeks ahead…

Carl-my baby brother

Originally uploaded by jayfherron

Meet my brother Carl. Theres not too much I can tell you about him-he came in 1963 and went in 1967….fast beneath the wheels of a Chrysler New Yorker. I cant tell you what he wanted to be when grew up-if he ever told me it was so long ago I cannot recall. As a matter of fact,I remember very little except that he was a sweet chap.
What I do remember is how things went into slow motion that last morning-how they,my two little brothers,were playing a running game on the lawn…I was watching from my upstairs bedroom. There was girl about the same age as Carl who lived across the street-she had downs syndrome…or something of the such,but that morning for some reason my brother and her connected. It was almost as if they were a magnet-she came out and ran to the curb. Carl went to run too-and out into the path of the car he went.
Bel-Pre Road was not a busy road then…it was just time.
In panic I saw his small body tumble under that New Yorker-right now…this minute in my memories theater I can replay the reel over and over,perfectly. I see the man driving-his goetee and black leather coat…he had a ‘highball’ in his hand,it was the day before drinking and driving was seen as wrong.
I dont know at what point I started to run to stairs and to the street-I remember having to go to the basement to fetch my father…I remember my father holding this boy-his boy,who was dying in his arms. What I remember the most was how my father picked up my mother and held her and wept…the motion of love he showed has always been an overwhelming memory.
That was a bad time-1967…just months before the big ‘summer of love began’ and the hippie movement was just about to show its strength in Monterey…I say bad time,I meant for me.
I’ve never really gotten too deep into the story about Tuckahoe. I know I’ve said something…but steered around it only useing the pieces that fall together easily. What happened there was a pretty big thing-no…it was a big thing and my parents never understood,really never taking the time to believe. I almost created an accident that could have killed people…thankfully it did not. But I was expelled from school and a judge made me work a hard job-for no pay,at least to me. I was’nt allowed to ride to work-I had to walk,which trained me in my mind years later when I became homeless in these woods where I live today.
When we moved to the Washington area I was thrilled to the max for being freed from this terrible place and the kids that harrassed me there. Only…the following school year at the new school 150 miles from Tuckahoe was Debbie. She came from Tuckahoe.
Well…that ended school for me,and of course started a chain of problems like me running away a few times. My parents never understood or wanted to understand what happened in Tuckahoe…it was just blame all of the time and accusations of being a liar. Not too long before Carl went to his death I had run away and when my father found me he beat so bad with his leather belt that my bedroom walls had scars so deep that the next day he brought a huge bucket of spackle patch and a gallon of paint and I to repair the damage.
A few weeks later we were following Carl as he was being taken to Pottstown in a hearse. The flower arrangement that covered his casket had fallen to the right side and my mother kept on about it…and me. She kept saying over and over that it should have me because Carl was such a good boy,and I was being so bad.And fretting about that flower cover.
Its not hard to figure out that that stuck in my mind.
When the thing that happened in the Navy went through its course no one at home ever knew or cared about what my side of the story was-I never knew what they might have been told…all I know I was pegged to be a liar and a looser by my father and mother,except when my father was’nt around then my mother would make these attempts to contact me…its almost always the same test! “Jay…do you love me”?? or “I’ve been a bad mother-have’nt I”?? and I want to tell her no…and yes,and theres where I lie.
I am so sickened by my parents desire to exhume my brother and sister-sickened by the selfishness of it and sickened by the nature of it,I am sickened enough to the point I sent each of my family a letter saying plainly they will loose me forever if this happens…how I can see that as a threat I do not know.
I fear the letters were sidelined…mother dearest called yesterday. She was concerned about a T-shirt she left in my car.

….the feeling of depression-

the door to barracks D

Originally uploaded by jayfherron

The few weeks have been right at the stress level where I peak and have no control over my body getting prepared for depression-I hate it and want to die.
I’ve spent the past two months with the belief I have an anyurism…this is what the letter from the VA clearly says-and yesterday was my consultation with a nuero surgeon who says I’m making it all up…heck-it was’nt me that operated the MRI or wrote that letter.
Yes I guess I’m glad about it-but there does’nt seem to be enough time to settle and think on that. Fresh in my head are these two poor remains of my brother and sister and that trip and ordeal…and that morbid plan. And then over the week end I recieve the order for a hearing from the VA…the moment of time has come-and my lawyer can’t make it. I’ve waited more than 37 years for something like this to happen….I waited all day yesterday for her to call-it seemed like 37 years again.
I can’t hardly write-my eyes are full of grief and I swear I wish what ever it was in my head would bust wide open and send me into opens arms of a real life with God.
I can’t bare the thought of being a part of today…or the next few days-depending on how long this time lasts. My body feels like its spiraling down towards an endless tube-my bones ache from the weight-the trillion tons depression weighs burdon me…

….disturbing the Peace

Jo Eileen

Originally uploaded by jayfherron

I last saw this little girl in the fall of 1957. She was in a casket in a funeral parlor-I had taken some flowers from Mrs.Cowans garden and placed them on her chest….I had to stand on a stool to see her because I was just a boy of six.
I was’nt allowed to go to the funeral-I guess I was too small…but I remember as the funeral procession drove by our grandfathers house,my sisters casket was taken to the cemetery in a coupe la floure (an open flower car hearse combined) and the only explaination about my sisters death coming from a great aunt who sat on the stoop with me as the cars filed by-there goes JoEileen.
I guess the whole thing was more mystery to me than anything-but a little over a year later me and another boy were playing and saw our neighbor-an older man-going into his cellar with a gun and without him knowing we had had followed in curiosity Mr.Hoke used that gun to kill himself. It was a little easier to understand as a few days later I stared down into the casket at him-his casket was in the same parlor as my sister laid in repose just not too long ago. These people were dead.
Where my sister is buried in Pottstown Pennsylvania is where my brother Carl was buried when he was killed-unlike my sisters funeral I attended this from the very moment I saw Carl going under the frame of a Chrysler New Yorker and seeing his head being cracked by the tire…until we followed the hearse to take him to Pottstown-my mother kept saying to me it “should have been” me as we stared at Carls casket from the back of the hearse for a journey of 150 miles or more.
I dont know if I can tell this in one try…I’ve just returned from a journey to the graves of these two young children-buried in between is even a third,my cousins young daughter,Somer….she was 12.
My parents are now getting quite old and my father has taken a notion that after 50 years for my sister-and 40 years for my brother…he wants to move them to a second grave site in the same cemetery,to a plot where my folks seem to see fit to be buried.
I was enlisted-I confess,I did at one time volunteer to go to Pottstown but was turned down by my father…at that time I had no idea of the plan. But last week I was enlisted and with in an hour of fruitlessly trying to patch my leaking bedroom-the roof…I was on my way to begin a journey through airports and back with my parents-Beep and Bop! My pockets lined with two dollars in quarters and my credit card…which is now a sinking ship!
Last night as I sat here trying to work it rained-and the patch did not take and I sat here working on my computer while it rained three feet behind me into buckets I had lined on the floor of my bedroom.
The plan to destruct my siblings peace has been estimated to cost around 4000 dollars…the man at the cemetery used the term ‘it’ in regards to my brothers remains….it seems he was buried excluding a concrete vault,so rusted pieces of a casket are there-and the feeling of a back hoe digging up against what the cemetery man is calling ‘it’ is a disturbing thought to me…that is my brother,and I saw him die. That is my sister-and I remember her being carried from our house the night she went away. That is my cousin Davids child who lay in between-a child he loved and her sisters loved and her mother loves. This is about the most crudest thing I have ever witnessed.
I dont know what is promoting this idea-my father blames my mother…my mother does not want this to happen-she says its him??
When the cemetery man refered to my brothers remains as ‘it’,my emotions started spinning quickly. I escorted my parents to another part of the cemetery to try to find a great aunts uncles brothers son…and tried to keep my self to myself but could not because in the car is my father saying such and such was a horses ass and he wans’nt going get out and see him and my mother and I troddled off to this little grave and there she said she was not liking the idea about moving my brother and sister-and I lost it….
Bop looked at me…”are you crying”??
You’re gawddamned right I’m crying mother dearest….