1985 Chapter 14: Workin' for the C-I-T-Y

 1985 was dominated by my time working for the City of Port Aransas. I began the year unemployed, suddenly as green as could be as Jeri's Instrument Fitter Helper in the oil refinery. There, I had to build my self-esteem, one teaspoon at a time. 

When Little Jimmy got fired, and Dad told me to get my application in NOW, everything changed. I did not have to be so on guard anymore. When you work with several thousand other construction workers, who do not even work for the same company as you, it is every person for themselves. 

The City was a comfortable niche, 7 am to 4 pm. One hour lunch in which there was plenty of time to go home, eat, and watch the noon news. Every day at 12:30, on KIII Channel 3, a somber and concerned Michael Landon would appear on our television and say: "Could I ask you a very serious question? Have you ever stopped to think of the financial hardships that would result in the event of your death, or the death of your spouse?" He urged us to call for our Academy Life Insurance Kit now, every single day. We almost knew the pitch, word for word.

I pumped the skid-o-kans out on the beach. There were 6 stalls, 3 per side, and toilets constructed of lumber, with plastic tanks beneath and joined by PVC pipe. I would show up with the laser-blue 1977 Chevy Silverado with a 300-gallon fresh-water tank and a pump, and a trailer with a 600-gallon waste tank and a pump. I would hook up to each building, pump them out, blast them with high-pressure clean water and soap so powerful that it had a flashpoint of 74 degrees. When I applied for this, Dad said this was one of the best jobs in the public works department. No one messes with you. As long as you do what you are supposed to, you have it made. 

When Dad told me the position had suddenly opened, I was expected to go for it. I had been driving 56 miles one way each day in Dad's car, which got 11 miles to the gallon at best. This job was on the island, I could walk to it, and it was a good job. There would be no "I don't know, I don't think it is a good fit." Dad walked to work every day, so I could drive to Corpus Christi. This opening was an incredible windfall for me.

On the days I was not cleaning the Skid-o-kans (Monday and Friday), I worked with the rest of the operations team. It was the spring brush-and-solid-waste pickup that the town sponsored. I was working with Gary, who did not have a license; he had lost it after a Driving While Intoxicated arrest. Having a license was required to work for the city. So I, who could barely get a standard transmission to move, had to drive this large dump truck. That was rough, but it should not have been. The reality of driving a heavy truck is that there is no need to increase rpm, which I was doing. I was so freaked out that I told Crockett, my boss, I would be better off not driving one of those. He cautioned me, "Well, Mike, that is the job; we need you to drive those." These were words. I think it would have been action if I weren't doing the job no one else wanted to do.

I will admit. I jumped into the fire a little too quick by starting to date someone from work during the first month. Dee worked on the beach crew, and within days, we were living together. Sometimes I was assigned to an extra beach crew after very heavy-traffic weekends. She filled every corner of my eyes and attention. It was fortunate for me that the pace of any of the work I did was a nice, easy one. I am sure that if I worked in the control room of a nuclear power plant, I just might have accidentally blown a state or two off the map out of mere distraction.

As the weeks passed, I became much more proficient with the equipment. Mosquitos were a serious issue in Port Aransas. Our open drainage ditches were a perfect breeding ground for them. To combat that, we mixed used motor oil with diesel and sprayed the ditches with it. The oil coating prevented air from reaching the larvae, and they would die without ever hatching. I know this sounds absolutely crazy by 21st-century standards, but it was normal and needed back then. Dad drove a tractor, and I stood on a wooden platform on the back, shooting oil into the ditches. The city also sprayed Malathion off the back of a small pickup once a month around the island. It was important to keep your house windows closed on those nights.

An old Ford pickup came into the city's possession, once the Dog Catchers' truck. Luther, our former landlady's son, was the animal control officer on the island. The city just bought him a new truck. I started using that truck for putting up signs, which was becoming another of my primary jobs in town. That truck was a 3 on the column, and something about driving it daily, alone, just made all of this gear stuff suddenly sink in. I then was able to drive any standard, any dump truck, tractor, anything. I had no more problems with these pieces of public works equipment.

I had only met Luthor a couple of times, and because the animal control officer reported to the Port Aransas Police Department, Luthor had this air about him of a wannabe cop. One of the jobs that Dad did regularly was to drive the garage truck on the beach to empty the close to 100 55-gallon steel drums. I accompanied him on a holiday weekend run. We got to one of the skid-o-kans, and there was a bowl of water and a plate of dog food, looking like the Gainesburgers that were popular back then. Dad put his hand out and stopped me from walking. He held his finger to his lips: "SHHHHHHH! Luther Trap. If a dog starts eating or drinking, Luther is going to pop up with a gun and yell, FREEZE!" I laughed. I could so picture him in the role of Roscoe P. Coltrain, Sheriff of Hazzard County from The Dukes of Hazzard. 

In the summer of 1985, a hurricane entered the Gulf of Mexico. Actually, there were a few that year, but this one appeared to be coming for Port Aransas. Working for the city meant we had the responsibility to secure all the town offices and property, leaving no time to care for our own. Danny had its sights set on us, and we scrambled to brace for impact. Incredibly, I found out why we called them "Skid-O-Kans." There were hooks on the end where we hooked up the pumper truck. We hooked up to those and to the hitch of a truck, a backhoe, or a front-end loader, and anything that could pull one, and started driving down the beach, out Avenue G, Cutoff Road, and then onto the Transfer Station. Towing these heavy buildings on the road was a ton of friction on the wooden runners they were built on, so there was so much smoke coming off them en route. We needed to make sure they were not on fire when we got them to the dump.

Next came the nearly 100 steel drums we used for trash cans. If we left those behind, they would get washed into town like giant bomb projectiles smashing people's houses and properties. I was one of many vehicles collecting these. Glenn and I were working on a dump truck. Ramone, an elderly gentleman who ran the transfer station, was on vacation, so we had hired a temp named David to monitor the dump. He was pretty close to being homeless, which in Port A, meant that you lived on the beach more or less. He was incredibly lazy. 

Each contingent of people who were bringing loads of barrels to put in the barn was getting out and stacking them. When Glenn and I got there with our second load, after David did not help with the first. Glenn backed into the barn, and David watched us. Glenn looked at me, "Still too many barrels to get, we don't have time to screw around here." With that statement, Glenn pulled the PTO lever on the dump truck (everyone had been unloading them by hand). David, realizing what was happening, started yelling, "Hey! What are you doing? YOU CAN'T DO THIS! HEEEEYYYYYYY!" The barrels were ejected into a giant pile in the barn in front of David. Glenn opened the door. "Make sure you get those all stacked before the next load comes there." The truck rolled forward, the bed came down, and we headed to the beach for another load.

Dad and others were boarding up the Community Center, City Hall, and the Police Department. As members of the Public Works Department, we could ride out the hurricane in City Hall because, allegedly, it could take a hit from a hurricane. The rest of the population would be evacuated. City Hall had not been tested because it had been destroyed by Hurricane Allen in 1980. No, I would evacuate to San Antonio and would be one of the first allowed to return after it was over to clean up. 

At the last minute, Danny turned north and made landfall near Grand Chenier, Louisiana. The task to reverse our preparations commenced immediately. What an experience, though, one I will never forget.

As the months passed, I learned to do so many things. I could operate all kinds of equipment and really enjoyed watching problem-solving on this level. Many improvement ideas came from our people and the department. We sandblasted and repainted our trucks and heavy equipment.

Carl was the Director of Public Works. Crockett was the manager of all the staff. Carl was all Texas and very animated. Crocket was quiet and very collected. Much of the time, Carl was loudly complaining about something or actively making a case for it. 

One great memory of Carl was on a cold, late December day. It was unusually cold on the island that day. We stayed in all day, detailing all the pickup trucks so they looked showroom-new. We had cleaned every truck as much as they could be cleaned and shone. It was about 3:35 in the afternoon, and we were all just standing around. Carl addressed the unasked question in the room. 

"Y'all want to go home, don't you? You are thinking that I am gonna let you go home early because there is nothing to do. Y'all would like that, wouldn't you? Wouldn't you?"

It was clear that Carl was going to go off about something. This was the build-up. "But you know what? Y'all wouldn't even piss on me if I was on fire!  You know that? I would be standing here, burnin up, on fire, and Y'all be like, 'Oh no, Carl, I can't, it's 4 o'clock, I have to go home.' You'd leave me there burnin, and nobody would piss on me!" We all had no idea what to say. "You know I'm right! Y'all really wouldn't even piss on me if I was on fire!" He really made us feel ashamed about this, too. I think inside, we all wondered if we would or not.

Clearly, this was Carl's way of burning enough time to reach 3:45, at which point he told us to "get outta here." When you are the Director of Public Works in a 2000-person town, you have to be careful because everyone has an opinion about what they see. Carl just had a very colorful way to handle things like this.

Glenn eventually got done with the city and started a lawn service. Dee and I continued to work for the Public Works department. Dad had been working there since 1980, the year he arrived in Texas. He had designed his own police car cages and the cruisers when the town could not afford to buy them. He had overseen the Department at times during his tenure and was even the de facto City Manager when people were out of town. 

Dad was a solid and highly valued member of Port Aransas and of this department. It was my honor to work with him there.

*NOTE: The Workin' for the C-I-T-Y reference in the title of the chapter is a tribute to a song that was very popular in 1985 by John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band called "Workin' in the C-I-T-Y."

1985 Chapter 13: The Nebula December

 This fall, Dad bought our friend Steve's 72 International Travelall. He had been driving the 74 Chrysler Town and Country wagon since I arrived in June of 84, but he was ready for something else. He sold the Chrysler to his friend Bill. Bill returned to the area with his family after living outside of Texas for a few years. 

Dad liked the Travelall. It was a very cool vehicle. It had some issues with the front end, but when you live on the island, you can live with discrepancies. The way you handle them, too, is very different from how it would be done anywhere else. The mounting bracket on the Chrysler, where the steering box was mounted, rusted out, and the whole steering column would suddenly convulse, making it feel like the car body was going in one direction while the engine and frame were going in another. Dad chased down Claude Brown, one of the County Constables, who also ran a side welding business and had a mobile welding rig. They pulled over on the side of the road, and Claude welded the steering box to the frame. Done.

I learned that the Travelall had a posi rear end. One Saturday, Harry, Steve, Glenn, and I were all at Dad's house visiting and playing darts. Port Aransas was mostly all open drainage ditches, so the mosquitoes had a place to spawn. The driveway was full of vehicles. Harry was heading home when he backed his Ford pickup into the drainage ditch off the driveway. There was no way he was getting out on his own.

Dad told him he could easily pull him out with the International. He pulled out of the driveway and smoked the tires. Back and forth in front of the house on Oleander. Dad kept flooring that old International, and in turn, because of those welded spider gears, laid two equal strips of rubber on the ground. Harry, standing out there with a rope tied to his truck, hoping that THIS time, Joe would line up to the rope and pull him out, preferably before the police arrived. The Cop Shop was only about 5 blocks away, and I would bet real money that they could hear the tire squeal from there.

Harry protested every time and was yelling at Dad to cut it out. Of course, that just made him do it more. He was burning the tires so much that at times, you could not see most of the vehicles out front. I imagined that if you could see this from the sky, it might appear that a small commuter jet had crashed here. This went on for about 20 minutes, and the more he did it, the funnier it got. Finally, he was done tormenting Harry and pulled him out of the ditch.

On the first Friday in December, we were invited to a family camp that Brooke's boyfriend, Allen, hosted. Dee, the kids, and I all went. We got there late Friday night and hung out on Saturday. It was nice to get off the island and do something different. Life in Port Aransas is otherwise, a complete state of mind and being. I would be lying if I said I remembered much of it.

Saturday night was a night to remember. We were surprised when Dad showed up in the International Travellall. With him, he had Brooke's friend Bella, from Connecticut, and her boyfriend. They flew down to South Texas to surprise Brooke. Dad had a pretty good buzz, but that was probably not the whole reason Bella and her boyfriend just about fell on the ground and kissed it when they got out of the vehicle. 

There was a control arm bushing issue with the Travelall, and a sticking caliper issue, too. Either one would not be too big a deal. Together, they were this crazy wildcard of physics in which, at high speeds, like those Dad drove there at, when you stepped on the brakes, nothing would happen until the sticky caliper suddenly grabbed hard. Then, the sloppy control arm bushings caused the vehicle to veer hard to the left, and then, in the next moment, you were driving through a field. Dad, then, would wrestle with the steering wheel and put the vehicle back on the road until the next time it became necessary to touch the brake pedal again. Honestly, I was surprised they had not driven through someone's barn on the way here.

I laughed so hard as they told us the story of their blindly taking a cab to Port Aransas from Corpus, only to take this death-defying ride out here to surprise Brooke. We did not have a normal father. Our Dad was fun, unpredictable, embarrassing at times,  reckless and dangerous at times, but he also had a heart of gold. Most people would probably have scoffed at me for finding humor in this, but it was what it was like to know Dad. Burying Harry's truck in the sand last spring. The nuclear response was his strength. It always caught people by surprise. 

It was why people did not cross him. They could not imagine how their challenge would be met, so they just made sure not to challenge him. This was his strategy. It kept the peace in a world where peace could otherwise have encountered complications. I did not fully understand it until years later, when he seemed decades older, although only 8 years had passed. In 93, the Clint Eastwood film The Unforgiven showed a more realistic side of holding peace with strength, even though time had just about erased the threat. The last scene, where William Munny from Texas tells them all not to follow him, riding on the coattails of his reputation as a younger man. It was, in effect, the primal example of return on investment: give a lot early on so you can coast later.

Bella and her boyfriend ended up staying for weeks. At first, at the Best Western at the beach on Sand Castle Drive, and later, with Dad and Brooke, to save whatever money they had left. Dee and I forged on with a focus on the rest of the holiday season. 

As we approached the holiday, Dee's other sister, Lee, came down from Dallas. She was a single, professional woman who showered the kids with gifts of clothing and toys. She was very nice. She stayed with her mom on the island during her visit. 

Dee and I were talking. Although Dee really appreciated her sister's kindness, she always felt that she was almost desperate to accept her generosity. For the last 12 years, Dee had always been in need of something, but since last year, she had established herself as a valued member of the Beach Crew and was building a career with her municipal employer. That may not seem like much at face value, but it is significant when you live on an island in the Gulf of Mexico. Here, the industries were fishing, tourism, and small-shop retail, and let's not forget mowing lawns. She was on her feet as a person and a mother. 

For once, Dee wanted to just enjoy her sister without feeling like she needed the material boost that came with her visits.  Lee never complained or made comments. She did this because she loved her sister, nephews, and niece. I told Dee that I was pretty sure I could ride over to Ann's house and get a small loan we could pay back the following week when we got paid. She liked the idea.

Dee thought it would be good for me to bring Lee the money, as she did not want to offend or hurt her sister in any way. I went over to her mom's house and met Lee at the door. I told her that we wanted to thank her for what she did, and I hoped she would not be offended if we gave her the money she spent on the kids. She just stood there and looked at me for a moment. "Can I have a hug?" she asked. We hugged. "All these years, I watched my sister struggle to get by with her deadbeat ex. It is so nice to see that she is with someone who really does love her and the kids."

That night, I sat up late with all three kids. They talked and talked about anything and everything. During my drinking days, it definitely helped at times like this. Alcohol allowed me to be relaxed and free. You could tell they really loved this version of me, and they took turns sharing stories and thoughts with me. They asked questions, and we laughed and listened to music.

This was a good thing, too, because their father, who lived in the trailer they all shared, had decided to move off the island and back up to San Antonio. He never did much with them, really. His children were amazing, but he was more focused on partying and seeing what he could score on the beach.

His departure from the island created this unspoken option. Dee's home, which she had paid for, was now open. She did not need to stay with me on Ruthie Lane. She had options. Of course, I felt that we were only getting better: the money for Lee, the house, the car, my growing relationship with the kids. But what I refused to look at was us. Our reason for staying together still lacked substance. Somewhere in my subconscious, I was banking a list of pros and cons. Although I could not see it, it was there.

There was a knock on the door just before Christmas. It was Dad. Dee and the kids had gone to bed. Dad and I sat up for hours and talked like we had not in what seemed like forever. It was wonderful. I really missed this. This was us. He talked about being a kid in the 1950s, his parents, and so much more. We talked about work, music, and family. Everything was so natural. Everything was right.

Forgotten

 Everybody has secrets

Everybody has dreams

The dogs are combing the soil

Whatever this is comes to light

Breaks the glass

Arrows down range

Cannot stop now

Jump. Scream. Dance. Throw up.

Nothing works except for the wind

That you cannot control just like that arrow

Futile exercise, empty words, worthless life

Question is, what now?

I dream of answers, and youth, and viability.

Image by fotoshoptofs-Pixabay.com

From Saigon I hear echoes of your abbreviated childhood.

Fire and tears then silence and more silence.

It's more than all mixed up

It's finished, interrupted, devastated.

1985 Chapter 12: Building the Perfect Beast

 Despite working hard to normalize our lives materially, I could not extend that to my relationship with Dee, no matter what. We existed, but we could not fall into the groove that I felt we should inevitably fall into. That was really because the way to fix us was to stay friends and separate, so we could each grow individually. So I was fixing everything around us, naively believing that doing so would cause us to fall into line with the perifrials as they came into alignment. The car, my grandfather's visit, and a change of scenery.

The reality was that nothing changed. It was turning me into a lunatic. My most significant shifts were happening during this period. I felt constant bitterness, helplessness, and jealousy during this time. I was trying to defy gravity in this relationship. 

One Friday night, we packed the car full: kids, Dee, Anna, and Horace. We went to a drive-in movie in Ingleside, off the island. We always drank wherever we went. It was a way of life. I was not an angry drunk like some other people can be. But this night, there were extenuating circumstances.

I was extremely agitated that night because the night before, Horace really tried to seduce Dee down on Sandcastle Drive while his pregnant wife sat at home in their trailer. He played it so innocently, always making himself look like he was the good guy. I did not have the heart to call him out in front of Anna. Instead, I was passively-aggressively taking shots. 

The fuse was lit when I thought I had seen him sitting with a girl at the drive-in, and I said it out loud. It turned out to be a guy. This humiliation made me strike out at him on the way home. I verbally trashed Horace, his lies, his manipulation, his entire being. I appeared unhinged because Dee was the only one who knew everything that I knew. I had been biting my tongue, and I just lost it. Everyone turned on me, and I unleashed a barrage of hatred at him on the ride back to the island like never before.

They were just waiting to get out of the car, and when I pulled into her yard, Anna threw a whole fountain soda, cup and all at me. She told me what a terrible person I was. I wanted to tell her why I was so mad. But there was no one on my side, and I was sure that would not have gone well either. 

I went back to my house, and Dee and Horace came with me. Out in the yard, I pushed him down. I wanted him to take a swing at me. I offered to let him. I kept pushing him and yelling at him. I could see he thought about it, but he kept saying, "I can't, I know Joe Jackson will kill me if I do." I had never been so angry in all my life.

Finally, frustrated beyond what I could bear, humiliated by my jumping to conclusions. I got into my car. I needed to get out of there. Even though I was angry about what happened last night, Dee could not stand behind me because of the way that I acted tonight. If she had, she could have told me I was acting like a tyrant, but there was a reason. But at what cost? Calling out her sister's husband while she was this far along? 

 I was reaching for an all-new low, and instead of taking the high road, I let this guy, who could not speak a word of truth if he tried, drag me into the pit in which he lived. I needed to get out of here.

I headed to the ferry and drove north to Aransas Pass, Rockport, and Tivoli. I had no idea where I was going. Victoria would be the biggest city in my trajectory. I had no destination in mind; I was just trying to run from the pain that lived inside me. I was mad at Dee for not breaking ties with this deviant idiot her sister was living with. I was mad at myself for holding it in and not just calling him out privately. I was mad at how I had acted. This was not one of my best moments for sure. I wanted so badly to not care about any of this.

As soon as I left the island, I was drinking coffee. I just needed the road, some music, and some time to think. After driving for a while, I needed gas, so I stopped in McFadden for coffee and gas. After filling the car and getting my coffee, I was walking back to the Dodge when I noticed something hanging low underneath the back of the car. My guess was the exhaust. 

Nope. Not the exhaust. It was the gas tank! The 1972 Dodge Dart had two heavy steel straps that connected just behind the back seat, then on the other side, to the bottom of the trunk where the spare tire well was. This is what suspended the gas tank to the bottom of the car. Here, the spare tire well had rusted out, and what was left of the steel had torn out, and the tank was reaching the ground.

I ran back into the store. "Do you have any wire, rope, or twine?" The cashier found a little old clothesline rope for me, and I did my best to wrap it around the full gas tank. The only places I could connect this to were the filler tube for the gas tank inside the left side of the trunk. I did the best I could, then opted to drive back to Port Aransas carefully. I drove a few miles, then found a discreet parking lot to pull into and went to sleep.

In the morning, as I drove, I recalled a wild ride last night just before I left the island. I was in Charlie's pasture, driving at 60 miles an hour through the dune-like roads and around the twists and turns. No wonder I was dealing with this. I was just disappointed in myself all the way around. Throwing tantrums the way I had was not the answer. I felt ashamed. No matter what this brother-in-law guy had done, or was doing to me or others, it was no excuse for my ridiculous behavior. Something I was thinking last night came back. I just want to not care about any of this.

Something changed here. I was growing in an accelerated way. It was foreign to me, like I was injected with a serum that was changing my DNA. As I approached the island, I knew what the first thing I had to do was. No matter what others' injustices were, I acted like a complete ass, and I needed to fix that. I was not going to be here again. I drove over to the trailer where Anna and Horace lived. Dee was there with the kids. I first apologized to him and Anna. Especially to Anna, because she was a true innocent party in all of this. I talked with Dee, and we worked it out enough that she came home within a day. 

As for my Dodge, I took a broken street sign, bolted it inside the trunk, and ran a plumber's strap from the gas tank straps, through the giant hole in the trunk, to the signpost bolted to the floor. That was my permanent fix. Yes, Vicki-Lynn (the name I gave to my first car), I promised Vicki Magro I would name my first car after her, but in reality, it was more for the Kinks song "Victoria," about Queen Victoria. Lynn was a tribute to the first girl I ever asked out when I was 12, Lynn Nettleton, was absolutely, no denying it, "an Island Car." Annual Port Aransas Rusty Bucket Parade, here we come. <sigh> 

Then something happened on an October afternoon that made it feel like I might just be succeeding in building the life I envisioned for us. I stopped into Harry's Beach Street Pub. Dad and I were going to throw some darts. There was Rick, the Shark Hunter, captain of the Orca. I really liked Rick. We were sitting at the right side of the bar when Rick told me that he was moving up to San Antonio. His wife and kids had been up there for a while, and he was driving up there more and more to see them. He had been working a little, but his days as Captain of the Orca had passed, and it was not really sustainable to keep his place on the island.

His wife, Janice, seemed really nice, though I never got to know her well. I imagined he was trying to do better in their relationship, given all his traveling to San Antonio. I was sad to see him go. I loved watching that 74 Plymouth Satellite make a left onto Avenue J, then throttle as it went by my house. 400 cubic inches of barely muffled exhaust. You did not even need to look up to see it was him. He always waved as he drove by.

Rick was thin, shorter than me, and lean, with almost shoulder-length hair. I never saw him without his baseball cap that usually sported a mirrored pair of turbo-style sunglasses. He wore a sterling silver shark-tooth necklace with multiple rows of chain, each row containing many shark teeth. It had to weigh a lot! But he made it work. He made lots of things work. He was small, but fierce, and made you feel pretty good to be around. He brought and contributed energy to any room he entered. 

We were sitting at the bar when Rick made the pitch. I am selling the house. Do you know anyone who would want to buy it? My Dad and I looked at each other. I realized that I would definitely love to have his place. He lived on a dead-end road off Station Street. It was a 1969 Ritzcraft mobile home parked on a residential lot on Ruthie Lane, which I had heard stories about him towing across the island with his 74 Plymouth.  His price was less than one-third of Brooke's car's price. The lot rent was just $125 a month. 

I called my grandfather and talked with him about a loan. I told him there were weeds growing through the living room floor in Jeri's mobile home, where I was living on Avenue J. He thought it was a good idea and told me that he looked forward to seeing it when he returned.

It was late October, and we moved quickly as I did not have much of my own furniture. Friends gave us a couple of beds and a table. All settled in at Ruthie Lane, we decided to have Thanksgiving there. I got way off track with this idea that I was going to make the salad to end all salads. I had never worked with vegetables before, and a little spark from the days of eating at the salad bars of Bonanza and Ponderosa in the late 70's and early 80's got me speeding off the Thanksgiving trail and off on some non-cohesive, mega vegetable assault that put me in my own little version of what that day would be like. Think of it as Clark W Griswald tries to introduce a new food tradition into Thanksgiving. 

I jokingly told everyone that I would need the bathtub to make the salad. This was a slight exaggeration. My sister and Dad came over for Thanksgiving, and so did D's family. It was an interesting mix and pretty lighthearted. The several pounds of salad I made, although tried, did not look all that different by the end of the meal. My dad told me that it was the wrong venue. The salad I made should be for a salad party. Being a meat-eater for the most part, I had never heard of such a thing. I knew Dad had dabbled in vegetarianism, so he would know.

I was trying to build a better life in our new home, telling myself that I could do this. Dee's sister had her baby boy, and he was healthy and thriving. It should have been an incredible moment for the baby's father. But nothing changed with him. Anna and the baby were at our house a lot. Horace would disappear for the day, supposedly looking for work. One evening, he arrived at our house on Ruthie Lane. He reported that he had been hired at the beach high-rise resort, Mayan Princess. He was going to make more than people who worked for the City of Port Aransas (me) and would be tending to the guests' maintenance needs. The job came with a brand new Ford Ranger pickup truck to drive and a unit to live in. No more trailer. The man who interviewed him told him that he was exactly what they were looking for.

We were all genuinely happy for him and his family. A better thing could not have come along with a new member of the family. Going from a camper trailer to this would be perfect for them. Not that living in a camper was bad. Many people in Port A lived in trailers. It was perfectly acceptable. All three of us, Dee, Anna, and I, commended him on his persistence in finding work. This was so much more than we could have ever imagined. As we did, he kept adding details to what this would be, its perks, and what was said during his hiring. 

I may have been at odds with Horace, but he had a family, Anna was a good person, and I liked her a lot. This was a good day. We ate, and after a couple of hours of questions and answers, the conversation began to settle into a new reality. Then, something happened. It was a strange shift in the reality of our not-well-lit living room. 

Horace put his head down and said it was all BS. Anna went wide-eyed, "WHAT?" His voice was full of humiliation, sadness, and self-pity. "None of that happened. I just wanted you to be proud of me for once."  Anna looked like someone had just punched her in the stomach. She was devastated. "None of it? You don't even have a job?" He hung his head low. "No, I did not talk with anyone. Y'all are always so disappointed in me. I just wanted one day that you weren't." She was furious. "So THIS is better? Lying to me?" Anna asked to be taken home. I felt worse for her than ever before. 

I had done something like this in my senior year of high school, with something unimportant, as a joke with a friend, only to realize that even that brought nothing but disappointment. This was on a level I could not comprehend. It injected a level of bitterness into the night that I could not shake. 

This changed my view of Horace. Of course, I knew he was useless, but he had the capacity to be a decent person. The intelligence was there, he just didn't use it. But here, I decided, he was already dead. He would never amount to anything decent. He would never sustain himself, his family, or anyone. He would never be a husband, father, or friend. He was only on the take. Any interaction was just another hit to feed self-indulgence. He was no threat. He was a cautionary tale, like a plane crash that could have and should have been avoided.

We were on the threshold of December. I learned last year that, even though winter in South Texas is not a New England winter, there is still a formidable grayness to it emotionally. I was trying to build a life that could not be built. Hammering the square peg into a round hole. I thought that all I had to do was keep on trying, and eventually I could make it happen, everyone would see, and everything would be great. But no matter how many things changed on the outside, the inside stuff stayed the same. Dee and I needed to be on our own, respectively. We were friends, no doubt. More than that was not right, for right now at least. We stayed on the ride nonetheless, feeling that there were no other options. December, however, can be full of surprises.

1985 Chapter 11: Allies, with our backs against the wall

It was incredible to have a car again, and one that did not catch on fire every 15 minutes, intermittently had no brakes at all, and smelled like fish was even better. The Valiant sat in the front yard, dead. A constant reminder of its worth as the sacrifice that put my Dodge back on the road.

Something new was going to happen. Port Aransas was like living on a different planet. Certain lines never seemed like they could intersect. That began to change in 1985. Last February, my Grandmother and sister came down for a visit, which led Brooke to come back a month later to live here. I saw that as an isolated incident. A fantastic one.

My father told me one day that my Grandfather (his ex-father-in-law) was coming down for a visit, and I would need to pick him up at the airport. Brooke and I drove to Corpus Christi airport in the Dodge to pick him up. It was great to see him. We took him back through Corpus on SPID (South Padre Island Drive), a highway system that ran through the city and headed out to the islands via Flour Bluff. I recall him being impressed with how fast the Dodge could go from 0 to 60 to keep up with the fast-moving traffic in the city. 

There are moments in your life that you will remember forever. I did not think that I would ever see my father and grandfather in the same place ever again. So it was an incredible treat to see them face-to-face once again. Their history was an interesting one. Their respective intellectual arsenals could do nothing but meet. As a child, I could not understand the psychological sparring match that would ensue. For me, they were an endless stream of words that would drone on and on. My 10 or fewer-year-old brain did not notice that their conversations were more like a test of wills, spoken calmly yet wrestling for dominance.

I cannot say for sure, but looking back, the conversations must have led my Grandfather to take shots at my father in his words. This was not because my Grandfather did not like him, I think it was more that he admired him, but was disappointed in him. He knew my father could be anything, yet he had his demons, and alcohol was the big one. I do not think that anger really came from his view of my father and his potential being wasted in my Grandfather's opinion. I think the drunkenness itself harkened back to an extremely frustrating period of my Grandfather's life. He watched this take his wife away from him, and in all of his knowledge, wisdom, strength, and determination, there was nothing he could do. Keep in mind, this is just my assessment, but knowing him as I did, and seeing what set my Grandfather off, alcohol abuse came with a hair trigger for him.

From my young perspective, their conversation would be just rolling along, and without taking a breath, or changing tone until well into the sentence, my Grandfather's words changed to: "and if I was to say, 'Joe Jackson, I never want to see you in this house again.'" Just like that, my Grandfather, 61 years old, jumped up out of his seat and leapt at my father, knocking him out of the kitchen chair. My father, just 30 years old, is doing his best to deflect but not harm my Grandfather.

There was a warning that told us something like this was about to happen. My Grandfather had blue eyes, but they were like nothing I had ever seen. They were ice blue, and when he got angry, they burned through you like charged blue diamonds that could cut you in half. If you got him into this state, you were in trouble and were about to meet a sense of justice not seen in over 50 years.

No doubt my father probably threw out a statement just before my Grandfather went physical to assault him, like pulling a pin on a grenade, knowing it was going to detonate on both of them. The 1975 incident I am referring to was not the only one. There were earlier ones that I recall. One in particular was on a sunny Saturday afternoon. My father was heading to the Package Store (that's Liquor Store for all you non-Conneticans). He had had enough to drink and did not need to be driving.

I wanted to ride with him because on this nice day, he had to top down on our 63 Plymouth Sport Fury Convertible. Dad should have said no, but he was fine with it. I also wanted my cousin Phyllis to come with us to ride in the convertible. She wanted to go. We were in the back seat of the car when my Grandfather came out to confront my father and make us get out. Rightly so. 

An argument ensued, which resulted in my Grandfather telling my father he would kill him if he attempted to take us in the car in his condition. Things got pretty tense as my Mom and Aunt Diane tried to calm things down, and my Uncle Dave, just a teenager at the time, had no choice but to play policeman. 

Although I am not sure, I believe my father apologized to my Grandfather later. These two men respected each other, but my Grandfather made it known that my Father wasted what he was because of his proneness to alcohol. As they stood here in Port Aransas, face to face, in my Father's front yard on Olander, you could see mutual admiration despite the history. I wasn't ready for that.

My Grandfather pointed out that my Father had filled out, and my Father gave back a "you look good, Dave." My mother and father separated 12 years ago and divorced 10 years ago. But these men had a history, and it was theirs. Now, they had a common cause: grandchildren. It was here that they met and had a friendship that still survived. 

We all fell into old and comfortable conversations by dinner time. I brought Dee over to meet my Grandfather. One thing had not changed: the conversation between my Dad and Grandfather flowed just like it always had. This time, there was an undercurrent that they missed each other. 

I went home later that evening. Brooke's boyfriend at the time, Alan, had come to visit and meet my Grandfather. Alan was the 3rd generation of a wealthy family on the island. His Grandfather owned a large resort on the island. His parents owned a formidable plumbing company on the island. Alan himself did not seem to do much. He acted like all of the family money was his, but his Grandfather and father were from the school that said, first, you worked for it on your own and proved yourself.

I heard about this visit the next morning. Alan had been going on and on about all of the things that he had done. It was typical for my father and grandfather to talk about engineering and mechanics. Alan kept interjecting how he had done many of these things. My dad told me that he could see my grandfather was getting angry. This twenty-year-old was outright lying to his face. He was genuinely insulted. My grandfather finally told Alan, "You would have to be fifty years old to have done all of these things you are saying you've done." That was his call to tell him to stop now.

My father, knowing the blue fire eyes sign, boldly locked eyes with Alan across the table, ALAN! Cut it out!" Alan, however, lived in a world where he thought he could talk without consequences. Normally, my father just could not be bothered with the kids, "exaggerations," but to my grandfather, a man who lived an incredible life in which his reality far exceeded these fabrications, it was an insult.

Alan continued his fabricated life stories. Again, my grandfather, even angrier now, told him. "You would have to be an old man. You're insulting my intelligence." The warm Port Aransas night, whiskey, and one 20-year-old kid who could not take a warning. A perfect storm. My dad, fed up, told him. "Alan, shut up."

Alan did not take the advice of either. It was now clear to my dad that my grandfather was going to get out of his chair and knock Alan out of his. My father knew the look, after all, he had seen it many times. My father hauled off while Alan was mid-fabrication and punched Alan in the face. Alan fell back, stumbling into my Grandfather, and knocked him from his chair.

My father, suddenly mortified, got down to help my Grandfather up. "Dave, I am so sorry!" As my Grandfather got up, he was unharmed. "BS Joe Jackson, this is your revenge for all those fights you lost to me!" He wasn't mad. In fact, he was happy that Alan finally got what he deserved. My grandfather saw absolutely no value in a person who outright lied to him, even though everything around him proved it was not true.

During the week, I took some time off. My grandfather wanted to take a ride off the island to look for a decent used car for Brooke. We went across the ferry and into Aransas Pass. We looked at a couple of cars, but it was quickly decided that he would purchase her a 1982 Camaro Berlinetta. This was going to be the nicest car in the family and it would match the cars that Brooke's school friends drove.

We immediately registered and insured the car. The car cost $6,200.00, and the insurance was over $1,600.00 because it was registered and insured in the name of a 16-year-old. I think Dad and I were in a state of disbelief, and not because Brooke did not deserve or would not appreciate such a gift. No, Brooke had found her place in Port Aransas. She had great friends. She did well in school. She made great decisions. She was thoughtful. She thrived here on the island. Dad and I had just pictured something a little more entry-level. Around this time, $ 6,200.00 could have bought a brand-new basic Toyota sedan. 

Brooke appreciated it immensely, and she took the best care of it. She had Dad to make sure it was always safe and running right. My grandfather hinted that it would mean that he would have a non-island car to take him to and from the airport when he came down. This would not be his only visit.

My grandfather and I had a chance to talk. My Grandmother, my Dad's mother, had called him about D. "He's your grandson, you need to talk some sense into him," she told him. "I like her," my Grandfather told me. "I see her as a victim of circumstance." 

It was subliminal to me, but you could tell a lot about the man my grandfather was from his view of the people his grandchildren were with. You could always count on him to just say what was on his mind. He never held back. Never sugar-coated a single word. 

His visit was something Brooke, Dad, and I really needed emotionally. There was a grounding effect that Grandfa (we all called him this because either I or Phyllis could not say Grandpa) had on all of us in the family. Divorce or no divorce, it was true for my Dad as well.

One of our best friends in Port Aransas was Glenn. He was a little younger than Dad and used to work with us. He was almost like a brother to me, maybe even more so than JT. My Grandfather took a liking to Glenn. Glenn was not the image of a typical intellectual of those days. He kept a small lawn-mowing and odd-job business. He was thin, with long hair and very laid back. He was one of the most well-read people I knew, other than my Dad and Grandfather. My grandfather loved talking with Glenn. Their conversations extended into hours. They had such a mutual respect for each other that it was unique. I recall my Grandfather even messing with him at times, trying to pass on something that was physically impossible for him to figure out. They laughed at these times together.

Dad and I had no air conditioning; we worked outside all day, so what was the point? When we needed to cook something in the oven, this made the house even hotter. My Grandfather and Brooke went over to Aransas Pass and bought Dad and Brooke a microwave. This was a game-changer. My grandfather saw this as an absolute necessity, even though we never had such modern devices before.

For my grandfather, it was like he had brought electricity to a previously powerless island. For us, it was sort of just like that. I say this because on that first night with the microwave, my Dad was buying different things from the store, bringing them home, and trying to master above-average delicacies with this contraption. It was all very mad scientist-like. 

In 1986, the microwave was not a standard home appliance. In fact, restaurants still had warning signs on the door for people with pacemakers, stating that a microwave was in use. The Campbell Soup Company, which owned Swanson, was only now introducing the microwave-safe tray in 1986. So here was my Dad, cooking so many things in the microwave that would become available at grocery stores over the next 20 years. His recipes tasted better, too!

I especially loved this version of my father. There was a playfulness about this. He had insatiable curiosity about what he could make this device do. The rest of us sat there, like tasting judges, impressed with his creativity. It is a fond memory. Music was playing quietly in the corner, out of respect for my grandfather's presence. Cigarette smoke lingered in the room, like it did everywhere in this era. The hot Texas night, humidity, and salt air. The sound of the microwave running. The conversation sounds like my dad's, my sister's, and my grandfather's voices. 

This brand of my Dad's cooking resembles me on my best days, and that of my sons as well. It has been great to see how that has developed among the three of us. I wish he were still here to see it. I know I see it randomly, especially in my boys, and it happens without warning. It becomes like a surprise knock on the door.

My Grandfather's visit made Port Aransas seem less far away than it had before. I tried to plant the idea in my head that the turbulent existence Dee and I were living in could somehow be tamed in the wake of his visit. It would bring about a sense of calm overall. But every night it was the same. The pregnant sister was just trying to make the best of what she had. The so-called brother-in-law is whiny, lazy, and constantly complaining. Ulterior motives behind every interaction. 

His visit was good for my father. Just like when people would pull me aside at gatherings when my father walked away from the group and tell me my presence had changed him for the better in a large way, I was seeing that manifest with Brooke, with my Grandfather. It was obvious that my dad thrived when he had family around him. Make no mistake, my father had very formidable demons, which is what caused him to originally live alone in the first place. He was not selfish. He hated the idea of any of his problems affecting others. But this was something to see.

My Grandfather enjoyed the visit too. He started a habit of bringing a couple of bags of State Line potato chips for my dad on each trip to Texas. It was a nice touch. There would always be an undercurrent of disappointment with my father in my grandfather because he knew he was so much more than he allowed himself to be. I recall a photo he took of my father passed out on the bathroom floor. It was very unflattering. In early 87, my grandfather flashed the photo in front of me, a passive-aggressive reminder of how frustrated he was with my dad. It could only mean that he still loved him like a son, but was also unhappy with certain choices he made. 

Their relationship was complicated. My grandfather clearly had more leeway in Port Aransas to do what he wanted, and you could tell he liked it and wanted it. All along, he complained that our beach was not pretty and that the white-sand beaches of Sarasota were much prettier. He made comments about Port Aransas' bohemian style, but that was its beauty. It could not remain so disconnected forever. I do wonder what he would have thought of it today, in its post-hurricane, insurance-money rebuild that makes it more like Myrtle Beach than its charming, quaint former self. Like a root canal, Port Aransas would eventually be stripped of its personality and made into a drone-like tourist trap.

One final memory of that visit was of a smoke-filled night when we were playing cards for coins at the kitchen table, and beer was flowing. My grandfather preferred whiskey. We were talking about old times, and my Dad said something that my grandfather registered as inappropriate. "Damn, you Joe Jackson!" My grandfather pushed his hands against the edge of the table to rise from the chair. My Dad, seeing all the signs, said, "Oh no, I'm about to get hit." But Grandfa had a little more to drink than he realized and dropped back into his seat as he tried to rise, then once more. Finally, he resigned himself to letting it go. These two men were strange allies. In some ways, they saw the world as the same place, and this is where they met. In other ways, they were different, and they would always be that, too. 

I could spend the rest of my life trying to untangle their history and never understand it. I know this, my Dad loved him as if he were his own father. I know this because in my dad's final words her told me so. 

Brooke and Dad took Grandfa back to the airport, and he returned to Connecticut. Life in Port Aransas was the same for the most part, but in some ways, he had changed it forever for us in ways that could not be defined.

1985 Chapter 10: Your Ride is here

As summer set in, the daily cycle was always the same. Wake up with the mother of all hangovers, work at 7, inside my head, and my music during my work, which happens mostly alone. I pumped the skidokans on the beach 2 days a week and took care of odd jobs, vehicle maintenance, and, exclusively, installing and replacing street signs around the island.

During this time to think, I was trying to devise a plan to become mobile again. It was summer, and walking everywhere was getting very old. I was finally changing from the mold that I arrived in Port Aransas in. Island or no island, you could not get me to change my blue jeans, t-shirt, Frye boots dress code. But this summer, the island began to wear me down. Shorts, no shirt, no shoes. I would not be caught dead dressed like this, but now, I could walk a hot asphalt road, or a yard full of sticker burrs (something Port Aransas lawns contained: a small, star-shaped, pointy burr with the strength of a Lego). 

As I was working on a plan to get a mobile, Jeri drove into the yard one day with the vehicle I most wanted to see again. Towards the end of our time working at the refinery in Corpus Christi, he had acquired a blue 72 Plymouth Valiant, a 4-door sedan. It was nothing to look at, but it did have the 225 slant six motor and transmission (more or less) that my Dart had. My Dodge had sat in the driveway since Jeri, and I rope towed it in from 18-mile road when the front ujoint dropped and destroyed the transmission, exhaust, power steering, and radiator on March 4th. 

When he last had this, Valliant, my Dodge was still on the road. Shortly after, he sold the car, and then my catastrophe happened. A few times, Jeri mentioned that he might be getting the Valliant back. I heard a noise outside, and there they were, Jeri and Odette, they were bringing the Plymouth to me and dropping it off.  It was in a bit rougher shape now. It was loud, and each side of the body had taken some kind of impact. The tires were bald, and the suspension was tired.

That was nothing compared to the interior. It had a blue vinyl bench seat in the front and back. But the front seat was just the metal springs; there was no upholstery or stuffing, just metal wiring, so there were two couch cushions on the springs. The driver's door had been hit, so it did not latch. However, a bungee cord was tied around the base of the steering column, and the hook could be attached to the driver's door handle to keep it closed. 

In the dashboard, where the heater and radio used to be, there was a jagged hole in the metal. Through the hole, a white electrical plug hung out a couple of inches. To start the car, you would turn the key to the on position, then pinch the two plug prongs together. You could feel the jolt of 12 volts zapping you as the starter engaged and the car started up. It had an exhaust, but it did not sound like it did.

It was a Saturday. I was so grateful to have a car and for the kids being with their grandmother that I told Dee we could take a ride off the island. We got in, all excited for the adventure we were about to have. We stopped at the local Ice Box, gas, and convenience store and got gas and beer for the road. While I was fueling the car, I noticed something hanging down underneath. Curious, I reached under and pulled. It was the tailpipe. The entire exhaust came off with it. I walked it over to the dumpster and threw it away. This way, I did not have to worry about it falling off on the Ferry or on the road.

It sure was nice to be on the road again. We took the ferry to Aransas Pass, Ingleside, Portland, and finally northwest Corpus. I showed Dee where I used to work, and we found a dark spot looking across the bay at the harbor bridge. It was here that she talked, and I listened. She told me the most horrific stories that I would ever hear in my life. It was amazing to me that she was still here to talk about it. At most later points in my life, I might have recognized that she really just needed time on her own to sort it out. I was too young in the here and now to get it. I did not know how to support her, so I just listened.

We drove across South Padre Island Drive and into Flour Bluff, then north on South Padre Island, on 18-mile road, Park Road 53 as it was known then, right through the area where my Dodge met disaster in March. We got all the way home. I pulled into the driveway, adjacent to my Dodge, which was beautiful compared to this bomb we were driving. As I drove nose-first towards the passenger door and right-front fender of my red-and-black Dodge, I pressed my foot on the brake pedal, and it just swung effortlessly to the floor with no resistance at all. We slammed into the side of the Dodge and came to a stop, rolling back a little.

D jumped out of the car, cussing all the way. "I got my own two feet, I don't need this!" I was in shock. "I LOVE that car! Do you really think I would do that on purpose??? The brakes did not work at all!" From that day forward, I needed to keep in mind that every once in a while, the brake master cylinder would simply blow its seals, leaving no brakes at all, and I would have to "figure something out."

I did not have the money to pay someone to swap the transmission from this car into my car, so I took the easy way: I drove the Valiant. Despite its car from hell aspects, it sure beat walking. 

We used it for everything, but pretty much stayed on the island now. Dee's sister Anna and the so-called brother-in-law Horace went everywhere in it, too. The only thing he was pretty good at was fishing. But, really, when you live on an island off the South Texas Gulf Coast, how could you not be?

Horace and I clashed constantly. He always said that he and I were with the wrong sister. His "wife" and I liked the same bands, and he, in a very immature way, used that as a way to make passive-aggressive statements that the opposite configuration would somehow work better. So much for him being an advocate for Dee's ex-husband. Although I was criticized at every opportunity, never directly, but in an undertone. I was riding along with Dee, who wanted to help her pregnant sister. Deep down, I knew this guy was not worth a thought or consideration from me, so, in a strange state of duality, I balanced it against the times when he was outright up to no good.

Horace also had no problem riding in my car. He did actually complain about its condition a time or two, but I told him he did not need to ride in it and that his feet could take him anywhere he wanted to go. Of course, he twisted that around to mean I was insensitive for talking about putting his wife out and walking. I told him I was not talking about her.

Horace fished frequently and one time, stupidly left a fish in the car, in the hot South Texas summer sun. I finally had to take the car up to the Landfill and blast it with the Skidokan cleaner, which had a flashpoint of 74 degrees, using a 1-inch high-pressure hose.

I did all I could to keep the peace and was even helping Anna and Horace move into a trailer from some cottages they were living in. We made a couple of trips and were all done around an hour before sunset. We took a break, sat on the truck of the Valiant, drinking beer. 

Suddenly, the Port Aransas Fire Department engine came in with its red lights on. They stopped and got out. "We have a report of a car fire." We looked around. "There's no car fire. We would notice that." Still, the firefighters walked around the cottages, looking around, when one of them suddenly pointed to the Valiant: "It's THIS car! It's on fire!"

I reached into the car through the window and pulled the release. They opened the hood, and sure enough, under the fuel pump, near the exhaust, fuel was dripping out of the weep holes at the bottom of the pump and igniting from the exhaust heat, setting the motor mount on fire. It was a small fire. One of the firefighters pulled the fire hose from the truck and blasted the engine with enough high-pressure water to put out a small building.

I felt this overkill was intentional. Defiantly, I closed the hood, jumped in the car, and wanted so badly to start it, give the helpful firefighters a friendly wave, and say "hey, thanks guys!" then drive away. Unfortunately, they got everything way too wet, and the car did not start till the following morning.

Because of this new issue, I decided to try to swap the transmissions one weeknight. We towed my Dodge to the City Maintenance shop, but by 11 PM, I realized I was way over my head and gave up. 

To deal with the car catching on fire if it ran for 15 or more minutes, I kept a gallon jug of water in the back seat floor. Pull up to the Family Center IGA to pick up some groceries for dinner, shut off the car, open the back door, open the hood, dump water on the fire in the engine compartment, close the hood, put the water jug back in the car, and get groceries. It was the routine. Deep down, though, I knew that if I did not do something soon, I might not even have this transmission for my car.

The final straw was when the engine started to knock really badly. I was still driving it; it was still catching on fire, and there was a persistent fish smell I could never get rid of. I went and talked to a local mechanic I had met during my A Auto Supply days. He told me to bring both vehicles to him, and $300, and he would make the swap.

It was amazing to have my real car back again. But it still had no power steering. The exhaust was damaged in the drive shaft incident, and I was having electrical issues. Port Aransas was taking its toll, but this was still a thousand times better than the Valiant, which we towed back home and parked.

September was here, and as colossally messed up as my life was, it seemed to be getting better. Our relationship dynamic had not changed. At times, we did well, and looking back on that, I could easily see those moments through the lens that said Dee and I were friends. All the other times screamed that she needed to be on her own; ironically, so did I. But I was not ready to see that, and she did not have many options for a place to live with 3 kids, so she sort of needed me, too. She could have and would have figured it out if she had to, but this was sort of working for now.

I was so busy trying to stay ahead of my life that would disintegrate at any moment that I did not get to see my Dad outside of work very much. I still hung out with him and Brooke, but it was not nearly the way that it had been before Memorial Day weekend, when all of this insanity began.

Undone in the Meltdown

The voices all around me rejoiced,

Freedom has finally come.

Lying down snow shovels in the armistice,

There was joy, tears, and relief until I noticed the whole scene had been left undone.

In the ash, in the smoke, I saw the wounds that we did not know how to fix 

They were abandoned for lack of direction.

I knew then, I needed to minister to all those left undone, unfulfilled, and unquenched 

Of course, I harbored fear of being caught in the gravity well of my mess that I could not see for 5 months

All of which had ended my life in the last revolution. 

But I knelt down and aided one fallen two years ago, and within hours, it leaped to its feet and danced a dance of freedom and humility.

Another hill to climb that I could not allow myself to even touch, I laboured for hours until its conclusion, and it joined the dance of liberation. We recoil. We mourn, we search for answers, and when none come, we have to get off the floor of the saloon, brush ourselves off, and walk out the door.

In my limitations, I feel like I am falling short. I have made promises, and I see them out of the corner of my eye as if they are piles of dirt underneath the carpet.

While there are some things we should never return to, I am finding that others, especially the things promised, need to be revisited, reevaluated, and addressed.

Then I ask, what was the collective combination of tasks that caused me to lose my footing and fall hundreds of feet, making no gain last year?

My burns and abrasions remind me of the missteps. I open the journal, and the tour guide looks suspiciously like me.

He is lean and fearless and still has the big goal in his words. Where did that stop?

Turning the page, I find another guide. His adventures are so much more than mine. He just liberated himself from his chemo drip; the hills he climbs have changed dramatically.

The visitors over the last week have been stark reminders of the need to test everything you can touch, everything you can see. We lie to ourselves and say it can't be done.

And you would be right if you listened.

But no.

You can be as wrong as you want to be.

It is up to you.

It is up to me.

1985 Chapter 9: Despite Repeated Warnings

 There was nothing I would not do for Dee. I gave her the attention she had craved for the last decade. Although that was good for her, what she really needed was to be alone and find out who she was. When you start having children at 16 and are an excellent Mom, you put yourself on indefinite hold. Now that she was free of her former life, what she really needed was to let herself grow and see what she had within.

She told me about experiences that were so dark and brutal, I never looked at the world the same again. I fell in love with her, not in a healthy way, but in this weird duality of ways. First was a sort of hero worship in which, despite inhumane adversity, Dee maintained a loving bubble around her children. The second was that I felt a primal desire to rescue her and somehow undo her past. This was a leftover, ingrained childhood habit of mine from taking the position of protecting and guiding my mother through trials. My mother really did not need me worrying or trying to fix things, but at the time, I thought I was having some effect.

I don't think there is anything more powerful and destructive than an ignorant young man in love. I had no clue. I did not let that stop me. I was going to fix everything. I had never stood up on my own in this world. I was 19; for the most part, I had lived with either my parents or grandparents, with a couple of summers when I lived alone in campgrounds. I made $355.79 on the 1st and the 15th of every month. You could not tell me anything.

Photo by Todd Trapani on Unsplash

Because our relationship began so feverishly, it caught the attention of Dee's so-called family. Her Mom lived on the island, so did one of her sisters. Anna was pregnant and in a common law marriage with Horace, who used to work for the City, as I was now. He was a brutal antagonist. He had some strange connection to her ex and took everything I said as a derogatory statement aimed at him. I tried to find common ground with him, but it never worked. As time went by, I tried so hard to win that battle, which meant lowering myself to what he was. It took me only 3 years to mature to see that this guy was the lowest of the low. Lowering myself to him to relate was pathetic. I had no compass. All I wanted was what I wanted. When I look back, what an absolute freak show this had to be for my father to witness. I feel eternally bad that during this time, I gave my father nothing to be proud of. In large ways, I showed him the worst of what I was while he was still here, more than I showed him the best.

Speaking of him, he was the only reason I did not end up dead or at least ambushed and beaten up within an inch of my life. Her ex and the so-called brother-in-law would have loved to do this. Fortunately, they were extremely afraid of my father, which allowed me to walk with immunity.

Dad and Brooke moved out of Jeri's old mobile home on Avenue J were we had been living since last fall, and moved into Charlie's mobile home on Oleander. That was bigger, much more fancy, and was on stilts, as many houses are on the island, so it sat 20 feet off the ground.

My new little family and I moved out of the cramped travel trailer in Mayfield's Park and into the mobile home on Avenue J. Not long after, her ex came and took the trailer and his VW Bus; he needed a place to live. Having the extra room was nice. I was trying to make this perfect life for us, but there were red flags and warnings almost hourly for the person with their eyes open. Mine were shut, but I swore to everyone voicing concern that they were open.

Dee needed her cycle broken, and with me it was, but that was the part she did not need. At nineteen, I was too naive to see it. Everything with us was intense. Anna and Horace were with us so much of the time. He could never "find" a job and was supposedly out all day, every day, looking for one. His presence was more problematic for me than for everyone else. He was a drain on everyone around him. Every word spoken was a passive-aggressive manipulation.

It did not take a genius to see that he wanted Dee and that all his so-called loyalty to her ex was just leverage to keep me away from her. She loved a little buzz, and he knew it, so he made sure to show up with a little pot to share with her now and then. I never knew where he got it because he was not capable of earning any money. 

We all drank. It was a way of life in Port A. A twelve-pack was legal tender. A windfall would be if you were walking on the beach and spotted black trash bags in the surf containing marijuana that was jettisoned off smugglers' boats, being approached by the US Coast Guard for inspection. The weed would be waterlogged, making it substandard. But it was like a redneck lottery in which the finder would dry it out, bag it up into small sales portions, and sell it for fifty cents on the dollar. Sea Weed it was called. The brother-in-law was frequently associated with these seaweed dealers and had some of this garbage on him.

He was always trying to get Dee alone and found many ways to do so. This consumed me with rage because I wanted her to tell him to get lost and never come back. It put a hole in me all day long as I worked. I was consumed with jealousy and worry. She and I worked at the same place and the same hours. There was one time she had the afternoon off. As I came down Park Road 53, driving past Avenue J, I could see Dee's ex's 10-speed bike parked in my driveway, next to my dead car, which had not moved since the Great Dodge Space Time Disaster on March 4th. We walked and rode bikes to get around the island.

There were times her ex would stop by to see the kids, which, of course, was ok, but the history bothered me. I had heard about the bad, but I knew there were also many good times. The whole thing was too much for my immature brain to comprehend. Everything for me was a dance with hidden knives everywhere. 

One Saturday morning, Dee walked to the store for milk. She was missing for hours. I had searched all over the island for her. I eventually found her at a woman she worked with's house, mellowing out and visiting. At any other time in my life, I could have understood this as no big deal, but in the here and now, I could not believe she would be so insensitive as to make me think something had happened to her. It should have been my wake-up call that she really needed to start her life alone to work through the last 12 years. She was carrying so much. 

Every day was like self-inflicted conditioning for me, like Alice Cooper's No More Mister Nice Guy. I was an innocent, yet overbearing kid, just wanting to shower this amazing girl with all that was good. Most of the time, it was met with limited tolerance, anger, a lack of appreciation, and retaliation that seemed out of place. While it did not feel like it at the time, she was molding me into a very different person from the one I started out as. Somewhere down the road, despite all of the pain, the dying daily inside I felt, and inflicted upon myself, I would grow to become thankful for her and all of it. It was brutal and dark, but it wasn't her fault. She was always trying to tell me what she needed, and I could not hear it. 

I tried to do things with her, Brooke, and Dad. Those times provided a little few hours of releif from my panic. It was clear that Dad and Brooke saw no good in this union. They were right, of course, but I could not be told. I have never met a person more stubborn than I was here until I saw my sons grow up decades later.

The summer played on. I was a tense, twisted knot of a person wishing that I could fix everything. I did not even have a car, which made me feel even more powerless. My Dad, who had been my best friend for over a year, was now watching from a distance that I put him at. It had to be like watching a heroin addict slowly slipping into the abyss.

I drank hard to numb the orchestra of torture I was feeling. I showed up to work so hungover every day. I worked mostly alone, so my 1977 Chevy Pickup and its 8-Track player, with my cousin Tom's old 8-Tracks, brought me some soothing. But the fact remained, I was into something that I had to figure out a way to get Dee away from these parasites of her past.

My Grandmother had recently made public that she was going to give her car to my father. He said he did not want it. So, I called her and told her about an idea I had: Dee, the kids, and I would all move to Connecticut, and if she was giving Dad the car and he did not want it, we could use it to get our lives up there started.

My Grandmother has had to deal with adversity that I cannot imagine. She handled this well with me, always speaking lovingly but with absolute direction, not the direction I wanted. I am sure that the next time she talked with my father, he probably told her there was nothing he could do because he had tried. 

The conversation I did not know about was the one she had with my Grandfather. She was my father's mother. She called my mother's father. "You're his Grandfather. You have to get through to him. He is ruining his life. You have to go down there and talk some sense into him." As if that would ever happen, my Grandfather coming down to Port Aransas, to his ex-son-in-law's city of refuge. 

The summer days and nights continued to eat at me like cancer. Highs and lows. Listening to lies conjured up by Horace's unscrupulous lack of morality. Dee even spent a Friday night at her ex's to "talk." I kept trying to mold everything into something I could somehow understand and manage. The whole time, it was like running ahead of a title wave that I knew I could never outrun. no matter how hard I tried, no matter how much help I received, I could not get any part of my life or the lives of those around me under control. 1985 was a little more than half over, and it was going to get worse.

Lunch Break: Peak Hour

 It was really something,

you should have been there.

I was forever young, forever strong.

Time did not pursue me, though it somehow pursued me in dreams.

Power to do existed any time, any day.

That was never a thought whatsoever.

Every hill I saw, I dreamed of climbing.

The sun was at high noon, and I took energy directly from it.

It lasted an eternity and had no end.

Now I stand on the opposite edge of the canyon

I can barely see the other side upon which I once stood.

I was strong and invincible; 

It seemed even time itself could not smite me.

Photo by Daniel Schludi on Unsplash

Then I blinked...

And here I am.

Pain lives where my strength used to be.

The keepers of harsh wisdom used to warn me

I thought, what could they possibly know about me?

I was so ignorant

because they were indeed me.

On the other side, I was limitless.

I only lacked money and focus.

That first thing never matters, 

That second one burned my most precious possession: Time.

Peak hour was wonderful and it was wasted.

Does this happen to everyone?

Or was I just a fool?

I never knew I had such power.

I stepped through each day playing trivial games, 

Having empty conversations.

Peak hour was beautiful because I had no pain.

Little did I know I was banking it, so that it could grow in interest.

Today, I am paying a young man's debt.

I try to share wisdom with the young ones today.

It always looks like something else.

Dear Leonard, you nailed it when you said:

"and I lift my glass to the awful truth, 

that you can't reveal to the years of youth, 

except to say it isn't worth a dime."

I speak, but most of my words can only be heard after I am gone.

If only we could save peak hour for later on, 

what could we do with that?

Instead, I rambled along my peak hour, spreading poison on the very 

fruits that I must survive on later.

Peak hour was beautiful, and it was tragic

And it made me into this.

Is that good or bad?

I will never know.

Tired

 Tired of the wind

Tired of erosion

Tired of the lack of completion

Tired of no resolution

Tired of the exhaustion

Tired of the math problem.

Photo by Majestic Lukas on Unsplash

Contemplating all that grows in incarceration

No sunshine yet thriving

Hey, mister, can you tell me

What do you know, how do you think, what do you have?

Tired of the dreams

Tired of the weakness

Tired of the noise that never stops

ticking like a timebomb through the day

Tired of the secret life

in which I am stronger, faster, better.

Tired of deficiencies, reminders, and potholes.

I am tired of ice

Tired of the cold

I do not have the time to follow the sun to stay warm

Nor do I have the energy to make the trip.

Time is the great reckoning

I don't know how to negotiate

So I enter the room

making demands like I own the place

with no hope of ever backing it up.

I am tired of annexing what I need to survive

never knowing if  I got it right.

Is the paycheck the same if I just let go?

I am tired of the fever dream

the hysterics, the unprecedented antics

that changes with every tick of the second hand.

Facimille, paths not taken, and fiction

Tired of it all.

Just tired.

Dear Friend

 Dear Friend, where have we been? We climbed hills and travelled through dark and snowy lands, never worried about what would come our way. I never doubted you, and in doing so, I took you for granted. I was under the delusion of invincibility, much like my youth; I saw yours as even greater than that.

The marauder bands do not come in like falling skies, but like gentle snow falling, soft piano keys played, and lullabies. They seem invisible, and yet, they are nothing but seen, nothing but laying siege upon us, fires burning, acid falling, crying in the rain, pain and deterioration, and we fell slowly and denied it over and over again.

Unsteadied our steady love. It broke us without my knowing. It promised me we would go everywhere and do everything, and that things would only get better. As the sun rose one day, I packed for that wonderful journey. In one minute, I found myself standing at your bedside next to a window overlooking our oblivion. I did this. It was within my hands to stop it. I was blind. I was careless. Stupid. Ignorant. Petty. Cheap.

The days since that day have been first borrowed time, then catastrophic, then a graveyard that extended for far too long. I did this. I know it now. It gives me insight, and suddenly, I see there are so many like me now, slowly doing the same thing. I run around like a madman, screaming of the danger coming from Santa Mira! But they just look at me like I don't know anything. I am screaming in the vacuum of the same ignorance that broke my dear friend and me. I will watch this over and over again. It will always remind me of you, my friend.

My hope for you in the next world remains, because despite my limitations, you are still spectacular. I have to believe there is more for you. Yesterday, as you disappeared from view, I felt that there was. Saying good-bye did hurt, but there was nothing more that I could do. We had our day, and it was magnificent. I like to think that because of you, I will never be so careless ever again, that I will have an edge that no one else knows. You were here for the best days ever, and I am so grateful. Thank you, dear friend. Thank you.