It was like I was viewing my life through a long dark tunnel conduit. I could see myself, sitting in my 76 Chevy van, not driving it, but living it. I was living a 1987 run-on episode of the Twilight Zone.
I was working for Clock Company in Manchester, Connecticut, third shift, from 11:20 PM through 7:20 AM. It was a good existence. I was pretty proud of myself. I was 21 years old, I had landed this job last spring, when I marched into the Plant Manager's office, sat down, and with great determination and no experience, convinced him to give me a chance to operate their most elite computerized vacuum furnaces. I learned to heat treat parts for IBM mainframes, solid metal Colt pistols, and Emhart door locks there.
I was dating a girl four years younger than me from Southington. I had been living in a semi-finished basement apartment of my mom and stepfather's house in that same town. On Memorial Day weekend, 1987, my Lone Oak Campground friends, Gary and Robin were married and I was Gary's best man. The wedding was perfect. Everything in my life at this time seemed to be going in a particular direction.
It was fascinating that in seven months, my life went from living in South Texas, then migrating north, changing everything. I went from my sun-bleached island boy who never wore shoes, back to Connecticut where it appeared that I was headed for the cookie cutter boring industrial north-east lifestyle. I found the girl who talked about what our wedding would be like all of the time, I found the bulletproof great factory job and learned a unique skill. I was headed for 1955 for sure.
In doing all of this, I led the person that I had the last 3 years down long damp basement corridors and locked him up, trying to forget that he was there. Back out into the sunlight, I became the product of all I fled back in 1984.
The voice of my father these days seemed to always be in 3rd person. I had heard about the things that he said, but I did not often speak with him myself. But then, the day after Memorial Day came, and nothing was ever the same.
It was almost impossible to tell from my basement dwelling, but sunlight from the small windows by the ceiling and the distant sound of a neighbor mowing their lawn was a beautiful day. I had to go to work at 11:20 tonight. The thing that woke me however was the incessant sound, that maddening drone of the voice of my stepfather complaining over and over and over again about me. This was the psychotic ranting that for some reason this morning I knew that I could not take one more minute of. Not only that. I, a person of what I like to think of with higher than normal patience and restraint, could only think that I was going to completely explode into venomous anger if I came face to face with him. I knew what I had to do.
Even though there was only one bathroom at this house, I skipped going up to the first floor. I sneaked out the back bulkhead door around the back yard, out to my 72 Dodge pickup waiting for me in the driveway. Today, I deprived my stepfather of one of his redundant, complaining sessions. Democracy had arrived. I realized today that I had forfeited my independence no more. Today, was the first day of my journey back to myself.
I had a long way to go, but at 21 years old, nothing seemed too big to take on. I drove over to my Grandfather's house where my 76 Chevy van was parked way out in the backyard against the treeline. I pulled a tire off that was flat and took it down to the local tire shop at the plaza. When I signed in, the work order had a place to enter my name. The whole day, I maintained an attitude that said, "Enough is enough". My anger was like a fuel that held the throttle steady of determination. This was a new concept for me at this time. No more, NO more, NO MORE! I was done, and I knew it to the very true. As I looked at the blank space for my name, I latched onto something that declared, today, from here on, things are going to change. I printed into the name field: "Joe Jackson".
After the tire was complete, I researched the Wheeler's campground book that I bought in Texas last fall, and Connecticut, in its never-ending ridiculous configuration, had no campgrounds in the center of the state. All of these campgrounds were inconveniently spread to the outer parts of the north, south, east, and west. I decided that since I was working in Manchester, CT, I would look in that northeast quadrant of the state. I found a campground in Tolland, CT that was probably a 25-minute drive from work instead of an hour as it was now. I drove up there, rented a primitive site by the month, and went to work that evening.
At 11:00 PM I sat in my truck out in the parking lot of Clock. I often would sit there in the dark parking lot and play with the AM dial. I loved the night sky. Since the '70s, I would ever so carefully turn the AM dial on a radio in the middle of the night and pull in distant radio stations from hundreds and even thousands of miles away. Here in 1987, it was still good, even though the 1980s replaced all of the AM rock stations of the 70s with talk radio. A very big thing right now, here in 1987 was something called TalkNET. It was a syndicated entity of nationally broadcast hosts, Bruce Williams, Sally Jesse Raphael, and a few others. These call-in shows offered business advice, relationship counseling, and the like.
But these nights in the dark parking lot, before my day-night began, I found a calmness from AM 740 out of Toronto Canada. I would always catch the weather for Thunder Bay and it was always given in a deep, quiet, and calm tone. Then a pause would take place, followed by an even more calming voice. "Welcome to Late Night Classics with Norris Bick." The classics would gently start leaking into the cab of my truck which meant that it was exactly the time that I needed to go into the shop and punch in. Everything about my life in these days was very surreal.
At 7:20 sharp, the doors to the shop flung open, launching us over-nighters out into the world. Westbound onto 84 to fight the traffic going through Hartford. Back in 87, Hartford was as much of a nightmare as it could be traffic-flow-wise, well, maybe anything-wise. The deadly and antiquated I-84 East to I-91 North interchange was still in existence back in those days. It was a gross violation of safety and common sense right in the middle of the city where the exit ramp of I-84 east dropped you into the bowels of Hartford, placed a suspension extracting median in the most illogical place, followed by two left lanes that 70 feet later became one and 70 feet later dropped you into the passing lane of I-91 north, already in progress. At this point, if your vehicle made it through the suspension test, its ability to go from 25 to 60 just might determine if this was the day that you died or not.
Once I fought through the gridlock of Hartford, I contacted Kevin who followed me up from Texas the previous fall, and told him what I was doing, moving into a campground. I knew that he would want to stop spending $250 a week for his dumpy motel on the Berlin Turnpike. $250 weekly in 87 was a serious amount of money. He was ready to do this.
I went to my grandfather's house and got the van, then to my girlfriend's house to visit for a couple of hours to nap. I left her house in Southington in the evening and headed to the campground. Both the Chevy van and the 1969 Ford pickup that Kevin was driving with the slide-in camper on the back were no longer registered. Me with my Texas tags and him with his Oregon truck plate. I did make it look like they were registered using glue, white paper, a Bic pen, and a razor blade, I was able to change the 86 on my plate to an 88 and on Kevin's truck, the 87 became 88 as well. Even standing right behind each vehicle, I could not tell they had been "enhanced."
Kevin's truck was not running well. It would not stay running. I played with the mix on the carburetor, eventually getting it to stay running but running very rich. It was pretty loud with dual glass pack exhaust, and smoke to accentuate everything about it. It was just so "me" to be convoying through Hartford Connecticut with two very unregistered vehicles, uninsured, one loud and blowing smoke like it was a locomotive from 1845. Fortunately, night was falling.
As I looked in the side mirrors of the Chevy van at the headlights of that Ford pickup following, I was immediately taken back 7 months ago when I was on my way out of Texas with Kevin and his family in tow.
When we got to our exit and Kevin slowed down to take the exit, the Ford sputtered and stalled. Kevin coasted it over to the shoulder of the ramp, and here we were, two unregistered vehicles on the side of a ramp in Rockville Connecticut of I-84. Otherwise known as a lit billboard asking the police to please find us.
I tried to get the Ford running and it would not. Anger erupted from me as if I was still on the side of the Will Rogers Turnpike in Oklahoma like we were last October. Finally, I told Kevin, I am going to drag this thing to Tolland. I hooked up a rope because I was no longer stupid enough to not carry one, and I dragged that Ford the last 9 miles of our journey. No more.
Living in a van in a campground off Shenipsit Lake Road is how I entered an extended transitional point in my life. The days of the summer of 1987 were as if I were watching my life on a small screen looking through a dark tunnel. I loved my times at the campground as it gave me moments of peace. I would drive to the campground in the morning after work, radio always playing WHCN, WCCC, and WAQY as an undercurrent in my life.
Moving to Tolland also made my life more hectic. I cleaned out my space in the basement of my mother's house, putting all of my furnishings in storage. I told my step-father off, explaining that he was always wrong about everything. I went from living 5 minutes away from my girlfriend to living over an hour away, on the other side of the great barrier of the late eighties interstate highway expansion that was also called Hartford.
I would get out of work Friday morning, really needing to go to sleep, instead, driving down to Southington to fulfill a very busy weekend of social activity that my girlfriend had planned for us. The balancing act was working at first and it felt so good to be living in my van in a campground, not listening to endless chronic complaining about trivial things.
I was 21 and could balance so many things at once. As time went on though, cracks began to develop on a foundational level. Trying to balance acting like I was living in Southington, but living in the van in Tolland and living in the alternate universe of night shift began to take its toll. I filled my days with working on the truck when I should have been sleeping. I was also hanging out with Kevin and my neighbors when I should have been sleeping. I needed to get more out of my days, and I was determined to do it, despite being human, despite not being indestructible (unknowingly so), despite there only being 24 hours a day.
Some nights at work were great because you could set up a job, and it would run a full 8 hours. Set it and forget it in a vacuum furnace. Other times, there was a lot of hand work due to some jobs cooking for only a couple of hours. As I squeezed time out of my days, it began to erode the quality of life that I was giving everything. I was transitioning from the person whose supervisors told me that I surprised them with how fast I picked things up and owned them, to being in a void, suddenly realizing that I was sitting in my truck out in the parking lot, after my shift started with my supervisor saying the words, "we could really use you in there." I could not for the life of me remember getting to work.
When arriving at my girlfriend's house, or at a family cottage I could hear her mother whisper, "Oh, I really did not think he would make it." There was an expectation among the people around me that I would not meet the standard they were expecting. In trying to satisfy everyone, I was falling short pretty much everywhere. Changing the laws of physics was evidently something I was incapable of.
Probably one of the scariest of times for me took place one afternoon after my supervisor and his brother put a clutch in my truck. After working all night, I went to his house in Stafford Springs, drank beer, and hung out while the clutch was getting installed. The core charge was pretty high, and with all the running I was doing, I really needed to take the old one back to the parts store to be refunded the core charge. The part store was inconveniently located in East Hartford. I went there only to be told that I needed the receipt with it, I had accidentally left that back at the campground. I was mad and tired and should have been back in Tolland, sleeping.
I was headed back to Tolland when I suddenly noticed I was driving on I-84 east not knowing why I was. Last I knew I was going to East Hartford to take the old clutch back. I got off the highway and headed back towards East Hartford. I was about 3 miles from the parts store when the memory that I had just been there and they rejected it without the receipt came back to me. I turned around, drove back to Tolland, and got less than 2 hours of sleep before having to go back to work and do it all over again.
I had clearly crossed into my blackout drinking phase here, unfortunately, I was nowhere near ready to do something about it. There were many smaller gaps and my pace of drinking was recklessly obsessive.
Another Friday morning, my girlfriend really wanted me to come down right after my overnight shift. Thinking I could do anything, I headed that way. I did great getting through Hartford and as I worked my way from New Britain into Plainville, I suddenly woke up, my truck speeding 70 miles per hour down the grass median, diagonally drifting me toward the eastbound interstate lanes. Adrenaline exploded into every cell in my body. I was heading down a slope and if I pulled back up to the roadway at this speed too fast, I would roll the truck over and over down the hill.
Reaching deep within me for all of the restraint I could find, like that of a pilot whose jet is speeding towards the ground to just not panic and make calculated and intelligent moves, I turned the steering wheel gently to the right and took my foot off the gas. I was very pleased when it appeared that I was going to pull this off with no damage whatsoever, and proceeded to hit a reflector post with the driver's door mirror, smashing it into little pieces and spraying my left arm with small pieces of glass.
I started to recognize that spreading myself this thin was hurting me. Much to my girlfriend's dismay, I stopped showing up even more to stay at the campground during my downtime. This really wore on the relationship and our initial visits always seemed to begin with a cool reception that eventually did warm up, but that was our normal cycle now.
Even so, living on the edge was always my way. There were still some quiet moments. One weekend I decided to really take some time to reflect. My company was having its annual picnic in North Charlestown New Hampshire at a sister company called Mal Tool. I drove up to East Alstead New Hampshire to my family's camp in the woods, a one-room log cabin my cousin and my Dad built back in 76 and 77.
All by myself at the cabin, I felt so free. I cooked dinner and knocked down the better part of a 12-pack. As I did this, I sat in the rocking chair, writing and listening to Solid Gold Saturday Night on the radio, it was so liberating. I could feel that I belonged here! I just knew it! When I left Texas, I told myself that I was going to move to Maine, to the Franklin County area that my Dad lived in back in the 1970s, but here I was, now into August 1987, soon I will have been gone from Texas for a year. I saw no way to make Maine happen, but, I could see New Hampshire happen, and why not? I was young, I had all the time in the world to do that.
I never did go to the company picnic, but found a new dream, a new goal. I was not sure how to make it happen or how to take steps to do it, but somehow, I was going to do it. I headed back to Connecticut on Sunday with the hope that I was going to break out of this place that I got stuck in against my will last year.
I returned to Connecticut absolutely loving the idea of moving to New Hampshire. I did not know how I was going to pull it off, my only exposure to NH was this little town with a small beach at Warren Lake and a general store. My skill set was limited to public works, outdoor construction, and computerized vacuum furnace operations.
I also had a girlfriend who up until Memorial Day, we were headed for a 1950s-style life, factory job, big wedding (although there had not been a proposal), suburban house on a postage stamp lot with a small lawn to mow out front and back, a couple of cars, a cat, dog, and vacations in Texas and Arizona. After Memorial Day, there seemed to be a slow-motion disassembly, brick by brick of this plan.
I know that it was more than this. I think I fell into a familiarity with the lifestyle. My girlfriend was a very nice person, but she was young and had so much more to experience too. I had already had a spouse in Texas 2 years ago and 3 children. We were in different places despite some very good previous few months. The more time we spent apart, the more the differences showed. I met her and a friend of hers at a club one night. Her friend commented how I seemed more content, my hair had grown out, in other words, my real self, the one who came from Port Aransas was coming through and it fit me better and seemed more natural.
Now I sat here in my 1976 Chevy Van. WAQY out of Springfield Massachusetts played. There was a dedication program on the radio in the mid-August sunset. I would be going to work in about 3 hours. This is where that dark tunnel feeling overtook me. There were forces spinning about in the world that seemingly did not have anything to do with me. Little did I know, they were connected to me, some just down the road, others, a significant distance yet. Iran and Iraq had been at war throughout the 1980's. It was getting messy. To protect Kuwaiti oil tankers, the US was putting American flags on them to deter attacks. Iran Contra testimony was dissected daily by the talking heads in the news. Things that seemed impossible to touch my life were out there as the world became more turbulent. That great distance would be covered in seconds somehow, which should have burned me up on reentry, yet somehow I lived to tell.
A girl called into AQY, she requested Alice Cooper's "No More Mister Nice Guy" because she had been burned too often. Another called in and requested "Bungle in the Jungle" by Jethro Tull because there was someone she wished to know better. Then Joe Walsh's new one "On the Radio", and Sammie Hagar's "Give to Live", his contractual requirement to the record company to put out one more solo LP despite having become the lead singer for Van Halen last year. Finally, Warren Zevon, Sentimental Hygiene.
This song really summed up my existence right now. My life kept changing and I could tell I was in a transition. You may wonder why I bring up such trivial occurrences, but they are not really trivial at all. If you listen to the song, Sentimental Hygiene, the words really played out with what was happening in my life at the time, but that was nothing. What was truly extraordinary is the killer lead guitar in this song which has laid-back aspects and driving aspects both at the same time, playing like a soundtrack to how turbulent the world was at this moment. The trouble brewing in my life, and in Texas, where there were no jobs because the oil business crashed, the northeast, where business was booming, and the construction of homes was unprecedented. The turbulence in the world scene, where, in some ways, we appeared to be on the brink of World War III, but we didn’t know it. The lead in this song was the expression of all of that for me. It played to my soul. I did not know where I was going, at all. In fact, I could have never guessed what was coming next. Every day, I got up, went to work, drove around. I knew something big was coming, and there was nothing I could do about it. I was crossing into that period of my life in which there was an inevitability in everything that came next.
One of those inevitabilities happened one day when I went to Southington and my girlfriend informed me that we needed a break. This hit me harder than it seemed it should. I think mostly because we had just assumed we would end up together permanently and here, the relationship only lasted 8 months.
I drove back to Tolland, not knowing what came next. At the site next door, Kevin and Joy broke up again and she went back to Texas. I spent my days hanging out with him and my other neighbors.
I went to work on August 13th and got out on the morning of the 14th. I needed to get back to the campground to take a friend of mine to court in Enfield. My 72 Dodge pickup never had a working gas gauge as long as I owned it. I just filled it every so many miles. This morning, however, I must not have paid enough attention, because, on the way to the campground, I ran out of gas on the interstate. It is true what they say, a guy walking down the interstate with a gas can in hand gets offers for rides very quickly, thus proving the story about my Dad's friend who hitchhiked all over the country, with a 1 gallon gas can that never had a drop of gas in it. From the moment my truck ran out of gas, my life was never the same. All of the changes that came after this belong to many other stories.
It is always important to me that I do not speak on other people's behalf. Sometimes that makes the telling of stories more difficult, but as time passes, I seem to find a way, but maybe now that will not be possible.
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