My Life So Far, Part 17

When I last wrote in this blog, I left off on the cusp of Monday May 21, 1984. The next day, Tuesday May 22^nd, would be the second anniversary of my marriage to Bertha. We had planned to put off celebrating until my paycheck same on the 24^th. Then we would go out to eat. The week went by without anything exceptional that I would have remarked upon had not the events of Wednesday the 23^rd and Thursday the 24^th.

(Friends, this really hurts to write about. But I must get it in writing, because next moth my annual parole review comes up, and I may be revoked for lack of employment. If I don’t tell what truly happened, the only story in the public forum will be the one concocted by the police and prosecutors to convict me of the heinous crime of which I am a co-victim. That is why it takes so ling for me to post episodes, the trauma being renewed stirs up PTSD, and I need a few weeks to recover.)

On the night of Wednesday May 23^rd, Bertha was very tired and laid down to sleep before I left for work. Before I was quite ready, Bert asked me to check to see if her friend Debbie O’Bannon would come over to spend the night. I found Debbie and her boyfriend, Jesse Aranda lounging on the tailgate of Jesse’s truck and talking. When I asked if Debbie was coming to keep Bertha company, the consensus was that there was a possibility if Jesse didn’t spend the night with Debbie. So I passed this on to Bertha, who asked me to leave the door unlocked to allow Debbie to come in if Jesse left. Bertha did not want to have to get out of bed.

I left for work at about five minutes before eleven, trying to get there with enough time to check in and get squared away before I started my shift. I got there a few minutes before shift started at 11:30 PM and filled in my log, checked out my equipment, and asked the outgoing shift if there were any alerts. Just then a secretary came by with a stack of ledger books to place in the office of one Ed Carson in Plaza One. No one could tell me which office was Mr. Carson’s, but I am a Marine and whenever I encounter a problem, it is in my training to try my best to resolve it. So I took the books to Plaza One looking throughout the office suite for the one belonging to Mr. Carson.

The people who worked at the Methodist Church’s Dallas area medical center’s administrative office, The Deadman Medical Center, must have been exceptionally humble. Not one item of identification was on any office door, desk or wall throughout the suite. I must have spent forty minutes looking through drawers and around desks for a name tag or letterhead. Nothing!

Finally I gave up and left the books in a common area where there were a counter and sink, apparently a lunch and break area. At that time I got a radio call from my immediate supervisor, former Maj. Jim Houston, USMC, who wanted me back in the security office so he could escort the pretty nurses going off shift to their cars (there had been a few assaults in the neighborhood, and the nurses were frightened to walk through the dark parking lot alone.).

Immediately I set the alarms and attempted to lock up. It was 12:40 AM, May 24, 1984. As I tried to lock the back door of the plaza, the key that was already cracked decided to break off in the lock. Enough was protruding to grip it with my fingernails, so to avoid anyone using it to open the door, I opted to take the minute longer to extract the broken pieces. Mr. Houston met me at the emergency door to the hospital as I came around the back of the plaza and we went down to the office in the basement while he was castigating me for failure to answer the beeper.

Our beepers were small squares of plastic with a view port on top and two buttons on the face. One of those buttons, when pushed, placed the beeper in silent mode where it recorded calls but didn’t notify the wearer of the incoming call. As I moved around the office suite, I bumped into a lot of furniture. It seems that one of the corners of a desk or table must have hit the right button at the right time to place it in silent mode without my knowledge. When checked, the beeper displayed the two pages and was in silent mode.

No other events of note took place before 7:00 AM when the alarm in Plaza Two went off. Plaza Two housed a pharmacy, and management was especially worried that there would be an attempt to raid it for drugs. So we took any alarms in that plaza very seriously. It turned out that the cardiologist in the plaza had come in early and never bothered to inform us so we could shunt the alarm for him.

The shift ended and I went home, tired but expecting to get my paycheck and take my beloved out for dinner to celebrate our two years of marriage. I arrived a bit after 8:05 AM, to find the door closed only part way and not truly latched, even though it was locked. Upon entering the door I noticed the apartment was in a shambles with the contents of my wife’s purse, the closets and the trunk we used in lieu of a table all strewn about the floor. All the closet doors were open, the kitchen cabinets and drawers too.

Deborah was awake and playing in her pen that doubled as her bed until we could get our furniture. Her diaper was full but we had no more Pampers in stock. So I went to find Bertha to discuss using one of the cloth diapers until I could get my paycheck and buy new Pampers. When I entered the master bedroom, the first thing I noticed is the bed, devoid of all bedclothes, but with a huge red stain in the middle of the top part of the mattress. A pile of clothes, the ones Bert had just washed the evening before and left folded in the hamper overnight, was in the middle of the floor, and Bert’s legs were sticking out of the pile.

At this point I knew something happened to Bert, but I didn’t know if she were alive or not. So I dug out her body from the pile of clothes and pealed back the sheets she was shrouded in only to be assaulted by the sight of my beloved’s face brutally marred with many wounds and a knife protruding from her neck. My mind refused to accept the vision and assumed the knife was in her mouth. I gripped the handle lightly and flung the knife into the pile of clothes, then reached for Bert’s right carotid artery to check for a pulse. When I did, my fingers entered one of the wounds on her neck and sank to the second knuckle in her cold meat.

The world receded and I could hear the blood in my own arteries as I went into shock myself. I wanted to cry, by tears were dammed up and everything I saw seemed to be on the other side of a glass wall, like I was in a terrarium. My training kicked in and I rose to report to the local authorities. I used the terminology that I had been taught to use in a crime scene. But my shocked mind kept dredging up useless trivia to distract me from the horror I had witnessed. One of the things my mind dredged up was the memory of Krystalnacht, The Night of Broken Glass, when the Nazi Brown Shirts vandalized the homes and businesses of Jews throughout Germany and beat them in their beds, many of them to death. I couldn’t help comparing my beloved to those victems.

I trudged to the home of Debbie and Jan, Bert’s friends, to use the telephone, and called the Grand Prairie, TX police to report Bertha’s murder and get the ball rolling. I was so out of myself I cannot clearly recall what I said or did, but I know I wanted to try one more time to revive Bertha. So I returned to my apartment and Jan followed. While Jan cared for Deborah, I returned to the bedroom and cried over Bertha while gently asking her to wake. I placed my hand over her heart and prayed that God would restore its rhythm, but Bertha didn’t have enough blood left in her body for her heart to move. At some point during my prayer, Jan showed up at the door and said, “Don’t touch anything.”

I answered, “I already messed up the scene. Besides, I have to do this.” Then I finished my prayer and pleading with Bert.

Officer Richard Bender, now a full Detective, responded to the call about 8:40 AM. When Jan announced the police were here, I picked up the knife that I had thrown and carried it out to him on my palms, trying not to smear any evidence on it. I told Bender what the scene looked like when I arrived and that I was a fool to mess it up. Then I offered some conclusions, trying to keep my mind from the reality of the horror in the room. Bender ignored everything I told him unless he could spin it into testimony to use against me in court.

When the detectives, Junkin and Rhodes, showed up, Junkin told me that the police received a string of prowler calls the night before, but they don’t respond to prowler calls. If they did so, my beloved may have still been alive when I returned home. Once the detective lieutenant arrived, the investigation turned hostile toward me. The detectives asked me to come with them to “make a statement” at the police station. They claimed I was not under arrest, but I was not free to go get my paycheck to buy diapers and formula for my daughter. Remember this when I tell you about the trial.

From 9:45 AM until 4:30 PM, the detectives tag-teamed me to sweat a confession out of me. I was trained by the United States Marine Corps to withstand the torture techniques of the Communists who were our enemies at the time. So the mental torture of the police was not irresistible, in spite of the fact that I had not slept in more than thirty-six hours nor eaten in more than twenty-four hours, by the time the “questioning” was through. At one time, Detective Rhodes, a former Navy swift boat sailor from the Viet Nam war, took me into the pipe chase behind the cell block to beat a confession out of me. Realizing that my life was in danger, I stood in a non-threatening Akido stance to await whatever happened. I am not trained in Akido, but I do know how to stand and how to bluff. Rhodes took a second look at me and how big and ready I was for anything he might do, and decided to forgo the beating.

Detective Junkin tried to belittle my faith, and suggested I had voices from God telling me to kill my own wife. I told him he was sick in the head himself and ought to get help for it. I was then turned over to another detective, a devout Catholic, who tried to get me to lie based on the spiritual angle of confession. I realized, however, that the stricture against bearing false witness applies to false confessions. So the detectives finally gave up trying to shake my self discipline, and took down the statement that I had been making all along. Then they announced that they caught me in a lie and placed me under arrest.

At no time did the detectives make a serious attempt to identify the two prowlers that were reported the night before. Nor were they willing to consider the connection between the prowlers and the murder of my wife. It wasn’t until after they told me I was arrested that they allowed me to call anyone, although they did let me talk to my mother-in-law, whom they had called, to see if she could make me confess. She tried to trap me by asking me if I had raped Bertha after I killed her. I answered the underlying question, no I didn’t kill her, but the call was not recorded and my mother-in-law twisted the words in court to make it sound as though I told her I killed Bertha.

I remained in the city jail until Monday, even though it was a holiday, when they moved me to the county jail and had my first arraignment. I was appointed Mark Stoltz, who now sits on the Federal bench, to defend me. He assumed I was guilty, and when I insisted upon my innocence, he ignored my input. When he finally did tell me something about the case against me, I informed him that the primary witnesses were lying because the first wasn’t there and his wife was only parroting his story. Stoltz never investigated the truth.

In my next post, I will tell you of the trial that lasted four days and led to me spending thirty-two and a half years incarcerated for a crime that I was a co-victim of. Under Texas law, if a murder is committed during the commission of another felony, it is a capital offense to be punished by the death of the murderer. A capital crime was committed in my apartment that morning, by the State couldn’t charge me with it because it is fundamentally impossible to burglarize your own home. While I sat in the county jail, I received a three-months subscription to the Dallas Times Herald, now defunct. I counted fifty cases in that time in which people were murdered with the same modis opperendi as my beloved. I couldn’t help but wonder how many people would be alive if the police responded to prowler calls and made arrests for trespassing before the murders were committed.

Ol’ Fuzzy is not employable and was denied for disability benefits. The only thing I have is the blogs. But I don’t qualify for ads on the blogs until there is enough traffic on the blogs to interest advertisers (20,000 hits per month). If you like the scribbles I post, please help me keep it going. First, share, share, share. The more people who know about the blogs, the more who will visit them. And you can leave me a gratuity by dropping a buck or two in Ol' Fuzzy's Tip Jar. This is a PayPal account I opened on Wednesday, April 5, 2017.

My Life So Far, Part 16

Because of Bertha’s neurosis, my family turned us out, not wanting to have their purses and wallets rifled for minor cash. I stood beside my wife in the troubles even when my sister tried to use blood ties to turn me against her. Bertha had a problem and until she was willing to accept it, there was no way to help her. We lived with a Mormon family who were friends of Bertha’s family for three weeks, until Bert found a subsidized apartment in Grand Prairie, Texas that we could afford.

I got a job working security for Jim Bearden and Associates out of Arlington, Texas. Most of the work entailed guarding hospitals and high-rise apartments. One job we had, that I was assigned to cover, was to guard a parking lot for a restaurant that had a bar next door. The bar patrons would fill up the restaurant parking lot so the diners had no place to park. I would stand outside and direct people to put their cars in the bar’s lot until the restaurant closed and their parking lot opened to non-restaurant cars.

On the same nights I worked the restaurant parking lot, I also guarded the parking garage of a high-rise with a broken garage door. That job started exactly one hour after the restaurant job ended. I had to use the time in some way, and I didn’t drink. So on one occasion in mid May, I decided to go home and kiss my wife. When I got there, thinking I would give Bertha a pleasant surprise, I found her not at home. I don’t expect my wife to give up any personal life for me. So I didn’t feel any wrong was done by her, but I was disappointed that I could not share a kiss before I returned to the high-rise for my second shift of the night.

The next Wednesday morning, May 16, 1984, I met my neighbor, Gary Don Shepherd, outside. Gary said he and his buddies met every Wednesday night from 10:30 PM to 12:30 AM at the doughnut shop just off the freeway entrance. I explained that I had to be to work in Farmers Branch, Texas before 11:30 PM on Wednesday nights, and I felt it would be rude for me to show up for only twenty minutes and leave. So I begged out of it. Besides, those few minutes on an evening were the only time I could spend with my wife and child. I valued that time with them.

Around this time my mother-in-law had begun a renewed effort to convince my wife to take the baby and leave me. Whenever my wife called home, it was the same refrain. When we had saved enough to rent a moving truck and bring our furniture and household appliances to Grand Prairie on the weekend of May 26-27, my mother-in-law saw this as the opportunity to split us apart. Since I had to work that weekend, Bertha would be going alone. But I had unwavering faith in Bertha and her love. The one thing Bertha craved in life was the only thing she could never have, the approval of her mother.

To be continued….

Ol’ Fuzzy is not employable and was denied for disability benefits. The only thing I have is the blogs. But I don’t qualify for ads on the blogs until there is enough traffic on the blogs to interest advertisers (20,000 hits per month). If you like the scribbles I post, please help me keep it going. You can leave me a gratuity by dropping a buck or two in Ol' Fuzzy's Tip Jar. This is a PayPal account I opened on Wednesday, April 5, 2017.

My Life So Far, Part 15

Because of the time I spent in Galveston with my wife giving birth to Deborah, I couldn’t make my rent for October, 1983. Bertha and I lost the house we were renting in Beaumont, Texas in January. So we packed all our things in a borrowed truck and moved into her brother’s house next door to their mother in Houston. This gave me more employment options.

I got a job grinding castings at Bethlehem Steel’s Houston facility, which served the oil industry. This is the same work my father did in the auto industry in Michigan, and I felt closer to my dad every time I went to work. But the rest of the crew were immigrants and I didn’t speak Spanish. The foreman’s English was minimal and only the manager could give me detailed instructions. I am a self-starter when I understand the job, and I did good work by myself. But I was unaware that OSHA was hard on the local shop, and I was moving 400 to 1,500 pound castings by myself. At college I dead-lifted 1,500 pounds for official score. I was comfortable with the weight, but OSHA was not. So after only three weeks I was fired for violating OSHA regulations about lifting heavy weights in the workplace.

After the foundry debacle, I got my chauffeurs’ endorsement on my driver’s license and started driving for Yellow Cab. The best hours for work were from two in the afternoon to two in the morning, and on my worst day in 1984 I brought in over a hundred dollars. After the lease on the car and gas money I would have more than forty dollars left for an eight hour shift. Naturally I worked the extra four hours to improve our finances.

In February my mother-in-law came to me to propose taking our five month old daughter and my wife to visit her East coast relatives. I saw nothing wrong with the idea as presented to me, so I gave my approval. That was my biggest mistake. One should never take a proposal by that woman or any of her offspring at face value.

The first stop on their trip took my wife and child to visit my wife’s grandmother and namesake in Florida. The lady was a wonderful person and I am glad she got to meet my child so early in Deborah’s life. Then my mother-in-law took them to Maryland, where she dumped them at her brother’s house, my wife’s uncle, with instructions to not allow them to leave unless I paid a ransom and bought them an airplane ticket. Then my mother-in-law took a flight to Pakistan where she had men whom she was bilking for money.

When my wife talked with her mother on the telephone, she was told the my mother-in-law could not return because the airport was closed. For most of the month of February we gave her a chance, but it was only a ploy to tear apart my marriage. I called the Pakistani consulate in Houston to ask if there were any problems in the airport in Karachi. The answer was no, the airport had been open for international flights the whole time.

I value my wife and child far more than I value mere money. So I drew out our entire savings, put it in an overnight envelope and mailed it to my wife as certified mail. Bertha paid off her uncle, bought a plane ticket, and returned to Houston that next night. Shortly after dawn, I picked them up from the airport and we packed what would fit in our car, put the rest of our things in storage, and fled to my family in the Dallas area.

Suddenly the Karachi airport opened to let my mother-in-law fly back. But by the time she got to Houston, we were gone. Strike two.

To be continued….

Ol’ Fuzzy is not employable and was denied for disability benefits. The only thing I have is the blogs. But I don’t qualify for ads on the blogs until there is enough traffic on the blogs to interest advertisers (20,000 hits per month). If you like the scribbles I post, please help me keep it going. You can leave me a gratuity by dropping a buck or two in Ol' Fuzzy's Tip Jar. This is a PayPal account I opened on Wednesday, April 5, 2017.

My Life So Far, Vol. 14

I had no trouble finding a job in retail. I was hired to manage a kiosk in the Gulfgate Mall for Frontier Fruit and Nut Company. We sold ready to eat dried fruits and nuts as a snack item people could eat in the store. Working by myself, I brought the store to within a few dollars of the company quota for the first time in the history of the kiosk.

I finally found a crew to work the store with me, but one I had to let go because he couldn’t return from lunch in the half hour we gave him. As soon as there were two other people working with me, my quota was doubled. I taught them my tricks and techniques for sales, mostly how to catch the attention of passers by because the food sold itself once people looked at it. I took applications from a large number of people. No one gave it the effort that I did.

One of my tricks was to put a honey dipped, sun dried date on the scoop and present it to the oldest woman in the hall, saying, “Hay gorgeous, do you want a date?” It always made a sale. I just couldn’t get my employees to try. My most productive one became hostile because she perceived things in a racial way, being a black woman in Houston, Texas, and decided I had singled her out for being black. Little did she know I had singled her out for being good at the job. Before I could clarify it with her I was hired away at a shoe store for Genesco Shoes in the San Jacinto Mall in Baytown, Texas.

I worked for a black lady as her assistant manager in the Jarmin store. The job lasted through the end of 1982, then the company moved me to Beaumont, Texas to work in one of their Flag Brothers stores. My wife was now pregnant with our daughter, and she was miserable all summer. The economy in Beaumont is very much tied to the oil industry. When the country goes into a recession, oil is depressed. When the oil business is in a bust, Beaumont is dirt poor. The oil depression caused sales in the Flag Brothers store to drop so low the company was thinking of closing it for lost revenue. So that summer of 1983 in Beaumont, I was unemployed with a pregnant wife.

I sold Kirby vacuum cleaners and picked up scrap metal along the highway, mostly aluminum cans. It wasn’t easy making rent. But I did. When my daughter was due on September 4^th, my wife had not yet shown signs of immanent delivery. On September 16^th, the Ob/Gyn resident in John Sealy Hospital in Galveston, Texas had Bertha admitted to force labor with a pitosin drip. Bertha had the IV in her arm for seven whole days, in agony the whole time from forced labor. But the baby was not yet ready to come. Finally, on the afternoon of the 23^rd, Bertha began to dilate. If we had medical insurance, Deborah would have been taken by Caesarian section at least five days earlier. But non-paying customers don’t get surgical procedures unless it is life threatening.

It was four o’clock in the evening when the nurses suggested I dress in scrubs to help my wife with the delivery. My mother-in-law demanded to take my place in the delivery room. She had already monopolized the visiting time before delivery, and she had been telling my wife that I left and wouldn’t stay for the baby’s birth. I had already slept the night in the waiting room. I told her it was my place to be there for Bertha when the baby was born and so I shall be. My mother-in-law was livid. Her lies to my wife would all become apparent if I were to be there. She dressed in scrubs herself and told me I couldn’t go in there or “there’ll be hell on this floor.” I leaned forward and very quietly but firmly stated, “So be it.”

I would always be willing to give her her way in matters of no import. But when she would supplant my place beside my wife as our child was born, I had to stand up to her and put down my foot. I heard no more of it from her. The battle lost, my mother-in-law looked for other ways of tearing apart our marriage.

Deborah was born late in the night of September 23^rd, 1983. I had just turned 25 the previous month. Deborah weighed a little less than nine pounds and was healthy in all respects but one, her neck had not finished forming in the womb. She was precious to me from the start. The first time she sunk her little hands into my beard and refused to let go, I was smitten for life.

To be continued….

Ol’ Fuzzy is not employable and was denied for disability benefits. The only thing I have is the blogs. But I don’t qualify for ads on the blogs until September. If you like the scribbles I post, please help me keep it going. You can leave me a gratuity by dropping a buck or two in Ol' Fuzzy's Tip Jar. This is a PayPal account I opened on Wednesday, April 5, 2017.

My Life So Far, Part 13

As painful as it is to dredge up old memories of my life with Bertha, I must finish this series or I shall burst. I have been avoiding it far too long. So I shall plug in where I left off.

Bertha found an apartment in the Centerwood area of Houston where she wanted to live so she could be near her favorite church. In April, 1982, I moved into the apartment to hold it until our wedding. Bertha was still living in a mobile home she shared with a friend in Pasadena, Texas, half way between Gilley’s and Johnny Lee’s. Those were the big landmarks on the highway that every one used to navigate.

I found a job in Deer Park, Texas, delivering welding gasses for Amerigas, Inc. I usually drove a pickup truck. But sometimes I drove a three-ton flatbed. When the wedding day arrived, I dressed in my rented tuxedo along with my best man, my brother Alan and my father. We set out for the church in plenty of time. In fact we arrived fifteen minutes before the service was to begin. But my mother-in-law to be set sentries at all the doors of the church to tell me I could not come in by that door because the photographer was taking wedding pictures, and it is bad luck for the groom to see the bride before the wedding. Each pair of sentries directed me to try the other doors. Of course, when I got to the other doors there was a pair of sentries guarding it too.

So I decided to do a little prenuptial shopping at the local big-box store. My father, brother and I spent half an hour browsing at K-Mart and then returned to the church. Now the doors were unguarded and I could enter. Of course, my mother-in-law had begun a whisper campain against me in the church that I didn’t care enough to be on time. So I called on the people who were preventing my entry to testify of the time I showed for the service. There was a lot of squirming and excuses, but everyone realized how they had been used by my future mother-in-law.

Bert and I could not afford a honeymoon because we had moved the date up so far. So we decided to put it off for Christmas, and simply live as we pleased until then. Bertha reveled in the freedom I granted her as my wife. For the first time in her life, she was allowed to make her own decisions based on her own good judgment. Her mother hated the loss of control over Bertha’s life. Less than a week after the wedding, my mother-in-law was trying to drive a wedge between my wife and me.

On Christmas Eve, I had to work bringing in stock for the post holiday time. I was offered the week between Christmas and New Year off in compensation. I took the three-ton down NASA Road One to Texas City to pick up oxygen at one plant and acetylene at another. Then I set off for Deer Park and my honeymoon. The weather was turning bad before I finished loading, and by the time I hit the highway, there was a full blown ice storm in the coastal area of Texas. Driving on crowned roads covered in ice and sleet is no fun in a three-ton truck loaded with five tons of explosive gasses. Due to conditions, I didn’t make it back to the shop before closing time. There were three people there to help me unload.

As we were moving the gas bottles into the storage building, I heard a hiss and smelled acetone, a sure sign of a leaking acetylene bottle. We found the bottle that was leaking and moved it outside to a blast proof site built just for that purpose, finished unloading and set off for the holiday. Boy, was I tired!

Bertha and I went to NASA and took the bridal suite in the big motel there as soon as I was showered. Tired as I was from driving the bad road in the truck and then driving back in our car, Bertha didn’t let me have any sleep that night. Nine months later, Deborah Rochele Seys was born. I can’t complain about the abuse from my wife.

Ol’ Fuzzy is not employable and was denied for disability benefits. The only thing I have is the blogs. But I don’t qualify for ads on the blogs until September. If you like the scribbles I post, please help me keep it going. You can leave me a gratuity by dropping a buck or two in Ol' Fuzzy's Tip Jar. This is a PayPal account I opened on Wednesday, April 5, 2017.

My Life So Far, Vol 12

I find it difficult emotionally to write about my life with Bertha. I have never been allowed to mourn her passing. But I must press on even if no one reads these words. I need the catharsis.

On our trip to Dallas, my stepfather decided to take the Southern route along I-10 through Houston to see Bertha. The familiy was in three vehicles. I was driving a ten-wheel van with Pop, Mom drove a pickup and my brother drove another pickup. We looked like a band of Roma when we pulled into her block on Avenue E just West of Macario Garcia Blvd.

When I knocked on the door, no one answered. Bertha’s cousins were all around the house and they assured me she was in there. So we waited for an hour and a half for Bertha to emerge. She was napping and didn’t hear the knock on the door. I only had ten minutes to greet her and get a hug before we had to get back on the road to Dallas.

The brakes on the big truck were failing by the time we got into the Dallas city limits. The slope of the street on one intersection caused us to have an adventure we didn’t want to have. As we sat at a red traffic light the truck began to drift backward. My mother, the hero, pushed the big truck with the front of the Dodge Power Wagon, the same Pickup type that today is called a Ram. It is fortunate that the pickup had enough power to hold that ten-ton truck from running over the other vehicles. We all were frightened by that close call.

We spent a couple days in the building to be demolished before we got a place to stay. That was like living in a haunted mansion from some old movie. I attended the Lakewood Memorial Assembly of God that first Sunday in Texas. My beard was down to my third button on my shirt and, with my dark complexion and Semitic cast to my face, made me look Hasidim in my dark suit. A woman walked by twice, giving me the eye, before she blurted out, “Are you Jewish?” and I answered, “Only by faith sister, only by faith.” I was referring to the passage in Romans where Saint Paul said we are Grafted into Israel. But I’m not sure she caught the allusion.

Pop’s employer had lined us up a house to rent in Garland, and it was a nice one. We moved in and got ready to begin work on the salvage and demolition of an old, condemned apartment complex to make room for condos. The buildings were fairly well preserved for ones that were not fit to inhabit. The fixtures were all antiques, quite valuable on the market, and we had the task of removing them intact.

I began attending the Broadway Assembly of God, just a short walk from the house, and enjoyed the fellowship of the congregation. Little was I to know that when I was falsely accused they would turn against me.

I only stayed the rest of the summer with my family. In November, I moved to Houston to be with Bertha. I got a job driving a delivery truck for Amerigas, Inc. in Deer Park, Texas while Bertha got us an apartment near her favorite church. Our engagement was announced and I moved into the apartment while Bertha sold her mobile home to her friend and roommate. Our relationship grew closer with the proximity, but the months to wait until June were trying on both of us. Finally, Bertha could take no more and moved the date for our June wedding up to May 22, 1982. I was all for it!

Ol’ Fuzzy is not employable and was denied for disability benefits. The only thing I have is the blogs. But I don’t qualify for ads on the blogs until September. If you like the scribbles I post, please help me keep it going. You can leave me a gratuity by dropping a buck or two in Ol' Fuzzy's Tip Jar. This is a PayPal account I opened on Wednesday, April 5, 2017.

My Life So Far, Vol 11

The Fall semester of 1980 begins a rough time for me to remember. This is the start of my relationship with the wonderful lady who became my wife, Bertha. We came together the second week of the semester, after her supposed fiancee told her he wanted to see all the other, prettier women on campus, and not be seen with her. I guess my biggest attraction to Bert was that she needed me. It is fine and lovely for a woman to be independent, but a couple needs to be interdependent, and that’s what Bert and I became. After only two weeks of doing everything with her, I could not imagine doing anything without her.

My GPA fell from 3.7 to 2.9 and I spent more money on Bertha than on my tuition. We had internships together, went to church together, took several classes together and studied together. Bertha was an elementary education major while I was still studying Bible and Ministerial Arts. But the electives and basic courses were still the same.

My homeletics course was easy that semester, I could always give a good talk if I took the time to organize my thoughts. The only hard part was trying to keep the sermons to ten or fifteen minutes. Vaudie Lambert told us, “Give me a couple of hours to fill and I can speak off the cuff. But if I only have ten minutes, it takes days to prepare.” But it was enormous fun.

That Fall, just like they do every year, the college sponsored a “Sadie Hawkins Party” based on the Li’l Abner comic strip character that was always stalking around Dog Patch trying to get her a man. For this party only the women could invite men to come. The year before, I was in the band and was exempt from this stricture. But this year Bertha asked me to come, so I put away my guitar. Bertha didn’t have a country style hat to wear, so I gave her my Stetson western hat for the night and broke out my old Resistol hat. It needed re-blocking, having spent the past few months in the bottom of a sea bag, so I blocked it Winchester style and pinned the front brim up like Forrest Kelley in F-Troop.

We had photos taken, and it was a joy to show off my lovely lady to all the people who took the time to look at the pics. Bertha had a beauty rare in a big and tall woman. It came from the love in her heart. You could see the light of that love radiate from her in every pose she struck. Even the camera loved her. Not something most people can say.

I can’t recall if it was that Christmas or the following Easter that I took Bertha to my mother’s and stepfather’s home in Margate, Florida to show her off. At first my family loved her and there was no wrong she could do. We attended the little Full Gospel Assembly of God in a nearby town and did as much as we could together. But my mom wanted to teach Bert how to cook my favorite dishes. So my stepfather had me change out the water pump on his Dodge Power Wagon. I always enjoyed working with my hands, and there is little in the way of mechanical things I can’t figure out if I try. So the water pump was a blast, even though it was simple. But my poor Bert was not enjoying the kitchen. I made it up to her after I showered with a little snuggle time.

At the end of the spring semester the college informed me I would not be welcome back until I paid off the complete promissory note that I was required to sign. The debt I owed the school was in the range of twelve hundred dollars, but after the promissory note it jumped over two thousand. My distaste for banks began then.

Bertha was transferring to the University of Houston for her sophomore year, and I returned to Margate to be with the folks. I helped out at the mini locker complex with the crew of Haitian men who my stepfather had hired. William F. Ogden is also a Marine, a veteran of World War II and Korea, so he was confident that I knew how to lead men. One time the work required that a large stack of cinder block be moved by hand from the pallets they were received on into the building to be near the sites were they would be used. I first made sure every one of the men had gloves because the blocks will tear the skin of even a heavily calloused hand. Then I went to the pile of block and took the first two block into the building to show by example what was required of the men. After that I moved more block than any two of the others combined, sort of a challenge to them to keep up. My stepdad became worried that someone would get hurt moving block at that pace and put me on a different assignment. The Haitian men worked harder for me than any other foreman my stepdad had assigned to them.

When the mini locker was finished, the company decided they liked my stepdad’s work so much they wanted to move him and his family to Dallas, Texas to work on condominiums. I was without employment for a week, but didn’t need any money except to pay my college debt. So when I saw a help wanted sign at the local Denny's Restaurant, I went in and offered to fill in for the manager for one week, just to have something to do. I became the line cook on the midnight to eight AM shift. I ran the place for eight hours a night for six nights. But I couldn’t stay. If I didn’t move with my family, I would have no place to stay. So when the week was up and there was still no replacement, I had to leave the manager without a night shift line cook. I hated to leave him out on a limb like that.

To be continued….

Ol’ Fuzzy is not employable and was denied for disability benefits. The only thing I have is the blogs. But I don’t qualify for ads on the blogs until September. If you like the scribbles I post, please help me keep it going. You can leave me a gratuity by dropping a buck or two in Ol' Fuzzy's Tip Jar. This is a PayPal account I opened on Wednesday, April 5, 2017.

My Life So Far, Vol 10

I spent the Holidays between semesters in Lakeland, FL while my family was scattered across the country visiting other relatives for their Holiday vacations. There was work to be had locally, and I was glad for the money to help pay my tuition and board. The second semester I was able to take a full course load. My course of study dictated that I take Old and New Testament surveys, English, speech, homeletics, hermaneutics, pastoral counseling, and specific Bible courses. I also took some math and science as electives.

My English professor, Dr. Bush, was a Brit born in “Indier,” as he put it. I had great fun discussing one of my favorite poets with him, Kipling. Dr. Bush was always telling dry jokes, the kind that are guaranteed to crack me up. No one else got them, however, and they all looked at me funny as I rolled on the floor laughing. I passed that course with an A!

English Literature was another fun course. The professor earned his doctorate by making a new translation of Beowulf and comparing the story with that of Arthur. It was interesting to hear the Old English language as he read the original work from a printed copy he kept for reference. The Old English word Beowulf means bear, as does the Latin word Arcturus from which we get the name of Arthur. The similarities continue from there. I won’t go into more detail because my memory is failing and I no longer have my notes from the class.

The semester was marked by many great speakers who came to our chapel services: Charles Coleson, Pat Robertson, Vaudie Lambert, and many others. Having the opportunity to meet and question the great preachers and speakers who passed through the chapel gave us a broader outlook on out chosen profession. Some of the people whom I had looked up to turned out to be quite shallow without the team of writers behind them to put wise words in their mouths, while some of the more obscure turned out to be the most wise. The praise of the public is not a good way to measure the worth of the words.

Springtime brought out several interesting events the students put on for ourselves. We had a three-lift weight lifting competition, bench, squat and dead-lift. We had a play by several students that was written by the director. And on the day that prospective students from high schools across the region came to look over the campus and decide to attend or not, one of the students preached from a boat in Lake Bonnie. The audience sat on blankets on the grassy shore to listen. A portable public address system, battery operated was used in the boat. And I met for the first time a young lady who would change my life. Not having a blanket at the shore that day my date and I borrowed space on the blanket of one of the high school seniors by the name of Bertha Schifflett.

That summer I tried to attend summer school, but I owed about eight hundred dollars, and the college would not allow debtors to attend summer semester. So I went to where my family was staying in Margate, FL. My stepfather had landed a contract with Central Land Development Corporation out of Dallas, TX to build a mini-locker complex in West Palm Beach. I worked with him on the project, until personalities once again clashed. This time he appointed me site manager for a project in Perine, FL, building the world’s first two story drive-through dairy store. If you are ever in Perine and pass the corner of US-1 and Royal Palm Blvd, look at the Farm Store on the North side of Royal Palm. All of the errors are my own.

As that summer wound down, I had saved up a couple thousand dollars to put toward my college tuition and board. My debt at the school ballooned to twelve hundred due to the promissory note the school had me to sign. But with my savings and the G.I. Bill, I was able to get back into it. I signed up for another full load.

To be continued….

Ol’ Fuzzy is not employable and was denied for disability benefits. The only thing I have is the blogs. But I don’t qualify for ads on the blogs until September. If you like the scribbles I post, please help me keep it going. You can leave me a gratuity by dropping a buck or two in Ol' Fuzzy's Tip Jar. This is a PayPal account I opened on Wednesday, April 5, 2017.

My Life So Far, Vol 9

After I left the Corps, I worked for my stepfather a short while until a personality conflict led to my dismissal. I worked as day labor on the road construction crew for a while and bounced around trying to fit in. The people who attended every church I visited all agreed on one thing, I should attend Bible college. So I picked up my diploma from the Mount Clemens Board of Education and applied to the Southeastern College of the Assemblies of God (now known as Southeastern University).

I arrived early only to find out that my acceptance to the school was contingent on my paying the entry fee up front. I was devastated and started looking for work to earn the fee. As I brought it to one congregation of fellow believers for prayer, I was taught a lesson on receiving by God. A lady in the congregation decided to pay the entrance fee for me. I believe her when she said God laid it on her heart. But when I asked her to allow me to earn it by doing some form of work for her, she rebuked me in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Her words were basically that I must learn to put aside my pride and accept what God has given. If I could not accept a simple entrance fee donation, how could I accept the free gift of grace unto salvation? I meekly submitted with, “Yes, ma’am,” and went to the office of admissions with her check. This is not an easy lesson to swallow. My father worked for everything he had and gave to us, his children, first before he took anything for himself. I had been infused with the desire to earn my own way. But the impossibility of that was brought home to me in this lesson. We cannot earn salvation, it can only be given by God out of His grace. Wow!

My first semester, I was restricted to only twelve credit hours. I wanted to finish the course on time, but the rules of the school were inflexible. Because I had an honorable discharge from the Marine Corps, I was exempt from physical education. Apparently they felt I was taught how to keep fit in all the running, calisthenics and weight training I went through in the Marines. I took the attitude that I had run enough to last me a lifetime, and this was the time to study and pray. The college had a requirement that all students attend a daily chapel service before most classes started. This was my favorite period of the day.

I got into the habit of entering the chapel early with other students to pray before the service. It is here that my first introduction to contemplative prayer was made, but none of us understood what we were doing. Founded by the Church of God in Christ for white folks who might be uncomfortable in a black church, the Assemblies of God is a Pentecostal denomination that traces its roots to the Azuza Street revival of the early Twentieth Century. They may not have had Apostolic Succession or a Catholic view of the faith (I will cover the meaning of the word catholic in a future post), but they had a relationship with Christ that was often lacking in other churches. And they talked tongues. A lot.

It was through glossolalia that I began contemplative prayer. We would gather in the morning and let our mind go while our mouths were busy uttering words we didn’t know. I had visions, most of which I subsequently forgot, and laid hands on my fellow students for prayer that was answered as we expected it to be.

One prayer stands out in my mind. A student asked me to pray for him that the Holy Spirit would correct some deficiency in his life. I lightly touched the fingers of my right hand to his forehead and said, “Holy Spirit, have Your way in this life.” Immediately, he fell to the floor as though dead. I spoke without thought, “Get up, I’m not through praying for you yet.” And he stood, suddenly restored to full consciousness. I don’t know why he fell out. No one had ever done so when I prayed before or since. Yet I was witnessing so many miraculous events that I was not inclined to question it.

As a child, the Barefoot Sisters of Mt. Carmel taught me that miracles are happening every day, and that it is up to God to decide when and where a miracle takes place. But until I joined the AG, I had only heard of miracles elsewhere, never witnessing them first hand. Here miracles were so commonplace that people were not surprised by them, they were surprised by their absence. That kind of faith was very appealing to me, and still is. Yet I detected something lacking in the regular church practice of these Pentecostals that was only partly made up for by our very non-conformist morning meetings in the chapel.

To be continued….

Ol’ Fuzzy is not employable and was denied for disability benefits. The only thing I have is the blogs. But I don’t qualify for ads on the blogs until September. If you like the scribbles I post, please help me keep it going. You can leave me a gratuity by dropping a buck or two in Ol' Fuzzy's Tip Jar. This is a PayPal account I opened on Wednesday, April 5, 2017.

My Life So Far, Vol 8

The second worst year of my life was 1979. While I did everything to the best of my abilities and tried to be the best Marine in the squadron, nothing I did could change the prejudgment of the senior NCOs who were trying to get rid of me. In June I would become eligible for a good conduct medal. The ones who hated me without cause were determined to keep me from receiving one.

In February, we set up a day bivouac in a field behind the auxiliary airstrip to practice sending and receiving radio messages and teletype messages over the radios. It was my job to set up, maintain and supervise the field expedient antennae for each HF radio. Our communications squadron would commute to the field every morning and sleep in the bachelor enlisted quarters (BEQ) at night. Those of us who didn’t have vehicles would wait at a shelter near the BEQ for people going to the bivouac site to give us a ride to work. One Thursday morning, every car that stopped had an excuse not to give me a ride. Finally I saw the First Sargent drive past, alone in his car. He pointed at me and laughed, shouting, “I have you now.”

A half hour later, when I was already late for work, a woman and her underage daughter stopped to give me a ride. The woman said her husband was on float and she kept her daughter out of school so the two of them could go out and party. She invited me to join them. They just happened to have a quart of my favorite whiskey, Wild Turkey by Austin Nichols. I said, “No offense, ma’am, but I have to get to work. I would love to party with you after hours. But not just now.”

She said, “Sorry son, it’s now or never.”

I replied, “Ma’am, I am a Marine, first, last and only. I have an appointed place of duty, and I will do my best to be there.” When she heard that, she looked surprised and gave in. She dropped me off at the bivouac site forty-five minutes after I was supposed to be there. The Corporal over my section told me I was in big trouble because I was being charged for desertion. When the charge sheet was finally turned in, I could only be charged with unauthorized absence from an appointed place of duty. I shrugged it off, because if this kind of stuff is accepted in the Marine Corps it wouldn’t survive the next fight, whether on the battlefield or in Congress.

I was brought before the squadron Commanding Officer for Article 15 Office Hours. When he told me the name on the charge sheet I said, “I saw him drive by with an empty car and didn’t stop.” The Colonel dismissed the charges against me and wrote a charge sheet against the First Sargent for disobeying a lawful order by not stopping to give a Marine a ride at the Share-a-Ride station that morning. He paid a fine and had to leave the Marine Corps at the end of his current enlistment. But his vengeance on me would be sooner than that.

In late March I was called into the base hospital for evaluation of the weight standard. My weight on that day was 212 lbs., five pounds over the official weight limit for my height. But the corpsman recording my weight and height tried to measure me two inches shorter than my actual height so I could be discharged for overweight. When I protested enough that my actual height of 73.25 inches had to be recorded he added twenty pounds to my weight, recording me at 232 lbs. The physician attending never looked at the scale nor did he examine me. He merely took the corpsman’s word for it. Most Navy Corpsmen are the best, most conscientious people in any armed service. But the NCO network can always find one corruptible by a case of cheap scotch.

I was discharged on April 9, 1979, and took the bus to Franklin, North Carolina, leaving the service that I loved and planned to spend my life in for the last time. Franklin is a place that anyone who loves Jesus Christ can fit in. I had some trouble finding steady work, but I knew I was home at last.

To be continued….

Ol’ Fuzzy is not employable and was denied for disability benefits. The only thing I have is the blogs. But I don’t qualify for ads on the blogs until September. If you like the scribbles I post, please help me keep it going. You can leave me a gratuity by dropping a buck or two in Ol' Fuzzy's Tip Jar. This is a PayPal account I opened on Wednesday, April 5, 2017.

My Life So Far, Volume 7

The rest of 1978 was spent in something of a depressed fog. I still did my job with my best effort, but things like remedial physical training were not attended to with the gusto I once had. At Christmas I chose to stay behind and stand guard duty in the squadron armory. During my watches I practiced unlimbering the shotgun, a Remington 870 Riotmaster, from the sling position as rapidly and accurately as I could. If someone broke into the armory, a slung shotgun was as good as no shotgun.

On my third night of watch, the Officer of the Day told me not to load my shotgun. Two hours later the Sargent of the Guard came by and told me I was authorized to load three rounds in the magazine but not to have a round in the chamber unless I had cause to fire. Apparently, an argument came up over which was more important, protecting the weapons under my watch or keeping me form accidentally discharging my firearm. I never did an accidental discharge in my entire life. That’s because I take safety seriously.

The next week I received a six day pass to go home and visit my family for New Years Day. Eighteen hours by Trailways bus from Havelock to Ashville was a slow means of winding down from the stress and climbing out of the pit of depression. I arrived in Ashville an hour after the bus station closed and my connection to Franklin didn’t come through until morning. I was alone without enough money to rent a room in a town too far from my home to walk in one night.

I called my stepfather and the family came and got me in the pickup truck. It was after midnight when they arrived in Ashville, but it was a bright time for me to be around people who were not hostile or indifferent to me. I spent the time rebuilding my soul as well as reconnecting to my family. The last day before I was to return there were two buses scheduled to go back. I chose to take the early bus to avoid a possible snow storm that threatened to inundate the Eastern seaboard. That choice angered the senior NCOs who hated me.

I was the only Marine who had liberty that weekend that made it back to the squadron. No one knew what to make of a man who couldn’t get promoted due to his weight wanting to fulfill the mission so much he would give up the opportunity to extend his liberty for an extra two days while the roads were cleared through the mountains. I watched the snow fall behind the bus the whole way back to the coast.

I looked foreward to a better year in 1979, but the senior NCOs had other plans for me.

To be continued….

Ol’ Fuzzy is not employable and was denied for disability benefits. The only thing I have is the blogs. But I don’t qualify for ads on the blogs until September. If you like the scribbles I post, please help me keep it going. You can leave me a gratuity by dropping a buck or two in Ol' Fuzzy's Tip Jar. This is a PayPal account I opened on Wednesday, April 5, 2017.

My Life So Far, Vol. 5

My next duty station was with the Second Marine Air Wing in Cherry Point Marine Corps Air Station, North Carolina. As soon as I checked in with the squadron CO at Marine Wing Communications Squadron Twenty- eight, I asked to speak with the squadron legal officer. I explained my situation vis the Okinawa charges and asked what he could do. The man worked for me as if it was the most important thing in the Marine Corps. Although I have had trouble from many senior staff NCOs, the officers of the Marine Corps always treated me fairly and with the respect due to a fellow Marine.

After about three weeks my charges from Okinawa were dropped and expunged from my record. But the snide notations in my Sevice Record Book (SRB) were still there for other NCOs in on the lingo.

Life at Cherry Point was different than life in the Third Marine Division. The air wing did things in a more relaxed way. I began to make a mark on the radio shop with my knowledge of field expedient antennas. The big RIF caused all units in the Corps to have many unfilled billets for junior NCOs that they were not authorised to promote people to fill. There is a mechanism for putting a person in a job that that person’s rank is not high enough to fill. It is called brevett rank. In the 1970s, there were two methods of giving a person brevett rank, give him an official but temporary promotion that includes the pay and priveleges or to give him the authority and responcibility only at work with none of the pay and privelage the rank entails outside of work. I didn’t qualify for the first one because of Gen. Wilson’s fat-body order. So I got to do the job of a sargent with none of the pay or privelage of that rank.

In the month after I reported in a MWCS 28, we had a change of command cerimony for the squadron. The new Colonel was a veteran of Korea and Viet Nam. He boosted morale and performance significantly in six months. As I stood on the flightline of the auxiliary airstrip in the parade cerimony, I could see the mountains that I had called home since my parents moved there. I experienced homesickness for a place I had only visited once.

From Cherry Point I went on the big Exercise Solid Shield 1978. Marine Wing Communications Squadron 28 was loaded on the old WWII vintage LPA USS Francis Marion, named for the old Revolutionary War hero known as the Swamp Fox for his cavalry campaign in the Carolinas and Georgia. The ship was manned by an all reserve crew. Marines were not treated as mere cargo on this float, we were crosstrained in Naval MOSs as well. I stood radio watch on the bridge and changed out a bilge pump in the engine room.

When it came time for us to debark, LCM8s were brougnt alongside and we climbed over the side on cargo nets just like the Marines in WWII did. We made a combat assault of Onslow Beach North Carolina and moved by tactical tractor-trailer to Bogue Field on Camp Lejeune, NC. I had trained in Boot Camp to debark via cargo net, but this was the first and only time I ever did.

Later that fall, I was chosen to go on Opperation Reforger 1978. This is the big NATO exercise in Europe where we pretended to defend against a Soviet attack. Marines were on the extreem left flank of the defense line, the Baltic coast, protecting the city of Hamburg from communist aggression. As a part of the Marine Air Wing, I set up communications with the sundry commands of the wing as well as the Marine Division doing the actual defense. One Bundes Luftwaffe colonel acting as referree refused to admit that Marine aviation could stop Russian tanks with bombs. I asked the Squadron CO for permission to speak, and when granted I said, auf deutch, “Sir, you may recall the effects of the Stukageswadern on French tanks in May, 1940. Marines invented divebombing on land targets and your predescessors copied it from us.” The German was more angry that an enlisted man would correct him, and be right, than that he was wrong. But the showing of the Marines in Reforger ‘78 was so strong that Hamburg was deemed successfully defended by the referrees.

To be continued…

Ol’ Fuzzy is not employable and was denied for disability benefits. The only thing I have is the blogs. But I don’t qualify for ads on the blogs until September. If you like the scribbles I post, please help me keep it going. You can leave me a gratuity by dropping a buck or two in Ol' Fuzzy's Tip Jar. This is a PayPal account I opened on Wednesday, April 5, 2017.

My Life So Far, Vol. 6

Between the two floats, I met a young Woman Marine, let’s call her Anne because that is not her name and I don’t have her permission to mention her in writing. Anne was beautiful, charming, alluring, and as a Marine I knew she was tough. As we got to know each other’s likes and dislikes, I was surprised at how much we had in common. I fell for Anne hook, line and sinker. My uncle owned a pawn shop in Miami, FL. I had him find a wedding set, white gold, which he sold to me at cost. Then I asked Anne to marry me. She agreed and gushed over the engagement ring. I had her hold the other two, the wedding bands, as well until the date we would set.

Anne claimed to dislike her Marine Corps life and wanted out. She told me she was playing on the psychologists to get a mental illness discharge, what had been known until that year as a “Section 8.” I believed her because I was in love. I didn’t realize her discharge was legitimate. Anne was bipolar and schizophrenic, two disorders that run in my own family. I should have recognized the symptoms, but as they say, love is blind.

After Anne was released from active duty, and I was sailing the north sea in an LST, she asked me for money to buy the wedding decorations and pay for the ballroom where the reception would be held. I cleaned out my credit union account with alacrity, and mailed her a check for over five thousand 1978 dollars. As time went by her letters became more vague and less emotional. Then came the letter in which she returned the wedding set and called off the wedding. She claimed to have spent the money on a van to ferry church members in. I was so crushed I could not think.

One thing I had no desire to possess was the wedding set. A barmaid at the little country music joint right outside the front gate was a sweet lady who was trying to save up for a fertility procedure so she could be a mommy. I just gave her the rings to sell or wear, I cared neither way. This was the single most devastating thing that happened to me since my grandmother died slowly of cancer.

I loved Anne with my whole being, so the inconsistencies in her actions and words didn’t register at the time. In hindsight they’re plain as sunshine. Anne acted sophisticated and self-actualized, but she wore a brazier that was two cup sizes too small. I noticed the bulge of her bests above the cups whenever she exposed her cleavage in a low neckline. On day I asked her if she wore only push up bras. She said she didn’t need push ups because her breasts pushed themselves up. But her breasts were always tender. I took her to the local Cato’s store and bought her all new underwear that fit her. Her breasts were never sore after that.

Anne claimed to be Christian, Born-again Evangelical. She attended one of those tongue talking churches near the base. I went with her on every Sunday. We had a good time and God ministered through me in prayers, laying-on of hands, and prophecy. A couple people were healed by God when I laid on hands. At this time in my early walk with God, my lips would tingle when I spoke the words God gave me and my hands would tingle when I laid hands on the sick or oppressed.

But Anne’s Christianity didn’t carry over to Saturday nights. One of her friends was married to a professional musician who had a Country Music band that played gigs in bars on Saturday nights. Anne wanted to bring me along to show me how country she was. When we broke up I discovered that in her other personality, Anne didn’t like country music. After Anne’s discharge, but before the letter breaking off the engagement, Anne’s friend invited me to come along with them on one more gig. I wrote a poem about missing Anne that night, set to music. I know this is cliche, I wrote it on a napkin at the band table with the band members’ wives. I even borrowed a pen from one of the ladies.

Every time I see them dancing I miss you.

My arms ache to hold you tight.

The bar maid is a pretty sight,

But I want to be with you tonight.

There were three other verses to it but they are not as good as the first. I realize its not professional songwriter quality, but I am not a polished pro. Anne’s jilting me was the one thing that made me lose interest in trying to remain in the corps. So when the senior NCOs worked to evict me, I no longer fought to stay in. I was in a depression that lasted for almost a full year.

To be continued….

Ol’ Fuzzy is not employable and was denied for disability benefits. The only thing I have is the blogs. But I don’t qualify for ads on the blogs until September. If you like the scribbles I post, please help me keep it going. You can leave me a gratuity by dropping a buck or two in Ol' Fuzzy's Tip Jar. This is a PayPal account I opened on Wednesday, April 5, 2017.

My Life So Far, Vol. 5

My next duty station was with the Second Marine Air Wing in Cherry Point Marine Corps Air Station, North Carolina. As soon as I checked in with the squadron CO at Marine Wing Communications Squadron Twenty- eight, I asked to speak with the squadron legal officer. I explained my situation vis the Okinawa charges and asked what he could do. The man worked for me as if it was the most important thing in the Marine Corps. Although I have had trouble from many senior staff NCOs, the officers of the Marine Corps always treated me fairly and with the respect due to a fellow Marine.

After about three weeks my charges from Okinawa were dropped and expunged from my record. But the snide notations in my Service Record Book (SRB) were still there for other NCOs in on the lingo.

Life at Cherry Point was different than life in the Third Marine Division. The air wing did things in a more relaxed way. I began to make a mark on the radio shop with my knowledge of field expedient antennas. The big RIF caused all units in the Corps to have many unfilled billets for junior NCOs that they were not authorized to promote people to fill. There is a mechanism for putting a person in a job that that person’s rank is not high enough to fill. It is called brevet rank. In the 1970s, there were two methods of giving a person brevet rank, give him an official but temporary promotion that includes the pay and privileges or to give him the authority and responsibility only at work with none of the pay and privilege the rank entails outside of work. I didn’t qualify for the first one because of Gen. Wilson’s fat-body order. So I got to do the job of a Sargent with none of the pay or privilege of that rank.

In the month after I reported in a MWCS 28, we had a change of command ceremony for the squadron. The new Colonel was a veteran of Korea and Viet Nam. He boosted morale and performance significantly in six months. As I stood on the flight line of the auxiliary airstrip in the parade ceremony, I could see the mountains that I had called home since my parents moved there. I experienced homesickness for a place I had only visited once.

From Cherry Point I went on the big Exercise Solid Shield 1978. Marine Wing Communications Squadron 28 was loaded on the old WWII vintage LPA USS Francis Marion, named for the old Revolutionary War hero known as the Swamp Fox for his cavalry campaign in the Carolinas as and Georgia. The ship was manned by an all reserve crew. Marines were not treated as mere cargo on this float, we were cross trained in Naval MOSs as well. I stood radio watch on the bridge and changed out a bilge pump in the engine room.

When it came time for us to debark, LCM8s were brought alongside and we climbed over the side on cargo nets just like the Marines in WWII did. We made a combat assault of Onslow Beach North Carolina and moved by tactical tractor-trailer to Bogue Field on Camp Lejeune, NC. I had trained in Boot Camp to debark via cargo net, but this was the first and only time I ever did.

Later that fall, I was chosen to go on Operation Reforger 1978. This is the big NATO exercise in Europe where we pretended to defend against a Soviet attack. Marines were on the extreme left flank of the defense line, the Baltic coast, protecting the city of Hamburg from communist aggression. As a part of the Marine Air Wing, I set up communications with the sundry commands of the wing as well as the Marine Division doing the actual defense. One Bundes Luftwaffe colonel acting as referee refused to admit that Marine aviation could stop Russian tanks with bombs. I asked the Squadron CO for permission to speak, and when granted I said, auf deutch, “Sir, you may recall the effects of the Stukageswadern on French tanks in May, 1940. Marines invented dive bombing on land targets and your predecessors copied it from us.” The German was more angry that an enlisted man would correct him, and be right, than that he was wrong. But the showing of the Marines in Reforger ‘78 was so strong that Hamburg was deemed successfully defended by the referees.

To be continued…

Ol’ Fuzzy is not employable and was denied for disability benefits. The only thing I have is the blogs. But I don’t qualify for ads on the blogs until September. If you like the scribbles I post, please help me keep it going. You can leave me a gratuity by dropping a buck or two in Ol' Fuzzy's Tip Jar. This is a PayPal account I opened on Wednesday, April 5, 2017.

My Life So Far, Vol 4

While I was on Okinawa, I began to research the various technical aspects of my job as a field radio operator. Remember all those formulae and equations you learned in high school for waves and light? I am here to tell you they actually do have an application in the real world. By dividing the speed of light by the frequency of the specific radio channel I was assigned to use on a specific day I could calculate the wavelength. I could then cut a piece of communications wire (com-wire) into a harmonic of that length and have a perfect, field expedient antenna that didn’t have to be tuned to the frequency to work.

Whenever I tried to explain in quick terms what I was doing, the eyes of my listeners always glazed over and I lost them, mostly because they forgot all the background information. I made myself an expert on the creation of field-expedient antennas because I saw the need in my unit. Of course, when I began to improve myself in relation to my job, I was yanked out of it for six months. In the summer of 1977, I was volunteered for Camp Guard.

Camp Schwab on Okinawa did not have military police stationed full time to patrol and enforce law and standing orders. Most of the time, Marines are a pretty law abiding group. But when you have over three thousand trained killers on a hundred and eighty acres things can sometimes get interesting in the Chinese sense of the word. We were not only tasked with interior guard duties, we filled in as provost marshal surrogates on the base. I was trained in methods of subduing trained Marine infantry men without doing any damage to them. Therefor, I don’t swallow the excuses of law enforcement officers that they had to beat someone into submission.

Life in Camp Guard was not as strenuous as the First Tracked Vehicle Battalion radio shop. We stood post, took classes in security work, and stayed ready for contingencies. One contingency we were required to muster in response to was the attempt by Red Army Faction to storm the base on Hiroshima Day, 7 August. I was assigned to secure the beachfront base access from the “protesters” led by RAF agitators. Two Military Police officers from Camp Hansen were sent to “help” us control the crowds. I was in the front line with a six foot staff to hold off a rush. Behind us stood a line of Marines with fixed bayonets on their rifles. Behind the crowd milling before us a RAF operator pulled out a pistol and fired six shots in the air. As the crowd surged forward to escape the gunfire, the two M. P.s took off running, screaming like school girls, and left the infantry Marines to hold the line. The surging crowd pushed us back three feet, and the bayonets were moving forward when the sound of roaring diesels caused the crowd to look to our rear. Two M60 tanks were rolling down the beach to line up their guns on the crowd. They took off running because a 105 millimeter tank gun is bigger than a .380 ACP. We never saw those two M. P.s again.

When my stint at Camp Guard ended, the battalion assigned me to the classified material control center as a clerk. I went to the big base in the Southern end of the island to take the courses on handling and destroying classified documents. My security clearance was upgraded to top secret so I could carry around the messages and orders that had to be seen by the officers and senior staff NCOs. A company grade officer had to accompany us whenever we took documents from the vault to the burn barrel on the roof. I was issued a .45 Colt and a thermite grenade to destroy documents if ever I was attacked. We never faced that problem.

I did get approached by a foreign agent who wanted to recruit me, but after I reported the contact to the Naval Criminal Investigations Division (forerunners to today’s NCIS) for counter intelligence, the guy disappeared from the village. My entire spy-vs-spy career was a real let down. No more agents or intelligence officers from the communist block bothered me.

I stayed in the job for the rest of my time on Okinawa, but I was not exempt from my primary MOS as radio operator. When a typhoon struck the island, while everyone else was buttoned up in the storm-proofed barracks, I was in a poncho with a radio on my back out in the storm, looking for storm damage and other emergencies that would have to be dealt with during the bad weather. I had no complaints, it was my job, and no one else was willing to do it. That was what caused the First Sargent to get really angry, thought I would put up a fuss. I just said, “Aye, aye,” and performed the mission. I watched, and reported, as the wind pushed one amphibious tractor over a hundred feet and another one was rolled on its side.

When the First Sargent couldn’t get me for insubordination as planned, he concocted a plan to get me convicted of violation of a direct order. Our barracks had not been properly cleaned, call a “field day” in the Marines, for over two months. So a field day was planned for the Saturday before I would rotate back to the continental United States. I was assigned to midnight radio watch, 2400 to 0400 hrs. Then when I lay down to rest at 0430, the Sargent in charge was specifically ordered to make me get up and work with the rest. Standing orders are that radio operators who worked the midnight to four watch were exempt from field day the next morning. I hadn’t slept for over twenty-four hours and stood on SOP to refuse the order.

A charge sheet was written and I was brought to the battalion CO for adjudication. The Lt Col went with the First Sargent’s recommendation and found me guilty. The First Sargent told me that if I appealed I would not go home for six months. But I would be allowed to appeal once I got to my next duty station. Needless to say, I opted to get out from under the thumb of a hostile NCO instead of fighting the false charges under the UCMJ.

To be continued….

Ol’ Fuzzy is not employable and was denied for disability benefits. The only thing I have is the blogs. But I don’t qualify for ads on the blogs until September. If you like the scribbles I post, please help me keep it going. You can leave me a gratuity by dropping a buck or two in Ol' Fuzzy's Tip Jar. This is a PayPal account I opened on Wednesday, April 5, 2017.

My Life So Far, Vol. 3

I began a spiritual journey in high school. I had been raised in the Roman Catholic Church, baptized, communioned and confirmed at Saint Peter in Chains Parish in Mt. Clemens. But I felt there was something that rang false in the doctrines taught at CCD on Saturdays. I had read the writings of Saint Augustine, Bishop of Hyppo, the first theologian to write in Latin, and the Bible. These didn’t square with the things the Barefoot Sisters were teaching about the Pope.

One Saturday morning, the sister teaching our class pointed out the window to the Greek church across the intersection from Saint Mary’s School where we took our obligatory classes. She said they are one with the Roman Church, the same Catholic faith. She invited us to visit them sometime. I didn’t go, but I remembered what she had said.

Around that time I began reading the preposterous books of Eric Von Danekken, who tried to prove God is an astronaut from outer space. The oddities he displayed were interesting to read, but the conclusion he drew from it all was to far fetched to swallow. One couldn’t merely suspend disbelief to accept it as state, one would have to hang it with a long drop and extra weight to ensure the neck was broken.

In Boot Camp we were issued New Testaments with Psalms and Proverbs supplied by the Gideons International. I read through the Book of Acts of the Apostles, and every passage Luke referred to that I could find, before I graduated from Boot Camp. At radio school, the message percolated through my soul. I found no pleasure in getting drunk with the other guys, and the desert was calling to me. (Marine Corps Communications and Electronics School is at Marine Corps Base Twenty-none Palms, California, the heart of the great Mojave Desert.)

After radio school I was sent to the Third Marine Division on the island of Okinawa, Japan. Eighteen hours from home by fast airliner, and living with a bunch of warriors who knew if the shoe dropped they were right under its heel, I was already disillusioned with the lifestyle of booze and whores they chased to distract them from the reality in front of them. A small group of us began to experiment with contemplation in the Native American methods, using tobacco as a stimulant and to cleanse us of spiritual influences and sitting in the lonely places by the sea in search of a vision.

That was a wash. The only visions we had were a jumbled mess of confusion and self-congratulation. But one man had a vision that turned out to be prophetic. He saw me suffering many trials and living through much pain and strife. But he said First Man told him Cayote couldn’t trick me into falling for his snares so long as I remained true.

On New Years Eve, 1977, I was in the Club Texas in Henoko Village, Okinawa, drinking strait bourbon and not getting drunk, I didn’t even feel a buzz after six shots. So when the barmaid/pleasure girl brought me a seventh a strange impulse came over me. I turned the shot glass over on the table, leaned back and said, “God, if You are there, and You hear me, show me something better to do tonight.”

I got up like a mean drunk, even though I wasn’t even buzzing, stomped out of the bar and started back to base. When I came to the intersection of Texas Street and Henoko Street, there was a busload of Christians witnessing for Jesus. When they invited me to come with them to their church, spend the night, and attend services the next morning I jumped right into their van. I figured that if God was going to answer my prayer for something better to do with such alacrity, the least I could do is take Him up on it.

It was one of those Full Gospel churches that emphasized speaking in tongues over most of the things Jesus taught. But they did teach the rest of the Gospel in a secondary way, and I took it in. New Years Day, 1978 was a Sunday, and the church held its full service schedule. I attended youth service, Sunday School, and regular service that morning and the two mornings thereafter. That first Sunday I walked the isle and rededicated my life to Christ. They kept urging me to get re-baptized, speak in tongues and quit dipping Copenhagen snuff. But I was scheduled to rotate back to the continental United States in the month of January, 1978. So it was not possible for me to attend the baptismal service they planned in February.

On the temporal side of life, thing happened while I was on Okinawa that destroyed my dream of being a Marine for life. The end of the war in Viet Nam led to a massive Reduction in Force (RIF). The Commandant of the Marine Corps at that time, Gen. Louis F. Wilson, MoH, USMC, decided there were too many fat, lazy NCOs that couldn’t pass a Physical Fitness Test (PFT). He changed the weight standard to the same as the flight weight standard, and I went from being thirty-five pounds under my maximum weight to being five pounds over. Gen. Wilson also ordered that no one could be promoted if they were heavier than the new weight standard. For NCOs above E-5 that meant they would be eliminated from the Marine Corps once they were passed over for promotion three times, once each month for three months. The non-rated men like me could be passed over any number of times without worry about being forced out.

I was put up for meritorious promotion to Lance Corporal (E-3) after only three months time in grade as a Private First Class. But the new weight standard and the no-promotion order kept me from attaining it. For the rest of my time in the Marine Corps, I was submitted for meritorious promotion on the second day of every month (I was that good at my job) and once I had six months time in grade as a PFC I was put up for regular promotion on the first day of every month. In all I was put up for promotion forty-five times from PFC to LCpl. I calculated that if I had been promoted every time I had been put up for it, and taking the General Secretary of the United Nations as one rank above President of the United States, I would have been eighteen ranks higher than God.

I was placed in the remedial weight program for the rest of my time in the Corps. But all the body building I had done in Boot Camp and radio school now inhibited me. If you are doing regular exercise, it is almost impossible to lose muscle mass.

When I first got to the Third Marine Division, I was assigned to Alpha Company, First Tracked Vehicle Battalion. In the radio section of the Headquarters Platoon, we had a corporal who was second in command of the section that told us not to use his name. He wanted us to call him “Farm” because that’s where he grew up, on a farm. I promptly forgot his name and only called him Farm as he wished; he did outrank me by two grades. When I was assigned to provide communications for a training exercise in which the amphibious tractors would swim out to a landing ship, load on the ship at sea, and then unload and swim to shore, Farm told me it was imperative that I keep the battalion operations chief informed if anything happened, because we had an incident in which Marines had drowned when their vehicle sank in thirty feet of water.

The radio net was being monopolized by the ops chief and his diver buddy making small talk contrary to military regulations. When an amtrack’s engine stalled and it had to be taken under tow by another vehicle, I could not convay the information to the ops chief as ordered by my immediate supervisor because of the illegal use of the military channel for private chatter. So as the pressure mounted, I decided to stick my neck out to fulfill my mission. I announced a Flash priority message and then proceeded to inform the ops chief that one vehicle was dead in the water and taken under tow, divers should stand by in case the towing operation failed to bring it to shore before leaks overwhelmed the electrical bilge pumps.

The NCOs were embarrassed by the fact they were violating radio protocol, a standing order. So they turned it against me saying I panicked while at sea and made a false radio call. They couldn’t make it official, because then their own violation would come out in an investigation and they would be punished. Instead they decided to wreck my career with little back-channel comments about me being a trouble-maker. I only desired to carry out my mission, because the lives of my fellow Marines may depend upon it. When it became known that I did that, the tractor crews of Company A began calling me “Flash” and deriding me with the false story of my panic. I knew better, and I decided I didn’t care.

To be continued….

Ol’ Fuzzy is not employable and was denied for disability benefits. The only thing I have is the blogs. But I don’t qualify for ads on the blogs until September. If you like the scribbles I post, please help me keep it going. You can leave me a gratuity by dropping a buck or two in Ol' Fuzzy's Tip Jar. This is a PayPal account I opened on Wednesday, April 5, 2017.

My Life So Far, Vol. 2

In June, 1976, it wasn’t politically correct to enlist in the military services. The draft had ended in 1975. But I had already enlisted in the delayed entry pool before the end of the draft. So even if it hadn’t ended, I wouldn’t have been subject to the draft, I was already committed to serve.

I had always been a social rebel. All of my classmates would talk about doing their own thing, but they all did the same thing. I, on the other hand chose to do something else, that no one else was doing. They dressed in bell-bottoms or baggies and platform shoes. I wore boot cut jeans and Western boots. They listened to disco and rock. I listened to classical and country. They talked about beating the draft. I actually did. When the draft was eliminated I was a Marine.

The Marine Corps chartered a plane to take all the inductees from Detroit and Chicago areas to San Diego, California for boot camp. The aircraft was an older turboprop liner used only for charter service. When we were on final approach to Chicago O’Hare Airport, the wind between the buildings was so fierce the airplane actually flew backwards a few yards in the last leg. But the pilots knew the airport well and made adjustments so we touched down on the sweet spot on the runway. No military cargo pilot could have done a better job.

The problems with the aircraft were not limited to wind. On approach to San Diego Airport, the pilots noted a red indicator light for the landing gear. They had no way to tell if the gear was up or down. So the decision was made to divert to the airline’s corporate headquarters at Long Beach Airport where there were all the support resources to ensure the aircraft would fly again. The flight crew were nervous because there was a very real possibility that the aircraft would crash at landing. All the passengers were inductees into the United States Marine Corps. We were scared too, but we refused to give it place. It was the passengers’ calm, cool demeanor that comforted the stewardesses and pilots as we approached the airport and braced for crash. All the emergency equipment was out and ready. There was talk of spraying the runway with foam, but when the tower saw the landing gear down in the correct position, they decided to forego the foam.

The landing was picture perfect without and untoward incident. But the passengers were many miles away from our expected destination. The airline bought us supper catered in the terminal but the rest of the terminal was closed. So we had to sleep in chairs and on the floor as we waited for the Marines at the Recruit Depot to come and fetch us.

It was a Wednesday when we landed in Long Beach, and we were supposed to be in San Diego that day before 1600 hours to get our barracks assignments. The upcoming weekend was a Federal holiday, Independence Day fell on a Sunday that year, and the Marine Corps was intending to take the whole week off at MCRD San Diego intake. So when we were a day late, we wound up in limbo for that week. We watched a series of movies that Sunday, all of them action flicks of the Marine Corps in WWII and the Korean Conflict. But most of us hated the wait because we didn’t enlist to lounge around, we were there to become Marines.

Finally on July 12, 1976, we met our Drill Instructors. I was in the Third Recruit Battalion. Once we were situated in the squad bay, the D.I.s took us one at a time into the office and interviewed us for potential problems. I admitted that I had once had problems with heat. So I was required to wear a huge “H” on the front and back of my sweatshirt. The senior Drill Instructor, Gunnery Sargent Carver, told me I was a “shit bird” and he was going to see to it I was dropped. I knew better, and he never knew me. I decided to be the best that I could be.

One thing I never did was admit that I was receiving my high school diploma that summer. People with my test scores and a diploma were sent to Officer Candidate School or some other special group. I had learned that standing out in that way was to be a target. So I wanted to be a regular Marine like Uris. I had chosen to go to radio school after Boot Camp so I could be in the same situation as Uris was in WWII. I did not want to learn how to jump out of perfectly good airplanes before they land or swim to shore from a submarine five miles off the coast and twenty feet under water. I knew that if a war started, a radio operator had a larger picture of what was happening than a supply clerk or a grunt. So I never told them I could type and my vision kept me out of the infantry.

One example of the lengths the NCO’s would go to in order to bring their predictions to reality is my rifle qualification in Boot Camp. I always loved the sport of target shooting. I even had a .22 rifle as a teenager so I could plink cans and poke holes in paper. My father had been a soldier in the 1940’s occupation army. He taught me the basics of firearms safety and marksmanship. So when I went to the rifle range in Boot Camp I had something of a head start.

I quickly mastered the Marine Corps method of marksmanship, which is the best I have encountered for teaching people who have never fired a rifle how to hit what they intend to hit. By the end of the first week of rifle training I had gotten used to the unnatural positions from which Marines fired on the Known Distance Course. During the second week my proficiency rapidly improved. At the 200 meter line I had problems in the offhand and kneeling positions, mostly because the M16 rifle is so light that it is hard to hold still in those positions. But at the 300 and 500 meter lines my score was incredible for a bespectacled nerd.

The final day of rifle training we shot for official score. I did respectable at the 200 meter line, only dropping a few points in the offhand and kneeling positions, and only dropping one point in the rapid fire. At the 300 meter line I only dropped three points from the maximum possible, firing a perfect rapid fire. But at the 500 meter line I was getting really hot. I fired seven strait bulls eyes, six in the ‘x’ ring, when someone fired on my target and hit the post. I informed my rifle coach that the target being marked was not fired on by me and he called the butts to tell them I had not fired. While we were trying to get my target cleared up that person fired twice more, one complete miss and one on the one point ring. I lost fourteen points to the subterfuge. It turns out the senior Drill Instructor was in the butts and didn’t want the best score in the platoon to fall to me.

I missed expert by one point because of the cheating of my DI. But I knew that I could shoot when the need arose, so I didn’t care. I re-qualified three more times with my rifle in my Marine Corps career, each time firing expert. The only practice I got was the week of qualification and whatever I did on my own.

In 1804, shortly before he crowned himself Emperor of France, Napoleon was explaining to Marshall Ney how he wanted to establish such equality in France that everyone stood the same height in the social order. Napoleon used a wheat field through which they rode as an example of the even height of social stature he would institute. Ney, it is said, pointed out that some stalks were taller than the others, just as some people would always stand above the rest. How, he asked, did Napoleon plan to deal with that form of inequality? Napoleon drew his sword and smoothly slashed across the top of the wheat, lopping off the heads of the stalks that stood above their neighbors. Now they are all the same height, he told Ney, and that is how we shall deal with the people.

To avoid Napoleons in the Marines, and in other places, I have learned to keep my head down and not stand out from my fellows. I do the best job I can of the tasks assigned. But I never tried to be more than those around me. My ambition was to be a Marine, and I achieved that upon graduation from Boot Camp. So the rest of my time in the Corps was spent being the best at what I was doing, nothing more. To better myself in case of war, I went to the unit library and read all the professional journals of the various arms of the Army as well as the Marine Corps Gazette. Now it has become codified that all Marines must read journals and books. Who would have thought of that in the late 1970s?

To be continued….

Ol’ Fuzzy is not employable and was denied for disability benefits. The only thing I have is the blogs. But I don’t qualify for ads on the blogs until September. If you like the scribbles I post, please help me keep it going. You can leave me a gratuity by dropping a buck or two in Ol' Fuzzy's Tip Jar. This is a PayPal account I opened on Wednesday, April 5, 2017.

My Life So Far, Vol. 1

My Life So Far, Volume One

Those of you who grew up with me will know the first part of this story, but bear with me while I fill in the ones who never met me. I was born in Mt. Clemens General Hospital on August 8, 1958, to Alfred Edward Seys and Laura Mae Seys (nee Laura Mae Aude). Yes, that means I have been twenty-nine years old for more than twenty-nine years. My family, two older sisters and my parents, lived on Tallman Street, though I have no memories of the place and couldn’t find it on a map if I didn’t have GPS.

My earliest memory is of our home in Mt. Clemens at 60 Logan Street, between Cass Avenue and Church Street, one block East of Groesbeck Highway (M97). The first memory I have is of me navigating the stairs in the old house so my mother could put my shoes on my feet and I then went out to find my new friend, Ron Kenyon, down the oiled dirt road. I believe I was around four years old at the time. Life was a great adventure, and I was happy not to know I was poor. We lived on the wrong wide of the railroad, but it insulated us from the intrigues of the city proper.

I attended Woodrow Wilson Elementary School just a short walk up Church Street from my home, and walked home and back for lunch each day. I actually felt sorry for the kids who rode the buses because they didn’t get as much time at home each day. It was here I learned that I was not considered as good as some of the other kids because of the low income of my family. I decided by the third grade that the opinions of others made no difference to me, because I knew my own worth. When the playground bullies found that my feelings went unscathed by their taunts the quickly tired and sought easier prey.

On the day of President Kennedy’s assassination, I was in kindergarten. The school rolled televisions into the classrooms so we could all watch the news coverage of the death of our beloved president. I remember my eyes watering at the obvious distress of the First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy, until I noticed Martha Stanton crying. It became more important to me to comfort Martha than to cry myself, so I held her hand until she stopped. Martha, please forgive me for embarrassing you like that.

My family suffered some severe setbacks when I was in the second grade under Mrs. Lockwood. My father was hospitalized with a “nervous breakdown” and my mother had gall bladder problems that led to surgery while dad was in the hospital. When mom got home we returned to as normal a life as we could until dad came back from the hospital and returned to work.

My dad was not a very big man at only five feet eight inches, but he was very strong and worked in foundries trimming castings with a swing grinder. I have tried my hand at the work and I know it takes lots of brawn. Dad did this for the whole time we lived in Southeast Michigan. He took me fishing but I only went for his company, I was a lousy angler. My biggest catch was always pan fish too small to keep.

After the sixth grade I attended George Washington Junior High School, walking there from home using Grand Avenue past the old railroad passenger station that was already out of service by nineteen seventy. I played football with Brian Maikoski, Mike Ocianiki, and Jerry Copp, among others. It was there that I fell in love with math and science, in spite of the efforts of Mr. Penzene to destroy my love of math. Were it not for Mr. Penzene, I would have learned to do algebra in the eighth grade and had calculus in high school. As it is I still haven’t studied the calculus in a formal setting. My math education was badly stunted due to his efforts.

In high school at Mt. Clemens Senior High, I took a double science major and a math major, twelve semesters of science and six of math in a school that lasted only eight semesters. Yes I doubled up on science. I also became a history buff. But the curriculum at the high school was not as in depth as the books I was reading in the library across the street. When the history class was studying the Second World War, I asked the teacher to allow me to give the lecture on the Pacific Theater of Operations. I spoke from memory, without notes, but was able to convey the entire information in half an hour so we could have a comment session. The teacher was impressed enough to commend me in front of the class. He said he learned something from my presentation.

In my junior year, two important events took place that shaped the course of my life. I took the PSAT and scored in the top ninety-five percentile, I even have a certificate from the Michigan Department of Education for my high scores. Even the Massachusetts Institute of Technology offered me an academic scholarship. But I knew I was too weak in English to make it at MIT. So my senior year I took the college writing course while all the jocks were taking film study. I always had a writers’ block whenever I was required to write on an assigned subject. I could always write, and write well, when I picked the topic, but whenever the topic was assigned, my mind would blank out and no words ever came. I failed that course and didn’t receive my diploma until the end of the summer of 1976.

In the summer of 1975, I enlisted in the United States Marine Corps delayed entry pool. I wanted to serve my country with the best there was. Even though I recognized that the United States Army was already the greatest in the world, I perceived a difference in the way Marines are trained and the way they perform in battle. I was hooked by the writings of Richard Tregaskis (Guadalcanal Diary) and Leon Uris (Battle Cry). So I had a place to go after school was done for me, and I had a way to pay for college once my first enlistment was over. I left Mt. Clemens in June, 1976, not realizing I would never return.

To be continued….

Ol’ Fuzzy is not employable and was denied for disability benefits. The only thing I have is the blogs. But I don’t qualify for ads on the blogs until September. If you like the scribbles I post, please help me keep it going. You can leave me a gratuity by dropping a buck or two in Ol' Fuzzy's Tip Jar. This is a PayPal account I opened on Wednesday, April 5, 2017.