My little bio on a class-reunion site from 1999 got so many hits, I thought it might be a good idea to dabble with an uncensored version. Welcome former classmates!
(A Constant Work in Progress-started-1999)
This bit seems to be getting more readable, although it is still all over the place. I am working on making it more compact:
Here it is....................................
Welcome to my live obituary page!
LONG VERSION
This is going to be a great novel.......if any of the characters ever manages to die off before myself so I can publish it without bringing the wrath of half the country of Sweden upon me............
Since this was originally a recounting of life's events for a class reunion website, the bio starts around the high school years-the late 70's, but other events are thrown in later. Events are not exactly in chronological order, but I think it makes for more interesting reading. I don't get any money for this, but I fancy myself a writer and enjoy writing about my seemingly stranger-than-normal life experiences.
Foreword:
"Youth is wasted on the young".... so true, although some of my friends seemed to make the most of it, I certainly did not. I think it was a combination of being afraid of my Dad and over-protected by my classic Italian Mother, being her only child until they adopted another kid five years before I was out of the house. After that, they always said I was not an only child, but that's not the way I saw it. I was an only child. Just because they imposed some stranger's illegitimate kid on me five years before I was out of the house doesn't change that one bit.
"But why so selfish?", you may ask. Well, the kid turned out to be such an asshole that I can't believe that my luck was so bad, in getting this guy, instead of a younger brother I could be buddies with. This new kid hated me from the start. That's why so selfish. Okay. Enough about the brat.
Back to my little life story. Despite the hostility at home, which was really very subtle in my early years, where I didn't even realize it was going on, I was so clueless. Despite this weird dysfunctional family I was stuck with, I still managed to scare up some amazing opportunities before the age of 27 or so, whereupon they promptly dried up. I mean, they just stopped dead. Maybe it was because we, as a generation, had been unknowingly caught in the tail-wind of a long running economic boom in America, or it was just part of being young, but I remember several once-in a lifetime chances that I let slip through my fingers, things that I never hear of happening these days to young people, let alone anybody else. I let them pass like a warm summer breeze, without a second thought. Problem was, I think we all thought these early opportunities would just keep coming, like we were standing at an eternal bus stop, waiting for the next ride to arrive.
The thing was, the optimism in the air was so huge. Everyone seemed to have great expectations for the future. "Just go to college", they said. 'You want to make good money some day, don't you?" There really was not much emphasis on the what; what to major in, what career to pursue, although my mother did push the veterinary profession on me, a lot. I just assumed that I would eventually become a millionaire, at the very least. It wasn't just my delusional thinking. I remember the general attitude was that we would all prosper if we just got educated and worked hard and kept at it. That's what used to work, anyway.
Years later I read a book which cleared up a lot of questions about what had begun to happen upon our graduation from high school back in 1978. The prosperity of the American masses was about to be put through some big changes. Here's a link to that book:Who Stole the American Dream?
. Here's a link to another article which explains why the year 1978 was the best year in history for wealth equality: 1978. So, this is why I am haunted by my youth and what-could-have-beens. It just hasn't got any better than that era in America, maybe the world.I was ruined by the quality of women I was able to date routinely in my teens and twenties, for sure. Why I didn't pick a wife at this time eludes me. I must have suffered from brain fog. Well, that and my lack of finances. I was in the unfortunate position of being a poor kid in a rich neighborhood. My Dad did well in the insurance business, but he had no interest in my being even remotely successful. When it seemed like I was actually pointed in the right direction, like when I started a rental business that quickly became quite profitable at my tender age of twenty, he seemed to go out of his way to sabotage me, for whatever reason. Stepfathers. What the hell is wrong with them? Psychos.
The time to find a wife was definitely in my teens, because I sure had a lot of chances with some spectacular young women, although I was a dud with the women in my high school, for some reason. I seemed to do much better in the summer and with girls from other school districts. I think my high school town was a very tightly-knit community, looking back on it. I also was losing weight and concentrating on sports (wrestling) during the school year, so I probably was simply too damned tired to hook up!
I now greatly regret my excellent safe sex practices in my youth, because this is absolutely the best time to "knock up your girlfriend", get her pregnant, because all the young idiots that got their girlfriends pregnant in high school are proud grandfathers now, bragging on Facebook with their kid's prom pictures, while I cruise around in the twilight years, childless and too ashamed to even show up at the class reunion and my mother went to her grave with no blood grand-kids. The initial so-called "shame" of unwed pregnancy is long forgotten. In fact, I'm sure that their parents were secretly thrilled. Something I see so clearly now, but wasn't apparent back then, unfortunately.
Regardless, I don't know what I was thinking at the time, maybe some version of waiting until later, but you can definitely wait too long. It didn't help that my parents moved a lot. I think I must have lived in about 5 different neighborhoods before I was 18. Shoot, they even moved while I was away at college. (I didn't even get a chance to say goodbye to my old room.) If we could have just stuck in one spot, I'm sure I would have established some lasting relationship with a girl somewhere along the way. As it was, I would fall in love and then we'd move. Fucking weirdo parents of mine.
My fruitless attempts at starting a family actually continued somewhat into my twenties. I experienced a virtual smorgasbord of beautiful women at weddings, at the beach, in clubs at the beach, at college parties, at triathlons in different cities, everywhere it seems. I had the Midas touch for beautiful women, for at least a solid ten year period. Problem was, I was always on the road somewhere, so I could never follow it up effectively. I don't think I was necessarily that good at it-it was just a very good era to be single in America. Keeping that in mind, it was pretty amazing how good I was at it. It ruined me for later in life. For a guy who was mostly broke all the time during and well after college, I was a sure thing with the ladies, through about my late twenties.....
CHECK THIS OUT!
I remember I attended a wedding and reception in Maine, in Bailey Island, in the summer of '86 at age 26. So I was basically at the tail end of my magic years. My college buddy was getting married, a wild man who I never dreamed I'd see walking down the aisle, but there he was... It was an idyllic summer resort-place that the well-moneyed bride's parents had rented for a day or two for the post-wedding celebration. The first night we ran out of food about halfway through the party.
The group had asked me to run to the local Acme back in town and get more lobster. I was like, fine, no problem. So I'm walking around the Acme parking lot in this little town-I believe it was Brunswick, Maine, where I didn't know a soul, and these two high school girls pulled up in a Trans Am. Remember, I was 26 years old by then, so high school girls were off limits to most men my age, but I was relatively short and in very good shape, so I looked much younger. These beauties were looking at me, driving slow, so I waved them over.
One thing led to another and I ended up, first on the couch at the reception, making out with both of them, one on each side of me. I think the groom was more envious of my situation than in his new bride, from the look on his face. So I'm making out with these two high school girls on the couch and the other women are getting pissed, I can tell (such a genius!). So I lead them both outside to a rocky beach not too far from the party somewhere on this Bailey Island place. I distinctly remember it was stormy, and when the lightning flashed I would get a brief look at these girls laying there naked, like a flash bulb going off and....well, never mind. It's probably illegal anyway. Regardless, if I have a grown child anywhere, it's from this event. In my fantasy mind I have this kid somewhere and they probably grew up in this idyllic little town in Maine.....I finally got back to the party, like 12 midnight, and the guests were a bit dumbfounded. It's no wonder I'm ruined for life ever since the eighties ended.
Lesson #1: If you can hook up this easy, enjoy it while it lasts, and try to land a wife before your youth is gone, because it's fairly slim pickings after that time, unless you become wealthy. Regardless, it's still never quite the same, not as genuine as this.
Unfortunately, I could not follow up with my two new girlfriends, because it was before the age of the internet and they were 9 hours away from my then current place of residence. Besides, I figured it was a normal weekend for me.
I couldn't bring girls home at that time anyways, because my Mother was usually so mean to them, that she would end up driving them away. This had been going on for years-since I was about 12 and since I couldn't seem to get into a decent line of work that paid anything in my early adulthood, I couldn't afford my own place and couldn't escape the whole brutal ritual.
The reasons for this escaped me. I always theorized that my slightly delusional mother had transferred her ex-husband onto me; I was him, so to speak, and she was jealous of every girl I brought home. The more attractive she was, the worse my Mom acted toward that girl. "Do you think you're going to marry a nice girl and settle down, after our divorce? Not as long as I'm alive you're not!" I couldn't really analyze and realize this until I was older-and it was too late. I thought it was just me. Regardless, there would never be any "walk down the aisles, no wedding day smiles"......., not as long as I was broke and stuck in the boonies anyway.
I think the problem was I looked just like my original Dad; here's a picture of my parents during happier times before my existence, at the Chicago Airport in the late 1950's:
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| Is that me? No it's my Dad from Chicago, that prick! |
Still, some of the fine women I let go of still haunt me to this day, and always will, I suppose. It's the curse of life. There are no second chances...no rewind and "let's try that again." There was this one girl I met in Wildwood, NJ that is my biggest regret....Actually God, or the powers that be dropped no less than three beautiful virgins into my lap, and I really blew it. There were more than three of course, but these three really drive me crazy, because they were around prime marrying age. You start too early and they're too young. You wait too long and there's a line in front of you. That's how it is. Good fortune in life is mostly about timing.
There was Beth, from Virginia....a virgin from Virginia, all of 16 years old. I know she was a virgin when we went out, because years later she got divorced and ended up on my doorstep in Washington, D.C. for a weekend. She said, "Kurt, I would gladly have given up my virginity to you. You just didn't take it." That just kills me. God must've been up there saying, "Dude! What is wrong with you? I gave you a gift, and you blew it." My chances of ever producing a kid were fading quickly............
Then there was the girl who invited me to escort her in the Homecoming Court in high school, when I was 16 and she was 15. This was truly an honor. I didn't even get her phone number and she moved shortly after that, never to be heard from again. This seemed to be the story of my life, close but not quite. Then there was the girl in Wildwood when I was a 23 year-old lifeguard-a few years older than she was. A real beauty queen. I actually took her virginity, in the back seat of a '78 Chevy Blazer, and whoops, I forgot to get the phone number..........In the days before the internet, the phone number was the one chance you had for follow-up. No phone number and you couldn't find her again, no way. She was lost forever.
Still, it was a great era. I think we, as men, had a favorable sex ratio. There seemed to be two women for every man and I'm talking about attractive single women. I remember, the majority of teenage girls and women in the 1970's were just gorgeous. Natural beauty, thin and healthy, and very clean. Best of all, there were a lot of them, it seems. This changed after the mid-90's or so. I'm not sure what happened to the country, to the world.
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| U.S. Sex Ratio through the last few decades.... |
I do remember the animal attraction was such, that in dating young women during my late teens, often on first dates, we would not even manage to get out the door and would end up having sex within 5 minutes after meeting! "Hello, pleased to meet you." Next thing you know, we'd be on the floor.......this is the truth.
One time my neighbor friend fixed me up on a blind date with a girl he knew, whom I arranged to meet at his (parent's) house. I met her in his basement, and we sat on the couch. After the introduction and the usual niceties, my friend left for a few minutes to get something upstairs. When he came back I had this girl on the carpet under a blanket and he was like, "excuse me...." "Oh, sorry about that Eric." She got a terrible carpet burn on her back, which I'm sure she carries to this very day. It was an outrageously great time to be a single guy in America.
Little did I know that I should have grabbed my best pick for a wife right then and had at least one kid, because by the time college got through with me, and then I just about starved my way through the entire decade of the coming 80's, things would never be as good again (for me) as they were at that stretch of time.
I believe there was a war on the white man or something. I couldn't get a decent job in the eighties-even with a college degree-to save my life. They wanted women. They wanted minorities. They wanted handicapped female minorities. That was the big three that would get you a job in about 2 seconds. This came from government imposed regulations. Eventually the corporations grew tired of all the regulations and taxes and moved a lot of the good jobs overseas, but the effects of this would not be felt until after the year 2000.
Anyways, I believe I really would have been better off going to horse-something school instead of college, because my Dad started a thoroughbred horse-breeding operation on 40 acres in Lancaster County, PA while I was in college and he had a need for qualified horse people. My education was of no use in that situation.
Horse-shoeing (farrier) school was like a 6 month course somewhere out in Colorado. Horse training was more involved-more like 5 years+ of on the job training, but it would have beat the shit out of college because college turned out to be four wasted years anyway. So instead of getting out of college and buying my dream house out in the country and working with race horses on Daddy's farm, I ended up working for peanuts shuffling papers in my suit and tie out of his insurance office, for 7 lean years until I quit in disgust with nothing to show for the whole effort but a sore ass from sitting all day.
Regarding my dating powers in the eighties, I just thought it would always be like that, forever young, but that's not the way it is of course. My girl-magnet powers faded. The magic stopped. For short men, there's also a smaller window of opportunity, because you're already at a huge disadvantage in the women department merely by being below average in height.
By the time I was 30, I couldn't catch a cold. I think the problem was more economics than physicalities. Plus I believe my limits were self-imposed. I had always had the confidence to approach beautiful women. Before age 30, it's cute to be living in squalor. Don't worry, soon you'll be making money. I mean, you graduated from college, right? Suddenly, I'm 31 and I'm still working for the Beach Patrol, or unemployed. I must not be all that. There went my confidence right out the window. Suddenly, the magic was about as gone as gone gets. Hopefully there's a do-over somewhere along the way. Problem is, sure, I could do it over, but I still wouldn't know what I know now. That's why I'd like to dedicate this to the youth of America. Learn from my mistakes, and benefit............
Past Life Goals:
In my teens; to be rich some day, or at least comfortable......it never dawned on me that I would be less than wealthy by the age of 40. A lot of us (Late Boomers as they called us) just assumed that we would enjoy the same economic opportunities as our parents and grandparents. Our grandparents enjoyed the opportunities of returning from World War II as heroes to a booming economy, and our parents enjoyed the privilege of being born to this group, at the same time avoiding any major wars themselves, due to their own incredible timing (depression-era children).
But then again, it was a much different time in America, the 1960's and early to mid 1970's. I think our optimism then was pretty huge, compared to the economic doldrums of the decades that followed, when a socialist economic philosophy became more dominant.
I had watched my parents-my Dad, and many of my parents friends, build business empires in a relatively short span of time. It wasn't unusual for many of these depression era children to eventually acquire huge homes in upscale suburbs and finish raising 3 or 4 kids by the time they were in their early 40's. Looking back, it was a pretty amazing era, compared to the relatively lukewarm economic climate that followed in the 80's, 90's, and beyond.
I remember in 1966, we had moved from my original home town of Minneapolis to this little country place, near Lancaster, PA. My Dad was in the insurance business. We lived down a dead-end street next to woods and cornfields. I could have lived there forever, I liked it so much. Our neighbor was an ex-Amish man with an eighth grade education. That's about it for the Amish school system. By the late 1980's, he was getting offers from the larger steel companies of 12 to 15 million dollars to sell the business. He went from a garage business to 15 million dollars in a little over 20 years. It was an unbelievable time to own a business in America, so yes, my expectations were high also.
My Dad was no slouch either in business. By the time he was 30 he had moved us out of that working-class shite-hole of a neighborhood we were living at in King of Prussia to a contemporary style A-frame home on Valley Forge Mountain-otherwise known as Mt. Misery, a very nice area at the time, and still is to this day. It was unreal, the opportunities for someone who wasn't afraid to work a little. If you wanted something, you could just get out there and work for it! There was little to stop you.
My Dad was very driven though, to put it mildly. The four year period from the time he showed up as my Stepfather, 1966, until the time we moved to Valley Forge Mountain, 1970, was hell. Sure it was still hell until I left at 18, but hell looks a lot better from upper-Valley Forge Mountain, let me tell you....
Since my age conveniently goes with the year, it's easy to remember how old I was during different periods in my life. Ages 0 to 10-the 1960's, we were broke as a joke. 1966 to 1970 was the worst part, because that's when my Stepfather showed up-he would beat my ass at the drop of a hat, and he was young and strong as hell, from growing up on a farm in Northern Minnesota, out in the boonies, and quick-tempered as a bobcat.
It sucks being poor. How poor were we? I remember getting slapped for ordering clams at Howard Johnson's restaurant in King of Prussia-a real dive. These weren't slaps like you'd see on a television soap opera. These slaps would just about knock me out, and left me with my ears ringing for hours. I remember getting my ass whipped for buying a Hot Wheels car. My Dad came into my room while I was sleeping, saw the toy in my shelf, woke me up, and proceeded to beat the shit out of me, and then threw the car on the floor, and stepped on it. He was absolutely fucking nuts!
The decade of the 70's was better. In mid-1970 Dad moved us out of that early tract neighborhood in the 'burbs to a custom A-frame house-built from scratch-on two acres in the woods, in a much better neighborhood-meaning "rich". How long did that take? Maybe four years of hard work and struggle? I think Dad had worked for five years before he married my starving Mom's ass in Minnesota, so it was 5+4=9 years of selling insurance door to door before we were living up on Valley Forge Mountain. Nine (9) years to climb out of the gutter-that's not bad. How many 30 year-olds do you know these days who went from zero to a huge new house in 9 years (college or no college)?
Oakwood Lane, Valley Forge Mountain 1971
I got to live here until 1978, when I graduated from high school. Then it was off to college, I guess because I was such an academic genius, right? (Not!) While I was away they bought a place with 20 times the property, 80+ acres of prime Pennsylvania Dutch Country, and moved again, back to our old neighborhood, to an even larger house - about 5,000 square feet, plus two barns and a guest house. Yes, my expectations were high after college, but I had another thing coming.
One small corner of the Anderson Estate - 1983 and later
Of course, I had nowhere near the success of my father, despite all that college, which only seemed to hinder me. Ironically, if I had just stuck with wrestling, I am sure I would have at least equaled my father's financial success, but probably not as quickly. The combat sports really became popular in my early to mid-forties, with the advent of mixed martial arts competition. By that time it was too late-I had been out of wrestling for two decades.
I don't know how many times I would be driving around while out of work, especially after George Bush and Barack Obama became president, and I would pass by some martial arts school where the parking lot would be packed. Hadn't I already been doing this shit back when I was 18, before I left for college? Let me see...."Mixed Martial Arts". Isn't that karate combined with wrestling? Exactly. What was I doing in high school? Karate and wrestling. College is such bullshit. What a grand scam on the American public.
Also, unfortunately, looking back, I think my (Step) Father was sabotaging me, or at least indifferent, strange as that may sound. I am convinced of it. He really seemed to enjoy it when things didn't go well for me.
He did do a good thing though, perhaps unintentionally, by making me stick with wrestling in the beginning. Practice was an hour and a half after school every day, and I hated school to begin with. I made the mistake of letting my Dad hear how unhappy I was with it, and he made me stick with it.
Dad liked to see me suffer and be miserable, but I think he never dreamed that I would actually be good at it. I think he was surprised when I made the varsity team that first year, and went on to eventually receive a few scholarship offers by the time I graduated high school. When I stupidly passed up the scholarships, including a full scholarship offer from Drexel University, he didn't say anything. He probably breathed a sigh of relief. It's funny how clear things are, when you're older and looking back on it. I don't know if it was truly sabotage or just indifference.
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| I turned down a wrestling scholarship to Drexel U., #8 above... |
I had a lot of interests, but no one thing ever stood out as my calling, my talent. I was very intuitive about people, but I did not recognize that as a gift at that time. I enjoyed writing. I also had an eye for beauty and art, being able to pick out beauty pageant winners at the start of the show, or the most expensive knife in the case at the sporting goods store, or rock bands that were going to make it big. I always had a camera, taking artsy pictures of everyday objects, or landscape shots.
I also remember having a pretty good record in backyard wrestling matches in my King of Prussia neighborhood with the other kids between the ages of 6-10. In fact, I only lost once in that four year period, to a much larger boy. Again, these were never recognized as talents, never developed, except for wrestling, and that never paid anything, no cash money.
I remember my three main hobbies by the age of twelve in 1972 were magic, wrestling, and karate-Tae Kwon Do to be exact. My parents never encouraged any further interest in any of these endeavors. If it didn't involve college, they just didn't want to hear about it. I also had the good fortune to be surrounded by some great talent; Steve McGovern, who placed 2nd in the state tournament eventually and held a record for dual meet wins, probably to this day, and Mark Cagle, who eventually became an All American at WVU, to name a few notables.
Scholastic wrestling was really wrestling-lite, compared to the real wrestling, where the stuff was actually very dangerous, such as in the early days of pro wrestlers like Billy Robinson and such. Our wrestling was watered down in comparison. Years later the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Mixed Martial Arts would greatly eclipse scholastic wrestling in popularity and financial potential. Of course, we could not predict such trends and take advantage of them at that time.
My parents were surprisingly dedicated wrestling fans in high school, for a while, but they quickly lost interest after my short high school career-probably because my father was so good at earning a living, that everything else seemed irrelevant to them. Plus they had their new adopted kid to keep them busy also, the curse of my existence.......
I think my Dad was, paradoxically, jealous of the attention I was getting in my wrestling exploits, even though he attended the matches. One night after a big match, the car got stuck in the snow going up the driveway. My Dad had me get behind the massive Oldsmobile and push while he gunned the engine. The tires just spun on the icy surface, but the car didn't budge. He gets out and says, "You go out there and you flex your muscles for everybody, and you can't even move the f--ing car out of the snow."(!) Say what? I just stood there in shock.
This would be the case generally, throughout the rest of my experience with my parents. It really is bizarre, looking back on it, how nasty they grew towards me when I tried to become an adult. It's like it was okay when I was a nothing-kid. In fact, they did not even attend my college graduation ceremony, or my graduation some 15 years later from chiropractic school. It really meant nothing to them, these accomplishments of mine. "Yeah Kurt, that's nice, but show me the money." That was their attitude, and they never did change, not one iota.
Anyways, at the age of 18, I was off to college, which was like the Holy Grail in those days. I didn't even have a major, or a plan, nothing. Wrestling remained in the picture, but I only managed a one year scholarship, at WVU for a season, after pissing away most of my eligibility at a smaller, non-scholarship college. Upon graduation, wrestling was abruptly dropped also, due to lack of career options. One of my enterprising teammates opened a "school of wrestling" after graduation, out near Pittsburgh, and he's still running it to this day, as far as I know, so he did a good thing.
These days, there's always ultimate fighting, but the career is short, and hazardous. I think I would have liked to teach it, you know, have my own little school, but it came along a bit too late for me to gain any of the necessary credentials. I am convinced that if they had it back in the day, I would have had a chance to continue my wrestling career in a prosperous manner in my post-graduate years, which would have been a novel experience, as I had never made a dime from the wrestling. As it were, it apparently was all for nothing, the sacrifice and hard work in college and sports, with no payoff whatsoever, as far as I can tell.
College was considered the answer to lasting career prosperity through the 60's and 70's, although it changed to a much less reliable career path since about the early 80's, when affirmative action and the "war on the white male" really began to take hold, and race and gender preferences took precedence over academic accomplishments and other formerly desirable attributes in the hiring process. In fact, the whole country just got really sloppy and lazy, from the mid-1990's onwards, compared to when I was a kid.
My parents career advice went something like this; Go to college, get good grades, graduate,
get a good job, invest in the stock market, max-out your 401(k), cut up your credit cards, and clip
coupons . . . then someday, when you are, oh, 65 years old, you will be rich. That was the attitude although it was nowhere near the formula my Dad had followed in his successful path to relative wealth before the age of 40. Success was okay for my Dad, but I had no business thinking I could be anything but average.
Lesson #2: Don't let other people dictate what you should do with your life. They will very often screw up your entire career with their bullshit plans that will surely send you down the wrong road to the poorhouse.
I think the real plan was never for me to be successful at all. My parents really wanted to see me crawl, for whatever reason. Whenever something bad happened to me, my Dad always said, "let that be a lesson to you", or "there's a lesson to be learned from all this." This continued into my 30's and even my 40's! They seemed to be insulted that I ever wanted to be anything more than a "yardboy".
Is there anything worse than coming home from college, to find this huge country estate and there's another guy working your old job in the yard, the one you used to do before you went unemployed for five years in college and you can't find a decent job and he's employed every day you're there? I never could understand why they pushed the college thing so much if they never wanted me to have any kind of success. Maybe they were smart enough to know that college is not the true road to success. Maybe they were truly insane.
Once in a while, when I dared, I would serve my parents up with the same bold statement regarding lessons learned, after some misfortune had befallen them. I remember they lost a bunch of money in some bad venture and I said, well, there's a lesson to be learned from all this. My Dad just looked at me with that blank stare, like when a buzzard looks at you from the dead branches of an old oak tree.
Lesson #3: College isn't for everybody. Stick with your talents and interests, and don't get railroaded into going to college just because that's somebody else's plan for you. Maybe they're just trying to send you on a wild goose chase. If college is part of the long-term plan, then go with it. Otherwise, don't force it. Stay on the path towards your own prosperity, not blindly following what everybody else is doing.
The Lords of Discipline:
Throughout grade school, there were consequences if we got caught doing something bad. They would paddle us at school, and then when we got home our parents would kick our asses again, for good measure. It certainly isn't like that anymore, that's for sure. The only advantage we had growing up, as far as getting away with stuff, was that the technology wasn't there, to keep tabs on us like they can now, with the computers and the video cameras and, worse yet, gps tracking devices. When I went on a date in the 70's, we were where I said we were.
A lot of my junior high and high school classmates smoked "weed", but I wasn't sure why. The peace signs were gone. Rampant drug use in America was one of the many echoes of our long, drawn-out war in Southeast Asia. I also knew that if I ever got caught smoking the stuff, my parents would have grounded me until I was 50.
After about 2004, not only could the parents monitor their teenagers with a variety of computer software and video camera gadgets, but they could actually stick a gps tracking device on the car, and track you live on a computer screen, so you'd better be where you said you were, poor bastards! My era of growing up was much better in that regard. I used to skip school in the Spring time and go hiking in the park, among many other secret, fairly harmless things I got away with.
My friends got away with stuff that my parents would have murdered me for. Let's try a few; how about one buddy who impregnated 6 different girlfriends over a few years, and got 6 secret abortions, or how about one who regularly hauled a bale of weed from South Florida to drop off in a large city up north for $40,000 a trip. How about the one who made bombs in his basement, just for fun?
I remember around my 18th birthday in the Spring of '78, at a friend's house, they spelled out Happy Birthday in high grade cocaine on a huge mirror, and we shared it among us four boys and girls. I had never tried it before-I thought for sure I was going to have a heart attack. For a sheltered suburban boy, this was all a big deal, but luckily one-time events. Oh yeah, try any of that stuff these days, and they'll track your ass right down.....
I had so much fun after turning 18 and between high school graduation and the first year of college, it made me sorry I had to leave town. I finally got to date a girl I had lusted after entirely through high school. I guess graduation made her ease up a little. After my first year at college, my parents moved and she was long gone. I finally had some really close, and trusted friends. It would be the last time....wherever I've lived since has always sucked. The neighbors are strangers. I have no idea who they are. There's no decent hangouts where I know anybody, or anything going on. It's just "strange faces behind every window pane". I watched the country degenerate over the next couple of decades. It seemed unstoppable......
Life After College:
Regardless, my so-called career was a big nothing after college graduation. I was about as lost as someone can get after college. I should have just moved to Australia, and started from scratch, maybe renting surf boards at the beach. I am sure it would have turned out better than the big waste of time I experienced, trying to break into the job market. What a disaster. Now, after relying on older people's bad advice (sabotage) as a youth, I have spent most of my productive years living a second-rate version of someone else' life.
My experience with older people as a youth was that most of them had wasted their lives, were very jealous of my/our youth, were basically completely miserable, and had hoped for the same fate for me/us too. Can you imagine, being jealous of some kid as a full grown adult? What a bunch of psychos! We had depended on the advice of the depression-era generation, and although some may have meant well, they really gave shitty career advice. I guess they were all stuck in the 1950's or something. They were clueless.
"Find something you like to do, and you'll never work a day in your life." - some wise person.
When you find yourself stuck in the wrong field, the best you can hope to do is become self-employed, which is easier said than done. Then you'll find that it is not doing the work that is difficult, but finding the work that becomes the challenge. When you're self-employed, the job becomes irrelevant, and the work becomes marketing your services effectively. Then, you become a marketer, which is much more exciting than some stupid old job, which usually stands for "just over broke". The exception would be sales. If you can sell, your career troubles are over. Truth be told, very few people can sell. It's a talent, like singing, or painting. It's just not as obvious at the start.
Goals-Continued:
In my twenties-to find a job and an apartment and to get laid, or at least date some available women........I can't believe the lack of job opportunities for myself and many graduates in 1983. The silence was deafening. "Hey, I just pissed away 5 years here", but no one cared. I thought college was the big answer. Where are the jobs? We were too early to have computer skills, and too late to ride the economic wave of the fifties, sixties, and post-war seventies.
It got so bad, I had to go back to work for my Dad, who was still a complete prick in business-mode, and he was always in business mode. Work for my Dad? Well shit, I could've done that without going to college. I would have been 5 years ahead already. I was actually kind of psyched to go back to South Central PA-a real garden spot with idyllic Amish Farms and countryside. But I'd been gone since 1966. Everybody was grown up now, strangers. Also keep in mind, I still had no clue how much of a complete dead-end it would to work for my Father's company. I actually believed that if I worked hard and paid my dues, it would pay off! What a bunch of crap we were fed. I was so clueless.
In regards to the "getting laid" thing, sex was actually fun in the eighties in America. It was good, clean fun. Free love was something left over from the 70's, who got it from the 60's. Casual sex was normal and widespread, so to speak, although an oversupply of this was not exactly one of my big problems. Sex didn't become dirty and risky until about the mid-1990's in America, don't ask me how it began to happen.
To make the dating world in the 80's even more ideal, there was a good balance of single men to single women, so we could take our time finding a wife candidate, unlike after the 90's or so, when everybody and their brother moved here to take part in the seemingly endless economic boom. Predictably, it led to a severe shortage of single women, a seller's market, so to speak. These days (2010) it seems that anything female with a pulse is snapped up by the time they are twelve, and people have kids really young, married or not; way different than the "good ol' days".
Fortunately or unfortunately, most of the single women at that time were looking to have a good time too, and further their careers, rather than settle down. It was all about the money. It seems like all the single women were on the pill. So we had a bunch of screwing around, with no apparent consequences. As a result, there are a huge number of single older people around, who never had kids.
Young people looked good too; the majority were in good shape (kinda' like the current state of the Brazilian beach crowd) and obesity and sloppiness wasn't nearly as widespread as it became in the late 90's and beyond in the United States. I still can't get used to the idea of a 300 lb bride, but now it's "normal". It's the physically fit people that stick out like a sore thumb. More about the wasted decade of the eighties later......
Some flashbacks to even earlier days:
Remembering.............
The 1960's:
This period was part of a general economic growth spurt in the American economy that lasted about four decades. In the 50's and 60's the white man ruled the work force, making money hand over fist, with the wives at home, barefoot and pregnant. This generation would be part of the most prosperous generation in world history, the Baby Boomers. Timing is everything.
Dad was an airline pilot, and they were treated like rock stars at that time. Here he was, great job, new wife, new baby.....
Something definitely went wrong though, because Dad disappeared somewhere between 1960 and '65. I couldn't tell you when. He must have stuck around for at least a year or two, because I have vague memories of the man. Things like watching him from inside the front window, as he walked up to our front door in his pilot's uniform, returning home after a week at work, and me getting all excited. Maybe my mother was holding me up to the window, quite possibly. The excitement must not have lasted too long though, because he apparently was a sick-fuck, according to my Mother's rendition of things. Where other babies would get spanked until they cried, he would spank me after I started crying, until I stopped crying, from lack of air from the pain. This is what my Mother told me. I don't know if it's true, but if it is, he was one sick fucker, per my usual bad luck I suppose......
Other memories have him smoking a cigarette, blowing smoke into his hand, and then pushing the smoke in rings, somehow, out the side of his hand. Another time I remember riding with him in his convertible on a warm summer day, with a brown dog named "Teddy".
The strangest memory, and still very vivid-it must have been when they were separated-Dad had stopped living at home, and he didn't come around much anymore. He picked me up at the house one night, and he had a woman in the car with him. She was a red-haired beauty. It's amazing how even then I was attracted to beautiful women, or had feelings of attraction, although I didn't understand it then, but I remember it just the same, and since then I've always had a thing for red-haired women. Well, he drove around while this girl just kissed me all over my face, and I must have been covered in lipstick, because when he dropped me off at the front door, my Mom took one look at me, and just about fell on the floor. Pretty nasty trick.
After that I did not see him anymore, even though I waited by the window, watching the street, it seemed for hours and days, but he never came home again.
My Mom began dating. I remember feeling uncomfortable about it, but I was just a little boy. I would catch a glimpse of some young man in the next room some weekend morning, and just be completely mystified, "Who is that?" Then the same one kept coming back, hanging around.
5 Years Old.......1965
I remember when my stepfather first appeared on the scene, back in '65. At first I was thrilled to have a new father around. "Isn't this great?" I was an energetic, carefree five year old boy, until my new Dad started spanking me in public whenever I showed any sign of misbehaving, whatever that meant. Then it seemed, it just became a game of humiliation.
Do you want to raise a kid and make sure his future is doomed? Just show up out of the blue one day, and start beating the snot out of him at the age of five whenever he shows any spirit, drive, or curiosity whatsoever.
I remember distinctly, the first time my new "Dad" gave me an ass-whuppin'. We were eating breakfast in Minneapolis at a place called Uncle John's Pancake House. I can't find them on Google search, so they must be long gone. I don't know what I was doing, but my new Daddy stood me up, yanked my pants and underwear down to my ankles in one motion, and proceeded to spank my bare ass right there. I can still hear the slapping sound in my ears, to this very day. The whole restaurant grew silent. You could have heard a pin drop. I think I must have turned red as a beet. Dad #2 was a no-bullshit kind of guy, but I think it was a bullshit thing to do to a kid at that age, especially since he had just shown up on the scene, for Christ's sake.
I also vaguely remember being placed into some kind of pre-school program in the Wayzata area, and I was the shortest boy in the class. Right then and there I should have known that I was going to have a rough life, because the other boys nicknamed me "The Shrimp" the first day of school. When I came home my mother asked, "how was school?" And I said something like, "they said I'm a shrimp", or something close to that. We moved to a number of different school districts for years after that, and I was always getting in fights with some little prick somewhere.
Shortly after Mom married this next guy, he moved us to Pennsylvania, for his new position as a sales manager for the same insurance company out of Minneapolis.
The first place we moved to in PA was actually pretty neat, a little town called Willow Street, in the heart of Amish country. We had an ex-Amish next door neighbor family with a boy my age, and a couple of other brothers and sisters-a very nice family, although they were somewhat spoiled. Truth is, they were the luckiest kids I had ever met, quite a contrast to my situation. Their father ran a little welding shop out of a garage about a mile away, down a country road, which would eventually grow into a 15 million dollar steel fabrication company by the eighties, an amazing story of an ex-Amish, 8th grade dropout, for another time.
Here is a picture of our first PA house:
They had a decent elementary school here, Pequea Elementary. They really had a good spelling and reading program, based on phonics principles. It was probably very advanced for the time period (1965-66). To this day I am a great speller and read everything in site. I do not understand why they do not implement something like this in the inner-city schools.
My relationship with my new Dad improved some here, if I remember correctly. I think the main reason why was that he was never home, being mainly on the road selling insurance all over the state. He took me on some trips with him, agonizing trips where he wouldn't pull over to let me take a leak for miles, and made me sit in the car for hours while he was inside someone's house persuading the poor guy to sign on the dotted line.
While I was there, my parents let me get a little beagle-mix dog, whom I named "Charlie", although he was a she. This dog would survive the next 17 years, and die while I was away at college, breaking my heart at the time.
Unfortunately, Dad decided that he needed to live closer to the Philadelphia office, about an hour and a half closer, and we moved after six months. An hour and a half drive was a lot in those days, before the age of the internet, it was a massive distance. I made some really good friends in our short stay here. It is interesting, what might have been if I had been allowed to grow up in Willow Street.
When your parents move a lot when you're growing up, there are a lot of "what if?" moments left in your past. I know for sure I left my future wife behind in one of these neighborhoods. Nothing beats the closeness of the relationships you establish with other kids when you're young. These days it may not be like that, with the distractions of the internet and technology, but back then, there were very few distractions, relatively speaking.
I remember staring out the rear window of the car as our little house disappeared in the darkness, when Dad drove us out of Willow Street for the last time. I was more depressed than when we left Minnesota, because I was a bit older and more aware of things by that time.
The move was a traumatic experience, to put it mildly. I hated the new neighborhood. The kids were mean. I got in several fistfights, immediately. The people were different than the wholesome country crowd back in Amish-land. It was here that I discovered my talent for wrestling, although it wouldn't be realized fully until some years later.
My parents adapted pretty well though. A lot of the neighbors were also young up-and-comers, and they were always throwing little parties. Eventually we threw some parties too, and I got to meet all the neighbor's kids. That made it a little better, but I was still only 6 years old. Eventually, I made some friends too. Willow Street became a distant memory..............
Here's Mom with some of her buds from that neighborhood, I believe around 1967. My Mom is in front of the door. Cousin Linda from Vermont is on her right. Mrs. Mattioli is to Mom's left. Mrs. McMurray is halfway out of the picture. All these women were in their mid to late-twenties, a great age to be! Even my mother the ex-stewardess looks trim and healthy. She would later eat herself into a relatively unrecognizable form in the 70's, after they adopted a kid in '73. Cousin Linda would develop schizophrenia and die homeless on the streets of Barre, Vermont. The other two are still living somewhere as desperate housewives, as far as I know.
Here's a picture of me in 1969 with two of my friends from this neighborhood, Mark and Chris(left). Mark eventually came down with a form of schizophrenia also, and eventually died from throat cancer this year (2010). Chris (from Pittsburgh) I lost touch with some time ago. Mark had two ridiculously hot sisters I tried to ask out in later years, but they never did give me the time of day. The dog I'm hugging is "Charlie".
Here is a picture of the place in King of Prussia:
630 General Armstrong Road
"Hell House"
I have since deemed this place, "Hell House", because this is where I received the worst beatings in my life, and even got into a car accident while I was living here, in 1969, which left me with nagging back problems for decades afterward. I was also constantly fighting with the neighborhood kids (the standard bunch of dickheads), but you know.....it toughened me up.
Regardless, this house was cursed. Dad was stressed out all the time, and would come home from work in a rage after being gone all week, probably from rejection on sales calls, and God help me if I pissed him off at all. Sometimes, Friday night, I would go hide, usually in the patch of woods behind Chris' house. When I got a bit older-8 or 9-a bunch of us boys would hang out there, sort of a little gang, when we weren't trying to kill each other. I cruised by there three years ago (2008) and that patch of woods was still there. It was even thicker and deeper.
Regardless, this house was cursed. Dad was stressed out all the time, and would come home from work in a rage after being gone all week, probably from rejection on sales calls, and God help me if I pissed him off at all. Sometimes, Friday night, I would go hide, usually in the patch of woods behind Chris' house. When I got a bit older-8 or 9-a bunch of us boys would hang out there, sort of a little gang, when we weren't trying to kill each other. I cruised by there three years ago (2008) and that patch of woods was still there. It was even thicker and deeper.
Dad was working his butt off to be successful in the insurance business during this time period and he was stressed out as hell. He had a hair-trigger temper that could go off any moment.
One time, he was in bed, on a Saturday morning, it looked like he was asleep, and I was standing there talking to Mom about something, and I said something that set him off - I think it was something about being "too lazy to get out of bed" trying to be funny, and quick as lightning he was up and all over me like a cheap suit,with a flurry of punches. I remember standing there in shock after being pummeled and he said, "never call me lazy again." Dad was a fuckin' maniac, trying to sell that insurance.
This would go on through about the year 1970 or so, when we moved to a bigger house, in a nicer neighborhood, and he mellowed out some, thankfully. It's almost like he then said, "Hey, I am a player. I am going to rise above it all....I can do it."
The best part of this shitty neighborhood was Caley Road School, actually a decent experience for me.
Caley Road School, King of Prussia, 1966-70 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grade (?):
I was enrolled into this school, in 1966, which had just been built, and still looks the same today-at least it did a few years ago (2008), when I passed by, in the mid-summer. The kids were a little rougher here than I was used to back in Amish country. I remember the first day, I asked another kid, "where do you live?" He said, "I live up my ass." I didn't ask many questions after that.
The neighborhood was more blue collar, or actually a mix of blue collar-steel workers and such, and young executives just starting out in the corporations that would grow five or ten, or more times their size in the next decade or two, or three, during one of the most prosperous times in history to be in on the ground floor of corporate America.
A lot of these young men achieved the American Dream in grand fashion, many ending up owning huge homes, raising large families and enjoying unheard of prosperity (these days) before they reached the age of fifty. Median family income during the 60's rose by 33% (adjusted for inflation). To give it some perspective, during the boom of the early first decade of the 2000's, family income rose just 1.6%, so yes, it was a good time to be hitting the white-collar workforce in this country. Scores of educated, young males, who did not have to deal with affirmative action, crushing tax rates, millions of illegal immigrants and cheap labor, and countless jobs shipped overseas, watched their incomes rise dramatically during that time, if they just put forth a little effort. They thought they were smart, but most were just lucky. It must have just been awesome to have work and to get paid, well, unlike the current economic climate in the economic decline since that time.
I experienced my first crush at Caley Road School, on a cute girl in my music class. I remember her first name was "Jeanne". She had these dorky thick-framed glasses, and brown hair tied back in a pony tail. Anyways, we were in music class, and the teacher gave us an assignment to sing something, maybe our favorite song. We had a week to prepare.
The next week, I think I sang a forgettable version of something like "Light My Fire" by The Doors. Well, Jeanne took her glasses off, and then let her hair down, and her hair just kind of flowed around her face, to me it looked like it was in slow motion for a second or two, like a movie or something. She got up, strolled over to the front of the class, and started singing in this tender little voice, and she looked just great. I sat there staring, transfixed, and I was like, "wow!" I never looked at girls the same after that. She sang, "Leaving on a Jet Plane", by Peter, Paul, and Mary, a song John Denver wrote for the soldiers being shipped out regularly to Vietnam. Vocalist Mary Travers just died of cancer (Oct, 2009). Here she is:
1966-70, Favorite Cartoon(s)/Shows: Speed Racer, Ultraman, Gilligan's Island, Batman, Beverly Hillbillies, Get Smart, Spiderman.
I also remember falling asleep while sitting upright on the couch in the basement here in July of '69, next to my Mom, with the Apollo 11 moon landing happening on the TV. She kept jolting me awake, but I ultimately couldn't stay awake for the big event. I've always needed my sleep.
Anyways, by 1970 - thank God - we eventually moved out of that dump, and into this huge, to me anyways, A-frame custom home on Valley Forge Mountain. It only took Dad 4 years to get us out of "the neighborhood." These days it would take ten times that long, if ever. What a great time to be alive in America. Anything was possible, and it didn't even take that long.
Plus, Dad was in the insurance business, which is the perfect business, if you can sell. In this kind of a business, stuff you sold years ago still pays you a monthly income, as long as they still own the policy. The longer you work, the more money you make and the easier your life gets, and you're not begging some boss for a raise either. Reference: The Invisible Bankers.
Looking back, Dad was a friggin' genius, a genius at marketing insurance anyways. How a backwoods country bumpkin from Northern Minnesota knew all this is a mystery to me. I guess you're born with these gifts. Or else it was a family secret handed down through the generations of bankers in his family. He knew exactly which move to make next. There were no mistakes. He was going to be a moneymaker, period. He seemed to know how to establish a niche within a niche. His niche was insurance. His niche within a niche was making disability insurance available to certain groups and then tailoring the marketing to fit each of those separate groups.
A key part of the marketing was making it appear that the insurance was part of the exclusive access to their given benefits. Benefits are a huge motivator for certain groups, like teachers or nurses, and there's usually a union involved, so they had to be adept at getting in good with the union heads.
The last part of the puzzle was the ability to make the sale using some kind of automatic payroll deduction system. This way the prospect didn't have to cough up the initial insurance premium to commit, they just had to sign a few forms and the insurance premium would be automatically deducted starting with their next paycheck. They were used to that; they were used to having deductions from their paycheck for things like taxes and miscellaneous stuff. They would forget about it, and Dad's income grew like a weed, on autopilot.
For example, he had mailing lists and custom postcard mailers tailored to Nurses Groups in Denver, or Postal Workers in Norfolk, or Pipefitters in the Philadelphia Navy Yard, in which case he would approach the union heads and offer special benefits and perks. The postcards would read something like Disability Benefits Especially for the Denver Nurse's Group-Expires December 30, or something close to that. There was always an expiration date. Better do it now, or you could really miss out.
He was always mailing postcards all over the place, thousands every month. I know because I used to have to stick addresses and stamps on these things in his dingy little office in Norristown in the early days. He would get a small percentage back in the mail showing interest, and these were sold as leads to insurance agents all over the U.S. In turn, he would get a cut of each and every sale, not only when the sale was made, but every year when the policy would renew. After 10 and 20 years, the income was huge, and it was on automatic pilot. It was fuckin' beautiful.
The 1970's:
The first three years of the 70's were among the best years of my life. We were in this big Swiss-style house with huge glass windows with a view of nothing but woods. They called it a Contemporary. These homes were distinguished by the presence of shag carpeting, simulated wood wall paneling and huge glass windows. No neighbors were there to eyeball every move we made. It was very private. I had my own room with the popular wood paneling. I wasn't getting "whupped" anymore, or at least as often. Valley Forge Park was a short hike away, and boy did I take advantage of it.
We did have a prowler one night, shortly after moving in. Some maniac parked his car on Paul Lemon Drive, came through the dark woods and climbed up onto our balcony. He then proceeded to stand in front of the sliding glass doors to my room, and peer in at me, as I lay there sleeping. My Mom, who had ears like a deer into her old age, heard something, awakened and opened the door to my room to see this dark outline pressed against the sliding glass door. The scream was deafening. To this day, I am convinced that this was the older "hippie" brother of one of my high school friends and a neighbor. This older guy was a real party animal and kind of a crazy biker-type who was really into the drug scene.
That's the night I got to meet the local policeman, Tom Marciano, ex-boxing champ and relative of the famous Rocky. What a character! A real nice guy, though who subsequently became a close friend of the family. He checked the area, but Mr. Prowler was long gone. Footprints the next morning showed that the creeper had actually jumped off the balcony and hit the ground running, at a drop of around 12 feet.
Tom recommended that we buy a gun, as Mom was here by herself a lot, with Dad traveling all over the place. They got a Unique Arms .22 automatic, which I got to practice with also, by the age of 12, spurring my lifelong interest in guns and shooting.
Everything was great until sometime in 1973 when, after unsuccessfully trying to have another child, my parents decided to adopt. This was the pivotal moment in my lifetime that determined my entire future, for I am convinced that if my Mother could have conceived a half-brother for us and they had not had to adopt the outsider, I would have benefitted from my stepfather's great success in business.
Actually, my mother told me that I have at least 7 dead brothers and sisters who never made it to term. I'm the only survivor. Maybe I will meet them in heaven. I think people who grow up with brothers and sisters have a huge advantage later in life. It's like comparing zoo animals to animals in the wild. The zoo animals know they're going to be fed and develop almost no survival skills, where the wild animals grow up with a keen sense of survival. Being an only child, I lacked people and survival skills, to put it mildly.
My parents, who were just now (1973) starting to reap the rewards of all their hard work with only myself as benefactor went out and adopted a baby boy, from Wyoming I believe.
At first, I was excited, back in '73, but after I figured out the new kid didn't even like me, and was very jealous of my presence, I wanted to send him back, like we had got him at Sears or something. Thirteen years younger, he would never warm up to me.
The lawyers made a mistake and left the birth mother's name on some paperwork, which I discovered in a drawer thirty-some years later, so I learned the mother's name, not that it would have done me any good. It was probably too late to request that she take him back. Plus, my entire life was fucked by then anyway.
Actually, it wasn't the fact that the kid was jealous of me that made me want to get rid of him, it was the fact that he was so obviously interested in how much money Dad had and very early on, that was alarming. I mean, he knew more about Dad's money than I did, by far.
 |
| April '73: Mom with her new bundle of joy...."Leif." I was relegated to my parent's shit-list from that point on. How much of an asshole did Leif grow up to be? Years later, after I gave his kid a car, Leif called me up to complain that the radio didn't work. That's how much of an asshole....... |
To top it off, he immediately became the favorite son, and he turned out to be there every day for the rest of my parent's lives, mainly because they had so much money that he never had to leave home or go anywhere because they just hired him as the "yard guy" when he reached adulthood, so this would be the last time I would get to see my parents without his presence, ever. In fact, my nickname for him eventually became "the Ever-Present One".
So the deck had been stacked against me from the start of this entire bizarre experience. Even my own mother much favored the new boy, even more so as he grew older. "Mom! Traitorous traitor!" I know I was being punished somehow, for the sins of her first husband, that mistake she had made as a young woman that ended in divorce. "Okay, blame me, because I look just like the guy?"
This is a prime example of how having money doesn't actually solve problems. You simply exchange one set of problems for another. If my Father hadn't been so successful in business, they wouldn't have been able to afford to just go out and buy another kid, effectively ruining what was left of my time with my parents as a result. The money was actually detrimental to my entire relationship with my parents, resulting in almost no attention to my career development. I don't think the timing could have been worse for the arrival of the new kid. He made out great, naturally.
In later years, I convinced myself that my father had been secretly gay, although I had no proof of such. It sure made everything else that had transpired make a lot more sense. It was darker than that though. If he was gay, he was psycho-gay at the very least. He had a huge chip on his shoulder like he was getting revenge on someone. He seemed driven by hatred....of something or somebody, which became directed at me almost immediately when he showed up. I certainly was not a bad kid, which would have meant certain death I am sure.
I did some research on his brothers and they all seemed to suffer from emotional problems later in life. The eldest one committed suicide....hung himself in the garage, leaving behind his young wife and two kids. It's my guess that all these boys had been sexually molested at a young age, at the isolated farm where they were raised, by an uncle or some older twisted person. We'll never know for sure, but something caused these boys to grow up crazy.
There is a vague mention in the genealogy archives of an uncle on the property that nobody speaks of.....never-married with a simple grave with just his name on it. I paid the price, though, for these earlier sins; bare-assed spankings and humiliated in public, the horrible marriage, screaming, violent arguments, miserable wife. It was just a cover-marriage(?). Resentful and wicked when I brought girls home. Never on my side. Young boys hanging around the yard all the time in later years. No apparent interest in beautiful women that ever happened to pass by us in the public setting. I mean, not even a flicker of interest. Uh huh. Something was fucked up somewhere.
The scenario in my mind goes like this if I were to rebuild the last half century of this guy's life: Isolated farmhouse. Three young brothers. Some older relative starts molesting these boys at a young age, switching to the next youngest child when he grows bored with the older one. It ends and the boys all leave home, confused about their sexuality. One never gets over the abuse and kills himself. The other one, my stepfather, acquires a ready-made family, my divorced mother and her son (me) to show the world that he's a normal family man in order to be successful in business at the time. End of story.
This is unforgivable in my book. It's like when you hire a lawyer. Personal feelings are tossed aside. You hire a professional to do a job. He signed up to be my father, not some bringer of vengeance.
Reality sucks sometimes, absolutely and this is one example. I've actually never heard of anyone else having this happen, but then again, not everyone is a pain-in-the-ass writer of every detail of his life like I am.
At least, I didn't have to be there to see the preferential treatment of the adopted one, although I tried to come back after college, to fit back into the family a number of times through my adult years, probably due to the lack of opportunity that presented itself consistently after my college experience.
This kid hated me, though. I could feel it. He was so thrilled when they sent me off to college. When I graduated I came back home to find him firmly ensconced in the family business and I was definitely out. They never did let me back into the mix. This was my reward for trusting my parent's advice, a lifelong cycle of poverty.
Everything my stepbrother did was looked upon as good-manual things like yard work and carpentry. Everything I had to offer was looked upon as crap-"did they teach ya' how to build a barn at that college of yours?" All the sudden it was "that college of yours", like I wasn't totally forced to go and it was my choice? I don't think so.
College degree? Big deal. Did not matter. Everything had completely shifted to the "yard-guy" and I was screwed, because I couldn't find a decent job on my wrestling and general business education. In fact, my entire generation and for about a decade after was pretty screwed career wise until the tech boom came along, unless they had family money, connections or both.
The 1980's continued:
I can't believe what a bad idea college was. I never recovered from it. In fact, by the time I graduated from college, my non-college going peers, who had started working after high school in the trades mostly, had 5 and 6 year-old kids already, and were about $100k ahead in earnings, with equity in their homes, and I had yet to go on my first job interview. I think the liberals took over the colleges by that point anyway, and the liberal view is oriented more toward socialism than capitalism and making real money.
Even though there were no jobs upon my graduation-there was a recession at the time, in the early 80's, I managed to obtain a position with my father's insurance company in 1983, supposedly selling insurance. Problem was, there was no base salary, and the senior salesmen I was working with certainly didn't want me taking over their lucrative territories. So this "job" pretty much involved me riding around with successful 50-something salesmen, while they did anything but help me learn the insurance game. We went to the mall, to sports bars, arcades, wherever. Of course, I starved, and learned next to nothing, except how to curse really well.
I was very surprised that my Dad would push the college thing so completely upon me, and then basically have no plans for me in the family business, once I graduated. Remember, this was back when a college degree still meant something, and it was 4 years of fairly hard work, especially for a jock-brain like me.
I do remember though, my Dad was the kind of guy that would go out and buy a Ferrari, and then use it to haul manure.
Of course, it was a mistake to go to work in the family business. But this was no ordinary family business. This involved a lot of fucked up psychological scenarios. There was the adopted brother, which turned my mother into a maniac, trying to prove to my Dad that she could be a good mother, from the guilt of not being able to give him a blood child. So she treated The Chosen One about ten times better than she ever treated me, and when he started having kids, even out of wedlock, forget it, he was gold from that point on.
I sure wish I had known what was going on. I would have gladly knocked up one of my high school girlfriends and got a jump on this little game. My parents had always said, "don't you go getting some girl pregnant". What they were really saying was, "please get a girl pregnant to give your mother something to do and because we're loaded and if you don't make a child we're basically going to treat you like shit at family get-togethers the rest of your life, especially when you're adopted brother is there with his brood because you didn't give us a grandkid." Damn! Damn! Damn!
Then there was the fact that I was descended from another father, the first guy who had schtupped my Mom and gave her a baby, something my current Dad never did accomplish, so they were probably slightly fucked up over that. I am absolutely sure I would have been way better off if I had been fully adopted, rather than with a Step-Dad and blood-Mother. I think most adopted children have it pretty well made, compared to the native born saps that are already there.
So I became the evidence that my Mom had made either a good or bad decision; If I did well, it made my Mom and Step-Dad look bad, and Father #1 look good. If I did shitty in life, it affirmed that my Mom had made a good decision when she had split with Dad #1, and married Dad #2, because I was a reflection of Dad #1 in their eyes. So it was in everybody's best interest, that I be a complete and utter fuck-up. (This is amateur psychology at best, merely my take on things. I have no facts to back this up).
Point: If you end up with a Stepfather, count your lucky stars that somebody showed up to support your Mom's ass, then get out of there as soon as you turn 18. Don't keep hanging around and try to come back home, like I did. You'll just fuck-up your entire life.
Let me revise that: If your stepfather manages to impregnate your mom, and give you a half-brother or sister, it will probably neutralize all that, and you'll be okay. However, if your Mother fails to give your Step-Dad another kid, and they go out and adopt a replacement, forget it. You're about 99 and 44/100% fucked. If your Stepfather's wealthy, it's even worse, because they don't share the wealth. They'll just rub your nose in their high lifestyle and when you drop by you just get to see the adopted kids living high on the hog while you get to go back to your tiny apartment.
Other People's Weddings:
I do remember weddings in the 80's were the best of times for my romantic life. I had amazing luck with the bridesmaids, not like after the age of 40 or so, when weddings became just boring again. Remember, I was a high school loser with the ladies, so this was a big deal for me. I must have attended eight or nine weddings through the decade. I guess I looked good at that time, or it was just the gift of youth, but I remember hooking up with the best-looking women.......in fact, I think it ruined me.
One time ended I up with a bridesmaid, at a wedding in Linwood, NJ, and somehow I lost her panties in the bushes behind the bride's parent's house, during the reception! I remember I sent her upstairs first, and then 5 minutes later I strolled in. I went to the fridge to grab another beer, and this girl's Mom came up to me and says, "that was fast". "Excuse me?", I said, shocked. She said, "Your beer, you drank it awful fast", as I stood there, having a heart-attack.
Point: Enjoy your youth. It doesn't get any better than this, unless you become a pro athlete.
The Family Business:
After two more years of going nowhere in the family business, I asked Dad for something else. He said something like, "you're just not a salesman", and stuck me in the back office, basically stuffing envelopes. Gosh, I didn't even have a window, sitting there in that stupid suit and tie all day, shuffling papers, the big-shot college graduate. What a fucking complete and utter waste of time.
Unfortunately my goal of getting an apartment and getting laid never did materialize, because I was paid like a pauper through the entire 80's . I really thought it was a dues-paying process, that it would get better.
By the time I realized what was going on, it was the 90's and nobody was getting laid anymore, not like it was in the 70's and 80's, when I was a young man. I think this made my Dad happy, because he seemed very jealous of my youth anyway, or anything good that happened as a result of such. (see above) The worst thing I could have done, in his eyes, was to make money and have fun. I think he was quite resentful. It's a shame I did not know what was going on at the time.
I could have avoided all this, just by taking the Drexel scholarship after high school, but I turned it down for some unknown reason. I was an 18 year-old moron. Regardless, I will always know that I did my best to fit into the family business.
The 1990's:
Up through the time period of the 80's, it seemed like everyone was educated, good-looking, sane, and relatively disease-free. I don't know what happened when the eighties ended. It became a different country. Aids showed up. It wasn't fun anymore. In society, everything seemed to become a burden, and people lost their sense of humor. It seems like it really picked up speed after Bill Clinton showed up. I think Bill stirred up a lot of racism and unhappiness with his policies, a lot of which still lingers in society today (2010).
The economy did hum along nicely though, under Bill. Unfortunately, I did not benefit from the mid to late 90's boom-times, due to my stupidly returning to college for a chiropractic degree, a move which was the final nail in the coffin, career-wise, not to mention a disaster financially. I think this would have been a brilliant move, if I had done it 15 years earlier. As it were, it utterly ruined my life, simply due to the huge student loan debt accumulated.
It didn't have to be this way. I had asked my Dad to help me in several business start-ups before this point. My favorite idea had been to buy an old tire supply warehouse in Willow Street, PA, my old neighborhood from my youth in the mid 1960's. The early 90's recession had resulted in this local tire company going out of business, and there it sat, a warehouse-sized building for sale. It was on the main drag of this little country town that was on the edge of the endless urban sprawl that is America. I wanted to open a gym there.
It would have been great, even if it barely survived. I could have done something enjoyable for once and lived in a cornfield for cheap somewhere south of town. I could have lived near my parents and had them over for Thanksgiving. I could have enjoyed my youth. I could have kept my friends in Philadelphia and had something resembling a social life. I could have had a place to bring girls home to for once, without my parents looking over my shoulder. But it was not to be. My Dad laughed at my little business idea like it was a joke.
Chiropractic college was a disaster for me because, not only was it no fun whatsoever, and 4 years long, but it still did not lead to a professional income. So there I was, finally out of school again in 1998, saddled with $114,000 in student loans with interest that compounded daily, 38 years old and nowhere to go.
Well, at the time I thought I did have somewhere to go. "I'll go back home now, to The Farm. Surely my parents will have some respect for me now. I mean, I am a doctor now....sort of." Nothing could have been further from the truth however. I left my comfortable apartment in San Francisco, with the cool and comfortable weather and bike trails galore and the Golden Gate Bridge......and went back to Pennsylvania, even though I hadn't even been invited. Looking back, it was such a stupid move.....
Point: If you're over 30, definitely do not go back to college, unless it's for two years or less, or you're wealthy already, and you can pay cash. If college did not pay off the first time, chances are it was a mistake then too. Two mistakes do not equal a correct move.
The Baby Boom Generation:
Another problem was my timing. Our generation followed the huge baby-boom generation, who had soaked up all the good opportunities generally, by that time, and then either shipped the jobs overseas to line their pockets, or imposed affirmative action on us and the war on white men. So I could not exactly go out and find another great job. I just had to sit there and take the abuse, as broke as I was.
It wasn't like the WWII generation, whose men returned home to benefit from the shortage of men and a surplus of women, career opportunities and a booming economy. It must have been unbelievable, to be starting at this time.
My parent's generation, meaning the children of the World War II Generation, the early group, before the hippie generation, had incredible timing. Too late for WWII or Korea, and too early for Vietnam, they benefited from steady economic boom-times. Everything was handed to them. Their timing was even better than their parents. They had the chance to really build something, and that they did.
So the era of American greed produced two groups that would realize unprecedented freedom and prosperity, and it probably would not be this good again, for a very long time, if ever. They were just in time for my generation to show up and get the benefits, or more often, the scraps that were left over.
Point: Don't depend on the generations ahead of you to help you out career-wise, or give you good advice. They are usually so busy building their own bank accounts, that you will not even be a factor.
Just look at all the 70-something politicians and college football coaches who won't step aside and give the next generation a chance. Often they are finally just dropping dead on the job, rather than retire. These children of the Greatest Generation should be known as the Greatest Me Generation.
I remember several instances when I was younger, and talking with aged members of that World War II generation, and they often admitted that they had shamelessly spoiled their children, our parents, because they themselves had gone through such hard times.
Regardless of the reason, it was then that I first learned that you can work really hard and make sacrifices, and often there can be no payoff, or things can actually get worse, through no fault of your own. Well, it is your fault if you trust the wrong people, but young people are naive.
Final Point:
Brown-nosers get ahead. Well, it seems that way anyway. I don't know, maybe it should read, "Brown-nosers get ahead when they kiss the butts of sociopaths, who get rich because they have no conscience." I've met sociopaths and they screw people over and then sleep like a baby. It's quite shocking to someone that has a conscience. It's even more amazing to see many of them profit so well from it and then come to the realization that, the people with "normal" emotions are the ones living a fantasy, that people are basically no good and the bad guys usually win, not like on TV.
I was taught the opposite growing up, an incessant reminder. Moms, dads, aunts, uncles, grandparents — no grown-up missed an opportunity to hammer it home. Maybe this was true for the World War II generation. The good guys did win that one, or so they keep telling us......
If I had dared question these things as a kid I might have wondered, "Gee, if this maxim is so self-evident, why do you folks feel so obliged to keep reminding me?"
Now I know.
As the naiveté of childhood began to wear off, I noticed that cheaters occasionally prospered. Then I realized they often prospered. And by the time I was a full-grown man I came to appreciate the complete upside-down-ism of our forebears’ totally misleading advice.
Cheaters, I learned, always prospered, except maybe for a few Bernie Madoffs, but he just had a bad ending. It was too late for me. I was a complete straight shooter. My Dad had beat it into me, and I was doomed to walk the straight and narrow, probably forever.
Part 2
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