Chapter 1

I was born in the early fifties, when poodle skirts were in, Raquel Welch was a real babe, and all the pretty girls had hips and tits, by God! The great war was over and the boom was on. It was the age of the S&H green stamps that you pasted into books. I remember that they came in cartons of Lucky Strikes, Chesterfields and Camels. The grocery store featured Folger’s and Chase & Sanborn coffee. Everybody drank coffee. Butcher shops were everywhere. Bakeries were everywhere. Little mom & pop drug stores were everywhere. The Eisenhower interstate highway system bill had been passed and roads wider than had ever been seen before were being laid down--in concrete! The drawback was that there was goddamned road construction everywhere.

Benny Goodman was the favorite of our parents’ generation. Country was King and the crooners were fast coming up behind. The rat pack was out there wowin’ the babes and taking Vegas by storm. It was the era of Burl Ives, Doris Day, Harry Belafonte and Nat King Cole. Marvellous stuff.

Comics were three cents or five cents, I forget which. It damned near put me off my feed when they went up to twelve cents! Gas was thirty-two to fourty-seven cents a gallon in the early sixties. All this sets the scene for the childhood of a reprehensible little bastard named Tony French. That’s me.

I was raised Catholic, along with my younger brother and sister. Our grandma and grandpa lived with us. We couldn’t get away with a damned thing in that house. Grandma had this little six foot bullwhip with knots in the end. It didn’t take much for her to lay into you, let me tell you. She was a mean woman. Mean.

We were raised Catholic, with the big ‘C’. Jesus loves you, God’s gonna judge you and reap your soul, the Holy Ghost watches you masturbate and you’re going to Hell. Yeah, like that. I went through CCD, Confirmation--all that crap. Mom made us go. There weren’t any promises made for after that, and I didn’t let the church door hit me on the ass on the way out.

Anyway, I worked from the time I could hold down a job. I had a mission. I wanted a car, then an apartment, then a house. I never let a chance to make money slip through my fingers. While I was in High School I shovelled sidewalks and driveways, delivered newspapers and cleaned windows. I raked leaves. I mowed yards. When I was sixteen and got my license I bought a clapped-out wreck of a Chevy pickup. I delivered bundles of newspapers, firewood, groceries and every other thing I could think of.

Dad was a Union man, and not all there since coming back from the war. He slept with his china teeth in because he thought that they might not be able to get them into his mouth after he died and he wanted to look good for Saint Peter. I desperately needed to get out of that house. It was a pot just a flash from boiling over and I didn’t want it to take me down with it.

I was driving around after school one day when I spotted it. It was a used book-mobile. The library district was dumping their bookmobiles because of the insurance liability. It was eating them alive. I saw one that was built on a Bluebird bus frame. It had eighty-some thousand miles on it, which was nothing for a school bus, and bookmobiles aren’t driven very hard. It was just old. I did my thing and wandered in like I didn’t have a care in the world. I offered them twelve hundred for it. I walked out with the title! They were so anxious to get it off their hands that I probably could have gotten it for five hundred, dammit!

I’d taken auto shop I and II in school, and gone on to take the III and IV-level courses at the county vocational training center. I could do any drive train work, electrical work or body work, most suspension work and I squeaked by with a little frame repair and upholstery. I knew that I had my work cut out for me to get that thing into shape. We had a huge back yard. I parked it next to the back fence and gave it a detailed examination. The power train needed a full dissassembly and reassembly, the running gear needed a thorough inspection and the electrical system needed a complete rebuilding with new insulation. I bought a good random orbital sander and a few big packs of wet paper. That garish paint job had to come off, and it had to be repainted before winter to keep the shell from rusting. It definitely needed new tires and fluids. I moved that thing to one end of the property and poured a ten foot by sixteen foot slab to work on. I needed something to keep a rolling jack from sinking into the ground under load.

The old man yammered away like a chihuaua with a cob up its ass. He finally asked/yelled at me, “What the hell did you buy that damned wreck for, anyway?” I snapped back “To get the hell away from you before I punch you into your casket, dammit!” He backed off, chewing on his teeth like he always did. I remember watching the muscles of his cheeks bunch and relax, bunch and relax. “Yep. That’ll do it.” He patted my shoulder. “I didn’t get along with my old man for shit either.” He turned and walked away. He shut up! From then on he actually gave me sensible advice on how to proceed. He’d been quite the jack-leg mechanic back in the day, but they’d used hickory axles and chain drives on the gravel trucks when he was in his twenties!

I tore down the differential and the rear bearings. After re-packing the bearings and replacing the brakes it was fine. The tolerances on the differential were within spec. Just for the hell of it I repacked the universal joints as well. Those little needle bearings weren’t worth recovering so I replaced ‘em all. It’s damned touchy work using a hammer and a piece of scrap wood to reassemble a universal joint. I flat out replaced the standard transmission with one from a school bus that had been rear-ended. It had died with less than twenty thousand miles on the odometer.

When I went to the junkyard to pick it up I about creamed my britches. There they were--four camping trailers that had been on a delivery van to their sales lot when the driver got caught in a twelve-car pileup down south a ways. They’d been there for a couple months and were taking up valuable space so I offered two hundred for all of ‘em. I got ‘em too! I drove each one home at about twenty-five miles an hour as the axles had taken hits and the wheels quivered. I had my interior furnishings, kitchen, heater, bathroom facilities, black water tank, fresh water tank and appliances! I even had propane tanks! I sold the carcasses to an RV dealer for more than what I bought them for.

I was gearing up to rebuild that engine when I had an idea. I remembered that low-mileage bus that I’d taken the tranny out of. Why not swap engines too? After all, I knew that the engine would fit the transmission--that’s where it came from! I borrowed a tow truck and got busy. About a week later I turned the key and watched my new drive train do its thing. Brilliant! I got all the old book shelves torn out from its bookmobile days. I peeled off the interior walls to replace the insulation. I screwed in new sheet metal for the walls and got the appliances moved in but not hooked up. A coat of white primer on the body got it ready to close down for the season. I had to concentrate on work and making money for a while. I did nothing but work and think about floor plans, water stacks, black water flow, tank placement and kitchen layouts for four months, from snow in around Thanksgiving to St. Patrick’s Day when it started to green up again.

Propane-fired refrigerators and freezers had just come on the market, and I’d lucked into some in my salvage. First I framed the interior walls, then I ran the plumbing and electrical. Twelve volt mains made sense because the only thing that needed 112 volts was the air conditioner. It was huge, and hung off the rear of the bus on a reinforced shelf, along with the propane tanks. Installing compression fittings and flaring the pipe was easy. I quickly picked up how to sweat pipe joints for tees and valves while using an asbestos pad to keep from setting the place on fire. The heater needed 12 volts for the thermostat and fan. The lights all over the living quarters were 12 volts. All the voids were packed with pink fiberglass then I stapled visqueen over everything. Finally I was ready for the panelling. That went up easy.

I put a trucker’s air-glide seat in place of the original driver’s hard bench. They’re much more comfortable. I had the whole thing painted silver-grey with blue-grey highlights. Dad even said it looked like a million bucks once it was finished. I didn’t tell him that it assessed at 300,000 dollars and insured for that. I’d moved my stuff out of the house and was sleeping in the camper, running off an extension cord and a garden hose. I was buying canned goods, paper towels and cleaning supplies for the thing as I could afford it. Dad gave me a sawed-off twelve-gauge and taught me about cut loads. If you cut the case most of the way around just at the hollow part of the plastic wadding that holds the shot, it’ll all hold together and not disperse until it hits something. That old shotgun looked a little funny with front and rear sights but there it was. It sat in a holster just above the gas pedal. That old bus had ‘vane’ windows--you don’t see ‘em much anymore. They’re triangle-shaped and you can turn them to pull lots of air into the cab once you get going. They make dandy firing points. They also made cars and trucks easier to break into! Busses, not so much because they were so high up the body and the door was too far away to mess with the door lock from those itty bitty vanes. They were designed to be too small to get an arm through.

There was a queen bed in back and a lot of drawer space. A little closet was put in for hanging things like coats. A deep couch turned into a bed when the back cushions were removed. The bathroom floor was sealed with hand-laid fiberglass and had a drain in the middle of the floor. It didn’t go to the black water tank, it fed to a Y-diverter that ran outside but could be sent to the black water tank. I installed a siphon and pump to fill the hot water tank that was mounted up high for a gravity-fed shower and for washing dishes. I installed a little 12-volt heater in the tank with a thermostat to shut it off at 130. I purely despised cold showers and that was my solution. There were little 12-volt fans everywhere to lessen the demand on the air conditioner and to make the heater more efficient. Two of them were also was set up to suck the hot air out of the kitchen as well as the stinky or humid air out of the johnny and purge it outside.

It was late spring and I was about to stretch my legs. I’d really put on some muscle while rebuilding that bus and I’d grown into my height. I was ready for some time on the road and had no problem handling that steering wheel or the standard transmission. My little brother and sister begged to go with me until the blood came from their eyes. After an OK from the parents we headed for Louisville and the Kentucky Derby.

I rented a spot on Jockey’s row before leaving home and pulled in four days before the race. We had a grass pad, water and electric. If we wanted to dump the black water we had to go to a central station. I dug a hole in the sandy soil just below the grey water outlet. We made friends with a lot of the jockeys and the handlers. We volunteered to help exercise the horses. My sister about wet herself. I had to admit, the horses were beautiful and athletic. Most of them were pretty high strung, though. I bet five hundred bucks on the most grounded of them. I gave him a double handful of cracked corn before the race and told him “You just do what you gotta do. You win this and you’ll be dickin’ mares until you fall over dead.” He stomped a little and looked like he was about to bear down. The trainer was about to give me hell until the jockey said “Don’t bother. If he understood that nobody’s gonna pass us!”

Well, Dust Commander won handily and I cleaned up at the window. I shook the jockey’s hand and gave the horse another double handful of corn. “I hope your dick holds out.” He looked like he was ready to do it all over again!

My brother about pissed himself when he saw what I won. The bet paid off at 15.3 to one. My sister Helen--well, after the put her up on the saddle for a lap around the course I wouldn’t need headlights to see by on the way home. Her teeth would guide the way.

Before we left town we had a problem. An idiot in a brand new Lincoln Continental slammed into my beautiful camper at nearly eighty miles an hour while we were at a dead stop waiting for a light to change. After all the crashing and grinding was over all I could hear was his braying laugh. I saw nothing but red. I kind of remember kicking out the emergency window and walking over to his Lincoln. He stopped laughing after I punched my fist through his side window, grabbed his throat and dragged him back out onto the asphalt where I proceeded to bounce his head off the ground with great persistence and a desire for retribution. “BAMF. You fucked up my ride. BAMF. My third of a million dollar ride. BAMF. You could have hurt my brother and sister. BAMF. You can’t hide from me. BAMF. You won’t outlive me. BAMF. I’m gonna kill you slow motherfucker. BAMF. BAMF. BAMF. BAMF.” People were doing their best to pry my fingers off of his throat. I responded by squeezing harder. I heard the most amazing pops and squelches as the cartilage began to collapse. I became aware of two fists pounding on my shoulder. “NO! NO NO NO! He can’t pay you back if he’s dead, dammit!” I relaxed to find Helen, my sister, at my shoulder. I wrapped her up in a hug so tight she wheezed and whacked me again to get some air. I turned and looked at the idiot on the ground. “This is my sister. If she’s hurt because of your foolishness I will hang you upside down then take a tree saw and start at your crotch. If I get through your hips you didn’t talk fast enough.” The young rake fainted.

I looked up at the news cameras around us. “Get me a lawyer. I want this drunk motherfucker in jail. I want every penny he ever made and every penny his family owns. If he ever drives again I promise before God to cut his hands off.” It went out live at the end of the Kentucky Derby coverage and made the syndicated news that night. I had lawyers climbing my socks to get in on the action.

Young Steven Bullitt had hosted his last party. After the damages and penalties were counted his family committed him to a mental institution for the terminally debauched. Of course, it wasn’t actually called that but if smoke is in the air then there’s a fire somewhere.

The three French’s enjoyed an up-scale hotel while the camper was rebuilt. Another three million dollars were added to Tony’s account directly from the legal judgement. He was also paid a hundred thousand for a television interview featuring the pounding of young Mr. Bullitt’s head into the pavement, and Tony’s monologue while he did it. It certainly pounded the last nail into the ‘Great Gatsby’ mindset and poisoned the waters against the Kennedy’s drunken escapades a few years later.

After a thorough inspection by a knowledgeable eye Tony signed off on the rebuild job. It had taken almost two months to get everything back into shape. They filled up the fuel tank and headed back home. They arrived without any further problems.

After Tony handed his brother and sister off to his parents he paid off his parents’ home loan. He sat down one morning for coffee and pastry with his mom and she had her say. “When I saw you on national TV beating that boy like a drum, then threaten to carve him up like a christmas turkey I thought they were going to lock you up and throw away the key. But then you called for a lawyer to sue his ass. You did good. People saw you as the good guy. You were defending your kin and in Kentucky, that says one hell of a lot.” She hugged me and cried a bit. Now Ma doesn’t usually get that emotional but right then I didn’t care. She settled down after a bit and I could see her put it behind her.

“So, what are your plans now, Mr. Rich Man?”

I sat down at the table across from her and watched her light up a Marlboro. “Depends. If I’ve still got a bed here then I’ll park the bus, put the batteries on a trickle charger and get a job. There’s money to be made and it won’t drop into my pocket without me asking it to. I need to get somebody to put my money in the bank to work, making more money.”

She nodded. “Good answer. Good times always turn to bad times and having a cushion only makes sense. You gonna get married? Raise kids?”

I shook my head. “Everyone around here is going to learn real quick that I’ve got money. I’m going to have to go where they don’t know me to find a woman that isn’t looking for a meal ticket. I’ll wait until after the news dies down and people forget the face on the TV.”

I blushed when she said “You better wrap your pecker before you get it wet. Otherwise you might find yourself at the altar, daddy. Men have been caught before like that, lots of times.”

The best plans all seem to go to hell. The good news was I got a job in a plastics plant working 7:30 to 4:00, pulling down a regular paycheck. I went from press-man to journeyman tool-and-die in a few years. The bad news was I just didn’t feel comfortable in that house anymore since I’d had it out with dad. I took twenty-three thousand out of the bank and bought a little two-bedroom house located on a cul-de-sac. It was built on a slab and had a deep back yard. I moved in without much in the way of furniture. I didn’t want to take any more out of the bank than I had to as it was making me more money. I slept in the bus until a couple paychecks came in to buy things. Then it sat in the back yard, wired and plumbed to the house utilities.

My little Chevy pickup finally gave it up for Jesus. I found a little blue Toyota pickup that had good gas mileage and not many miles on the odometer. I got crap at work for buying Japanese until I showed around an article saying that they were being made in Dearborn, Michigan.

I stayed with that job for just over seven years. I had my union papers and license as a tool and die maker. I spent my week-ends working over the bus to get it into shape. I bought food and suplies for it and generally got it ready for the road. I talked my sister into living in my house and paying me a hundred bucks a month in rent. If she got married I was going to flat out give her the deed as a wedding present.

I headed north to Eau Claire, Wisconsin. I’d liked that area ever since I was a young sprout and the family took a vacation up there. It was a large city for the area. Just East of the city was a town called Altoona which was away from most of the noise and traffic of Eau Claire. I looked for some property right off the blacktop. I respected the winter in the area too much to live on a back road. I bought about an acre of wooded land on a bluff above the lake, just East of Altoona and had a top-grade four bedroom pre-manufactured home installed on a slab--a house designed for the local climate. I also had a large heated garage attached to the house big enough for a couple of cars or trucks, the bus and a tractor or big truck with a snow blade. It only seemed like common sense to buy a couple of chest freezers for the garage and fill them up. A local butcher had good grain-fed angus yearling. I bought a half and had it cut and wrapped. I did the same for a half a pig. a pickup load of bags of frozen vegetables filled the voids in the freezers. (I used wire baskets in the freezers to keep everything separate. Otherwise finding anything in them would be like--like an archeologist digging for lost civilizations.)

A big thousand pound LP gas cylinder provided for the kitchen, the central heat and the water heater. The time period was the early seventies. Land was cheap at the time so I invested quite a bit, especially around both sides of the lake where the views were excellent. It seemed to be a rule that land always appreciated in value, and I wouldn’t have any close neighbors that way. The people at the local granary let me know about some farmers wanting to lease land to raise crops. I had several fields among my new properties, and let them for a bit less than the local average, as long as they’d only raise crops of hay or clover there. I didn’t want to have tenant farmers deplete the land raising corn and then abandon it. I spent about three quarters of a million dollars on property all told.

I got another job as a tool-and-die worker and machinist in another plastics factory. I knew the work and fit right in. Then I started wife-hunting. I went to church and to church functions. I didn’t go to bars or casinos because those weren’t the kind of women I was trying to hook up with. I went to nice restaurants, theaters and shows. I didn’t go to operas or concerts because, again, those weren’t the women I wanted to marry. I told the church Father that I was on the market. He suggested that I attend some of their mixers and dances. I agreed, but first I took dancing lessons. I didn’t do too badly. I danced with several women and learned to talk to their eyes. I even learned how to compliement a lady without either mentioning her tits or her bottom. I wasn’t a master at it, far from it. However, at the mixers a lot could be forgiven because both parties were after the same thing.

I watched the newspapers for mixers that weren’t associated with the church to expand my chances. That’s how I met Charlie. Charlene Thomas. She was a twenty-two year old farmer’s daughter. I was a twenty-six year old machinist. She was five-nine and a little husky, with shoulder length sun-streaked hair and dark blue eyes. I was six-one, strong and could work all day. I thought we made a good couple and so did she. She was impressed that I kept two chest freezers full of food and a clean house. I didn’t tell her about the cleaning crew that came by every Monday. She was goggle-eyed at the bus. I gave her the grand tour and jokingly said, “You ever make me sleep on the couch and it’ll be in here. Who knows where I’ll wake up.”

I was invited over to Sunday dinner to meet the folks. They lived just down the road, on a large dairy and beef farm South of Augusta on highway G. I dressed in a jacket and slacks, not a suit. I found out that Charlie had two younger brothers that were still in high school. We all got along well once they learned that I worked with my hands for a living. I told them about rebuilding the bookmobile into a camper just after high-school. I found out about life on a dairy farm. It was all quite--organic, if you know what I mean. From getting thigh-deep in rancid silage, to getting decorated by the manure spreader I quickly figured out that it wasn’t the life for me. They had to work a lot harder for their money than I did. However, they stayed solvent and managed to add something to their savings accounts each year. They raised chickens, sold eggs and sold some fresh milk at a premium. They’d never go hungry, either.

Sure, I visited, and even helped out as I could on the weekends. I could drive a tractor so I helped with the haying in the summer and picking rocks in the spring. (The ground freezes and heaves up rocks to the surface over the freeze/thaw cycles throughout the winter. Once the mud turns back to dirt in the spring you go out and pick the new crop of rocks so that your expensive machinery doesn’t get eaten alive.) A lot of it was a good time.

Charlie and I got married. First, however, I talked to a lawyer. I had most of my money set aside into a trust. In case everything went belly-up I wanted to be able to walk away with what I came into the marriage with. I kept out two hundred thousand dollars in a savings account. The rest was put to work making more money. I instructed the lawyer to not even send quarterly notices to my home. I’d come to him. Then I bought an eight thousand dollar diamond ring and popped the question. She kept me hanging for all of seven seconds before she stopped looking at the ring and figured out she had to say ‘yes’ to keep it. I got tackled like a walk-on Freshman quarterback at a Junior-Senior Varsity game.

It was early October and the leaves were beautiful. We were married in front of a bunch of farm folk and my family, in this little Methodist church. My mom must have been a bit dissapointed that we weren’t married into the Church (note the capital ‘C’) but she didn’t say a word. As soon as they got into town I asked all four of them not to say a word about the money. Mom and dad walked around my place, taking it all in with my brother Harry and my sister Helen walking behind us. It was a million-dollar view out over the lake. I got approving noises about the tractor with the snow blade and the two chest freezers. All dad had to say was “You need a machine shed.”

I nodded. “Yep, she’s a farmer’s daughter. I’ll bet she’s gonna want a garden from hell. That means attachments for the tractor and a big compost pile. Maybe even a green-house for forcing in the spring, around here.” Mom said “Oh, yeah!” That’s when I started worrying about where to store produce. I had to find out fast if Betty and Carl (my new inlaws) canned stuff. If so, their daughter no doubt would want to as well. I’d have to bring it up with Charlie later. We’d have over half a year to plan before planting season.

I got two weeks off of work for the wedding. I gave Betty, Charlie’s mom, a copy of the keys to the house and we took a plane for Niagra Falls for our honeymoon. I think that there isn’t anything to see in Niagra falls for a reason. It promotes the birth rate. Well, we talked some, too. We talked a lot! It seemed like all the time we’d spent together befor the wedding was spent dancing around each other. Now that we were hitched we got down to the nitty gritty. Neither one of us liked alcohol all that much. She could cook better than I could. Her mom was a canning fool but Charlie purely despised it. She wanted a small garden and some herbs, but way under an acre. We decided to put in a heated greenhouse off the kitchen as soon as we got back, before the ground froze hard. We both liked grilled food so an indoor grill with a fume hood was going in. I didn’t see any reason to cut down what God preferred to grow in our lawn. She laughed and asked that we keep some paths clear. I said “Why not put in ground cover. Creeping evergreen stuff?” That got an okay. She wanted a dog. I agreed if it was an outside dog. Ma liked little yarfies and I learned to hate ‘em. They’d bark like the world was coming to an end if the neighbor two doors down slammed their screen door ... They were totally insane.

Charlie wanted to go back to school. I’d be at work all day and she needed something to do to keep from going crazy. I sympathized. We had enough in the bank to send her to college in Eau Claire so she could sleep at home at night. She about threw a rod when I said we had the money and it was okay to spend it. I told her that I had two incomes--one from renting out the fields and one from being a machinist.

“You’ve got land???”

“No, WE’ve got land. about two square miles of it, mostly prime house sites around the lake, but there’s some nice fields in the mix too. Enough to make about thirty thousand a year in field rental fees. We’ll take a tour when we get back.”

She damned near cut short the honeymoon right there. I think that I quadrupled my value in ‘solid catch’ material right there. After that night we needed about a quart of Vaseline intensive care and a couple days to rest up. We spent the time making up lists of what do start on when we got back.

We actually did go back a bit early. I wanted to take her out to the county campground in the bus. She loved it! I could see some trips to Northern Wisconsin and up into Michigan’s U.P. coming soon.

We got the greenhouse construction underway, and the machine shed too. We agreed to put up a big pole barn rather than paying for stick-built construction. I had it primed and painted dark brown so that it wouldn’t stand out like a sore thumb. We bought fresh eggs and milk from her folks every week. I didn’t want to set a bad precedent. We paid for everything. I didn’t want any bad blood between us.

We had a river-stone barbecue installed at the side of the kitchen and a fume hood put in place above it.

We bought two big dogs, a male and a female. We had a doggie door put in so they could sleep in the heated garage. Their food and water were dished out there too. They were huskie-something mixes. I didn’t want them in the house because with that long hair they’d have to shed like a snowstorm sheds snowflakes. I tried to keep all my campaign promises, you see.

Once the crops were in and the fields were bare we fired up the bus to drive around to get an idea of what properties we held. With a county platt book in her lap and the elevated viewpoint of being in the bus it made the task a lot easier. Most of the home sites we could just drive past as there weren’t any driveways yet. The platt book told the story though. Almost each site backed right up against either the lakeshore or a precipice above the lakeshore, providing the “million dollar view” that builders and realtors craved. The fields were easy to spot and seemed to go on forever. I thought about buying an insulated set of coveralls, boots, a hat, gloves and a rifle. I owned the land and deer tags could be had two ways--licensed or traded for--under the table. Deer season was coming up. I’d have to talk it over with my in-laws as they knew the county fish and game people and what sort of foolishness they’d put up with.