Chapter 12: AFTERWAR-DS

I returned a grown man, but of course nobody can go home again. Home as it once was is gone and so is the person we once were. Nothing matches or fits the hopeful expectations. Disappointment colors all our current perceptions of the here and now.

My grandpa died and left me his property. Grandma is still very much alive and still fucking. We are lovers. This was their place, my grandparents home, and for some strange legal reason, now it’s mine. Surprised the hell out of me to learn I inherited it. It’s hard to think, believe grandpa, actually my dad, cared for me in the least bit. I don’t think he really cared about any of his children, excepting Grandma. She’s one of his daughters too. He never legally married her, but did jump the broom with her and had a daughter with her, my mom. He also spewed me into Mom’s belly. Grandpa loved fucking his daughters, if he felt nothing more for them.

Whether he did love me, or was such a misogynist, only a male heir would be allowed to inherit, is a matter of conjecture. How am I to understand something I have practically zero experience with? Love.

Love? Just a lie people say to get their way, or be polite to someone they’re obligated to schmooze. Reassessment of my grandpa is difficult. Decades old hate is stern concrete.

When I left here as a teenager, I was in the back of a patrol car and I was wearing cuffs. Not a voluntary departure! Grandpa kicked me out! He arranged with his friend, the Judge and his other pal, the Sheriff, for my own good, to be constrained, and against my will, shipped out west. Sent to a tough love juvenile correctional ranch in the desert! Sent to be trained to obey and honor authority. Another pal, Sheriff Dantes, another of grandpa’s and the Judge’s Korean war buddies, owned and operated the hell ranch.

No, I wasn’t under arrest or sentenced for any crime or juvenile delinquency. My crime was being caught fucking my Grandma. Grandpa doesn’t like wearing cuckold horns. I was made a ward of Sheriff Dantes, by judicial order. Grandpa’s pal the Judge, in his wisdom, gave me to Dantes, as his ward! Gave, I say! In other words, Dantes owned me! The other kids sent there for crimes, handed down by a Judge after a trial or a hearing, served a sentence varying from a month up to a year, and were then released, to go back home. None, except me, served more than a year.

Twenty one months, I was abused and tortured! Only having survived that hellhole long enough to reach my eighteenth birthday, got me released! They couldn’t legally hold me any longer!

Vietnam was sending thousands of kids home in body bags, and there was a draft to replace them. You had to sign up with the draft board on your eighteenth birthday. Enroute to Travers City, Michigan, to enroll in the newly created Great Lakes Maritime Academy, I was hitchhiking and I was tardy reporting for the draft, deliberately waiting until after I enrolled and qualified for a student exemption.

Three years of study and sea projects aboard ships, took every penny I could borrow and every cent I had saved while working as Dante’s ward at the ranch. Paid only pocket change, really.

The small monthly cadet stipend I received aboard ships, was similarly pitiful and also was paid to the school. The ROTC program assisted me with postponed school fees that would be forgiven after honoring my military service commitment. In 1972, I completed and received a three year associate engineering degree and a U.S. Coast Guard license as third assistant engineer, any waters, steam and motor of unlimited horsepower. The Army now demanded their pound of flesh!

My Merchant Marine Officers License so recently hard won, was suspended during my enlistment. After many months of Army training schools, I was made a Warrant officer and in early 1974, I was among the last Americans shipped to Vietnam, as our war was theoretically finished by a peace treaty and the draft repealed in 1973. I was sent anyway, to serve as an engineering officer aboard a coast-wise Army tug. Towing supply barges to the remnant South Vietnamese military mostly, Vietnam was an unpleasant place to be for an American. Rotating back to the states in 1975, soon North Vietnam invaded and conquered the south that same year.

The Edmund Fitzgerald also sank in White Fish Bay, on the Great Lakes in 1975. Unhappy year all around. Forget 1975!

After eighteen additional months of Army life stateside, mostly attending navigation and deck officer schools, that I volunteered for, in order to avoid sea duty in the rough North Atlantic, I was released from active service. Warrant grade two ( of a possible four levels ) was my highest rank, and held for the final two years of my enlistment. OCS was never offered to me, because I had only an associates degree, and the war was winding down, so opportunities were limited.

At twenty five years of age, in the bicentennial year of the United States, I was a free man, no obligations, no debts, and a bit of money saved, mostly in US Savings bonds.

We were required to voluntarily buy those with allotments automatically deducted from my pay. My Coast Guard license was freshly renewed and restored and valid for five years from the date of issue.

Rather than work on the lakes, I found more suitable employment in the Gulf in the oilfields, aboard tugs. Aboard the lakers in those years, the only way you could get a break off the ship, between fitout in April and before winter layup, was to quit. In the winter, you were laid off, out of work for two months if you were an engineer like me, and three months unemployed as a deck officer, for which I’m thankful, I was not.

The Gulf was a much better schedule. Four weeks on and two weeks off, and uninterrupted year round work! Oilfield tugs sat at the dock for lengthy periods, which didn’t distress me, as my pay continued seven days a week.

I bought a motorcycle and camping gear, to tour state and national parks, just roaming around the country during those two free weeks of every six. Pay rates were quite handsome, and I was able to save most of it, Unencumbered by a real wife or family, Sammy and Paula I ignored as examples of adults taking advantage of an ignorant boy. Child abuse.

Happy to be a moneyed vagabond, a tumble weed or rolling stone. Girls were catch as catch can and very easy to catch, with no long term involvements. Free, I was determined to remain free of complications and encumbrances for as long as possible. Remaining free and unencumbered was the reason I avoided visiting Crescent City for fourteen long years, although my only really happy memories were of there!

Those recent four years were spent going to a fro upon the earth, acquiring money and investing in high tech stocks. Now, at nearly thirty years of age, returns on my investments exceeds my wages, as lucrative as those were. My wealth will grow without addition input from more paychecks. Even if I use some of the funds my investments earn, equal to those missing checks. Missing paychecks occur, because I’ve retired!