It was a nice summer day and we decided to go out for a Sunday drive. You know, where you just drive till you get lost then find your way home. An old boyfriend and I headed South out of town on some back roads. Not sure if he had a destination, but he might have. When we got closer he asked me to turn here or there. Then he said, "Hey, pull into that driveway."
We were sitting in the driveway and he was pointing out the old barn and the hill where he used to play. This is where he grew up. An old man came out onto the back porch and asked if he could help us. My guy said, "We are just looking around, I used to live here." He asked us if we wanted to come in and see the old place. There was no hesitation, we went up to the porch and introduced ourselves. He was a very nice guy. After he retired from Ford he bought this old farm house out in the sticks and settled in. He did all the work to fix it up. It was all restored very nicely. He really wanted to show it off to us.
We entered into the kitchen that was still vintage but very nice. The one thing I remember was the "pass through" glass door kitchen cabinets. They opened on the kitchen side and on the dining room side. I was very impressed because I never heard of that before. They were original. The next thing that I had never really seen was a safe that was built in under the front stairs, by the front door. It had the name of the original home builder hand painted on the front. I think there was a scene painted on it also. Very cool. It took me back to sometime in the 1800's, when you might need somewhere to keep your possessions. It looked very original and unaltered.
We were then directed into a room that used to be the parlor. He had made a pool table room complete with the old fashioned pool table and those green shade and brass light fixtures over it. The entire home was a showcase of fine restoration. The guy did nice work. My boyfriend was so excited to see the inside of the home he grew up in. It isn't every day that you get a tour of something so memorable.
We all went into the next room. I think it was a living room. Paul (boyfriend) looked at a vintage photo of an old man in an oval frame, that hung on the wall. He asked the homeowner where he had gotten that photo. The homeowner proudly said, "About 20 miles down US-12 at an antique store." Paul was thrown aback. I think he turned a shade of green. It was a strange moment in time. The homeowner said, "Why do you ask?"
Paul then told us that the old photo was an image of the man that built the home. His name is on the safe under the stairs. "That photo was on that exact nail when I lived here, as a child!" When his Mom sold the house she liquidated some items and had sold the photo to the antique store 20 miles down US-12.
We talked for a bit, thanked the homeowner for showing us around and I don't think any of us will ever be quite the same. It was a memorable experience to have been there in that moment. I will never forget.
By the time I thought it might be best for me to do some damage control, it was too late. It never entered my mind that one person could be so evil, let alone your own sister. The one you grew up with. The one that shares the same birth mark, in the same spot on her body. I thought there was a sister code.
Guess not. There is way too much to tell. I will try and just relate some of the stories, of the relationship of my sister and I.
I must first clarify that I was directed to never speak of her to anyone, ever!! Any information will be about my perspective in this relationship. There will be nothing about her personal life, unless it affected me personally or was an interaction between us.
The only snapshot of our childhood that continually comes to the surface of my memory, is the room we shared as teens. It was the master bedroom of a very big house. There was a zig zagged dividing wall down the middle, of 4' x 8' sheets of bulletin board, that were hinged together. She on one side of the wall and I on the other. It was like night and day. I could not believe how she could be so effortlessly tidy and she could not believe that I could be such a horrible slob. I seemed comfortable in my mess and she seemed happy in a pristine clean space. I guess that is when I first noticed there might be a radical difference between us.
I frequently wanted to follow her around. I looked up to her. She rarely wanted me there and usually tried to shoo me away like a pestering bug.
I am going to narrow down this lifetime of crap to the top 6 issues that we had. There are way more.
I got married in February of 1979. She could not find the time to come to the small wedding. She said she couldn't because she was in rehearsal for a play. I should have gotten some clue there.
She refused to ever watch my sons. Well, they did handcuff her to a chair the one and only time she stayed over to watch them. I guess I don't blame her for that. Still, she only had 3 nephews. I was the only sibling that had any children. She never remembered their birthdays, rarely got them something for Christmas, never took them anywhere and generally did not seem to care.
I spent my childhood learning how to sew by making clothing for my Barbie doll. When my Mom sold the home that we grew up in, shortly after I graduated, she went up in the attic and took (among other items) my Barbie doll. She still has it or maybe sold it. Not sure. She told me, "Possession is 9/10 of the law. It is mine now." It isn't really about a plastic doll, it is about the attitude of the person holding it.
She called my Mom, the week she passed away, and told her that I was trying to control her possessions and take over her life. Without time to sort out what she was told, my Mom passed away with feelings of mistrust about me. The real intent was to try and help her because she had gone through a few years of cancer treatment, mastectomy, chemo, etc. I had met with my two brothers to discuss what we might do to ease her responsibilities. My sister lived out of state. She was so out of the loop that when I told her how we planned on helping she flipped out and called Mom to tell her that we were getting greedy and wanted her money and property. She upset her pretty bad.
I figured out (by listening to her) that she had sabotaged all family relationships. She had never given me the "benefit of a doubt". She always thought I must be wrong and spun it that way. She kept talking smack about me to everyone.
She always did little stuff like I was sitting in her back yard talking to her and she went in and came back out with the classified ads. She sat there reading it (which seemed strange) until I asked her what she was looking for. Her answer was, "Thinking maybe you could look for an apartment in another part of town." I live, you see, across the street from her and she doesn't like it.
We used to go up North to a cottage on Bear Lake, when we were teens. It has been over 35 years since I had been there. I loved it there. One day I asked her if we could go back up and stay in the cottage for a bit. She got all snippy with me and said, "YOU, are no longer allowed to go there!" See a previous story about my Mom giving me the safe deposit key. She however, inherited a 4 unit apartment building because I had the key.
One Christmas instead of making plans to hang out for a bit, she saw me out shoveling the sidewalk and pulled up to the curb. She reached into her back seat and grabbed a gift bag and called me over to the open window of her car. I walked over there and she tried to hand me the gift bag. I wouldn't take it. I said hold on to that and when you have 20 minutes where we can sit down and have a cup of tea, bring it back. She asked me why I was being such a bitch about it. My only answer was, "I don't accept Drive By Christmas gifts." The gift that I had for her was up in my room. Was I supposed to run up real fast and hand it in through the open window?" She now just gathers up some old stuff in her house and puts it in a gift bag and drops it off at my front door and goes back home.
Which takes us to "The Conversation". I called her one day because I knew she had the flu. I asked her if there was anything that I could get for her. The answer was, "I don't want you to get me anything, EVER." Wow, jump back. Is there an issue? She answered....."Yes, there is. I have not liked you since the day you were born." Who would say that to anyone?? I felt like I should get to the bottom of this. She laid it on the table and I was going to help clear it off. "Let's talk about it", I said. I tried for two hours to come to some peaceful place but she wasn't having it. At one point, I asked what else was bugging her about me and she brought up that I borrowed a sweater of hers, when I was 12. That was about 40 years ago. That is the conversation that opened my eyes to all the damage she had done to family relationships. She pretty much explained it all to me, in detail. That conversation did not end well. She bitched me out that I better not meddle in telling Mike where his sperm donor lived. I had enough of her negativity and accusations of my wrongdoing.
I am sorry but there really isn't a way to sugar coat this relationship. I live across the street from her and we have not spoke in over 3 years unless she chooses to bitch at me (only when there is a porch full of my friends over) or says hi real sweet when someone is watching her. Other than that, nothing. I don't want to talk to her. I want to talk to a sister, just not that one.
She has never visited me at any place I ever worked. No one has ever taken a "happy time" photo of the two of us. I don't remember any good times. We went to St. Louis once on a trip to take my sons down to visit my nearly 100 year old Grandmother. The night before the planned trip she called me to say that she had to cancel the trip because she started her period. She ended up going but there was times when I wish she hadn't.
The issues here are beyond me being able to solve them. I tried for years to be the perfect sister so as not to upset her. I still can feel the statement that she has not liked me since the day I was born. When she said that, it all started to make sense to me. All the behavior that I could not figure out, all of a sudden seemed normal for someone feeling that way. I wish it was way different but it isn't. I wish there was something I could do, but I can't.
Life is too short for this crap!!
It all started one dark and snowy night......
I went to 7 Eleven on West Ave one night at 3 am to visit a friend that worked there. I told him I needed a job. I was 19. He had inside information that the Frito-Lay driver was about to quit. Something in my adventurous mind clicked. I can do that. I drove the next day to Ann Arbor Frito warehouse to apply for the job. I got hired, right out of high school. They needed minorities and I happened to be one. I was a female. I drove the route for a year until the pressure got so bad that I left. At the time there was only 5 sales persons in Jackson County. Four middle aged white men and myself. My route stretched from downtown Jackson, Polly's on Spring Arbor Rd., Francis St. and everything south of there on US-12 from Clinton to Jerome. It was one fifth of the territory. It was a huge job for a wisp of an 19 year old girl to do. I hung in until the company removed $1800 from my pay to cover an inventory shortage that arose when I could not do an inventory due to a 6ft. snowstorm in 1978. I could not get to the warehouse. One of the other issues that I remember is that my Regional Manager had me meet him at the restaurant in Holiday Inn, for a "6 month review" and shortly after dinner he wanted to know if I would like to go up to his room.
I met a guy while driving the route and shortly after that married and had three children. That is another story for later. When I filed for a necessary divorce, 10 years later...I was waiting tables and did not make enough to support us. I went to work at a bridal shop doing alterations that also did not pay enough and had no health insurance for my sons. Another story for later. I got desparate to make enough to live on and jumped up on the dock at the new warehouse for Frito and asked what the chances are that I could have my job back. After extensive testing in Plymouth, I got hired again. $50,000 a year with a 401K and benefits including health insurance for the children.
I was in the "let's do this" mode and I did. Soon after I got trained in the current way they do things, I was assigned a new route assignment that they had just brought on board. I would deliver to Airport Road Meijers, Sam's Club and the Kroger on Argyle (the day they opened). It was called TDD (total direct delivery) and my job was to decide what to order for the three stores every day and send the order in to Dallas. It would be sent to Plymouth they would put the order in a semi and bring it to me the next morning. I checked it in and filled the shelves. I was what was called the lead sales rep. for my stores.
My average sales per week were about $12,000. A driver that delivered to smaller stores via the van style truck ran about $5,000 a week in sales. At this time the same territory as before now had 15 sales persons. Thirteen men and two women. In the warehouse on the wall every week they would post the sales of each driver in order of who sold the most. For three straight years my name was always on the very top. I was the one that you had to knock out to get to that position.
This was not an easy job. Very demanding and took a lot of time. Our days were long. I would start at 5-6am and needed my stores looking great by Noon. The stores all wanted them to look good by 7am but that was impossible. I would get back to the warehouse by 3 to send the order, every day. Then go back out to all three stores to fill the holes. Then into the back room or behind the store to tie up all the empty boxes in bundles of 25 each. The driver picked them up in the morning. There was a lot of contact with my sales manager, the store manager, the receiver, the grocery managers and more. I merchandised all the product and controlled the back room stock. Can't have too much or too little or you would be in trouble. Just right. I had it down to a science. Just stay out of my way!!
If you had been given an End Cap (the rack space at the end of an isle) you better be back at the store a few times a day, that stuff emptied fast. I used to say if you put dog poop in a zip lock bag and put it on an end cap, it would sell.
It was a man's world, that I tried my best to infiltrate. There were issues. I remember once the grocery manager at Meijers was telling me that I took up too much space in the back room when my order came in. They were big orders. My argument to him was that by the end of Sunday it was all gone out of the back room, so I don't think I order too much. He looked at me and said, "Fuck that!" I responded with, "I don't think a business conversation is the right place to use language like that." He apologized and said, "You are right, I will refrain from doing that." We continued the conversation about the back room space with the receiver, the store manager, the grocery manager and I. When we settled on how to solve the problem he looked right at me and said, "Can we fuck now?" I had no response. I was dumbfounded. You can't really talk back to them. They had the power.
The one other time that I remember clearly was when I needed to ask the grocery manager if I could hang a big Race Week banner. He knew it was coming. To ask him something he usually gave you 3.2 seconds for the sales pitch, then he was gone. So, I draped it over a stack of pallets and had the 2 second request ready. I went and got him and asked if there was a space big enough to hang this banner. He walked around behind me and said, "Your ass looks big enough.". Again I did not have a response for his behavior. I did not find it funny. He must have.
These are the two stories that stick in my head because of the emotional feeling at the time. There were many more minor ones. I started having nightmares about him. It was actually disturbing me. The pressure was pretty heavy. One afternoon when I could not deal with it, I was in the break room and saw a notice above the phone that said....if you are having trouble with any employee we don't tolerate that and would like to know, so we can resolve it. I wrote the number to the main office in Grand Rapids and called it the next day, at home. I told them some of the issues and abusive behavior of his. I really thought we would have him in check soon. Things would be alright because people should not be like this towards others. They asked my name and who I worked for. I was not comfortable telling them that. I could risk losing my great job.
It was Memorial week and I had a semi of Lays that were on sale for $1.99 behind Krogers and Meijers. We were going to empty those semi trucks of extra product in a week. It wasn't easy. My sales that week jumped to $37,000. I had extra help from a temporary company and that wasn't enough. I called the boss in the morning and requested more help. It was a ton of product and it would be hard to be three places and keep the end caps full. He sent over my Union Steward to help me. We worked together for the next few hours, haulin' ass.
A few days later, the pain in my ass grocery manager, passed me in an isle and pointed at me real mad and said, "WE NEED to TALK." I said OK.
Next thing I know my boss paged me to come to the warehouse. When I got there he said he had arranged a meeting to talk about an issue. I went into his office ready to talk. He came in a while later and asked me to go wait out on the dock. In his office was him, my union steward and a Teamsters guy from Detroit. I was not real comfortable at this point.
They talked for a half hour or so while they left me out on the dock. When they called me back in I sat (really nervous) in the chair, crossed my arms and said I would like my union steward in here with me. Something was going down and it did not feel good. My boss said, "We can't do that because he made management today." Oh shit!!.
They informed their top sales person that they were going to fire me. "For what?" The answer was....."For not tucking your shirt in today." How would you know that? Your union steward informed us. THIS is Bull Shit!!!! The meeting was brief. I don't remember much of it. Kind of like when you are in a car wreck.
The next thing I remember is the Teamsters guy from Detroit (with the gold Cadillac with gold wire wheels out in the parking lot) taking me over to a table to sign the arbitration papers. You can fight this and get your job back. As he helped me hold the papers his fancy suit drew back and I could see the full arm tattoos that the sported. I was a little scared girl at this point.
I went home and could not believe how fast that all happened. My date for the arbitration in Detroit, at the Teamster Hall was a month or so out. I prepared my case and planned on going there alone. The night before I was to go, my oldest son Brad (about 19 at the time) refused to let me drive there alone. Smart one that Brad. I thought I could do it but I was pretty mentally shook. My hands sweat that whole way to Detroit. I got worse every mile. It might have been the worst thing I have had to endure yet. Brad stayed outside in the car and I walked into the Teamster Hall alone. I found the room and entered to see a long table that had Teamsters guys on the right side of the table and every level of manager from Frito on the left. I am surprised that the President of Frito-Lay isn't there. They all had brief cases full of documents and I was the scared little girl in the room that wore a fancy dress and heels to the event. If you know me at all, that was very out of character. I could barely speak. I was asked to tell my side of the story. Then some other guys spoke. It is kind of a blur to tell you the truth. They adjourned the meeting and I went home. "We will send you the findings in the mail."
Weeks went by. No mail.
Finally the envelope came. I wanted my job back. I was jacked. The contents of the envelope was one piece of paper on Teamsters letterhead and the only sentence written on it was..... Arbitration Denied. I guess that was the end of that.
I filed for unemployment and got the full amount for 26 weeks. $300 a week. The unemployment office determined that not tucking your shirt in was a good reason for termination.
I went to 7 lawyers (starting in Detroit, Ann Arbor and finally in Jackson) in the next couple of years. They all would sit across the desk from me, in their fancy offices and tell me that I had a case of wrongful termination but they could not (for various reasons) take the case. They would however refer me to the next one. I found out later that if they refer me and I ever win, they would get a percentage.
I was so upset by the whole thing and pretty much broke that I looked into it and found out that three stores in Jackson paid you if you found any stale in their stores. $1 per UPC code that you found. I knew (from working with them) that most of the other drivers never rotated their stock when they merchandised the product and all the stale dates went out on Tuesday. I would go into the stores and fill carts full of stale product, take it up to the service desk and make $20-$30 on their stale policy. I knew they would not put it back up on the shelf and the driver would have to give them credit. I was pissed at the whole lot of them. I did that for a year or so. One day I got a letter in the mail from the headquarters in Dallas. The letter was a cease and desist. They wanted me to stop this stale policy thing. I guess I signed a legal paper when I hired in that I would not take anything that I knew from when they trained me to use it against them. It scared me for a minute but I went and did it a few more times. Just to say, "You are not the boss of me."
I stopped any thing that had to do with them to heal myself. I was so ridden with anger and anxiety that I physically went numb from the waist down. I was very disturbed by the fact that someone can do a kick ass job and others can be so disturbing that I can't sleep at night and when I attempt to solve the issues....I am the one that gets screwed.
I am not angry any more, really. I mean it. Well, yes I am a little. I was good at that job. I should not have been let go. The worst part was that ass that ratted on me for not tucking in my shirt. He was the one person there that was supposed to be there for me, not against me.
One of the main lessons that I learned was, that world is all about "Watch your own ass." I really don't want to be a part of that world. That is one of the reasons that I work for myself.
I ripped up my Teamsters card and burned it.
Well, we had the same parents and grew up in the same house. That is where that kinship ends.
I don't remember much when we were kids. He was the oldest child in the family. I know he was a Boy Scout. I heard he didn't like it but my Father was a Scout Master so he really had no choice. They went to Philmont Scout Ranch once. The newspaper came in the back yard and took their photo before they left for the trip. It seemed like a big deal. He was on the JHS swim team. He played Tuba in the JHS marching band. He used to practice his part at home and we teased him because it wasn't really a tune. It sounded more like a Moose farting. He didn't really like the Princeton haircuts that my parents gave him. He might have mowed the lawn once in a while. I think he was a paper boy.
He mostly chilled out in the Lazy-Boy chair and watched TV. He watched shows that I had no interest in at the time. Three Stooges, Science Fiction movies, Mission Impossible Car 54 where are you?, Hogan's Heroes and Daniel Boone. Matter of fact he had a Coon skin cap. I wanted to watch shows like Leave it to Beaver and Please don't eat the daisies. Back then there was no remote control. You had to get up to change the channel but if he was in the room we watched what he wanted. There was only one TV in the house.
His musical interests were varied and a little more mature than mine. His music pretty much drove me crazy. The one I remember most was Frank Zappa. He also listened to Country Joe and the Fish. I bet he liked whoever was at Woodstock. That was his era. He was a Hippie of sorts. Just a couple of years ago I was told, by one of his old friends, that my music drove him crazy too. I played Elton John real loud ...over and over and over.
He bought a car before he had a drivers license. It was an old classic Austin Healey. It was green. He kept it in the garage and worked on it. I always told him it looked like a frog. Because he had no license yet he would just drive it up and down the driveway. Back and forth. I thought it was funny that he could not leave the driveway.
I remember him being real happy that his number never came up to be sent to Vietnam. I guess I was real happy about that too. I don't think he would have gone anyway. He would have hitch hiked to Canada or something. Some of his friends were not so lucky.
My memory starts to get a little more clear when he moved into the basement. What a move was that! How cool. Your own space away from parents. There was a pool table down there. Posters on the walls, incense burning, ashtrays. It was teenage Heaven. I wanted to be down there. After all the basement rec room was used by all to entertain friends until he moved an old couch down there to sleep on. He really didn't like me down there. Most the time he would tolerate me for a half hour or so then get up off the couch and grab one of his nasty Frito smelling socks and shove it down my throat. I would leave. Didn't want to but that wasn't much fun. Once in a while I would go down to visit and some of his friends would be over. They were so stoned. I did not know what stoned was but they put me to work rolling a joint or two for them. They taught me how. How cool was that. It was 1970. I guess you had to be there.
Next thing I know he announced that he was moving to California. Wow. Really? California? I guess he worked at a gas station and he sent home a couple photos from there. I think he came back and moved into the basement again. Not sure. It is kinda faint.
He moved into an apartment next. My Mom owned the building on Michigan Ave. He let me visit once in a while. I heard recently that there was some really good parties there. I do remember going there with my Mom once because she suspected him smoking pot. She looked through his drawers. She found some. She went home and called the police to report that he had Marijuana. I do not know what ever happened with all that.
I might get some of the time line screwed up but I think he moved to Arizona next. He just up and left. Might have had something to do with the police report. Not sure. The story goes that he called up one of his old girlfriends and asked her to come be with him down there. Late 70's. She agreed. He had a vasectomy before she got there. Never to have children. They got married in 1977 at 7pm with 7 people in the wedding on the 7th day of the 7th month at the edge of the Grand Canyon. No one in the family was invited.
He got his own apartment building in the disbursement of my Grandmother's property so he came back to Jackson. My Grandmother had not passed away yet but had Alzheimers and was in a care home. My Mother was deciding who got what. I went there to visit him quite a few times.It was just a block up from where I lived. We usually played Trivial Pursuit. It was a popular game then. Just out on the market. He liked to play it because he was an avid reader and always won. He was the front desk clerk at the new Sheraton Inn in downtown Jackson. There was no caller ID then and a few times I would call him up and he would answer the phone like Richard Nixon or various other movie stars or politicians. While he was living there he called me up to pick my brain. He knew my husband was making money on the side doing various things. He wanted to ask me what I think he could do to make money. I had just read an article in the paper about a new class at JCC for clowns. I forgot to tell you that the best asset that he possessed was his sense of humor. He was pretty crazy and really funny. He latched right on to that idea and went to clown classes.
He created his own clown personality. It was Capt. Squint. He learned to juggle and make balloon animals. He started entertaining kids. I remember once he came down and did his thing for my son's birthday party. It was a big deal. He found his calling. He was pretty good at it.
Right when he was forming the face make up he invited me over to his apt. to see how he did it. I was sitting at his kitchen table so proud of him and what I had directed him into. He was almost done with the final look and a knock came at the back door. It was the lady next door. He had no phone so she came to bring him a message from family. My Mother had just passed away. The neighbor left and we sat back down and he asked me if I thought he should remove the clown make up before he went to be with her. Yes, I think that might be best.
I had three sons by now and even though he entertained kids for money he really did not like the sound of Hot Wheels in his driveway. He wanted me to keep them away. He liked quiet. So did his wife. He also refused to ever babysit until they turned 18.
Well, he hung out in that building that he was given until my Grandmother passed away. He put the building up for sale and sold it pretty quick. What he didn't know was that house still had a $12,000 bank loan on it. He never bothered to check. The estate was still making the payments. At the closing he was told that he could sell it but he had to pay the loan off first, off the top. He wanted out of town now, so he agreed. A few months later he hired a Jackson lawyer and took the rest of us to court for our share of his loss. We all got an apartment building for free with no loans and because it was all supposed to be dispersed equally, he figured we all owed him $3000. The three of us go to probate court and his lawyer explained it to us. I was thinking BULL SHIT. His lawyer took us out in the hall and explained that if we all argue there won't be anything left in the estate (cash wise) because the lawyers would get all of it. So, we all went back in and agreed to pay him. I had no clue how that was going to happen on my part. I was the only one that was trying to feed three kids. He kept hounding me for the $3000. I finally called him and said that isn't going to happen. I did however offer to make him a new clown costume. I suggested that he send me a drawing of what he wanted. He never sent it. I can't make shit up. So, I never paid him. The building he got was way nicer than mine anyway.
He has lived in Arizona since then. He came back once in the last 30 years. It was to attend his wife's parents 50th anniversary party down at St. Marys and then PJ's for the after party. We chatted some. He sat there for a couple of hours in PJ's making balloon animals and flowers. The entire 20ft table where everyone was, was covered with balloons. It was getting kinda full and I knew others in the room so I got up and took some balloon flowers to a couple gals that I knew across the room. When I got back he asked me if I really was a lesbian. He was thinking I might be.
He was staying up the street on that visit and in the morning, well Noon or so....I called up there and asked him if my sons could come up and say hi. They had not seen him in 10 or more years. He said, Not really. I said they really want to see you. He said his wife had a headache and did not want kids around. I said they are not little anymore. They are now 17-15 and 13. He still said no they were not interested in seeing them and they would be going back to Arizona in an hour or so and really needed to pack. That was the last I heard or seen of him. I really wasn't interested in communication at that point. I guess he wasn't either.
Fast forward to a few years ago, soon after I made a Facebook page. I got a message from a young man that asked me if I had a brother named ****. I said I did and he explained that he was his Son. I asked him to send me a photo and sure enough you can not deny that face. I no longer have the pleasure of a relationship with my own brother. It never really was great. I do miss his humor, his intelligence and his face. I have an even greater pleasure of getting to know his son that he won't acknowledge. It was such a joy to connect with him. He even visited me in person (from Texas) and introduced me to his sweet wife and their three lovely daughters. What makes Mike such a good Father is growing up knowing how it feels to not have one in his life. Love you Mike!!
Some things I will never understand and sometimes I feel ashamed that my last name is Jamieson.
The Wilson School library that I volunteered in had been given a generous funding to purchase some new magazine subscriptions for the school year. I was also on the PTA. We were in the middle of discussion on what magazines to order with the funds when the Principal came in the room. He let us know that we did not need to decide because he already ordered them all.
Wilson was a K-3 school. No one over 8 years old. The magazines he ordered are pictured here. Most if not all of them were weekly. That makes them more expensive. Most were for an adult black male that liked sports and politics. When asked what criteria he used to choose these for such a young grade level he said, "So the teachers can do research for the lesson plans."
Back sometime in the late 80's my children went to Wilson School. It was sort of in the hood. No, I guess it really was. Every day I would drop them off and noticed all the trash that was on the school property. A couple times a week I would work in the classroom or the school library, to help out. On those days I would get a closer look and noticed there was broken glass all over the playground and trash everywhere. There was a big dumpster in the parking lot. The kids in the neighborhood would come around and talk to you if you went there after school. If you were looking for the janitor, he could always be found sitting in the boiler room doing pretty much nothing.
One day I loaded up my home trash cans, went to the store and bought a few rakes and a snow shovel. Loaded a cooler up with Popsicles, ice cream sandwiches and the like. Drove my pick up truck over to the school on a Sunday and with my three sons we started to clean up the school grounds. Soon, some of the neighborhood kids joined up. I promised them a treat if they worked hard. We took load after load of junk to the dumpster. After a productive afternoon things were starting to look pretty good and the dumpster was full. I gathered up the tools, passed out the treats and we sat down to look over a job well done.
Monday morning I went in to the library to volunteer a little and a little bit into the morning the Secretary came into the library and told me that the Principal wanted to see me in his office. That is what I thought would happen. He would figure out who cleaned up his whole playground and thank me. Maybe even give me a gift card to K-mart or something nice. Nope!! When I went into his office he asked me if it was true that I had something to do with the clean up over the weekend. Why yes, yes I did. Then he got kinda pissy and asked me to not ever do that again. What?? What are you talking about? Is it a bad thing that the playground and parking lot are clean? It took all of us all afternoon.
He then explained to me that the school board was making a scheduled visit that day to see if he really needed more funding to hire another janitor. He was letting the playground get that bad in an attempt to have the school board see that the one janitor was overworked. Really? The one that is always in the boiler room reading the newest copy of Playboy?
Some things really don't make sense to me. I am sorry that I screwed that up for you.
We moved in the day my first son was born. June 23, 1979. Well, technically I didn't move anything. I was at the hospital. We were supposed to move in a month before he was born but the due date was wrong. He weighed in at almost 8 pounds, so the due date had to be wrong.
My Mother had gifted me one of my Grandmother's apartment buildings. For FREE!! She even fixed a lot of things up first. She took a grassy lot and had it turned to gravel for a parking lot, all new aluminum siding, all new storms and screens, a fence with gates all around the yard, new carpet in the hallway, some new bath and showers and a new boiler to heat the building to the tune of about $10,000.
I had just gotten married a few months before and now I have a place to raise my son.
Free isn't always free. I paid about $40,000 in property taxes in the 28 years. Most of that time I was at risk of losing it for non-payment of property taxes. Always had to keep up on that. The Consumers bill ran about $200 a month (on average for heat) for a total of $67,200. $28,000 for water and $10,000 for garbage service. That was just for the regular bills. That doesn't include maintenance and improvements. I was always buying stoves, refrigerators water heater, paint, plumbing, etc.
Even though she made a ton of improvements on the property, there was always something that needed fixing. Carpet needed replacement, plumbing broke, the roof leaked, the basement flooded, walls always needed to be painted, plaster cracked, the plumbing always clogged up, etc. There was always something.
On the other end of the issues I had to learn to rent to folks, collect rent, enforce the lease, etc. Tenants were always breaking things like appliances, windows, door locks, etc. They fought with each other. They fought with me. They had domestic violence issues. A few went to jail. More than a few went to jail. One went to prison.
It was quite a ride for 28 years. I am not sure that I ever met the perfect tenant. They all had issues, as did I. I was a victim of domestic violence, so they all tolerated our crap too. The stories that unfolded between 1979 and 2008 could fill a book. I ran into all kinds of folks. Some that I would rather not ever see again.
I had 3 sons in a pretty quick period of time. I raised them there. We planted trees, hung laundry on the line, they played in the sandbox, rode bikes down the hill, planted a garden and walked the dogs. It was home. I had painted each wall about 5 times before it was over.
Ten years into it, I filed for divorce. In court, the judge asked me and my husband how much improvement he had done on the building in 10 years. We both answered the same. He had laid a stick down floor in one bathroom and dropped a ceiling in another. That was it. I had done the rest. The judge gave me the building.
The City of Jackson has the right to inspect rental properties every 2 years (or something along those lines). They were behind on getting around so they had not come ever. Right after I filed for divorce they sent me a notice that there would be an inspection. I had to feed three growing boys so I tried to fight it but that didn't work. The inspector came and wrote me up for about 15 pages of violations. All of them had to be fixed by a licensed contractor. There was a lot. I proceeded to knock them off one at a time and would have to go to City Hall to explain what I had gotten done and ask for more time for the rest of the list. Each time it would take a few hours to wait your turn to see the board to ask for more time. This went on for a few years. Maybe three. Every extra dollar I had went into trying to fix up one more thing on the list. It finally got to me. I went up to the inspectors office to ask for some kind of hold. I could not do this constantly anymore while trying to raise three children alone. It was weighing on me heavy. I started crying, from the frustration and he said, "Let me see if I can help." He called a church that had a group of retired volunteers that came to my house and knocked off the rest of the list for no charge. How sweet was that? We were done!!
They came back every two years and did it again. Eventually I got an inspection with no violations. They usually charge for the inspection and on that one it said, because you did so good there is no charge.
Well, I was plodding along still trying to keep the FREE house up and running. I had paid the heat, garbage and water bill for 28 years. Tenants started to take advantage of me and let all their friends use my washer and dryer (while I worked for 12 hours a day), they moved in numerous friends that had no place to go, some of my stuff was taken and the economy was starting to take a dump. It was getting very difficult for me to keep my head above water. I had moved to the smallest studio apartment that had no working kitchen (it had been gutted) and no real bathroom to speak of. I ate out for 6 years and took a shower in the apartment below me. It was getting bad. I just could really no longer keep this up. I tried.
Anxiety set in and found myself in bed and could not get up and did not know why. The pressure had taken it's toll and I had full blown sciatica pain and uncontrollable anxiety. I could not go to work. I could not stand up. I laid in bed and tried to figure out how to deal with this one. One day I thought, if I own this house free and clear I could go to the bank and get a loan on it. Then fix myself and go back to work. That is what I did but no bank wanted to talk to me. I talked to friends and ended up with an "unconventional loan" that required no proof of income. Things were looking up. This might just work.
I did not like the original terms of that loan so I answered an ad for another one. The ad asked the question..."Are you not happy with your current mortgage?" That is when I ran into the smooth talking predatory lender. I had no idea there was such a thing. I don't think anyone else did either. That is where the real mess started.
I kept getting paperwork in the mail that the unconventional loan had changed hands. I did not understand it at the time but what are you gonna do. They were playing musical chairs with the loans. It was right before the mortgage crash.
Late 2007 I had a tenant that had been there for 10 years and always paid me on time, go to jail. It was not easy but I bailed him out, got him a job and helped him so he could help me. I thought I was going to make it but the bank had a different plan.
I was getting behind. In everything. I could not keep up. I was in too deep. Being a proud independent woman, I maintained the thought, "I got this!!"
Well, I didn't.
The servicing company and I had many conversations. Most of them heated. Someone about once a month pulled in the driveway and took a photo of my house. I was a month or so behind and had to figure out something. In the mail I got some of those checks from your credit card company. I still had good credit. I filled one out for the two months payment and mailed it. It did not get recorded on the payments. I was wondering what happened when the next bill came and it was those two months and another one added to it. I called to see what happened to the check. The answer was that they don't accept payments from a credit card. So, I asked what I was supposed to do now. They said send the full amount to us. So, I mailed a check with the full amount. It got returned a few weeks later attached to a letter that said, "We no longer accept your personal checks because you are in default." I was in default because they refused to cash the credit card check.
Meanwhile, I am working my ass off sewing, Trying to rent an apartment. The economy is crashing fast. The tenants that I had could not pay because they had lost their job. I am now on anti anxiety drugs.
When my personal check got sent back I had another conversation with the servicing company and asked what I can do, really. I was not trying to lose my home. She informed me that I would have to send a cashiers check via registered mail by a certain date for the total amount of $3000 something. I worked hard. I was determined to do this. Every time I got a significant amount of cash I went and got a cashiers check and laid it on my desk until I got the total amount. I mailed it off on the right day and waited for the past due balance to be documented that it was paid. A couple weeks went by and I still saw no evidence that it was taken off. I called to see what was up.
A woman on the other end of the line asked how she could help me and let me know it was being recorded for training purposes. I asked her to look up and make sure that the payment was recorded. A few minutes went by and she came back on and said that she found no record of a payment by me. A year of frustration had built up in me and my response to her was, "What the FUCK are you talking about? I sent that in two weeks ago." She got kinda snippy and asked me if I just used foul language with her. I said, "Yes I fucking did." She then stated that tonight when I lay my head down to sleep I should have a little talk with Jesus about my attitude. THAT fucking pissed me right the fuck off. There was now smoke coming out of my ears. I think my comment to her was that she is the one that better be having a talk with Jesus tonight for participating in stealing my home.
A week or so later a letter came in the mail. It was a brief letter. Attached to the top edge of it was the 4 cashiers checks that I had sent them. The letter said......"We requested one cashiers check, not 4."
It was cold that Spring night. I went down in the basement to kick start the boiler that always acted up. It would not start. I looked under it where the burners were to see if it had the pilot light on and saw a pile of wet insulation plopped on the burners. I think it was done and would cost me thousands to replace.
I gave up after 28 years and started packing. I had six months to get out.
I learned a lot from my Mother. Some of it by her teaching me, some must have been genetic and some just by observation. A large part of who I am, came directly from her. There were times, when I was a teen that I just thought she was a pain in my ass but mostly I looked up to her.
She was an independent cuss and very outspoken and opinionated. Are you seeing the similarities already? She ran her own business. Always made it on her own, with no help from the Government. She was a constant volunteer for the betterment of her community. She was a Girl Scout Leader and a Cub Scout Den Mother. We lived behind the scout office and she even volunteered to store the semi load of Girl Scout cookies for the whole county every year. It filled the whole first floor for a week or so.
She was raised in Jackson on the quiet little corner of First and W. Washington. My Grandmother owned two apartment buildings there that had about 15 units each. The City of Jackson took them down in the 60's to put the road around downtown. There is a mailbox there now. She graduated JHS in 1948 and was sent to Stephens College in Missouri to learn to cook and sew so she could find herself a good man. Well, she did. My Father is from St. Louis. He was going to a college near hers. They got married and had two children and then moved to Jackson the year I was born.
She cooked and sewed and had 4 children. Everything seemed alright until she signed up to go to college in Ypsi. She wanted a teaching degree. She went while we were in school. She became a sub and worked Hunt School while I attended there. I can't give you the reason for the divorce but rumor is he did not want her to work. He wanted a housewife. She wanted to do stuff outside of the home. The divorced about 1969.
She always had a sewing machine out and actually used the Bishop method of sewing. Must have been something they learned in college. I grew up reading the Bishop Method book that she had and wanted to do everything in it. Our existence was old school and she cooked three meals a day. I learned to cook from her also. Mostly I baked things from scratch. Cookies, cakes, brownies, bread, pies and anything else I could make a mess of.
She believed in giving us a sense of accomplishment and independence too. We all had bikes and no boundaries I learned the street names in Jackson by riding everywhere. She let me paint my room any color I wanted any time I wanted. I could sew anything and use all her stuff. She made some of our clothing.
I started acting up a little in high school. Drinking, smoking Pot, skipping school a little, talking back. Normal stuff. She hardly ever disciplined me harshly. She usually let me stew in my own guilt and that fixed that.
She opened an art gallery on Michigan Ave in the Eastern end of the Ionia. Hand in Hand Gallery. I worked there in the 70's. Her and my Step-Father opened a screen printing shop on South St. and I worked there for them also. Hand in Hand Graphics.
At about 50 years young she got diagnosed with breast cancer. She wanted to take her yearly trek to Syracuse, NY to a fire truck convention of some sort, so she put off treatment. She told us when she got back and proceeded to have chemo done. Lost her hair, etc. Later it came back and it was time for the trip again. She put it off again. Didn't even tell her husband. When they got back she told him and later us and had a radical mastectomy soon after that. I don't recall all the details. It was over 28 years ago and I had three young sons. They were 1, 3 and 5 when she passed away. She was only 53. It was a very sad time and very hard to deal with. She hand wrote her own will and in the will she gave my Step-Father my Grandmother's estate. It included about 9 apartment buildings. My Grandmother was still alive.
Right when she got diagnosed, the first time, she handed me a safe deposit box key and just said, "You will know what to do when the time comes." I didn't expect her to go anytime soon and I was really busy with my children so I put it in a box of papers that ended up in a storage closet. A little bitty key. They day after she passed my Step-Father asked me to come see him and he wanted possession of the key. I asked him what he was going to do with whatever it was. We both did not know what was in there. He said he wanted to bring the contents to his file cabinet. I said I would meet him in the morning at the bank. I went home and thought about it and something didn't seem right. She was barely gone and he wanted the key NOW. Her words kept ringing in my head. "You will know what to do." Well, she knew I was a cuss. She trained me. She also knew I was the most honest and not self serving. I was torn about it. I did what I thought I had to do to protect whatever she knew was in there that she wanted me to deal with and not her husband. God, what a task I took on. I did not know this would be this hard. I went down first thing in the morning to the bank. I signed in and went to the box.
I opened it and sat at a table to see what the big deal was. All I remember that was in the box was some Consumers Power stock papers. My Step-Father's family started the company. Might have been something of his. I did not know but I did not think that is why she gave me the key. There was no cash, coins, jewelry or other valuables. I assumed the stock was valuable but it wasn't mine. The only other thing was my Grandmother's will. I was young and wondered what the heck I was supposed to do with that. I took the will, locked the box back up and went straight to the court building and filed it in probate court. I went out to my Step-Father's home and let him know what I did and he got pissed. Really pissed. I had to leave pretty quick. Later in the day my brother came to my house in a huff and demanded the key. I relinquished it. I no longer needed it. I never felt like I did the wrong thing. She gave me her key to her box and told me that I would know what to do. I think I did what she intended.
Grandma's will, that I filed in Probate Court, clearly said that if her only daughter predeceased her that the Grandchildren would inherit the estate. We all got our own apartment building and a quarter of two others after she passed.
I only did what she taught me to do, what she sort of asked me to do and no one is happy with me. Nobody!!
I was going to only explain the good stuff in respect for her life and the legacy she gave me. I loved my Mom. I miss my Mom. She meant a lot to me. I volunteer...just like her. I sew...just like her. I fight every day for survival...just like her. Sometimes I just wish she would have pre-thought what giving me that key would do to the rest of the relationships. It really messed them up.
My only peace is, that my Grandmother would have wanted it that way. My Mom did, I guess. My siblings should not be real pissed because they all got a quarter of the estate. If my Step-Father is upset then he is just wrong. It wasn't his. He barley talked to my Grandmother. He hasn't talked to me since the day after my Mom passed.
I am thankful for all that she did teach me. I do have fond memories. The one thing I am bummed about is that she was put to ashes and I don't have them, so I really don't have somewhere to go talk to her. You know, like go the grave sight and sit and talk to her. There was no funeral, by her request. I was given none of her belongings. No photos, no letters, not even her sewing books. My Sister got all that.
I am not sure how to end this because even though 28 years have passed, I feel open ended. There was never any closure. Just an abrupt end to anything that had to do with family. So I guess I will just.........
I have sat within the Nostradamus Triangle and I feel qualified to vouch for the reality of the magical powers of it. There was a time when I would have doubted it but I am convinced now of the power of the triangle.
It all started when I rented an apt. to a nice guy named Scott. He was harmless but he had a tad of schizophrenia. I never ran into anyone quite like him. He is very talented in many ways. He claimed to be a gourmet cook and proved it to me by cooking me many meals. He trashed out the kitchen but that was OK. He knows all landscaping plant life, mulch and grass by their Latin names. He would walk into my shop when I had a fashion, color or style issue and solve it with ease. The drawback to all this talent was that he self medicated with Vodka. Lots of Vodka.
Well, it was about to be his birthday in a month or so. He started warning me then that he would not be leaving his apt. that day. Ever!! I would tease him and ask, "What if you Mom or Sister calls to wish you happy birthday?" (He had no phone so they called me to talk to him) His answer was, "You don't get it, I will not be talking to anyone or leaving my apt." He warned me for weeks. His birthday was on the 13th and this year it would fall on Friday. He had lived through a few of them on Friday and he knew the consequences and did not want to involve others in the mayhem. He was protecting me from what may come.
The day before his birthday I was still teasing him that he was silly to worry about Friday the 13th stuff. I worked hard that day and near 10 pm I went out into the back yard to have a glass of wine and relax. When I walked out into the yard, there sat Scott already relaxing into his first Martini. He had lit his Tiki torches and placed them in a triangle around the gathering of chairs. I just sat down to enjoy the evening and he asked me how I liked the Nostradamus Triangle. He always liked to seem like he knew something the rest of us didn't get. I asked him what the heck he was talking about. He said he knew it was almost Midnight on the eve of his birthday and he wanted to be protected if he was going to leave his room.
I did not believe the Friday the 13th crap or the need for protection but I went along because the dancing flames were relaxing. It was such a nice night. Next thing we knew 3 police officers came toward us with long guns out and in position to shoot. That was something I had never experienced before. Ever!!! They were looking for our closest next door neighbor that had threatened to kill her ex-husband that day. She wasn't home. One of her teen sons had committed suicide a while back and she had his ashes in a guitar case for the remains. Her other son at the instructions of the ex came over earlier that day and took the ashes. It was the deceased Son's birthday and it appears everyone wanted to be close to him. She came home and found the case gone and threatened to kill the ex. They were looking for her.
After that incident and some discussion about what the heck just happened....everyone tried to calm down and pour another drink. Scott in the meantime was mentioning the virtues of sitting on the inside of the Nostradamus Triangle and how we were protected from any harm in there. We were somewhat skeptical but listened.
Just when the conversation gets back to normal (as normal as it can with a mental patient) we hear rustling of the grass in the small wooded area behind my house. It was coming towards us. The guy ended up standing right outside the triangle and looked us in the eye with the most freaked out look I ever saw. Something was gravely wrong. After he stopped for a second he moved on. We were so disturbed by the look on his face but had no clue what would make a person look like that. About 5 minutes later 4-5 police officers approach us with guns and flashlights. They were coming through the woods also. What the heck? They came up just outside the triangle and asked us, "Which way did he go?" He went that a way ------>. By the way may we ask what he did? We were informed that at the end of the street next to us he went in to try and buy drugs and the deal went bad and he got shot. Oh great!! Wonderful!! We all looked at each other and thought maybe we should go in now. It was not really safe out there. Scott convinced us that we were perfectly safe in the triangle. Anything could go on around us but we would not be harmed. We were starting to believe him. Two different incidents that I have never experienced before and all within an hour or two. I was also starting to believe the Friday the 13th stuff.
Well he assured us that all was well within the triangle so we stayed and poured another drink. Ahhhhhhhhh
Then all of a sudden a huge SUV police vehicle with lights and strobes flashing pulls in the driveway. Lit up the place pretty good. The officer gets out with his dog. I guess they were tracking the bloody guy. They found blood in my driveway. They all went to the South of there and left the SUV running. Because we were slightly drunk by now and found all this very humorous we stayed out there in the triangle to see the action. Stupid, I know. We should have gone in long ago.
Half hour later all the officers come walking back with the dog and open the SUV door to load the dog. Scott gets up and walks towards them. Mind you he had been drinking straight up Vodka all night. He also has now left the triangle. Oh shit what is he thinking? He goes up to the very official officers and thanked them for the awesome light and strobe show.
It was time for me to go in now. I have had about all I could handle.
