Tending Life's Garden

Not beating up on myself, just telling some truths.

My life's garden began when I was young,
learning by touch and by smell which to stroke,
and whether I should eat or I should poke,
I found what smelled good could also be dung.

The garden of my life reached puberty,
thunder, lightening and rain all came to call,
wanting to be a man, feeling so small,
snipped the umbilical cord to be free.

Glorious days of wine, women and song,
like a downpour of voluptuous flesh,
giving my garden substance to refresh,
flowers to be plucked as I danced along.

There were times when drought came to my garden,
wondered if it would be the death of me,
where are my ripe flowers, God, I did plea,
tried to restore but the ground had hardened.

Still, the garden grew, fresh flowers were born,
progressed and entered into adult years,
my garden grew into celestial spheres,
females caused me joy, then caused me to mourn.

The landscape of my garden was worn thin,
nurturing it became awkward, nothing grew,
I found you must love life, give it it's due,
as I looked back, I cringed where I had been.

My plot of life, my garden, as it were,
managed to feed itself without my aid,
helped me to the fall of my life's parade,
although a huge part of it was a blur.

The bitter weeds I've sown along the way,
causes remorse, yes I would change some parts,
mainly the left atrium of my heart,
give it more feeling and less disarray.

These are the days of my full winter's chill,
my plot of life has made its mark for good,
I've given it much, I did what I could,
I've had valleys and peaks and oh, some thrills.

Time has a way of rinsing out the bad,
we feed off ourselves, cannibalistic,
a merry-go-round down to the last click,
I just wish I had been a stay-home dad.

©June 26, 2006 / Jerry Pat Bolton

My Christmas Present

Today a box came in the mail,
It was addressed to me, not Dale.
What could be in this little box?
I shook it, I did not hear rocks.

Light as a feather it felt to me,
It was sealed so tight I could not see.
I tore into that box, I did.
Was it just air there? Oh forbid!

Inside the box another one!
My, oh my, this is so much fun.
I read To Grandpa, From Jimmy
My heart danced and then it shimmied.

My hands trembled opening it,
With tears in my eyes I admit.
It was a golden Christmas ball,
The best present I can recall.

Engraved on it, Number 1 Grandpa
I feel so good, I am in awe.
Jimmy is my groovy grandson.
Jimmy is my only grandson.

UPDATE . . . CHRISTMAS DAY

Today my daughter dialed my phone,
I've not spoke to her in so long.
We talked today and I am proud,
I love her so much, I say out loud.

©December 24, 2007 / Jerry Pat Bolton

It's Like I Said

Now that I have finished the first draft of Misdemeanors & Felonies: A Memoir I am struggling to find a real reason to keep this site viable. I suppose I could continue to relate daily my pprogress, or lack of progress, concerning the story, but I'm beginning to feel a little worn out with all the "talking" about it. I am posting what I have written here on my Myspace site and a few people read and comment on it, but any more "talk" about the project is becoming a little weirsome.

Saying that, I have to relate that the rewrite is progressing quite well. Oh, it is hard, no doubt about it, harder actually than I thought it would be, but I'm getting through it. I had so many notes I'd taken over the decades which I wanted to bring out in the telling of the story, and I did bring out the most important ones, but there are incidential things which also need to be included, and that is what the rewrite is all about. Also, toward the end of the first draft I tended to "rush" things, sometimes covering a great many years and happenings in one chapter. I need to fis at least some of that. Which means the book will be bigger than it already is, and it is already almost four hundred pages. THAT means I have to go back through it . . . This morning . . . And change the font from Palatino to Time Roman. In so doing I will pick up quite a few pages, so that is my agenda today, pluse trying to rewrite Chapter 16 and maybe more, well see.

Until the next time . . .

My Novels:

Write To Murder . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/956621

Margaret and David: A Love Story . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1072842

My Mother's Revenge . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1132742

Rebirth

Yes, indeed, a brand new baby is born. This baby's name? The rewrite or second draft of Misdemeanors & Felonies. Whatever name you want to give it, it is time to begin to put the outline (which is what the first draft amounted to) on the table and begin to tinker, slash, burn, add, completely rewrite whole scenes, if not whole chapters, in an attempt to turn what I have already written into something special. This "tinkering" will begin in the very beginning, because before Chapter 1, I will have a Forward or Prelude, whatever in order to put the rest of the book in perspective. Some writers scoff at the notion of a Forward, saying just tell the story, you do not need a Preamble to it telling the readers what to expect. Horsefeathers. I will begin with a Forward. I took many, many notes during a thirty, maybe forty-year span about my life in anticipation of writing a novel based on it. I have used some, quote a lot actually, of the notes, but there are still many II need to incorporate, and I shall.

I also know that I have left out important part of my life in a mad rush to get to the end of the book and not have it go too many pages. That was a mistake and I shall rectify that omission also. I so want this book for the people I have already mentioned that I became frenzied in my attempt to "get it done." I keep saying that I am writing this for my children, but am I really? Yes, I am really, although there is a great desire to get it written for my own sake, I can't lie about that. I have said that the book was meant to be written, and I have thought about it for many, many years, but not exactly in the form I am finally doing it. The writing of Misdemeanors & Felonies: A Memoir will, of course, be for me also. In fantasying thoughts (which I am never prone to do) I envision, as I write it I can break away from the real and interject what should have happened and make everything all right. That would be nice. It can;t be, however, what is done is done unfortunately, and unless I could locate the old Devil and offer my soul to be able to change the course of my life, nothing can be done about what has happened.

I'm not sure if I will be posting each day as I have before, but I imagine I will, whether or not I will post on Myspace page is another thing. I doubt it . . .

Here we go . . .

My Novels:

Write To Murder . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/956621

Margaret and David: A Love Story . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1072842

My Mother's Revenge . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1132742

Putting It To Bed

The title says it all. It is over. Time to lay back and relax awhile. Hah! Rotsa ruck . . . I won't be able to rest until I go back through the pages deleting here, adding there, correcting that mistake. All we have to do to make our book as readable as possible is to go on a slash and burn campaign. Cut out superfluous words, reconstruct awkward and misleading AND hard to understand sentences. It is not work for the squeamish . . . Hah! But it is work which should, and will, be done. In our rush to publish the book, especially when we self publish, which is how this will be published, we can screw up in major ways. Still, there is that tiny spark within my heart which say to hurry, hurry, hurry and got it done. There are people you want to read it; the ones you are writing it for.

I think I have caught myself in time. I am in the beginning of the second draft and I caught myself rushing through it and not paying enough attention to detail and flow of the story. This will stop today, I will go back to the chapters I have already dealt with and reread them. I am determined to make this book as self-explanatory as possible to the readers, especially of course to Patricia, Paula and Nick . . . Later, maybe Jimmy. Enough on the mechanics of writing, let me finish this blog entry with the last chapter . . .

I am so very nervous about the content of this memoir . . . There will be, and already are, some people who do not care for the fact that I am writing something which uncovers my weaknesses and my faults for the whole world to see. I cannot help that. I must do this. I HAVE to do this, whether it embarrasses some people or not. To not write this book, to the best of my ability, would be like refusing to take the next breath and we all understand how difficult that would be. The last chapter will bring the reader to here, where I am, and have been for twenty some odd years. It will be optimistic for the future and at the same time there will be sadness because of forces beyond my control which are tormenting loved ones.

I have done the best that I can . . . Now I will go back into the book and do better . . .

My Novels:

Write To Murder . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/956621

Margaret and David: A Love Story . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1072842

My Mother's Revenge . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1132742

Settlin' Down? . . .

Except for the bad news about Paula everything was going good in Taylor, Arkansas, Dottie and I were doing okay in the little house. My mother, except for a few caustic remarks here and there pretty much left things alone. Steve and Joy and their girls Brandy and Ginger, were managing to do well also. John and Jeffery were making their way in the world, and, as everyone was busy taking care of personal things it seemed mother was coming to grips with the fact that life was passing her by. Oh, she still tried to be the woman she used to be, but by now age had caught up with her and although her heart was still in the game of meddling in people's lives, she was physically unable to keep up the charade.

By now the reader must know that things in my life could not be placid and happy for very long. Paula, after getting straight moved back to Chattanooga, and went back to school at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. About this time my job at Survey Boats played out, they were downsizing, and I was having a hard time getting work elsewhere. I'd been talking to Paula, and knowing the way I have always dealt with crises, it's a wonder I hadn't done what I did already.

We piled everything we could into the car and took off up to Chattanooga. Foolish? Perhaps. Being foolish never bothered me before and it didn't this time. I will admit it wasn't the smartest move I've ever made, but there we were, in Chattanooga, with no job and not much money. Dottie got a job first as a waitress downtown and I eventually went to work at a Waffle House, but both of us could see we had made a mistake. I was able to see Paula, but she was so involved with her studies and her life I felt like I was intruding and we decided, after six months to go back to Louisiana.

So! There we were, doing the best we could. I was on the computer every day, putting my writing out there and every so often thinking about Patricia, my other daughter. I began looking for her or her mother on the computer. Every few months I would try another search. Nothing. I though I was close a couple of times, but I wasn't. I told Dottie that I was all over the World Wide Web and if anybody was looking for me and typed my name in a search engine they would find me.

On August 15th of the year 2007 someone did just that.

My Novels:

Write To Murder . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/956621

Margaret and David: A Love Story . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1072842

My Mother's Revenge . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1132742

A Fairie Tale

This character out of the Lil Abner comic strip is just about how I was feeling about myself when I got the news about Paula's cocaine addiction. From unadultrated happiness to the feeling that wherever I walked despair and gloom followed me like a rain clouud directly over my head. Life throws you all sorts of curve balls. I received one a few weeks after I met Paula in Little Rock. I found out she had been fired from TWA for cocaine abuse and had checked into a rehab center for help. I'm not a great fan of rehab places; I figure it is all a matter of priorities. I quit drugs. I quit smoking. I quit drinking. All of those I quit without a damned rehab place taking my money . . . I just quit. Anyway, after I heard the bad news I sat down at the dinette, and with a yellow lead pencil wrote this . . .

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A Fairie Tale

Once upon a time in a far off land called Temptationville there lived a beautiful princess named Love.

Princess Love was adored by her father who lived across the big mountain in a valley called Lonely. Her father's name was Forgetmenot. Princess Love did not know her father because she lived in a big castle with King Sunflower and her mother, Queen Rose.

Everyone in Temptationville worshipped Princess Love. She lived in grandiose style and showered with gifts from the people of the countryside. Princess Love was so happy. Everyday was her own special holiday.

On her sixteenth birthday, King Sunflower and Queen Rose gave her the biggest birthday party ever given in Temptationville. All the people came bearing gifts for the lovely princess.

There was dancing in the streets and joyous adulation for the beautiful Princess Love. The people spread their gifts in front of the Gift-Giving Temple. Everyone was so happy because they were able to show their feelings for Princess Love.

Forgetmenot left the Valley of Lonely and came down the big mountain to watch. All Forgetmenot could bring as a gift was the Special Feeling within his heart. Forgetmenot was very poor.

As the happy people piled their gifts before the Gift-Giving Temple, Forgetmenot stood off to the side and watched with gladness in his heart. The feeling was almost unbearable. Each time someone presented their gift; Forgetmenot reached across the void with the Special Feeling in his heart and blessed it.

Princess Love did not know who Forgetmenot was. Forgetmenot left Temptationville many years before to climb the big mountain to the Valley of Lonely to live.

After everyone had placed their gifts at the Gift-Giving Temple, he saw one man approach where all the gifts were piled up. He was all alone. He was a tall and handsome man, but he walked with an aloofness; and an arrogance which made him stand out from everyone else.
The handsome stranger was not happy like the rest of the people, although there was a thin, venomous smile on his face. Forgetmenot understood there was something foreboding in the way he approached the Gift-Giving Temple.

The handsome stranger placed his gift to the side of all the other gifts. Then he straightened up and laughed aloud. A heinous laugh. He bowed low before Princess Love and left. Forgetmenot could not reach across with the Special Feeling in his heart to bless this gift. He felt wickedness within the brightly wrapped package.

Princess Love began opening the beautiful things that had been left for her. Princess Love was so happy.

Each present she opened seemed to come alive in her hands with a feeling she had never felt before. After all her gifts were opened and she turned to leave, the package the handsome stranger had brought caught her eye. Princess Love bent down to open it. On top of the package lay a small card. On it was written:

Happy Sixteenth Birthday from Count Cacti.

Princess Love reached inside the box to retrieve her gift, but pulled her hand back with a start and a small cry of pain. Something had pricked her finger and blood dripped slowly from it. Princess Love cried out again and King Sunflower and Queen Rose came and wiped the blood from her finger and held her as she wept.

As Princess Love sobbed, she felt a sudden burst of energy springing from within her, which was at first, very scary. She overcame her fright, however, and allowed the strange sensation to fill her whole being.

She pulled away from the embrace of King Sunflower and Queen Rose. Her little heart was pounding at an alarming rate and she felt as though she knew . . . Well, she wasn’t quite sure what she thought she knew, but she suddenly felt she knew far more than anyone else in Temptationville. Quite without realizing why Princess Love understood that she, and she alone, was aware of things no one else could comprehend. She felt so . . . superior to the rest of the people.

Princess Love ran back to the box which held her present. For by now, as far as she was concerned, it was the only present she cared about. She grabbed the box, and, ignoring pleas from King Sunflower and Queen Rose, she ran to her room inside the castle with her treasure.
The odd-shaped, prickly gift Princess Love took with her became her all. She found that when she would prick herself with the spiny plant, the world of Temptationville, and all its happy people dissolved into pettiness and contempt.

Everyday activities, which once seemed so beautiful, now spawned rejection from Princess Love. It was as if everyone were like children at play. Playing childish games of life. It was all so very beneath her now.

Princess Love acquired such an attitude she was unable to converse with anyone about anything. No one seemed to be able to identify with her and couldn’t understand her strange ways. She thought everyone was absurd.

Everyone, that is, except Count Cacti.

The Count returned to her when she needed him the most.

And Princess Love found that she needed him often, because each time she pricked herself with the spiny, needle-sharp barb, it would fall from the plant and become useless. Every day she needed more and more of the self-inflected wounds to supply her body its feeling of omnipresence and condescension which replaced her soul. But it always seemed when the plant was about to become barren of the little prickly points Count Cacti would show up with another precious plant.

He would only bring one plant at a time, however, and Princess Love wanted more of them because she felt insecure without it. The plant had become her world.

On Princess Love’s twenty-first birthday she decreed to the people of Temptationville that they should bring only the small, spiny plant for presents and nothing else.

Princess Love needed to know that she would have an endless supply of the special plant which had become her only reason to live. And by her decree, she would not have to worry anymore.
The day of her birthday arrived and all the people of Temptationville arrived with their gifts. Princess Love watched the somber people from her window, high in the castle. There was no laughing and dancing. The people of Temptationville were sad.

King Sunflower and Queen Rose stood before the people with bowed heads and tear-stained eyes. They were also saddened by Princess Love’s strange enchantment with the little plant.
All the gifts had been laid round the Gift-Giving Temple and the people had silently departed.

Except one man who Princess Love did not know, but that Queen Rose recognized as Forgetmenot.

Forgetmenot had come down from the mountain from the Valley of Lonely again for his daughter’s twenty-first birthday.

This time he brought her a present. A Magic Mirror.

Forgetmenot walked to the Gift-Giving Temple and looked up at Princess Love as she watched from her window. He placed the Magic Mirror next to the many little plants the people had brought. Then he rose and looked again at Princess Love before leaving.

Princess Love, incensed by this strange, tattered man who dared not bring her the cherished spiny plant she so desired, ran from the castle to the Gift-Giving Temple to confront him.

She picked up the Magic Mirror, intending to smash it to the ground. Before she did so, she looked into it. The Magic Mirror seemed to explode her image from within it straight into her very soul. She looked at her face staring back, and from somewhere deep within herself came the terrible truth.

The truth of who she was.

The truth of who she used to be.

The truth of who she had become.

It was all so real, and the moment weighed upon her. The past five years seemed like an awful nightmare.

Then Queen Rose came to Princess Love and told her who the man was that left the Magic Mirror.

Princess Love ran after him.

Forgetmenot and Princess Love walked back to the Gift-Giving Temple and set fire to the hundreds of tiny plants.

Forgetmenot climbed back up the big mountain to the Valley of Lonely, but now Princess Love talked to him with her Magic Mirror.

She had broken her Magic Mirror in half, so that now they both had one. And they talked to each other from Temptationville across the big mountain to the Valley of Lonely.

And they all lived happily every after.

--The End—

My Novels:

Write To Murder . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/956621

Margaret and David: A Love Story . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1072842

My Mother's Revenge . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1132742

Modern Miracles

Modern Miracles

Some say miracles are a figment of our overactive imagination, or putting too much foolish importance on what was written in the Bible. I am not here to argue the point. I am here to say that I believe in miracles, because two such phenomenons have happened during my life time. Yes, I am the recipient of two blessed events and I shout it out right here loud and clear one of those miracles happened to me in the fall of 1986. Paula, my first daughter searched me out and called me.

Within two days I was in the Little Rock Airport waiting to meet her. There is no mortal way to describe what I was feeling as I sat there scanning every young woman that passed by, not knowing if I would recognize her or not. Sure, I could say I was super-excited and there is any number of adjectives I could use to call attention to my feeling, but none of them can possibly express what I was actually feeling. The best way to put it is that I felt like I had taken a near overdose of meth and was just barely holding on to myself.

A beautiful young woman came into my view wearing the uniform of TWA flight attendants, which was what Paula was at the time. She was also scanning the people around her, as though looking for someone, and in my heart I knew it was Paula. I crossed my left leg over the other one and lay my left arm on top of it, giving anyone who walked by a good viewing of the tattoo on my forearm which read "Paula." I saw her eyes go down to the tattoo and she took a tentative step toward me and within seconds I was on my feet and we were hugging each other for the very first time in our lives.

I do not understand how my thumping heart managed to stay inside my chest. We stood there, awkwardly I must admit, and talked for a few minutes before leaving the airport. We didn't go far, just a short distance to a lounge, which I think was named "The Airport Lounge." You could look out the window and see planes landing and taking off. It was there that I more or less lost it. The full impact of what was taking place hit me so hard I am surprised my heart did not stop, but I dealt with it in another way.

I wept.

More than once did the tears fall unabashedly down my face. I tried not to, but when I realized these tears of happiness and regret were coming out of their own accord, I went with it. I was happy, very happy that Paula had found a way to look me up, not knowing what she would find. She wanted to know who her father was and she had questions, Paula had many questions there at that lounge and over the next few years. I felt great anguish and regret the same time I was feeling such happiness, because of the fact that I was never a father to her. Our past has a way of bringing us down to her knees from time to time, and this was my time.

We stayed in the lounge for an hour or two until Paula had to leave and catch a plane back to St. Louis where she lived. I saw her off in a state of unbelievable elation that I had had this time with her. After she boarded the plane I drove back to Taylor with such euphoria I could hardly contain it. It was a few short weeks later than I found out from her mother than she had lost her job and had checked into a "treatment" center for her addiction for cocaine. This horrifying news caused me to sit down at the dinette in the kitchen and write a short story called "A Fairie Tale."

My Novels:

Write To Murder . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/956621

Margaret and David: A Love Story . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1072842

My Mother's Revenge . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1132742

Finding Happiness?

After we got the hell out of Hollywood, we spent a few years trying to find a "place that fit." (Thanks Patricia for that line) New Orleans wasn't that place, as much as I used to like it, I found I didn't anymore. The catering company I was working for had me going all over the Gulf of Mexico to catch rights and petroleum platforms, and it was wearing on me.

Taylor was next, and although I knew we wasn't going to make it there, I think Dottie was partial to the small town persona, as so we went back. My company put me on a rig where I could catch out of Cameron, Louisiana and that meant I didn't have to worry about where I would be sent to and I could commute from Arkansas. But wouldn't you know the damn job played out, so there we were back in Taylor, almost broke and no job. I took a chance and went to Texarkana, about sixty miles from Taylor and lucked out and got a Linotype job at a print shop there. Don’t you know, the job there went south also . . . Now what?

We hauled it to Nashville, Tennessee where I'd heard of a job at a typesetting place that paid good . . . I got it. Great . . . Are you getting the picture here that I have found a woman who will walk each and every step with me and I can't sit still? You'd be right . . . Uh huh. It took us a year in Nashville before we packed up and went back to Taylor . . . Talk about a glutton for punishment . . . It is almost embarrassing for me to relate it, but what the hell, it happened.

I found the best job I'd ever had with Survey Boats out of Patterson, Louisiana. We bought a house in Taylor (Gasp! Yes, bought!) A little two bedroom wooden house with a large back yard where Dottie made into one hell of a garden, much to the surprise to a few people in town. Whew! Now we were set. We were able to breathe easier. I had a good job, working a good rotation, and the pay was fantastic. I loved my job on the boats, the man, John Chance, Inc. of Lafayette, Louisiana who owned Survey Boats, Inc. had an open account for cooks to order food, and there was no monetary limit to what I could buy. I was able to prepare everything from Lobster to Prime Rib, whatever I wanted. He liked to say that his men had to be away from home and he didn't want them to feel they were missing out on home cooked meals.

I was happy, really happy, but happiness is a two-way street and Dottie, myself and Baby, the little pooch, were wallowing in it. Life was good.
Oh, but little did I realize that it was about to get much, much better. I think I can safely say unbelievably better. How could one heart withstand all the bliss which was heading its way?

My Novels:

Write To Murder . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/956621

Margaret and David: A Love Story . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1072842

My Mother's Revenge . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1132742

Heading West . . . Again

The world is always ready to accept and embrace new lovers. Nothing is impossible, no matter the age of these new lovers. When you are infatuated with another's charms everything seems to stop and allow you to have your way. You take chances because you understand, somewhere in your deepest thoughts, that whatever you choose to try will be accomplished beyond your wildest dreams.

Even people such as Dottie and I, who had been around the block a few times, even we decided that the world was, or should have been, at our beck and call. We were in love and we all know that love blinds. Dottie was in the mood to see some of the world I had been seeing through the blurred vision of booze and pills and hypodermic needles. I was more than willing to be the tour guide, another good fit.

We had fun on the drive west, stopping first in El Paso where I took her across the bridge to Juarez. Are you getting a feel of what I'm doing? Retracing all of my old haunts, again, this time dragging along Dottie who didn't know the history of these places that I had. She was stunned – if that's the word – with all the bars that were really whorehouses. We stopped in New Mexico to check out out-of-the-way places, old western graveyards and one monster house which rose out of the desert like a huge white bird. It looked so out of place setting amid cacti and the desolation of the landscape. It was solid white and built round, like an observatory, but it wasn't. We saw no sign of life there, and it has crossed my mind many times as I wondered what the hell it was and where were the people who built it.

The so-called tour I was taking Dottie on, however, as you might expect given my history, was a train wreck in the making. Phoenix was a bust and we didn't last but about three months there before moving on to Los Angeles. Hollywood, actually. The scuzzy part of Hollywood. It was also a bust and we headed back to New Orleans, our tails tucked firmly between our legs with one more slap in the face, this time it didn’t single us out individually, we both were wounded.

My Novels:

Write To Murder . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/956621

Margaret and David: A Love Story . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1072842

My Mother's Revenge . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1132742

Joan of Arc of My Soul #2

My meeting Dottie came at a particularly bad time in my troubled life. I was down worse than I had ever been. The failure of my marriage to Nanette really bothered me to the point that I was a walking, talking, mental wreck. I shoved all that in the back of my mind and just basically got down on myself to the point that I did not care about much of anything. I got a job offshore because of the money, but it, nor the money made me happy. My life had come to a standstill. It was meaning less and less to me. What had happened to me, or rather what I had done to myself and to others in the last dozen years of my miserable life was constantly on my mind and it was killing me, to the point that I seriously thought of ending my life.

I know the title Joan of Arc of My Soul might seem a little much to some, but Dorothy Jean Bridges, who I met when I was really down, fulfilled that image in the years to come. Dottie was there for me at the right time. Likewise I was there for her at the right time. We were destined, if there is such a thing, for each other. To say that our love and relationship was smooth and orderly would be insulting, for if the reader has been reading this blog for any length of time they know I was anything but orderly. Still, we merged into one another easily, both taking a chance on the other because life as we knew it was lacking. It was lacking and when we merged into our love what was missing slipped into place without so much as a whimper. It would need some fine-tuning, but it was in place and purring.

Although I was making pretty good money offshore and Dottie was working, we both wanted to leave New Orleans, I seemed to have instilled the wanderlust in her early on. Since she had never been out west we decided on Phoenix as our destination and just left. We did make a quick stop at Taylor (yes, I keep going back, do I not?) before cheeglin' on down the road. Mother was classic mother, but basically the couple of days we spent there were pleasant enough. Then we were gone.

Phoenix tomorrow . . .

My Novels:

Write To Murder . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/956621

Margaret and David: A Love Story . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1072842

My Mother's Revenge . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1132742

Joan of Arc of My Soul

After the shock of Nanette taking Patricia and leaving I went on a whirlwind tour which took me from Los Angeles to Seattle, to Dallas, until finally I stopped long enough to catch my breath back in New Orleans. I always seemed to return to that city. I went to my job the next morning and demanded what was owed me. Andy, the owner took one look at me and decided he would play the game of "I'll-send-it-to-you," and pulled cash out of his pocket and paid me off, with a bonus for coming up with something in the week preceding that saved him some money. He was a good man.

I was a street person again and that meant I did things I wouldn't normally do to get cash for the booze and the drugs, but it wasn't until I hit Dallas, Texas that I found myself shoving thin, hollow rods into my veins on a regular bases. The speed I found there very few people knew about. Well they knew about it they just didn't understand its multitalented use. But this guy I met in the print shop I found work in knew and turned me on. Did he ever turn me on. The drug of choice? Ritalin. What? you say, isn't that what they give . . . Yes, it is given to kids (mostly boys who just want to be boys) to calm them down, but when dissolved in water and drawn up in a syringe and then shoot into a waiting vein . . . It is NOT kid stuff.

I survived that, however. You notice all the crap I survived? Was I leading a charmed life, or what, especially when it came to surviving? Not so charmed like when it came to hanging on to the good things which came my way and treated me with respect and even love. I was like the song about the snake who was injured and cold and this beautiful woman happened by and he begged her to take him in. She was afraid, but after the snake said he would harm her she relented and gave the snake shelter. After the snake was warm and safe he bit her. When the woman asked why he had done that after all she had done for him, the snake replied, "But you knew I was a snake." In a large portion of my life I was that damned snake

But when I got to New Orleans I met my Joan of Arc of my soul, and although I tried to bite her more than once, she had the antidote for the bite . . . Love . . . This time I was starved for love . . . Two strangers met, both needed the other . . . After thirty-five-years we still need each other . . . Dorothy (Dottie) Jean Bolton . . . That's her in the graphic at the top of the page.

My Novels:

Write To Murder . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/956621

Margaret and David: A Love Story . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1072842

My Mother's Revenge . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1132742

Self-pity/Brightness/Gone

For a few months I seemed to be bound and determined to have my name written in the Book of Departed Souls. After leaving New Orleans I made a beeline for skid row Los Angeles and wallowed in self pity and wine/beer/liquor and any kind of drug I could score, which wasn't much because of my financial state. The city of Los Angeles welcomed yet one more tarnished soul into its odorous jungle of the pitiful and the lost amid the stench of skid row and all that implies. Days and weeks and months went by unnoticed by me as I tried desperately to commit suicide by wallowing in the depths of hell that was Fifth and Loos Angeles Streets in downtown. The bars, huge cancerous, sad places had my kind of people sitting on broken, cockeyed bar stools and at small little tables alone and lonely and full of remorse and hate because of whatever had sent them to this purgatory on earth. My kind of people. My kind of world. A world of desperate men and women bunched together in the bedlam of the moment. Every day there would be a soul freed from his or her misery when they were found dead in alleyways. Free! Great God Almighty! Free At Last!!

At least that was how I was beginning to view the living, just hanging around until death released you from all the agony that being alive entails. Among some fleeting lucid moments as I was on my knees in the slime and poverty of Fifth and Los Angeles Streets Nanette and my beautiful little daughter, Patricia found their way into my thoughts. It was much to horrible to consider and even think about and I sought out drink or pills, preferably both as an antidote. Before I could get to that most powerful antidote I could see how weak and stupid I was and that Nanette and Patricia were paying a far, far worse price than was I because of that weakness. But soon the wine obliterated their beautiful images and I was safe again, locked inside my cocoon of self pity and anguish.

Somehow, I came out of it and through an old friends help, Richard who I was sharing an apartment with when I met Nanette, I managed to climb out of the gutter and find work. After I found work self esteem slipped into my psyche and the thoughts of my family back in New York came to possess me. I called. Nanette agreed and I sent her plane fare and we were going to try it again. Through all of my problems over the years, it was the booze which amplified and made it much worse and I wasn't planning on quitting anytime soon. It was whiskey which caused the fight Nanette and I had after everything had been going along so damn good. I never could even remember what the fight was about, but knowing myself and knowing Nanette, the fight was probably all on me. Whatever it was, whatever I said, it scared her enough that she left the next day while I was at work. That really devastated me, because I couldn't remember what the hell I had done to cause it. I knew we had a fight, I remembered the yelling, me yelling at least, and I can only guess that whatever I said to her scared her enough that she took Patricia and went back to New York.

That was the last time I would see Nanette.

My Novels:

Write To Murder . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/956621

Margaret and David: A Love Story . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1072842

My Mother's Revenge . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1132742

I need a break . . . Yesterday's Chapter 51 had its toll on me . . . Whadda you think of my grandson? . . . Handsome, eh? . . . I'll be back tomorrow . . .

Chapter 51 Killed Me To Write

With the help of my influential mother-in-law in New York I was not sent back to Lompoc for the remainder of my sentence. Instead she got a federal parole officer in Brooklyn to take me on and Nanette and I took off for the big city. Flushing, in Queens Borough, was where the in-laws lived and we stayed there until Nanette had Patricia. I found work in Lynbrook, Long Island, and after the baby was born we moved out there.

I loved Lynbrook. I loved my job at Satisfaction Supply company: Label Craft Division . . . Yeah, I know, what a name, huh? I loved Nanette. I loved Patricia. What then, could go wrong? This is where the chapter started killing me, because I don't know why I left. In the book I blamed it on my nomadic lifestyle up until this time in my life. I blamed it on the "ramblin' man" syndrome. It is killing me even here trying to say that I walked away from my family. When I was writing Chapter 51 I had to get up from the computer three different times and take a walk outside to try and calm myself down, but nothing worked and I forced myself to write the chapter. This chapter is, by far, the worst one I have had to write and there have been some bad one.

This is all I am going to say about this chapter, except that it just about killed me, at one point I actually thought I was going to have a heart attack or a stroke . . . Tomorrow . . . Tomorrow . . .

My Novels:

Write To Murder . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/956621

Margaret and David: A Love Story . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1072842

My Mother's Revenge . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1132742

Just When Things Were Going Good

Nanette and I went back to Taylor. Yes, I know, going back there when things go wrong is getting old. I try to explain it in Chapter 50. But for someone who swore he would never go back when he left for the Air Force, I have broken that promise many more times than I ever thought I would. A "real" marriage took place within a few days of our coming back. Nanette was busy getting used to the culture shock of finding herself in the Deep South and I went looking for a job. I found one in a newspaper in a town called Bunkie. I found a tacky apartment and worked for two weeks before moving Nanette down with me, and although she never said anything, I just know her stay in the Bolton house in Taylor was anything but pleasant.

But we were together again. We found a little house and moved out of the apartment as soon as we could and things were going along very well. I liked my job at the Bunkie Record, I liked the publisher, Jim Levy and I even liked the little town of Bunkie. I was beginning to like my life a lot also. This was something very new for me. Although I didn't go around with a frown on my face all the time, my life up until then had not been such a stellar one. Foolishly, I was beginning to share the picket fence mentality with Nanette. I was beginning to believe it could actually be ours if we only put our mind to it and worked hard. I was a hard worker and always have been when I was doing what I liked to do. The Linotype machine opened up so many more doors for me that would not have been there had I not learned the trade.

Sigh. Drat. Crapolla. All of my wonderful thoughts were dashed the day Jim Levy came up to me as I was sitting at the Linotype and said he needed to see me in his office. When I walked through the door of that office I was rousted, handcuffed and hustled off to the Avoyelles Parish Prison in Alexandria, a town about forty miles north of Bunkie. Parole violation! I had not thought about the possibility of going back to prison for some time. I had been happy and I shoved it all aside into the furthest corners of my mind. One thing struck me immediately as they were leading me out of the newspaper.

My mother turned me in.

My Novels:

Write To Murder . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/956621

Margaret and David: A Love Story . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1072842

My Mother's Revenge . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1132742

Marriage . . .

After the narrow escape up in Apple Valley with Cecil I found, after returning to the Crystal Apartments both Nanette and I were rived up. The few days away from each other cemented, at least for me and I think her, that we were fated to be man and wife. It took us only a matter of a few short days before we were on a Greyhound Bus hauling ass to Las Vegas, Nevada. There we could be married quick, no waiting, no blood tests, immediately! Why were we in such a hurry? For myself I think I was suddenly, after the weekend disaster, ready to chart a different course. With the quiet, but powerful strength of Nanette I guess I was thinking, wishing, hoping that I could somehow turn my life around from the crime-ridden, hustling, small time bandit that I had become. It sounds terrible to put it in those words, it make it sound like I did not love Nanette. I did love her and that was part of it all. I thought she loved me also and together we could strike out together and make a life we could both be proud of. Ah, but I was getting ready to marry that sweet person in a fraudulent way.

Why did Nanette want to marry me? I was somebody who, until a few weeks before was nobody to her. I can't answer that question. I did sense a feeling of sorrow inside her. I don't know, maybe she was just anxious to find that little house on Main Street, U.S.A., with its white picket fence, the garden, all the trappings of a Norman Rockwell painting. I can only suppose she saw in me a diamond in the rough and she assumed that after the rough edges were whittled away I would be polished and bright and her dream would come true. Like I say, I don't know, it maybe be something as simple as her falling in love with me.

Well, we got to Las Vegas and we were married under my assumed name, the one I had been using since I'd broken parole. Why did I do that? I can only say that the idea of me going back to prison was first and foremost in my thoughts at that time in my life. I'd done four and a half years and did NOT want anymore of it. Still . . . It was a chickenshit thing to do and it has haunted me all these years, although when I finally got around to telling Nanette, she really didn't seem too upset. Then again, maybe she was so stunned she was unable to bring herself to anger. I'm trying to remember, I cannot think of one time Nanette got angry enough with me to raise her voice. I had what I had probably always yearned for. A wife as opposite my mother as was possible. She loved me . . . I loved her . . . What could go wrong?

Plenty . . . Every bit of it my fault . . .

My Novels:

Write To Murder . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/956621

Margaret and David: A Love Story . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1072842

My Mother's Revenge . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1132742

Cecil & Casey

No reason for the photo on the left except that she is my daughter Patricia and I love her and I want her with me . . . So there!!!

Cecil, a gruff old man who lived at Crystal Apartments and his girlfriend Casey invited me to Apple Valley for the weekend. I asked Nanette if she wanted to go, but she declined. Cecil was going through a rough divorce and he was afraid his wife was going to take his little place in Apple Valley. He homesteaded a few acres of land and built the a little shack on it so he could say he had made improvements. Cecil was pretty much a drunk, that was probably why his wife was divorcing him. He was also a pretty big executive for Richfield Oil, as was Casey. Nanette also worked for the giant oil firm, but she was stuck down in the basement. Casey was Cecil's girlfriend, but since he never took care of business, and since Casey was quite a bout younger than him, she had been using me for that part of her life. She really was dedicated to old Cecil, but . . .

When we got up there to the homestead everything went well f=the first day, it was the second day that all hell broke loose. I was pretty sure Cecil knew what was going on between Casey and myself, but we did not flaunt it. On the second day Casey and I both were ready, but hadn't had a chance to get together. Cecil nodded off in a hammock her had stretched between two trees and we though we could steal a few minutes.

Don't you know Cecil caught us. Whether or not he was faking sleep or just woke up I never knew, but he caught us nonetheless. He didn't say a word, but walked off into the desert for about a hour. Case went back to the picnic table in the back and I stayed in the shack faking sleep on the little bed. Cecil came in and took his twelve-gauge shotgun off the wall and just stared at me. I thought I was a dead man. But the turned and went to confront Casey out back. I have no idea what, if anything, he said to Casey because I never saw her again after that day. I expected to hear the shotgun going off and Casey would be dead, but it didn't happen. We drove back to Los Angeles and I bet there wasn't one word spoken between the three of us the whole time.

The time we spent away from each other kinda made Nanette and I to want to hurry things up insofar as our future plans . . . We will discuss those tomorrow . . .

My Novels:

Write To Murder . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/956621

Margaret and David: A Love Story . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1072842

My Mother's Revenge . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1132742

Watts Riots . . .

The summer of 1965 found me infatuated with an olive-tinted girl from New York City. Nanette Schiavo came into my life and from the very first began to touch me in places never before touched. She had such a quiet aura about her, quiet yet commanding. At least it was to me. I felt like a little boy who found that he liked girls, but didn't know what to say to them yet. That confused me right off, because I was, if anything, not bashful.

However, as things such as this usually do I found my voice and she reciprocated, giving me hope for the future, because the setting wasn't conducive to much more than a few smiles and words. We were in Cecil's apartment in Los Angeles, where he and his girlfriend Casey liked to entertain guests. It was the sixties don't you know, and everything that went on in the sixties went on at The Crystal Apartments where I and Nanette lived. I participated wholeheartedly in the sexual revolution, but I was to find out that Nanette, although she liked to go to these functions because she knew most of the people, she did not avail herself of the fleshly treasures available. Still, Nanette and I managed, over the next week or so, to get acquainted and it seemed that she liked me and I knew I was infatuated with her.

Then came the riots.

For over a week we were hunkered down in groups at the Crystal Apartments, afraid to go out alone for anything! Actually we were afraid to go out . . . period. During this period Nanette and I became more involved, actually seeking one another out to talk about the mess we were living through. And about ourselves. The more I talked to her the more I became awed by her. That she proclaimed to me the very first night we became physical (kissing, feeling) that she was a virgin. I, of course, did not believe her. She was twenty-six, how could she be? I would find out later, after we were married, that she told me the truth. I am "outing" her here, because I personally think it was a spiritual decision that she'd made to remain chaste for her eventual husband. I respected that. In the time we were living in, the mid-sixties, nobody was a virgin. Nanette was, however, and I did not push it, there were no problems getting raw sex if that was what you wanted, and I did want it. To this day I am proud of myself (one of a pitiful few things I am proud of) for not pushing her into sex. Would she have given in if I had? I seriously doubt it.

I wasn't working regularly, day labor mostly. Nanette had a job with Richfield Oil in the mail room. Our was a strange courtship. It was mostly done at the apartment of an old man by the name of Cecil, or my apartment, my roommate was almost always gone getting into trouble. The fact that we began to notice each other just prior to the Watts riots was the reason for out closeness to the apartment. And after the riots, Los Angeles was still smmering and had a few hot spots, so most people went back to work, but when they got off work the usually didn't tary, they went straight home.

I did have some respite from the city, however, and that comes in the next chapter.

My Novels:

Write To Murder . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/956621

Margaret and David: A Love Story . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1072842

My Mother's Revenge . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1132742

Nanette . . .

I pulled my time in Lompoc, it was different than El Reno, more mature and more dangerous, but I managed to get through it alive. When I got out I made no pretense of staying in Taylor. I had developed, after four and a half years behind bars one hell of an attitude. Taylor couldn't hold me, Taylor could never hold me.

I crisscrossed the nation a few times, from Los Angeles to New York and back again looking for whatever there was to find. The country was hip deep in the free love era and I was getting my share and then some. Everything was up for grabs, if it moved, take it to bed. Added to that was my insatiable appetite for drugs, mostly amphetamines and acid, although I experimented with heroin and other more dangerous drugs. And, of course, my old friend booze. Finally I decided to stop my running and I made Los Angeles my home, for want of another word. I lucked out, I suppose you could say, when I chanced upon Ginger. Ginger was a blowsy, blond-headed woman well into her forties and she took it upon herself to pay me for sex. That took care of my immediate problem of case, because I was still wanted by the feds for violating my parole. This little arrangement went on for about three or four months, with Ginger meeting me one to three times a week in the hotel where I stayed. Then one day she was gone. O never saw her again.

I got a job at a small print shop and moved into the Crystal Apartments with a guy by the name of Richard LaSalle sharing rent. The Crystal Apartments were geared for the young and it was a swinging place, living up to the free love which was sweeping the country. It was there that I met Nanette Schiavo, who would very soon become my wife. Nanette was unlike anybody I had ever met. At once sweet and timid and so quiet you hardly knew she was in the room. But Nanette was in the room and she would soon be in my heart. As all of this was going on, there was something about to break loose in Los Angeles which would put us all in peril, and it was just around the corner.

More tomorrow . . .

My Novels:

Write To Murder . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/956621

Margaret and David: A Love Story . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1072842

My Mother's Revenge . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1132742

Short-Lived Freedom

Whew! Life is about to get into the fast lane it seems. The Caddo Parish Prison wasn't like I had last seen it. Well, hell, neither was I for that matter. The jail itself hadn't changed, there was still the stink of cleaning deordorant in the cellblock, and the trap door where they used to hang the prisoners, and the guards were the same, but something was in the air.

That something kept the cellblock stirred up to the point that there were fights almost every day. Some were hurt bad, most were not. I only had one fight, I was learning how to avoid them if possible . . . Sometimes it is not possible.

I laid up there in the hellhole for three months before the marshals came to take me to El Reno, only El Reno wasn't where they had in mind to take me. I was being sent clear across the country to California and a joint upstate near the Vandenberg AFB (Air Force, funny, huh?) called Lompoc.

There were me and two other prisoners in the car and they made a beeline for El Paso, Texas first. Ah, memories of Juarez came to mind, but of course I would never get across that border, although I actually did, at one point, start thinking about how I could get the hell away from them. I also began thinking about me walking away from the jail in Midland. That was technically an escape, was it not? I had a sinking feeling they would file charges on me and after I finished my time for the feds they'd try me in Texas for escaping and put me down in Huntsville. I didn't want that, but the possiblility was huge that it would happen.

After we left one of the prisoners in El Paso we hightailed it across New Mexico to Tuscon, Arizona where we dropped off the other prisoner. That left just me. When they finally got me to Los Angeles I was ready, riding in that damn car for three days was hard.

My Novels:

Write To Murder . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/956621

Margaret and David: A Love Story . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1072842

My Mother's Revenge . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1132742

Chapter 43

After leaving New Orleans beaten and broken I fought the highway for the first, but of course not the last time. I was heading west, back to California. California kept a continuing, siren-like call to me for many, many years. It was like the women in Greek mythology who lured ships toward them with their beautiful songs, but much too late the sailors realized they were old hags and the ships were headed onto jagged rocks where they would sink to the bottom of the sea.

I had associated California with this mystical feeling ever since I was told that my real mother died in a car wreck going there. I didn't believe the story, it was much too convenient. Somewhere in my thoughts, however, I made myself believe that my mother actually did go to California, and was still living there, waiting for me to find her. Silly? Yes, but there was a great deal of silliness going on in my life in those very unproductive years. Anyway, I kept going back, but never tried to look for my mother. How could I, I didn't know her given name, never mind her last one.

During my little trip across Texas, (that's the reason for the gunslinger graphic) my God that's a huge state, my thoughts rambled around inside my head about everything under the sun. I did a lot of walking, a lot of standing with my thumb out at cars on Interstate 20. After a couple of days of this I was weary, hungry and beat down about as much as I've ever been up until that point. I would find out that there were a few more degrees of being beaten down that I hadn't touched yet, but that was later on in my life. Even so, I was angry at everything. I even picked up rocks and threw them at passing cars who would not stop for me. Late of the first night I was dropped off near some kind of construction site and I saw a Jim Walter model home they use to show prospective buyers. No one was around so I broke a window on the back side so you couldn't see it from the road and slept on the hardwood floor the best I could.

The next day my luck (what luck?) played out when I was walking through Midland, Texas and was stopped and arrested for "no visible means of support," or vagrancy they called it then. Thrown in the clink. They found out about me being wanted in Shreveport, but a miracle happened and, through a mistake, I was sent to the police garage to work as a trusty. Wow! I had leaving on my mind the moment I walked through the door. It seems I would get a little help.

See ya . . .

My Novels:

Write To Murder . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/956621

Margaret and David: A Love Story . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1072842

My Mother's Revenge . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1132742