CHAPTER 42 For Love or Money

Funny thing about Life is you see, you can have love or you can have money, but you can't seem to have enough of both, at the same time - without of course, placing an eternal mortgage on your soul.

Mammon is not a choice. It is a curse. The love of Mammon can cost your very soul.

My abbreviated time sheets had caught the attention of the home office in California. My work week for July 4th 1979, was just under 37 hours. I was getting very, very good at warehousing but the numbers indicated to the executives apparently, that I was goofing off. After all, years of time sheets from previous employees verified that the job averaged almost 55 hours weekly. It was a good test of my job security and itlet me see readily if I were to be an hourly wage earner or salaried as a Company Man.

Data Documents sent me a former Air Force Major to see to it that I got off my ass. At least that's how it seemed. He was a man with an obvious destiny - he was there to become our Top Salesman and General Manager. He arrived barking orders and taking stupid chances - like running up inside the truck while I was loading computer paper with a forklift. Totally against OSHA rules and any common sense. It was tempting to show him how dangerous that really was. His demeanor was designed to show me that he was definitely The Boss. I had no problem with that. I could tell he was under extreme stress from the fiery red expression in his face. I began to realize also, that he was something of a Closet Queen - a Fop, a faggot. The military must have been tough.

I decided to offer him a deal. I was due a vacation, but since they had chosen to pay me by the hour, it was apparent that I was no longer considered a full time employee. I told him I would drop the vacation claim and accept that he was firing me, if he would verify that information to the unemployment office. The State Of Arizona was one of our biggest clients and such a maneuver immediately gave him status. It appeared also as if I were bowing with dignity, to his authority. He jumped at the bait like a hungry squirrel. I figured he was just recently out of the Air Force since he was obviously green as new grass. He despised me and my long hair and my glorious tan and now very good physique.. That was OK with me. He was a real Military kind of guy. He would have despised anyone under his "command". This world is full of assholes. He had just fallen into the one that I was climbing out of.

Had I chosen Money at this point in life, I would have hired on as a sales representative with his local competitor. My customer contacts would have swung a lot of business. With what was going on with Sandy, I chose Love instead. In my obligatory job searches for the Arizona unemployment office during the next month, I made it a point to stop in and offer The Major a chance to hire me back. The taunting obviously enraged him, but he kept quiet. I was no longer his underling. The warehouse was totally constipated. Computer cards and paper completely filled the place. It was stacked almost three levels high - several train car loads, and would take a crew of four at least two weeks to clear, counting the weekly inbound deliveries from California.

Ah yes, Pride. It is always the Joker in the deck, and it plays so very well in a full house.

Back at the hill house, Sandy's nightly visits took on an air of desperation. She wanted me, I wanted her, we wanted us. She moved in for several blissful weeks that were nothing but the two of us. After that rather intense interlude, she began to call home and her little boy Todd visited often. Finally, after months of vacillating back and forth between the two houses, she and Todd moved in. For a five year-old, Todd was very good about it all. What was the odd hand in the game, was Sandy's husband Mitch. I had nothing against him and he had seen the attraction between Sandy and I several years before. I made a promise to him that I would take care of Todd. We shook on it. We became good friends and stayed that way until the divorce some two years later in the spring of 1982. It seemed to be a disturbing and intolerable alliance for Sandy. Two fools after all, are better than one. Mitch and I were at the head of the line. There would be others.

In the two years that followed Sandy and Todd moving in, there were a few parties, new career moves and other changes. I found myself working as a broadcasting instructor for Arizona Tech. I had to close my circles of friends for the protection of my relationship with Sandy. "When You're In Love With A Beautiful Woman" - you go it alone. Thanks, Dr. Hook for another great song. We were no longer growing together and getting thinner though. I was instead, shrinking and getting fatter. Early on in the living arrangement, the lies began. Little white lies. With specks of mold.

SOMETHING FOR YOUR NOTEBOOK: A love affair regardless of how wonderful, is over when either party chooses to lie to the other. You can live together, you can get married and have children and die in each other's arms, but a lie is poison of the most fatal kind, to love. Passion dies at the taste. Trust dies shortly thereafter. Romance dances alone in a drunken ballet. Happiness hangs by a suicidal noose around the neck. This is free advice.

Because it is free of course, few readers will place any value on it but it MIGHT save you much grief and hours of psychoanalysis. LEAVE your lover the moment you hear that first lie. Don't waste another minute of your life. No need to say goodbye or negotiate on material things. Fly or drive if you can, hitch if you can't. Take the bus if you have to. Walk. Don't yell, argue, throw things, or demonstrate your pain and rage in any way. Leave.

Again, this is FREE advice and it is worth millions. I didn't pay any attention to it either, even though this free advice was singing its song constantly as a still, small voice in the back of my mind.

After the divorce between Sandy and Mitch was finalized, she and I took off for a vacation by motorcycle. We both knew the love affair was over, but we could stay friends for this last part. We owed it to each other. It had been our dream - California on a motorcycle. We toured Los Angeles, Highway One, the Hearst Castle, Big Sur, San Francisco, San Rafael, Oakland, Yosemite, Reno, Las Vegas and back to Phoenix, camping and staying up in Marin county, with my lady friend "Belle Starr" from the old KBBC days.

On a very long stretch of high Nevada desert road I pulled over and stopped. Sandy got off the bike eyeing me warily. She almost asked out loud if I was going to leave her there. All the betrayals real and imagined, came into our faces. There wasn't much to say, or any reason to say it. We just looked at each other for a while. It was a wonderful, silent way of saying "Goodbye" since we both knew that we would soon go our separate ways. No regrets, except for the time wasted and the loss of many good friends. We had both paid high prices for our sin. We could at least afford our freedom.

A few weeks later, Sandy and Todd moved to an apartment. She was so buried in deception, I even had to tell her folks for her, that we were splitting up. It angered them. It was apparent similar things had happened in the past. We liked each other, they and I. It was not the breakup that angered them though, it was the deceit. She had been moved out for a couple of weeks without their knowledge.

Broken, bleeding hearts always seek each other out. They easily find each other, since they carry the same kind of pain. On the news of Sandy's move Mitch, who had been immersing his bleeding heart in beer for years said; "I told you so". I replied `No, actually you didn't, but that's OK anyway'. I began to understand why he always had a beer in his hand but couldn't survive a beer bash with a bunch of bikers. He was barely sober and mostly drunk almost all of the time. One beer more than his transfusion called for, and he was over the line. He really loved her.

The house was something of a mess with most of Sandy's furniture and piano gone and also from the ravages of a very curious storm. Ever the Nice Guy, I had been at Sandy's apartment saying goodbye to her and Todd. On leaving, I glanced up at the hill house - my house - some five miles away. Directly on top of the hill was a dark and raging thunderstorm that fit the place like a hat. Nothing nearby was being bothered. There were other clouds in the atmosphere but they were lighter in color, and much higher in the sky. I could not believe what I was seeing. There was lightning and the sound of distant thunder. It was as though the storm had been sent just to destroy the place. I feel now, that is quite exactly the case.

When I got back to the hill, almost every window was cracked or broken. The skylights were OK but all sorts of other damage was obvious. For instance, Mitch and I had dug a hole for one leg of a small aluminum awning outside. The awning was small, perhaps eight by four feet. The metal legs had been set in concrete, deeply in the layers of the caliche'. One leg and its attached 50-pound block of concrete had been yanked out of the ground by the force of the wind on the awning, and slung up on the roof of the house, still attached. Things were at crazy angles. There was water in the house. I had been through many storms there in five years. I would not have wanted to be there for his one. Something very angry had spent its frustration, and ravaged the place. The houses nearby were untouched. There was that feeling of Deja Vu' again. I wondered if the storm were another part of myself, vandalizing and raging against fate.... Some hidden demon, perhaps.

I made one more trip to Bonnie's place just a mile away, to let her know what had happened and what my plans were. Another goodbye. We made love for the first time in years - and for the last time ever.

I loved the old hill house, but I decided rather than rebuild my life again there in Phoenix, I would go on the road for a while and visit my folks in Texas. After all, I had gotten rid of almost everything to make room for Sandy and her stuff. I didn't even have a car, just the motorcycle. Sandy owned it, and she wanted to sell it. That would leave me without transportation of course, but inconvenience and even hardship for others on her behalf was nothing new. I knew she would be far more happy with the money than she would with me. So did Mitch. Drunkard though he was, he was still a gentleman. I knew Mitch needed a place to live, since he had sold his and Sandy's house in the divorce. I called Mitch and made arrangements for him to move in and take over the hill house. In my last week there, circumstances forced me to pay attention to that Still Small Voice.

A few days before I was to leave for Texas, in an otherwise quiet afternoon, an electrical firestorm developed in the junction box outside the kitchen window. It might have been an insect that started the whole thing. Whatever it was, it began a spectacular phenomenon that lasted for several minutes. It began at the wall where 220 volts were routed to the stove. It started small. It hummed and smoked and then moved up the wall gaining power as it went. Soon, the entire junction box and feeder line was throwing sparks and fire like a demon released. I didn't make a move, except to make sure no fire had started. I began to wonder for the first time, if the place might be haunted. I could have repaired it, even just temporarily to have some reading light. I didn't. It was nice at night. I accepted the night for the friend it was, as it had been before. I might even get another visit from the Burro herd, I thought.

Two nights before I was to leave, it rained again. The roof leaked. I had tossed most of my belongings outside. I had also been tossing the coins of the I Ching to see if I could figure out a pattern for my future choices. Almost consistently, the hexagram of The Creative kept popping up, with no changes. Heavy. That was extremely unusual. It indicated the presence of a person or being with powerful spiritual energy. I couldn't imagine that it was talking about me, I had the confidence and energy of a wet paper sack. I decided to pray. It was an ideal way to end my stay at the house, since that is how it began. I repeated almost the same prayer; "You do it, Lord. I messed it up again." The Still Small Voice of spirit guided me to the door. It was a refreshing, lovely morning to enjoy a broken heart. I had that feeling again, the one I hadn't had for several years. A taste of eternity. A feeling of Deja Vu'.... and freedom. I asked "What, Lord?" and the wind blew gently.

At my feet was my old high school annual. I had tossed it along with ome other meaningless mementos of what had been my life, out the door. It had fallen out of the sack during the rain of the night before, and was spread before me at my feet. A picture of my algebra teacher stared up at me. I asked "What, Lord?" again and the pages blew back and forth in the wind falling open to that picture. It kept happening. Again and again the pages blew back and forth, always falling open to that picture. Mr. Lowe Leach my algebra teacher, had been a member of our church when I was a kid. Our families had known each other well during the 1950's and 1960's. I recalled that he had me stay after class one day in 1959. He seemed very uneasy. He had looked at me as though he had no control over what he was saying. Right in the middle of some after-class algebraic theory he turned to me and said; "I bought a farm up by the Red River. I have four daughters now." That statement seemed oddly out of place but I assumed it was because we knew each other at church, as well as school. That memory, like a movie seen in 1959, re-played itself a couple of times that day in 1982 - some 23 years later, as the wind blew the pages of my annual back and forth.

I decided to keep my high school annual and pray about it again, later. A good choice as it turned out. At least now I wasn't having to choose between love or money.