20 Discovering a spring fed lake which turned into a water park (see photos). Song: Young & Restless Theme, Blue Moon, The Rose

I chose working for my parents business, and going to a rural high school over going to Culver Military Academy, and I chose to work at my father’s ski area. I got along with anyone, but it was difficult avoiding conflict just for being who I was (the son of the owner of the new ski area which was in competition with the already existing nearby ski area called Boston Mills). When a jock from my high school hit me in the side of my face while I was on a band break while playing on the weekend dances at our competitor’s ski area, he hit me hard enough for my head to break the wooden two by four divider in the restroom, and that gave me more of whatever kind of attitude I may have known, or not known, that I already had. Then, after unavoidable fights after school, plus being hit in the face by my gym teacher just for asserting that I had nothing to do with something another student had done, I definitely developed an attitude, and it manifested in the way that I walked, talked, in my posture, the longer length of my hair, and in the way that I thought. My gym teacher, who I thought hated me just for my long hair, actually hated me because of Brandywine, too. Plus, unbeknownst to me, it was his son who worked at Brandywine. In fact, his son had become my father’s favorite employee. I believe that my father, as well as my gym teacher, had been using their experience in the military as a model of how to be a parent (or teacher), and I think, now, that the gym teacher’s son may have realized, then, about how the military rubbed off on both his own father’s, as well as my father’s character. The gym teacher’s son may have used his knowledge of how the military influenced his own father, as well as my father, to his own advantage while both a student, and a Brandywine employee. But, all I understood was that they were both inexcusably way too authoritative toward me, and while I thought that I was getting favoritism from my father by being sent on errands, he was actually sending me on errands, often, for the sole purpose of keeping me away when important things were happening at Brandywine. I didn’t realize a lot about my father until decades later. His favoritism went toward grooming people into doing anything he wanted them to do, anything they were already doing, or anything they could be doing, and he used his leased cars as carrots for employees, and even on my own friends.

When I told my father that my new gym teacher had started singling me out regularly, and doing so just for the sake of being mean to me during my gym classes, my father angrily told me that it was me, who had the “wrong attitude”, which resulted in making me even more sensitive with my own father (without being cognizant that I never had the opportunity to discuss what had happened to me with my own father, or the teachers from my elementary school, or at my father’s country club, or other things that happened to me when I was a child). It still bothers me that no one told me, and that I had no idea, then, that my father’s favorite employee at Brandywine was my gym teacher’s son, and that the reason both my father, and my gym teacher, never wanted me being in an authoritative position in school, or at Brandywine, was more based of their own selfish needs, than on anything that I had done wrong, or said. They both didn’t want to respect, or understand, that I too, had talent, and wanted to help and contribute, and they both misunderstood my attitude. My father went out of his way to tell me that he didn’t want my help with the school ski club either at school, or at the ski lodge, and my gym teacher wouldn’t let me even try out for baseball (which I excelled in). My father only wanted my help when he absolutely needed it, while purposefully keeping me out of the loop. My father issued orders for Brandywine employees not to speak to me, and by issuing orders like that, it elevated the gym teacher, the gym teacher’s son, and others, toward instantly surpassing whatever authority an owner’s son might have. It was like I was just a joke, and that joke was on me. I didn’t understand why my father would start referring to employees as “his” employees, nor why he would angrily tell me that he didn’t want me speaking to employees. I was as baffled about my father’s unusual orders as my mother was. Luckily, while my father was the boss, my mother was the one in charge of me, too. Then, it became more confusing when my father would see me working alongside my mother, and my father would look upset, as if we were both doing something wrong. He couldn’t come right out and tell my mother that he didn’t want her telling me what to do, because unbeknownst to me, it was my mother who had insisted that that I be a paid Brandywine employee (before we ever moved to Brandywine), but my father got around that by reminding me that I would be out when I turned 18. Regardless, starting with my first days at Brandywine, he made it so I wouldn’t want to stay, by making ridiculous new rules for me, like stopping me from working alongside my mother, and/or other employees. Then, he told me that he didn’t want me even talking to employees, and I wondered how it would be possible working at all without communicating. Puppets?

My father’s changed his rules for me all the time. After receiving our first shipment of all new skis and boots (with laces) was when he needed my help organizing, numbering, and putting them in place for our first winter season, so I’d have to work inside the lodge all day, as opposed to outside. Then again, during the second season, I helped inside by updating new skis and boots (the buckle type). I totally understood that my father didn’t want me telling any employee what to do, and I don’t believe that I ever once used my position as the owner’s son, in order to do so. Both my mother and I simply obeyed him out of respect, and we generally did so the best that we could all of our lives. However, I think that my father wanted people (and even himself), to believe that I wasn’t capable of doing any work at Brandywine, except menial labor, and he announced that as his reason for not allowing me to be in any position of authority, or in upper management. After announcing his thoughts, I started believing that he wanted people thinking that something was wrong mentally with me. Maybe he believed there was, but he insisted that I leave work to see a psychiatrist on a weekly basis. However, I think that the real reason was twofold 1: So he could keep me away from Brandywine, especially during the first, and most important, employee meetings (which I never did participate in, not even once). And, 2: So he could get a diagnosis that I had some mental condition (which he tried again decades later to obtain, but could never get)! Did he need me starting to see a psychiatrist because he was fearful that had I remembered about being molested as a child, he could use my seeing a psychiatrist, as a basis for making me not sound credible? Whatever the case, I eventually learned that my father, and even my big brother learned to think litigiously, and I believe that they both preferred me remaining confused, demonstrated by usually ignoring my presence while they carried on in their intellectual conversations during the entire course of my life.

One of my memories while we lived behind the lodge during the ski season, was my father screaming at me in front of a lodge full of skiers. He stopped me from feeding the fire with logs from the thousands which I had either helped cut, or helped stack outside right outside the lodge back door. He yelled at me saying that he didn’t TELL me to feed the fire, lecturing me that I was only to do exactly what I was told by him, and him alone, whenever I was clocked in. Our mother had to “pull teeth” to get him to let me work in the kitchen. Then, my father would find something to scream at me about publicly about, and he would “ground” me by ordering me to sit in our trailer where we lived behind the lodge which was just steps away from the rear entrance of the kitchen, and lodge. I often had to sit in that trailer for hours upon hours with nothing to do except feel like a teenaged prisoner. Before my father died, my mother shared with me that our father remained a sad, and unhappy child for all of his life. Thinking about that, now, and about how our father’s father died when our father was just three years old, makes me think about when our father asked me, just before he died, “Do you love me”? I told him, “Of course I do”. But the sarcastic way he asked makes that question makes me think that our father may have died without ever knowing if even his own children ever really loved him.

My father wouldn’t like me working with my own mother, especially when she was doing things like payroll, or counting cash. But, when he wasn’t around to yell at both of us for working like that together, I got to help her doing whatever she needed to be doing, and that was basically what my parents’ battle over me at Brandywine was all about. It was the battle which my father brutally won. However, because of my mother’s insistence with our father, I learned doing payroll, inventory, ordering, and all about inside and outside ski area operations. In fact, our mother never stopped teaching me everything she could about everything.

Our father preferred me working in the little rope tow hut where no one else would stay working. I got used to it as my way of showing my father my “loyalty” and both parents’ praised me by telling me that any employee who ever tried sitting in there, simply walked off and quit. I think (at least for the first winter ski season) that the reason they walked off, was because of the carbon monoxide poisoning coming from the tractor motor. And, I think that the reason I managed to get accustomed to the rope tow hut, was because that was the only place where my father wouldn’t hunt me down, and scream at me. He never went to the rope tow hut, and never bothered me while I stayed working there. However, sometimes when it became too busy inside, my mother would tell me to either work with her selling tickets, or to go work in the busy kitchen. Often, she would come to work with me in the kitchen, but sometimes she would have to leave, to return to the office. Then, my dad might have heard from my sister that I was inside the lodge. Whenever my father would find out that I was in the lodge, or hear that I was working in the kitchen, this was when my father would appear to everyone as if he was angrily hunting someone like a rule breaker(?) down, and if my mother wasn’t near enough to protect me from his outrageous drill sergeant type of yelling, he would explode upon seeing me, and in public scream at me at the top of his lungs, embarrassing me to death regardless of the fact that our mother had told me to work in the kitchen. Even after she had firmly established that she wanted me working in the kitchen, he would still storm in and shock the bejeebers out of me by screaming at me as if he had “caught me breaking the rules”. But, I had two bosses… my father, and my mother. One time while I was working right alongside my mother in the kitchen, he came in and screamed at HER so loud that she became so flabbergasted that she couldn’t even respond. She involuntarily became unresponsive! It was as if she couldn’t talk, and it was exactly the same way she responded when my brother screamed at her in the hospital ICU in the very hours before our mother’s death in 2003.

My mother and I both knew that something was way off with my father at Brandywine when there was no reason that we could think of why our father never wanted me working in the kitchen at all. It simply didn’t make sense. I think, now, that he had some kind of weird agenda going on, and I remember, now, how it had started making a strange sort of sense to me somehow, after an employee shared with me that the girls on the kitchen staff were lesbians. However, back then, neither my mother, nor I, had an understanding of that kind of thing. When I mentioned what I heard to my mother, she told me that she couldn’t fathom what a lesbian was, nor could she even imagine that. However, one of my little sister’s girl”friends” who worked in the kitchen, and who was way older than my little sister, and even bigger than me, was one who was in bed with my sister at the rented house when I arrived, unexpected, one day, and who obviously had that kind of influence over my little sister. I have only tried to be the best big brother for my little sister, and I was only trying to stay, ski, and work at Brandywine, and have some idea of having a home I could come to. But, shortly after I became more than vaguely understanding of why our father started engaging in strictly private employee interviews without even my mother around, I also understood that the lesbian on the kitchen staff groomed my little sister into my little sister announcing that she was a lesbian, and I saw how my father looked delighted at her announcement.

Soon, my father used his gay friend in his attempt to groom me, just like the lesbian kitchen staff employee did with my sister around that same time. Unfortunately, when my father figured out that I wasn’t gay, and he learned that I could never adapt to that lifestyle, or condone it, he regarded me more as a threat, than an asset. My little sister announced that she was a lesbian(which was soon after she and her girlfriends had been meeting together at the rental house with no adult supervision). That was when my father learned that I was visiting, and he immediately ordered my motorcycle stolen, thrown in a ditch, and permanently confiscated, resulting in me having no way of visiting our rented home for the rest of that summer. Soon, I’d have to leave for college, so as far as my father was concerned, was when I would be leaving for good. However, my mother never stopped fighting for me to be able to continue working and/or living at the lodge, or have somewhere that I could call “home”. Regardless, my father continued fighting what my mother and I knew was a losing battle.

During my first college winter semester, I washed dishes through my winter break. Working somewhere other than Brandywine was the only way that I had any money, whatsoever, because I could never cash, and keep, myself, any of my Brandywine checks which were all deposited into my Merril Lynch account for my retirement, all of which was stolen. I came back, as usual, to my dorm room late at night, after working at the Kent Brown Derby. But, I was shocked to discover that because it was the semester winter break, my dormitory was closed, and the doors were locked, and chained shut. Again, I was stuck with no place to go, and no home where I was welcomed.And, since I started college, I wasn’t allowed to even visit Brandywine. So, again, I had no home, nowhere to sleep, nor anywhere to go to even stay warm. All I could do was walk through a closed campus with all the lights shut off, and wonder about the holidays. I still remained traumatized never able to discuss my childhood abuse, and now, again, I was a traumatized teenager with nowhere to go, and unable to get through to anyone on the Brandywine phone lines which were 100% tied up. I had no choice, again, but to wander, and live in the streets, and that time I cried.

With nowhere to sleep or stay, again I wandered, but happened to get picked up hitchhiking. Unfortunately, this guy was a drug addict who lived in Ravenna, and I heard that he died months later. I never stayed at his house, but he immediately learned that I was the son of the owner of the well known Ohio ski area, so he used that fact to take me into Ritz Camera in Ravenna, Ohio. He used the knowledge that I was Doug Dover froM Brandywine/Dover Lake to boldly distract a Ritz Camera store employee, and without my knowledge, stole a camera from Ritz Camera. He did this while I was innocently looking at their amazing cameras with him, and learned that he lived right across the street from Ritz Camera. I figured out about the stolen camera much later when I happened to visit him one more time. There in his house, I saw an obvious brand new expensive looking Nikon camera just like the ones I had looked at with him at Ritz Camera, and the camera was sitting right next to a syringe, and a spoon.

I had learned that before college, my father went to visit my dorm resident advisor, and then my advisor told me that my father was gay. And, I believe that my father went behind my back whenever he could with all of my friends, male or female, during the entire course of my life. I know that he attempted trying to make my wife jump through his hoops, too. I realize now, that my father was actually using the money which I had earned at Brandywine, to do things with on my behalf (instead of letting me use any of my own money, knowingly, myself). I think because of his childhood, he became a master manipulator who thought that he was using his love and concern for me, as an excuse for manipulating others whenever possible, in order to get people to jump through his hoops.

While I still worked at Brandywine during my junior and senior years in high school, I saw my little sister driving a brand new four wheel drive car up the hill at Brandywine well before she was old enough to have her learners permit. My father had obviously either leased it, or bought or for her. That must have been yet another one of my father’s leased cars used for organizing his “flock” of followers. No wonder he never bought, or leased one for me, he had a limit as to how many new cars he could lease. I saw my little sister driving her new car up the ski hill from the parking lot where our father had showcased another new leased car (a new Dodge Challenger which had also disappeared, as did the Barracuda). My father let others own his leased cars while forcing me to remain living in the streets carless, and I was not welcomed at home, especially after showing up to ski in my own earned, and purchased car, unannounced. That was when he gave my mother her own ultimatum, after she gave me a lift ticket to ski saying, “Don’t let your father see you”. My sister was driving a new four wheel drive car up the ski hill to one of the four houses which my father bought, but even that house was kept a complete secret from me while my sister was actually living in that house. I found out 30 years later that I owned that house at Brandywine, but obviously my father didn’t want me knowing where I could have legally stayed if I had known about it at that time. I was under the impression that my sister was still staying with a Brandywine stockholder’s family where she had adequate adult supervision while our mother and I were still working at the ski area. In any case, I was thrilled to see my little sister actually driving a new car at Brandywine. She was driving it ever so slowly up the hill parallel to the tree line, and very carefully. That was the last time that I saw my little sister for many years, and I can only guess at the reasons why my sister would have told untrue things about me, or about our father. By writing these 50 pages of stories, I’ve learned compassion, and love, through deeper understanding, and forgiveness.

I feel, now, that my father was purposely discriminating against me during my college years, and his prejudice started when he knew that I absolutely wasn’t gay. And, I think that after my father made me realize that by my not accepting his “gifts”, and that kind of lifestyle, that I would not only lose the battle, but would lose all of the “extras” he promised (in the way of investments?). And, it seemed as if he made it his life’s mission to make me accept his kind of lifestyle. Similarly, the only way in which he would (one time) engage in helping me start a video business of my own, was for me to accept taking orders from whoever he would tell, to tell me what to do. In other words, I would basically have to literally “sell my soul” for him to consider helping me at all financially.

My strict father had recanted, and allowed me to visit Brandywine for a day visit only, because it was while I was working a 40 hour work week job. However, while I was hitchhiking back to my room in Kent, one of my father’s obvious homosexual friends who I noticed had been visiting with my father, picked me up on the road outside of the Brandywine gate. On the way driving up the long hill outside of the Brandywine gate, he informed me that my father had “given him the okay” to give me the ride, and in that same breath, he revealed to me that he was gay, by actually showing himself to me! I guess that I should have already realized this about my father, but I didn’t. I asked that man to pull over at the top of the hill, and said that I wasn’t going all of the way to Kent, but just to one of my friend’s houses on the top of the road there. I could have had a ride all of the way back to Kent, but I chose to get out and walk. So, I remained true to myself, and while I got my message back to my father, I hope that can get it out to everybody without hurting anyone’s feelings. I think that my father should have talked with me about himself openly, but he never chose to, and wasn’t my right to ask. Did my father actually believe that he was trying to make life easier for me by providing me with a ride back to Kent from his gay friend? Was that the way my father’s wanted to get the message to me? It only made me more confused.

I went to college and when in my first college dorm, I learned that my father was gay from my dorm R.A. (resident advisor). He explained to me that he felt that I should know that about my father. After sharing with me about himself being gay, he also told me that they had met together in his dorm room end of hall apartment, which made me realize that while my busy father was way too busy to talk with me, even on the phone, he wasn’t too busy to travel to Kent to meet, behind my back, with my resident advisor. I feel like I was just another pawn in my father’s game of life, and I realize that he felt that manipulating people to do his bidding supposedly “for” me, he felt, was totally acceptable. And, I feel that he did so while being a confident, pompous, homosexual, and believe that he did this more often with more people commensurate with achieving more money, and more power.

There were others, besides my father, who exhibited the same air of confident, pompous sexual discrimination toward me, but instead of confusing me psychologically, it physically damaged me, and permanently disabled me for the rest of what life I have left to live! It happened moments prior to my wrist surgery, and was a result of when a P.A. (physicians assistant) used his position of power and control against me. My surgery was a result of an accident I had after I had just finished cleaning a gutter on Saturday 1/23/21. I slipped on a rung of my ladder because the two aluminum ladder parts separated in half! One half fell to the ground. I remained stuck straddling on the other half remaining verticle with one of my legs awkwardly stuckthrough the ladder rung, followed by me and the other half of the ladder falling too.

The first half of the ladder fell first, and landed flat, but as I fell while attached to the other half, I was able to reach through the ladder which I was stuck straddling on, to grab the gutter. But, I could only hang on awkwardly, and long enough to brace the severity of my fall, to either land flat sideways on the cold wet slippery freshly painted driveway, or land on my feet vertically, and then fall sideways while my arm was still stuck through the ladder. My bad. The two ladder lengths had detached from each other, and while the one half landed flat on the driveway, I was stuck on the other half in a very precarious position,but I managed to slow down my fall by hanging on to the gutter temporarily. While my foot was only about a foot off the ground, I actually had the choice to either land with most of my body weight landing sideways (knowing that my own body weight would snap my wrist much more severely), or to try and land more vertically. So, I chose to land more vertically (with less of my body weight injuring my forearm). Unfortunately, as I let go of the gutter to land vertically, my heel landed right at the end of the aluminum ladder which was already laying flat on the driveway. That resulted in shattering the bones in my heel, and followed by breaking my wrist with with my own body weight because I had no choice but falling over and landing while my arm was still stuck through the other ladder half.

Three days later (on Tuesday January 26th, 2021), I was waiting on the operating table in North Naples with my wrist doctor’s very pompously confident physician’s assistant, and an anesthesiologist. I actually don’t think that the doctor I thought who would be performing the operation, ever arrived (and I did state that I didn’t need to ask the doctor any questions in the moments beforehand.) I only knew that they had to put a plate and screws in my broken WRIST first, and do so BEFORE my shattered heel could be fixed. FYI, I don’t think I should have waited for my wrist surgery, because I was told that I almost LOST my whole foot!

In any case, prior to my wrist surgery, my wrist doctor’s P.A., and the anesthesiologist were the two close-by me as I lay on the operating table in the large, open, and fairly busy North Naples orthopedic operating facility across from Kmart. This P.A. (Physician’s Assistant) decided to go from examining my WRIST, to examining my FOOT! He began, by holding it up high (completely over the height of his own head), and while looking up at the heel of my foot while standing underneath it, he looked at me, and asked me if I was gay! Then, he clarified, and followed by asking, “Are you a homosexual”? And, when he decided that he either didn’t like me, or he got bored hearing my long answer to his very absurd personal question, HE DROPPED MY FOOT after holding it up above the height of his own head. Then he rubbed the fingers together of his one hand so that the anesthesiologist could obviously see that he was motioning for the anesthesiologist to put me to sleep, I lost consciousness, and this person is still working in the health care field.

Whether done on purpose or not, the P.A. let my freshly shattered heel pieces in my freshly injured unprotected foot slam down so hard from three times the height of my actual fall from my accident that I almost lost my whole foot. The P.A. was very confident about the results of my wrist operation, but my wrist hurts every time I play my 12 string guitar, and it still hurts many years later. Ater my heel pieces healed, the rest of my foot will still be in pain, and remain in pain, whenever walking for the rest of my life. I don’t know if my wrist doctor is one of the staff of skiers who go every year to Steamboat Springs CO, and/or if he was jealous of me because I told him I went once and did the lip jump there with no problem. However, I strongly believe because of the P.A.‘s confident, pompous sexual orientation, he purposely dropped my foot, ruining my chances of ever skiing, playing tennis, or any sports, and even walking, properly. I still have permanent pain (not at all in my healed heel pieces) but in everything else that was obviously traumatized from being stretched from him dropping my foot.

I think that some operating rooms already do have cameras installed, but I think that surgery facilities should all be able to provide video records of operations, if only for better operating room supervision. Having the ability to play back what was said and done is probably the only way that anyone could prove, for example, whether the actions of the P.A. were intentional or not. Doctors obviously have no way of controlling any/all shenanigans in operating rooms when they aren’t there.

Before I get sidetracked into other stories again, during my first Brandywine summer while I lived just steps behind the lodge in what was originally the work trailer, my father decided that my latest rule would be that I wasn’t allowed inside the lodge at all during my work days when I was mowing the back 40 acres, other than when having to be inside for punching in at 8AM and out at 5PM using the time clock in the time clock room (which used to be my music practice room). My sister never chose working for our parents, she had no rules which I was ever aware of, and I guess that while she was at the lodge, she would quietly report to him whenever I broke any of my rules. When my father (the boss) informed me that I had to start eating my lunches alone in our trailer (instead of with my sister and/or both parents), he also put an end to me being able to join in with outside employees who usually gathered to eat their lunches in the maintenence garage.

(See the photo of the side of the ski lodge summer/winter).

When my father started insisting on not letting me be able to even walk THROUGH the lodge during the day on my way back to work, I began to feel that he really hated me being around at all (which was devastating to me!). All I ever wanted to do inside the lodge during my days mowing, was to say a brief hello to my mother where she sat working in the office all day, and/or get a quick refill of ice for my big gulp from the lodge kitchen, or use the restroom on either of my 15 minute breaks from mowing, but doing ANY of that became too much for my over authoritative compulsive controlling father to allow any longer. He started insisting on me staying out of the lodge completely during the work day, eating my lunches alone in our trailer, then walking around the lodge the long way outside to go back to work. I obeyed him, and I did what I was told for decades, but never received what he promised I’d be paid. I was permitted to eat my lunches with my parents upstairs in the ski lodge until it began getting busy with people. I obeyed staying away except to use the bathroom and get a drink, and I accepted remaining permanently at the bottom of the totem pole, and being as uninvolved, or involved as my father demanded. I remember often questioning myself if I would ever survive working for him. What I didn’t realize until after his death, was that the reason that I had such low self esteem and confusion was because of my head injuries. It may have also been because of being molested when I was a child, which could have resulted in me displaying my own anger, had I not witnessed the totality of the anger of my own father. However, it was only obvious that my father was angry about the strong bond that I had with my mother since childhood. And, he barked out loud in the lodge at me (while within earshot of my fellow employees) that I was a “mamma’s boy”, and made the point of adding that I needed to have my “apron strings” with my mother cut. (My friend who was a fellow employee teased me about that both at work, and in school.) I am very sorry for feeling such anger and hatred toward my own father, because hatred is the devil’s playground. Instead of hatred, now, I feel pity. I often see how anger, and hatred can define peoples lives, and make others hate, and be angry right back. So much now simply seems like a battle between right and wrong, and good and evil.

My father made up rules for me which were completely different than he had for other employees, and my mother would only say, “That’s just the way it is”. I often saw my dad looking from the office window with his WW2 military issued binoculars

(see photo), so I always believed that he was watching to make sure that I remained outside for my full 8 hour work days, with one 15 minute break in the morning, a half hour lunch break, and one more 15 minute break in the afternoon. I only learned (well afterwards) that he had issued orders that none of the employees were permitted to speak to me. And, after he started requiring me to remain outside to eat a bagged lunch, he tried to establish what he wanted to become my iron clad rule of not coming into the lodge “under any circumstances during open hours”. I could live with that, but my mother and I both understood that to mean I could still come inside for a bathroom break, and a cold soda refill during my breaks. That lasted until my father made it even more clear by very loudly restating, “Only for dire emergencies”. No wonder neither sibling was ever interested in working for him. My normal routine had began by returning to the lodge at noon for lunch when I would park the tractor in the gravel in front of the lodge office window

so my mom could see or hear that I was back for lunch. The photo (above) shows the upstairs addition. Behind the left windows in the photo (above) was the living room. Behind the right windows was my father’s office where we used to have our daily lunches together, but it was obvious to me that something bothered my father, even when the phone rang. It was because I was in the same room. He regarded me as a distraction, demanded every moment of my mother’s time for himself, and when it started getting busy with people visiting, he couldn’t tolerate me being around at all, which resulted in his ordering me to remain outside of the lodge all day long (and even in the winters, explained). His screaming at me being in the lodge got to be so ridiculous that felt that my dad hated me. What could I do about him not being able to stand me being around at all? I lived there, but I felt that he would have preferred me dead, and he even told me that because of me, my parents were getting divorced. My dad remedied his unbearable situation of having to put up with having me around at lunchtime, after putting an end to hearing me arriving riding the loud tractor at noon daily on any “=&@#$^%” day, by ordering my mother to start packing a bagged lunch for me. I can’t forget that from that day, forward, at the end of my 8 hour work days mowing the back 40 acres (IF HE DIDN’T SEE ME ALL DAY LONG) my dad started greeting me at the end of the work days by looking at me as if he was delighted seeing me! But, he was, undoubtedly only acting,

and only on the days he had seen that I had spent all day long, outside, working without coming back to the lodge at all. My father knew how gullible I was because of my head injuries, and only now do I realize how easily, as a victim of head injuries, even my own father and siblings took took advantage of it. My father would often make the point of asking me if I was still clocked in before sending me out on errands in his cars, and he would always make the point of asking me that same question before sending me clear back to the other side of the lodge to sit in the closed bar, but allow me to read my school books. (I guess that was the way my father reminded me that he was paying me, even when Brandywine was closed.) I also remember when I tried not agreeing with him to go sit back in the bar, and he said threateningly, “With JUST THE STOKE OF A PEN”, and he didn’t even have to finish saying, “I could make it so you won’t receive all that you’re working toward”, and although I didn’t want to, I’d go sit back there and reluctantly stay, I thought that it was so he had more time talking to my mother and sister without me being with them around the dinner table, and I already knew that was why he made me clean the toilets before our dinnertimes. I had zero self esteem, and I think that he and my brother both knew how to take advantage of that, equally as well.

By requiring me to stay back in the bar clear on the other side of the lodge and read, my father could easily keep me out of the loop about anything going on in the office, new lodge addition, and/or keep me from even knowing about employee gatherings (I found out I had missed meetings only by hearing my fellow employees who were friends talking about them AFTER they happened). And, my father even succeeded in not letting me know about his New Year’s Eve party! (story page 23). Like my brother, my father seemed focussed on keeping me confused a lot, and selfishly didn’t even want me knowing when would be our opening day for skiing.

I only got to hear about my father’s New Year’s Eve party afterward, while he was being extra nice to me by “allowing me” to be present while speaking about it braggingly to my mother. In his recap about the party, he explained that he showcased his new V.I.P teacher’s lounge. He said that was where all of the ski club sponsors (all school teachers?) would be able to lounge in comfort, while their busloads of students who skied, would only have access to the hard chairs in the main lodge. It was as if he actually believed that the only way that I could have known about the newly built teachers lounge, and all of the new black leather comfort loungers in it, was because he was letting me hear him talking about it in his recap of his party which he manipulated me, and others, into making sure that I didn’t know know about, beforehand. He was obviously very aware of my head injuries, and me speaking impulsively, which was definitely another reason why he managed to so often either keep me hidden away, or sent me away, and was very determined, when he couldn’t accomplish doing either, to prevent me from being in close proximity, or even in the same room. I guess that my father thought that I wouldn’t have noticed they had built a VIP lounge upstairs in the new lodge. I guess that’s actually how stupid he thought that I was, and I think that he actually believed that I never noticed all of the cots in his newly added employee dorm. I did. The Brandywine employee dorm looked eerily just like the dairy farmhouse second floor of the all boy’s dorm with camp cots in upstate NY where my dad made me go live all summer against my will when I was 9-10. He said that it was in order for me to learn “work ethic”, but it was pretty obvious that he only wanted to get rid of me for an entire summer after I had been, unknowingly, carrying the terrible scars of what happened to me, for years. He just wanted to be rid of me, and on my last days overnight ride, I was sent over to get water from a well where there were rattlesnakes. Plus, what a coincidence it was that the same thing that happened to me as a child, happened to me practically in the same way that it did at that dairy farm.

New Year’s Day marked Brandywine’s success, and became evident when swamped on opening day (see buses photo)

. I missed out on opening day because my father sent me on an all day errand to drive clear across the state of Ohio through a snow storm, for a case of beer mugs he said were only available in Strongsville, but I made it back alive, and went straight to work, probably in the kitchen, or helping stapling on skiers’ lift tickets next to my mother. Anything I did at Brandywine was always lots of work, but lots of fun.

The person (in the photos, left) is Goodie, who was the oldest original Brandywine employee. Goodie built the lodge, and bulldozed from the very beginning. He graded the entrance road, and may have been who taught dad’s three new outside employees (who were younger than me) how to use use the two earth moving pans to build up Brandywine’s hills much higher. Sometimes, I would get the tractor stuck in the water while mowing the back 40 acres, and I had to take the long hike to go get the army truck from where it had always been parked near the garage, and pull the tractor out with it, myself. Or, if anyone working happened to be nearby, or one of the bulldozers would see me, any of the employees would help me without anyone ever having to say a word to me. I would jump up on one of the bulldozers making it so I wouldn’t have to wade across the creek, or I’d have to walk the long way, and across the bridge if I was on the opposite side of the creek where the army truck was. I was still working when the snowmaking systems were updated twice, and when the chairlift replaced the T-bar, as well as when the new bull-wheels and chairlift towers were installed for the larger quadruple chairlifts.

I soon realized that my dad’s new three younger than me outside employees started taking the army truck from where it was always parked near the maintenance garage, and saw when they started using it for themselves all day, but knew that I may need to find the army truck for whenever getting the tractor unstuck, again. The tractor kept getting stuck in the water only where the water was deepest. 

But, I couldn’t walk over the creek, or walk over the pipes (conduits) which went over the creek to find the army truck, because it was impassable from being blocked with screen and barbed wire (which you can see the in the photo above). Those conduits ran from out of the deep reservoir which was just outside of the maintenance garage, across the Brandywine Creek, then up the hills to provide the high pressured water and air for snowmaking. Wading, or jumping from rock to rock resulted in me getting “soakers” a lot of the times that I made the attempts, so I usually walked all of the way over to the main bridge where employees were working on the hills. On my way searching for the army truck, I walked past the new employees who were all my age, or younger, but I didn’t actually know any of them. I saw that they had the army truck nearby where they appeared to be just waiting around while outside operations manager Bob Earl, and his assistant (named Woody), were both working somewhere on the hill. When I told them that I needed to use the army truck again, this time, none of the three kids answered, or spoke to me. I had no idea, then, that it was because my dad had just announced his latest rule for all employees at Brandywine, which was to not speak to me at all under any circumstances, or face being fired! Everyone was fearful of my father, and I believe that was exactly the way he wanted it. He never informed me about it, and I only found out, secretly, from a fellow employee. My father had only told me that I was not to talk to “his” employees (as if that was even possible while working alongside them in the kitchen, loading the lift lines, working in the office, etc.). It was maddening for me to finally realize that my dad had announced he would fire anyone speaking to me at all under any circumstances. I had already noticed which student/employees were the ones who didn’t speak to me even in school, but could only guess that they were just too introverted, or something.

Did my father know that he created the perfect storm for making his employees hate me? Maybe he wanted to make my life as miserable working at Brandywine, as it was attending my small rural high school because he wanted to be sure that I wouldn’t want to stay there past age 18. Whatever the any case, any outside employee at Brandywine going all of the way to the lodge, and inside to Interrupt my dad just to ask him about going to help me toward getting the tractor unstuck, was a very bad idea because there were way more important things with my dad going on at that time. When all three of his new young outside worker crew jumped in the army truck, and drove clear over the bridge to the office to go bother my dad just to ask him which one of them, or if all of them, could go to pull the tractor out for me to continue mowing, it made my dad so angry that he drove them all back, and dropped them off somewhere. Then, he angrily sped back, picked me up, and drove me all of the way over to the 40 acres where I got the tractor stuck, himself. He angrily wanted to see how it was possible that I could keep getting the tractor stuck from just mowing grass, and he accused me on the way, of getting it stuck on purpose, just so I would be able to find, and drive the army truck again. I never forgot how his anger from seeing for himself exactly where, and how, I kept getting the tractor stuck, turned into amazement, because he immediately realized that I had discovered what could easily be dug out and expanded into becoming a spring fed lake! (*see photos*).

 Because I kept getting our tractor stuck in the water while I mowed, he realized that we had what could become a spring fed lake, and sooner than later Brandywine turned into a year round business which competed with all of the other Ohio water parks. However, my father barely said a word to me about his plans for a water park, and continued keeping me as uninvolved and out of the loop as possible. But,

 he very surprisingly allowed me start driving the army truck over the creek again each day, and to start leaving the tractor parked in the back 40 acres where I had left off mowing at the end of each work day. That way, I got to drive the army truck from where it had always been parked at the maintenance garage, over the creek back and forth, to and from, the 40 acres I had been mowing. Besides making my dad ecstatic discovering our spring fed lake, and what it meant for the future of Brandywine, by letting me drive the army truck again, and keeping it with me all day in the back 40, it became apparent that I immediately started staying away from the lodge all day every day (which was exactly what my father wanted). I easily settled into a routine of driving to work each day in an awesome army truck, driving the tractor all day mowing 40 acres, and then driving back over the creek in the army truck, even if it meant that I had no choice but doing other things which I didn’t enjoy like cleaning the toilets after my eight hour work day cutting grass. I would have gladly stayed working at Brandywine forever.

Unfortunately, when the outside employees began seeing me jumping into the army truck each morning, and leaving with it keeping it for my own use for the whole day while I mowed, they looked at me as if they wanted to kill me because they were no longer able to keep the army truck around for their own use all day. I think that one of those employees was in my English class, and though he seldom talked, I think he was friends with the one who followed me into the hallway after class to hit me in the back of my head with a world history book, which was followed by more unavoidable fight encounters happening to me. That fight started after I was trying to give my own impromptu spiel in English class, and after a student named Kurt had given his own impromptu speech, first. His impromptu spiel was on karate, so mine instantly became “The Adventures of Karate KURT… kurt…kurt…” (and I said his name “kurt” like a repetitive echo), followed by a harmless, and humorous story (as if Kurt was a comic book super hero), and I really didn’t mean any offense. In fact, it could have been used as an opportunity to have become his friend. Unfortunately, Kurt chose to make himself, and his own already established friends, my enemies. Kurt followed me out of class, and whacked me in the back of my head hard with a world history book. Again, due to my impulsivity, most probably resulting from the head injuries which I had definitely already had, my school assignment actually resulted in me getting another minor head injury. (As ridiculous as it may sound, that led to not being able to avoid being in other fights after school, too.)

Sooner than later the lodge’s private upstairs living quarters were finished, and my dad decided that it would be better if my mom, and my little sister (my two year older brother was already in college in Ann Arbor), and I, should not live at Brandywine any longer, but live in the first of two nearby rental houses. While my dad continued living 24/7 at Brandywine, very soon he had a dry heat sauna, and a custom built jacuzzi (see Brandywine’s upstairs office pictured

left). My dad tacked on my additional daily task requiring me to clean the lodge public toilets after I finished my eight hour work day, and that lasted through the summer, as well as the first two ski seasons. I think that was when my father actually realized that, like my mother, I was a good, hard worker. I just accepted getting used to doing it because I knew that my mother would keep cleaning them if I didn’t

. I was the one responsible for cleaning the Brandywine public toilets… (and if I didn’t get it done before dinner, I’d have to do it after dinner). The iron content in the water made the smell extra bad. I had no choice but to accept cleaning toilets as part of my normal daily job for all of the time that I worked at Brandywine (whether we were open or closed), but because I had dug the long trench by hand (we didn’t have a back hoe then) from the lodge to the creek where we first built a french drain for those toilets, I didn’t feel so bad about cleaning them (plus I couldn’t quit because I’d have nowhere to stay, and nowhere to go). So, Brandywine was where I learned how to install toilets. Who would work eight hours a day, then clean toilets (without quitting), but never get to cash any of my own paychecks, nor ever got paid a dime? I never got paid because my father explained to my siblings that all of my paychecks had gone toward interest bearing accounts which he would be making available to me in my retirement, so my siblings were told, too. Then, when they became the estate trustees, they both wanted to believe that all of my earnings were all part of our father’s estate.

Photo of me after being hired at our competitor ski area Boston Mills.

While I mowed the back 40 acres at Brandywine, I often saw this fearless (and somewhat fearsome – because of its size) hawk, and have always looked forward to when I would see it again.

The old wooden signs were replaced with state-authorized type traffic signs shown in the photo (left). I got used to driving exactly a half hour everyday during my half hour lunch breaks to go buy gas at a little deli, and/or an extra sandwich to eat, and my dad was very happy about getting used to not seeing me all day. When the Jaite paper Mill closed, both ends of that portion of the Towpath remain chained. The Jaite paper Mill opened in 1909, and was permanently closed in 1984. Today there are over 120 miles of open hiking paths which, like Brandywine, are all part of CVNP (Cuyahoga Valley National Park) land. I still have our parents’ ashes, and would be willing to bring them to beautiful Ohio to spread them in a ceremony at beautiful Brandywine, especially in Autumn.