31 “No Mon’, No Fun, Your Son.” “Too Bad, So Sad, Your Dad”. Song: “Under the Boardwalk”. Photo: My Mother, and My Girlfriend.
Banishing me out to live in the streets, or moving me into rented rooms became the kind of thing my father persisted in doing, starting with violently kicking me out at age 15 after making sure that I had at least 45 cents in my pocket before releasing his rage by telling me to never come back, or to move me into rented rooms either for punishment, or simply because he grew tired of having me around working for him, all while my mother continued trying her best to protect me from him. He hated me for my bond with my mother, and for me becaming involved in trying to protect her from him, and he hated even more, that I was in a band. He rationalized all of his actions by explaining that he simply wanted me to learn to become totally self sufficient, but he really only wanted me away from Brandywine as fast, and as soon as possible, and he sternly reminded me that I wouldn’t be living at home past age 18. I was already working full time at his ski area, so I was confused about how it would be possible doing both things at once. But, I believe that he was truly only trying to be a good father with no experience of ever knowing a father of his own, plus he was an only-child.
Despite all of our differences, he continued letting me chose to work for my parents for a total of 23 years. He explained that I had been on the payroll since age 14 because he wanted me to be assured that I wouldn’t ever have to worry about being both old, and indigent, and that was how he got me to sign over power of attorney at age 16. Because he was investing my paychecks, the most I ever received from him, personally, and condition-free, while he was alive, was an occasional hundred dollar bill, while my siblings, who chose to never work for their parents, were both helped with buying houses, cars, and paying for their educations. The reason that he never let me cash, or keep, any one of my Brandywine paychecks, was because he said he was investing them for me for when I was old. So, I trusted, and believed him. However, when both parents died, I never received any of the sum total of all of my Brandywine paychecks even though I was left with the actual checks which prove that my earned $144K, and one for $25K went from out of my bank account, and into my co-owned Merril Lynch investment account with my father. Regardless of me having the checks and dates deposited, I lost it in entirety to my siblings who stole it (explained in detail, including documents for proof on pages 46-49). Unfortunately. there was never any lawyer willing to get any of it back working on a contingency basis.
My father was the owner/operator of Brandywine, which started out as a family ski business. My two siblings chose to never work there, but I chose working there from the start. Then, when my father obtained 51% ownership of the stock of his ski area, he had the complete control he wanted. And, after I discovered that we had a spring fed lake, and he hatched the idea which led to the opening of a year round business with a water park called Dover Lake, I witnessed how money and power turned my father into a completely different person which is hard to describe. After he became the “Kraken in charge”, with a bright new look on his face proving that he knew my thoughts before I verbalized them, he stopped me before I said a word to ask, by raising his index finger up and saying to me, “Before I will consider you as a candidate for working here, you must obtain, elsewhere, the kind of credentials needed, first, and then apply, but I’m not making any promises”. It was as if he didn’t recognize that I had ever worked for him. He had become so unattached, and distanced from me that he hadn’t remembered I worked for him when the ski area was first built, or remembered that I lived with him in the trailer behind the lodge, and was essentially working 24/7 just like both parents were doing, when he required me to punch in on a time clock like all of the other employees. Then, when I worked ten more years earning what I was supposed to start receiving starting at age 65, I never received it (explained later). I actually worked much of my adult life on the clock recorded hours, and never got paid. It was like my father forgot when I was all the help that he could get, when he could keep no other employee working in the freezing carbon monoxide contaminated rope tow hut without quitting, or get any other employee to clean the lodge toilets without quitting, which were my only two jobs, plus teaching skiers, in the winters at Brandywine. I felt that he was purposefully confusing me by telling me, “You don’t have the credentials to be my son”. Then, since I never fully understood what, where, and how much my co-owned promised accounts were until after he died, they disappeared because my siblings were his estate trustees, and they defied both parents, ignored the instructions, and stole as much as possible for themselves, along with unscrupulous others.
I saw how money, and power turned the owner/operator of a ski resort (who happened to be my father) into a pompously confident, overbearing father who wanted me accepting his “sell your soul conditional loyalty requirement(s)”. But, I refused to accept selling my soul, in order to get a ride back to Kent, benefit in terms of getting jobs, promotions, get to stay at great penthouse type places, and/or live rent free, including having all that, and even having my own new awesome car to drive. I never even once chose to accept doing that for any benefits whatsoever, and always stayed true to myself, choosing to take the high road (the road which was the hardest to climb). Even after I graduated from college, my situation remained the same as most everyone’s in terms of working (the hard way), in order to feed myself, and it remained very difficult, if not impossible for me to ever see eye to eye with my father, or get along with him. Then, one day over the phone long distance, my father said that I could meet him to go looking for a reliable used car. But, first he made me give him my word that I would never use it to drive all the way back to Brandywine with, and I agreed. Then, when went looking for one, it was as if my father didn’t believe the promise that I made, and it made him crazy when the only car I wanted, happened to be the only one which had snow tires. In fact, he got so angry, that he stormed back to his airport rented car, and started driving me back to the airport intending to send me back to Ocean City where I lived at the time, carless (very funny story below).
My father was adamant about not permitting me to even visit home, or his ski area after I turned 18, and because it was so busy there, I couldn’t even speak with my mother on the phone. But, regardless of his latest, newest, rules, while I attended Kent State, I managed to get to one of the days of the Cleveland Ski Fair, anyway, and I took the photo (below left) of my mother standing in the middle of our ski booth
at the Cleveland Sheraton Ski Fair. I had always been permitted to go to the ski fairs with my mother, and I didn’t know why my dad wouldn’t let me, anymore. I didn’t know why he never stayed longer than a few moments at our booth at the ski fairs, especially because he was the one who started Brandywine. I guess he was just too busy doing more important things, like fighting the many lawsuits filed, some of which were even staged accidents skiers purposely caused so that they could sue. Or, maybe that was when he would meet with his friends that he wouldn’t want me, or my mother ever realizing that he had? Whatever the case, I got to one of the days of the Cleveland Ski Fair, despite my father announced that I was NOT permitted to go. But, I also wasn’t permitted to come home from Kent, and I wanted to see my mother. When I got to our booth, I saw that the employee who my father favored over me, who had completely replaced me from the very beginning at Brandywine, was standing alongside my mother, just like I had always done in the past three years. Unbeknownst to me, he was the son of my rural Ohio high school gym teacher! I didn’t know, then, that he was my gym teacher’s son! (I only learned that employee John Murphy was gym teacher’s Mr. Murphy’s son, years later, and I only deduced it by osmosis). Had I known that, then, I would have understood why both my gym teacher, and his son, always looked at me in the way that they did. In fact, it was my gym teacher who hated me so much, that on MY last day at that high school from hell, my gym teacher slugged me in the face, bloodying, and nearly breaking my nose. He felt that he needed to do that to me quickly, before everyone would know that I was innocent of committing a serious crime. He knew that the guilty student was NOT me, who blasted out the front lobby window over the front entrance at school. In fact, he KNEW that it was one of the other teacher’s sons, had always hated me since day one for being the ski area’s owner’s son. Then, immediately after I had discovered that we had a spring fed lake, my dad was so happy that he let me start driving my father’s Dodge Charger to school! However, I only got to drive to that school for a grand total of only a few days, until my gym teacher assaulted me, and tried to make it so I’d immediately be drafted. My gym teacher, and another teacher, and the principal, all hated me, especially after my motorcycle ride with the principals daughter (on my friend’s motorcycle). So, the two teachers, and the principal devised a plan to get me successfully expelled. All three were participating in a criminal conspiracy, and I only learned about what they were planning to do from the actual guilty one (who was one of the teachers son) who told me what they were planning to do to put the blame on me, and have me arrested, even though at least one, probably two, or possibly all three of them knew that I was innocent of the crime! Their strategy was to make sure that the police found the incriminating evidence involved in the crime, in my locker at the praise time when the school was evacuated, and the police came into the school to search lockers in response to what were fake bomb scares. That resulted in the whole school population, including teachers, having to exit the school, and remain outside, twice, and then during the third supposed bomb scare, we were all crammed into into the gym squeezed onto the bleachers. I believe that the fake bomb scares were all part of their strategy, because it created the perfect opportunity for the teacher (I had innocently, and trustingly, left my shotgun with her son over the weekend, and he did the crime on his own while I knew nothing about it) to safely plant MY SHOTGUN in MY locker without risking being seen while everyone was either in the gym, or evacuated! That would have surely gone a long way toward proving that I was the guilty one. But, when the gym teacher singled me out in the gym where the whole school was assembled, and walked me out through the halls to stand with me in the lobby where I could see, directly over his shoulders, where the lobby window was blasted out, I’m certain that the gym teacher realized that I wasn’t guilty of anything, especially because I knew nothing about it having driven in to school then walking in from the parking lot (not the front door). So, he was committing the crime of participating in a criminal conspiracy of setting me up. I think that he knew that I had no knowledge about the broken window behind me. Whatever the case, he started trying to convince me to just quit school, adding I could drive around all day in my dad’s new cars. And, when he didn’t like me cautioning him with the expression, “You should make sure your brain is engaged before you put you mount in gear”, he instantly punched me in the face, bloodying my nose. Then, acting almost as if he was sorry for what he had done, he walked me into the office where he, and the principal (who just happened to be there waiting) got me to sign a form letting me go home, I thought, because I had been assaulted! They conned me into believing that the form they were “letting” me sign, was because they were sorry that the gym teacher had assaulted me, so were letting me go home early for the rest of the day! The principal explained that I might need the form on my way off school grounds to show to any of the assortment of official vehicles assembled outside, adding that I shouldn’t lose or misplace it, because I might need it anywhere to show police that I was not a truant student trying to skip school. But, the form I signed, also, legally meant that I could never come back.
Even my own father totally, and incorrectly, thought that I had the wrong attitude toward authority figures, and it was actually puzzling to me, why both my father, as well as my gym teacher thought that way. In fact, they both thought that I needed straightening out, and to be punished for my attitude. Whatever attitude problem they thought I had, probably stemmed from my childhood, as a result of continual victimization both in and out of school. I was sodomized twice by men, then raped by a woman. I was sent weekly from my class, to the auditorium where I was continually molested in the green room, then sodomized by that teacher at school, and during school, and I think that teacher turned out to be my 5th grade teacher! And, I was assaulted at school, during school, starting with my first grade teacher when I was just trying to help out retrieving a medicine ball during recess, resulting in permanent physical, and mental injury. So, of course I became sensitive when authority figures became accusatory toward me, and/or directed their anger at me by falsely asserting that I had done something I hadn’t done, or blamed me for something someone else had done. But, I certainly was no angel.
During the middle of one of my winter seasons working my 40+ hour weeks, my father made my mother drop me off in another rented room, and this one was in the middle of nowhere. If she refused to do this, he threatened to have her left off in the same way (and she was scared to death that he really meant it). This time, she had to leave me way out in the outskirts of Cleveland’s iron ore district where there was nothing in either direction for miles. A snowstorm had made everything everywhere all white, including this road to nowhere. It was exactly like the TV show “The Twilight Zone”, and I never saw, or heard a single soul in that rooming house, just like the room that my mom dropped me off at in Kent (which was equally as erie a situation to find myself all alone in). This time, there was nothing nearby this rented room for miles… no buildings, no other roads, just a lonely bus stop that I could see through the window. There was no phone, no radio, no tv, no kitchen, or other rooms, and the window had a broken roller shade that you could pull down for privacy, but when you let it go, it wouldn’t stay down – it just flapped back up and spun around. A lone bus stop, and a deserted highway with only an occasional bus was my only connection to the outside world. It took me forever to stop hearing, in the dead silence of that room, the deafening sounds of the ski area’s giant compressors ringing in my ears, which were all that I had been hearing 24/7 while working, and sleeping in close proximity to them through the winters. I took the bus from my father’s latest chosen rental for me, and got a job at the first diner on the bus route, and that was how I got to every shift. This job, however, would have never paid enough for me to purchase transportation (which I don’t doubt, was why, this time, my father had my mother drop me off in the middle of nowhere). Unfortunately, my father preferred me belonging stuck in a room somewhere far away from him, with little money, no car, no phone, thus no way to get back.
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After I had volunteered for the service, I finished college on the GI bill. Then, my mom visited where I lived in a little trailer in the sand in Selbyville DE, near Ocean City MD, and that was when I took the photo of her feeding the ducks (way below) with my Nikon
35mm camera (see photo). Those ducks may have even been the same ducks involved in the accident described below. In any case, when my mom told me to call my dad after she left from her brief visit to Ocean City, my father told me that if I could get from my rented trailer in Selbyville DE, to a grass airstrip somewhere inland, that I could meet a small plane to take me somewhere to see him, but he was being very weird because he refused to tell me where I would be flying to, to meet him. At the time, I had no car, just a 50cc motorcycle. My dad would only say that if I could get to this grass air strip, he would have someone take me in a small plane to meet him somewhere. I got to the airstrip where he described, and I left my bike in the woods, and ironically, that motorcycle was stolen, too! I got into a small plane with a teenaged pilot who told me that it was just a short flight from that grass air strip in the woods, to where I would meet my father in DC. However, half of the way to DC, a lightning packed heavy rainstorm occurred, and that teenaged pilot became so scarred that he started crying hysterically, and yelling that we were going to die. Miraculously, we arrived in one piece, and my father took me to look at used cars, but after we left a third car lot in VA, I honestly thought that I wasn’t going to get a car at all, because I had told my dad that the only car I liked was a used Mustang with SNOW TIRES! (He was obviously convinced, correctly, that it was because I wanted to go skiing anywhere, again). Because he very obviously hated me even thinking that way, he started to take me back to the little airport in DC to send me back. However, just before entering into the point of no return, and at the very last light before leaving VA into DC suddenly, he made a very sudden sharp, and illegal u-turn, went straight through several red lights, and screamed, “SHUT UP”, every time I that started to speak out. He finally tried to calmly tell ME how to act just before we returned to the last used car lot we were at. He NEEDED me for helping help him locate the last cars we had looked at in a sea of cars, specifically one of the last cars he had gotten inside of with me, because he had left his black leather carry pouch bag in the back seat of that Mustang which was the car that I liked the most. I learned that he had left $25,000.00 (twenty-five thousand) cash on the floor behind the passengers front seat of the Mustang!
That was how I ended up with a good used car. It was a 1965 Mustang with snow tires purchased for $2,500.00, but I had to promise that I would not use it to ever drive back to visit Ohio, Brandywine, or home with it.
The photo is of me and my 1965 Mustang parked in Ocean City, MD near to the beach. I drove it to Sugarbush VT, and landed a gig for the winter season, then returned to Ocean City, and fell madly in love, which was when I added spoke wheels for my car (see the above photo). FYI, I have a tank swim suit on. Baggy longer style suits weren’t quite “in” yet. My Mustang (also in photo below with a view of Ocean City MD from across the bay) was totaled on one of the only two “S” turns within miles of each other (story below). I used my Mustang to drive to NY, and played at gigs in NY & VT.
Then, I drove it to Metairie, for a gig I pre-contracted through an music agency, and went near New Orleans LA, and then back to Ocean City MD, for more seasonal musical gigs.
Then, I got hit from behind in my first, of two Ocean City MD car accidents… My girlfriend and I were coming around an “S” curve on the north end of Ocean City MD, when we encountered a long row of ducks, all stretched across the road, wobbling tail to beak (exactly like the ones in the photo with my mother feeding them when she visited). She got to also meet meet my girlfriend, and her mother
. Unfortunately, I couldn’t help to slow down in time, and I ran right through a line of ducks stretched clear across the road, and I was devastated. Immediately after the tragedy, I stopped, and parked COMPLETELY OFF of the road on the very wide shoulder, only to quickly jump out to see if I had killed it. I thought that it may have still been alive, because I saw it lift its wings together once, slowly, as if preparing to fly heavenward (but it was probably only an involuntary response). Then, I saw a driver approaching, and could see that he had his head buried in the steering wheel looking more at his instrument panel, than at the road. We were stopped just off the road, on the shoulder, and because I could see that he was looking at his speedometer, and not at the road, I knew that the idiot didn’t even realize that we were stopped. So, I quickly jumped back into the car, grabbed my girlfriend, and put her under my arm to cover her as I heard him slamming on his breaks and skidding. I slammed into third gear, floored it, and popped the clutch right before the idiot slammed squarely into the whole rear end of my beautiful Mustang. We accelerated like a rocket ship, and I saved her from injury by cushioning all of her body weight with my own head and neck which slammed into the ceiling as we were catapulted off the road, across the street, and through a cornfield straight toward a telephone pole. I was able to steer the car left, to avoid hitting it, and we stopped in the cornfield, about 80 (eighty) yards away from his car, which remained on the highway, still facing straight, with steam oozing upward from under the middle of his front hood. My girlfriend was in shock, because she couldn’t move one of her legs, so I reached down and felt that the cuff of her jeans was caught, by being wrapped around the seat slide lever, and freed it. I made sure that she was alright, and realized that had I turned right, instead of left, to avoid that telephone pole, we would have plunged into deep water, where those ducks were obviously headed, and my girlfriend could have easily drowned before I could have figured out how she was stuck in that kind of confusion, while deep underwater. Thankfully, she wasn’t injured, and was out of shock. I still have my neck injury to this day, but it’s not serious, just sore for life.
I turned my attention back to suddenly see that kid jump out and look at the front of his jeep, and without so much as looking toward us, jumped back into his jeep, looking like he was going to try to leave. I was already running full-speed through that cornfield, and raced over the road to his jeep before he could even THINK about leaving. When an officer arrived, he made ME sit in the back of his police car where I couldn’t get out to be with my girlfriend! I was held captive in his police car watching the circus of events which followed for over a half hour, and he eventually got back in, and after I explained the events which had unfolded, he gave ME a ticket! I tried again, to explain about the ducks saying, “But officer, the ducks”, when the officer responded interrupting me, saying, “F*** the ducks!”, and handed me the ticket (for “stopped on highway”), because he SAID that ONE INCH of both inside tires appeared to have been, apparently, just off of the sandy road shoulder, barely touching the road. He finally let me out. By the time the tow truck arrived, the road was cleared, and we were on our way again. I noticed that the duck had been ridden over so many times by cars passing by, that I couldn’t have peeled it off. There was nothing left to remove and/or bury. The duck didn’t survive, but we did.
Ironically, a second car accident happened on the other “S” curve near Ocean City, MD. after my friend and roommate BJ Leiderman (who still works for PBS) had visited Ocean City beginning on a weekend during the 1979 tourist season. He helped me find two seasonal gigs… 1) playing on a grand piano in the dining room at The Commander Hotel on the boardwalk. (It included room and board for the season, and was just a short walk from where I met my girlfriend), and 2) playing guitar at the after hours club called “The Upstairs/Downstairs”
located right across the street from my girlfriend’s insurance agency on 28th St. Ocean City, MD. After spending all summer with her, practically every single day, her jealous ex-boyfriend who was an Ocean City MD paramedic named Clay, and two of his associates (a city-worker, and a younger EMT who was working with the paramedic Clay), were the only ones at the scene of my second accident in Ocean City. ironically this accident also happened on a similar shaped “S” curve, but on this curve, gravel had been purposely strewn on the roadway causing my accident (described below.
I began going each day with my new girlfriend after she got off work, to watch her ride her horse in the ring, and over the jumps. The barn property (see the photos
of different seasons, left) where she kept her horse, was Ironically, right across the street from the road with my musician friend’s three trailers at the end, on his lot. I could either stay there, or in town in the slave like basement quarters where I played dinner piano at The Commander Hotel. My girlfriend’s father was a retired jockey, and they had a retired race horse named Kowabunga
. I felt that Kowabunga tolerated me being in his stall with my girlfriend, before and/or after she rode, and grooming him, etc, because he possibly sensed that I had worked at a racetrack, and/or because he knew that my girlfriend and I were so close. Unfortunately, I also think that perhaps because of her father’s extreme hatred of me, Kowabunga sensed that hatred, and it may have even been why Kowabunga kicked her father breaking his ribs, which was what led to finding out in the hospital, that he had stage 4 lung cancer, which led to her father’s hastened death.
Even though my girlfriend and I had been dating for months, her old boyfriend kept coming into her office at work and pestering her, and it got on her nerves so much that it eventually made her very upset, especially because it was always while she was trying to work. I think that her father actually encouraged him to keep coming in (I guess because he was so impressed with him in his EMS uniform). Her father would even walk over from the bar directly across the street where I think he had began staying, chain smoking, and drinking all day, instead of ever working in the office with his daughter anymore, just so the two of them could sit, and continue to chatter in front of his daughter while she was trying to concentrate on taking over running her father’s entire insurance business soon, herself, because of his cancer diagnosis. Her father only considered me as unimportant in his daughter’s life, and like a long haired low life musician who he hoped was only temporarily in his town. He never bothered to ever even say one word to me. In fact, he always rudely went out of his way to ignore me, and spoke only to his daughter whenever they happened to be talking in front of me. (Even whenever I casually spoke to him, he ignored me.) The tension had been mounting exactly like that through the entire year. Obviously, only her mother (and her horse, of course) understood.
When my girlfriend became my fiancee, she decided that she had all that she could take from both her father’s, and old boyfriend’s interference, and was when she moved out of her parents’ house, and into a place of her own because it was much closer to work. But, because it had no air conditioning, I offered to go get my big fan I had acquired from out of my trailer, and I did so when she was so busy at work that she stayed working right through the lunch hour. The timing of our engagement, and her father finding out about his daughter’s plans to be with me all night for our very first night ever together, I think was after her father had finished legally transferring his insurance business into her name, because of his stage 4 cancer diagnosis. Then, when he realized that his daughter and I were planning on spending all night together, it made her father enraged – so enraged, that he needed something to happen to prevent that from happening, BEFORE we spent all night together.
Thankfully, it was just me driving when I left the parking lot to get my big square fan from out of my trailer. That was on the day gravel was strewn on the “S” curve in the road while I was on my way BACK from my trailer with my big square fan.
Musician friend Richard Rheil, and his drummer Al Saxon both lived in the other two side by side trailers where I lived on Dick’s property. Dick played at “The Downstairs” restaurant on his a B-3 organ, horn, and kicked bass pedals all at the same time, and sang.
(See photo of Al Saxon on drums). At that same time, I played guitar at “The
Upstairs” Penthouse after hours club, as well as played piano at the Commander Hotel, and Mario’s Restaurant.
Dick allowed me to live rent free in one of his his 14ft Tag-A-Long trailers, and he was glad to have me around to keep an eye on all three of his trailers, and his property, while he went south for the winter to play at “The Mucky Duck” every year in Ft Myers Beach, FL.. Shortly after my girlfriend became my fiancee, her father told her that he was going to have me killed, followed by me noticing a very tall man, who obviously worked for the city, threatening to tow my car from her work parking lot. I managed to photograph him just prior to, or on the actual day of my accident. I actually took the photograph because I felt that I needed proof of the fact that he was watching me for three days in a row around noon while I waited to take my fiancee to lunch, and he was making me both suspicious, and afraid.
Notice my car, and me motioning in the photo with my right arm toward that city-worker standing in the street. I took the photo because he had remained staring straight at me at noontime for three days in a row, after he had talked threateningly to me. I tried to politely explain to him (like a friend would) that I had permission to park my car in the lot because I had been picking up my girlfriend for lunch there every day for months. Obviously, that city worker was involved in causing my accident, and I would soon see that Clay (the tallest of the town’s two blonde haired paramedics) was, too. Because I was aware that my brand new fiancee’s father was dying, threatened to have me killed, and always wanted Clay to be the one to marry his daughter, it came as no surprise for me to see the three who were involved in causing my accident, were also the three I saw who were waiting in hiding at the scene of the accident. Ironically (and at least for the record in this website) the accident happened immediately after I took the photo (above).
My fiancee’s brand new Triumph TR7 sports car (unbeknownst to me) was still, temporarily, in her father’s name. Although her father’s, as well as her x-boyfriend’s, and other’s intentions became obviously known, I had no idea that I could have been stopped, and arrested for car theft, just for driving her new car, alone. Maybe that was the back up plan… what was planned, if the arranged “accident” didn’t come to fruition. What I witnessed (explained below) proved that my accident was pre arranged. They had all of their bases covered so that they could legally follow me. And, gravel can accidentally fall out of a city works truck legally anytime, anywhere. But, It didn’t have the successful results they thought it had. Their case should be a case, and remain an open case, because the fact remains that they were attempting murder. While we had both her sister’s, and her mother’s blessings for us to be married, on the second time her father threatened to have me killed, he added that he didn’t care if killing me meant him going to prison (for the rest of his shortened life because of his stage 4 stage terminal cancer). That was enough to convince us that he was dead serious. How could I even stay there with so much going against us? How could we even set a date to get married? Then, her old boyfriend, the paramedic, obviously working in camaraderie with others, confidentially, and pompously assured me that if I ever rode in his ambulance, that I would never make it to the hospital alive. So, when I got food poisoning three times in a row, almost dying in severe pain each time, even if I would have had a phone, because of Clay’s threats, and obvious connections, I was too paranoid to do anything. Then, that city-worker remained lurking in the street for the third day in a row doing nothing but watching me during the lunch hour, which happened to be the day that my fiancee had moved into her apartment, and everyone seemed to know exactly when that was, and was obviously when we were planning on spending our first night together.
Neither my nineteen year old girlfriend, nor I were planning on letting anyone stop us, but on the day of the evening when we planned on being together all night, that city-worker was still standing in the street next to his truck for the third day in a row watching me during her lunch hour! When I took off from my girlfriend’s work parking lot during her lunch hour to go fit my big square fan in her new sports car to use in her rented apartment on what was intended to be our first night ever together, I wasn’t expecting that anyone could, or would be using their radios to confirm where I was going. But, they could have easily already known that the only place that we both usually ever went to from her work lot, was to where she rode her horse, which was also right nearby the trailer. The fastest way was by making the only turn off after going over the Bay Bridge, and driving on the “s” curve, going, as well as coming back from my friend’s trailer in Selbyville, DE. One, or more of the perpetrators may have been associated with that big white house near that “s” curve, because immediately after the “arranged” accident, I saw that they were parked behind that house in the back mostly hidden from being seen from the road.
Since my girlfriend’s old boyfriend was the town paramedic, he had his own radio, and obviously, the huge guy who worked for the city,
had a radio, too, (please see photo, left, of the huge city-worker standing on the driver’s side of the white truck). Notice how he could stand in the street, and still look over the roof of his work truck at me. His height was what made it as easy for me to recognize him, as it was to identify her old boyfriend within seconds after my accident, when I realized exactly who the three in uniform were who I heard, and saw celebrating thinking that I was still in the totaled car. A love scorned ex-boyfriend, a city-worker for a lookout, and a father’s over the top interference, all teamed up getting involved in causing an “accident”. Their plan was to prevent us from being together on that very night, and it included strewing gravel on the curve in the road, no matter which car was driven, or, possibly, who was in it! Hopefully, the accident would either require a ride in Clay’s ambulance, or to be killed in the “accident”… either way would work, because either way, I’d be dead. Then, their goal would have been accomplished.
Gravel was strew down either to cause me to slide off the road in the “S” portion of the curve in the road across the bay, slam sideways into a telephone pole, or slide into a rock ravine. It did all three! When I slammed into a telephone pole sideways, it sheered it clean off (middle metal stud and all). The impact exploded both doors open. (See the photo of her beautiful brand new Triumph TR7 sports car.
I didn’t have my seat belt on, so I was ejected while the car continued sailing, and spinning through the air while I could see it, and hear the whoosh of the ends of both car doors, twice. They were like giant square butcher blades missing my head by inches on each spin while sailing in the air. Miraculously, I landed completely unscathed still in a sitting position on a patch of the only soft moist dirt around. Amazed, I saw the car continue spinning out of round in the air. It landed further down crashing into the rock ravine. I know that it was a miracle that I didn’t have a scratch. But, the car landed hard slamming into the rock ravine making a very loud ruckus, and totaled the car beyond repair. Then, I heard people yelling, “Yahoo”, and I peeked through the weeds from where I sat in the soft dirt. Three people (one of whom was very obviously my new fiancee’s old boyfriend) went running back across the street wildly screaming gleefully as if they were celebrating what they had all just accomplished. It sounded as if they had all just won the lottery together, and they continued shouting, “Yahoo” the whole time that they ran in my direction, and back across the street, then through the cornfield next to the neatly mowed side yard of the big white house across the street nearby. They ran into, and through the cornfield on the side of that house, toward the rear of it where they had obviously parked their vehicles, and disappeared. But, I survived.
On that very evening, because of everything, my fiancee and I agreed that staying together any longer just wasn’t safe, and we concluded that it definitely wasn’t worth me staying, and possibly dying over. So, on our first, and only night in her new apt where we both nearly died anyway by sweating to death, instead of consummating our relationship as probably would have eventually happened, we never even got to set a date to get married. Instead, we both agreed that I should just leave town. And, on the day that I was headed south out of town, I was nearly hit head on by two drunk and/or crazy kids who swerved into my lane recklessly playing “chicken”! At the last second, they drove clear off the road onto my side shoulder lane, missing hitting me head on by inches. I kept heading south toward VA Beach where I eventually wrote the song “Home On the Road”.
“Home On the Road”
by Douglas Dover
I’m going well I’m going well I’m gone
Home on the road all alone
How can I kept drivin’ on
I guess I’ll just have to be strong
Why must I leave you behind
And why can’t the whole world be kind
I love you I love you I do
It’s driving me out of my mind
Oh honey don’t/when I come back, honey don’t
Say you won’t see me no more
Cause once I find what I’m looking for
I’ll be back knockin’ at your door
La La La La La Lee
La La La sing harmony
Yes once I’ve found what I’m looking for
I’ll be back knockin’ at your door
I love you I love you my Lee
Your love brings me sweet memory
The fields and the forests of our youth
I speak of our love of our truth
I’m going well I’m going well I’m gone
Home on the road all alone
I’m going well I’m going well I’m gone
Ohhhh… Ohhhh… Ohhhh.
Ironically, I saw that same goofy looking tall paramedic again after I moved to Naples, FL in 1990 when, out of the blue, he stepped onboard, all alone, onto the Naples Princess excursion boat after all passengers had already boarded, and everyone of them had gone upstairs to the open air second floor deck. I was already set up next to the bar, and ready to play my first song on my guitar, followed by piano music for their sunset dinner cruise. He stood at the bottom of the stairs, alone, and didn’t attempt to talk to me. He just stood there and stared at me smiling smugly, and pompously, then turned to the side, and stepped off the boat right as the ship was pulling away from the dock departing. Then, the lady in charge came down the stairs and told me to start playing, and immediately went back upstairs. As soon as I touched my lip to the microphone, I received a 220 volt almost deadly shock! I would have been electrocuted because it stuck to my lips like super glue, but I managed to slap with both palms, and kick the mic stand with my hard shoes extra hard at exactly the same time, and that was only way that I had barely enough force to unstick that mic which had attached ever so firmly on my face, from off my face. What a coincidence?