It's time for Christmas break

I thought I was building up a full head of steam as I was starting to enter the era in which I lived in San Diego. However, it is the holiday season and I guess I'm fortunate that I decided to finish up this chapter of my life even though I had to deal with Thanksgiving a week and a half ago.

With all the anticipated time-consuming activities coming up for the next few weeks, I will be taking a break from writing the blog. However, this is a good time for you to catch up on the almost 500 articles I have written since beginning of the blog more than two years ago. At this point, we are more than halfway through my life. I guess that means I have at least another 400 articles to write before I catch up with my present.

After that, it will be Phase 2 of the blog, in which I'll detail all of my celebrity encounters. When I get to that point, I'll only be contributing one article a weeks. That means I shouldn't have to take breaks like this.

So in the meantime, I wish everyone stress-free holidays. Please do not pay for stress.

(By the way, this is the Christmas tree from my house this year.)

Wrapping up my time in Denver

Well, I did this after I chronicled my experience with living in Clovis, so I thought I'd do the same in celebration of the time I spent in Denver.



My only problem is that I don't have a good video to share for when I leave San Diego.

A not-so-unexpected visit

Driving back to Artesia during my move from Denver to San Diego, I had stopped and spent the night at my Grandma Bend's. I got up the next morning on 10/30/91 and inspected the inside of the U-Haul. Everything was still fastened in place. I didn't have all my belongings out of the specially-marked boxes and scattered all over the place. I didn't have any more mountains to drive through so I wasn't going to have to worry about the Pinto becoming unhitched and smashing into something.

I decided to drive to Artesia by way of Clovis. I visited my old workplace at KZZO-FM. However, there was no one there that I used to work with, so I went down to Portales and saw Grandma Ogolon. I also visited the campus of ENMU, where I went to college. Nothing much had changed. All I had left to do was go to Roswell and see Chez.

I had called Chez a few days ahead and told her I was going to come down. She told me that the 30th was her due date, so there was a possibility that she wasn't going to be home. I did not try to call her before I left Ft. Sumner to see if she was there. I just wanted to show up at her house and see if, by chance, she hadn't given birth yet.

I arrived at her home and knocked on the door. She actually answered it. Yep, she was definitely pregnant. She didn't seem too happy to see me. We did talk, but she seemed a little irritated that I was there. I asked her if I could get her anything. A smile slowly formed on her face as she said she wanted ice cream and Dr. Pepper. I walked over to Allsup's to get some. I came back. I don't think she thought I was actually going to get it.

Her sister Pid came home from school. She also made herself a Dr. Pepper float. The whole time, Chez just seemed to be patronizing me. I guess she was dreading what was about to happen and probably felt like I was partly to blame for her situation. We didn't get to act like boyfriend/girlfriend. She just was not in the mood for that.

The rest of the time I spent trying to get a photo of her. She held a newspaper in front of her face and would peek out to see if I'd put the camera away. I got three photos. She completely covered her face in one of them. But I managed to snap her giving me the evil eye twice. This is one of those photos:

The other photo gave a clearer picture of her eyeball, but I will only post photos in which you cannot distinctly make out facial features (as I have done in other photos I've posted of Chez).

I decided it was time to leave so I could see my parents in Artesia. I asked Chez if I could give her a hug before I left. She said I could, but she wasn't going to get out of the chair. I kneeled, gave her a quick hug and left. I drove off and wondered if I would ever get to see her again.

A week after I had moved out to San Diego, I called Chez to see how she was doing. It turned out she went into labor about six hours after I'd left. She said that when she started getting the contractions, her father made her start washing the dishes, saying it would help speed up the delivery. I guess it worked, because she gave birth about an hour and a half after she arrived at the hospital, on 10/31/91. She had a boy and named him Joad.

I asked her for a photo of the baby. She said she couldn't afford enough photos from the portrait session to give me one. I told her I would send her $10 to get a larger package if she would send me one. She agreed and I mailed her the money, along with the one clear photo I got of her while she was pregnant. I did get the photo of her and Joad that I asked for.

Even though she was really mad at me for trying to take her picture, she later showed off that photo to everyone, bragging that had been taken the night she gave birth. One of her friends said she didn't realize she had gotten that big.

As you might expect, my epic tale with Chez does not end here. There will be more in the future.

Ready to Move to San Diego

After I had received confirmation that I was going to be the Assistant Manager at the new movie theatre that Landmark was going to open in San Diego, I had to start preparing for my move. Fortunately, I had about a month to prepare everything. I started putting all my stuff in boxes and made arrangements to rent a U-Haul truck and a tow bar so I could take the 1978 Ford Pinto home with me. I literally had not been able to drive that for months and Dad was going to get me a different car that I could drive out to San Diego.

One of the things I had to force myself to do was to stop caring about what was going to happen at the Mayan Theatre after I left. That was very hard. My heart had been in that place for almost two years and I had to keep reminding myself that I was going to have to let it go and that it was my choice. One of the things I was going to miss out on was the disaster that would ensue if the theatre had gotten a liquor license. I don't think that ever happened, but I knew I no longer had to worry about that.

One of the things that made it easy on me was that Landmark had agreed to pay for my moving expenses. While they paid for the woman who had been selected as House Manager to fly out a few weeks early and locate an apartment, they would pay for my moving van, hotel stays, gas and two weeks at a residential motel. But I had to put everything on my credit card and send them the receipts. I wasn't looking forward to that, because I had just recently gotten a loan to cover my legal fines, fees and outstanding balance on my credit card. I did not want to get in the habit of running that card back up again.

A little going away party was thrown for me at the Mayan Theatre. It was actually touching because the Manager who had hired me, Mr. R, didn't get any kind of send off when he went to Palo Alto. (This was odd, because he was rather popular with the employees.)

I spent the next day packing the rest of my things in boxes. I had to figure out what I could take and what I would put in storage in Artesia. I marked the outside of the boxes "Leave" and "Take." Then, I had to get the U-Haul truck. I had wanted as small a truck as possible because I didn't have a lot of things to transport, but I was forced to rent a 14' truck because that was the smallest one that could tow a vehicle. When I drove the U-Haul home, I found it was nice to be behind the wheel of a vehicle again. The only catch was that I had to drive to a different U-Haul store to pick up the tow bar. Even though I had reserved it weeks in advance, the store I rented the truck from didn't have any available.

This was supposed to be the way things were going to go: Rid was going to come over that night and help me load up the truck and attach the Pinto to the tow bar. I absolutely needed help with that second part. He planned to spend the night and we were going to go to an exhibitor screening of "The Addams Family" the next morning. He had been looking forward to that film because he was a big fan of the TV series. After that, I would be on my way.

However, Rid never showed up. I tried calling several times, but he never picked up his phone. I waited until 8pm before I decided that I was going to have to load everything up myself. It was cold outside and there was snow on the ground. I had to make several trips back and forth. I was able to strap my more valuable possessions to the side of the truck. There was a lot of floor space left over after I loaded everything except my bed.

Because it was cold, I had to keep getting up in the middle of the night and starting the truck. I wanted to make sure I was going to be able to leave the next day and I didn't want any vital parts freezing up on me.

I got up the next morning and took the bus over to the Cherry Creek Mall, where the screening was taking place. Usually with exhibitor screenings, only theatre management is allowed to attend. However, the invitation for "The Addams Family" had no restrictions, so we invited all the employees from Landmark to attend. This was good as it would be the last time I would see most of them. We all had a good time. At the theatre, I asked Mr. M to come help me attach the Pinto to the U-Haul.

We got back to the apartment. When we got there, no one was parked in front of the apartment, so I was able to move the Pinto back into a position in which we would be able to easily set up the tow bar. I had to move it back by using the battery and the starter to engage the engine. After it moved back, I got ready to move the U-Haul out in front. Just then, the car parked in front of mine started moving his vehicle back. We waved our arms when we saw him coming our way and asked him to move back so I could park the U-Haul in front of my car. He looked a little ticked off, but relented.

We read the instructions and successfully attached the Pinto and tow bar to the rear of the U-Haul. I said my goodbye to Mr. M and he went on his way. I still had to finish cleaning my apartment and have the apartment manager do a walk-through. He didn't note any major issues and thought I would be getting the majority of my deposit back. However, I didn't get all of it because they charged me for parking, which I had previously opted out of. They never did send the money they owed me, but I figured that since I didn't pay any deposit to start with, I shouldn't be complaining.

But I was still fuming over Rid not showing up or even bothering to call. I mean, I had helped him move at least twice. On top of that, I went to help him out when he was getting evicted a few months earlier. (Because of an incident involving the police and someone else getting arrested, he didn't get evicted.) I felt like he didn't really value our friendship if he wasn't willing to return the favor this one time, the last time we would be seeing each other for a while.

As a result, I wound up not talking to him for the next eight months. I was that angry. The weird thing was that he had three major life changes during that time. I'll be writing about those sometime in the future.

I wrote earlier about how I had to deal with amajor snow storm hot on my heels as I was leaving Colorado. Driving that truck was a very nerve-wracking experience. one of the hardest parts was that I couldn't always tell whether the Pinto was still attached to the truck. Anytime I turned a curve, I would look in my rear view mirror. This got more difficult as it got darker and I was driving through Raton Pass. Miraculously, I never lost the car. I was also nervous about the larger items breaking free from their straps and wreaking havoc while I was trying to keep it under 60 on the highway. I was thankful the truck had an automatic transmission.

I made it down to Ft. Sumner and spent the night at Grandma Bend's. But I still had a full day ahead as I headed toward Artesia the next day, stopping to see someone special. More on that tomorrow.

My Summer Job

This doesn't go on my job counter because it wasn't really a job. It was the 40 hours of community service I was sentenced to a few months earlier.

I had to go to the courthouse in Golden to get my community service assignment. The counselor asked me if I had any non-profit organization in mind to work for. I didn't, so he offered me two locations. One was in assisting the security department for some organization. The other was working at Value Village, the thrift store for ARC. The counselor told me that there would be some light janitorial duties at the security position, so I chose the thrift store. I knew that even though that accident was my fault, there was NO WAY I was going to spend 40 hours cleaning toilets.

The thrift store was very liberal about its community service program. You could come in and leave when you wanted. I had planned to try to get it all over and done with during a two week period during the summer. However, when I first arrived, the woman I encountered. said I didn't have the proper paperwork. I told the woman they were supposed to have it, but she said I was supposed to get it and bring it. I called later and talked to the other guy in charge of the community service. He said they had my paperwork. All I needed to do was show up.

I was kind of mad about how I was treated that first time. (And I found out later that I could have done my service with the Denver International Film Society, which I had frequent contact with at the Mayan Theatre.) I decided to just spread out the 40 hours over several Saturdays.

I arrived and they had me working a kind of assembly line. The regular workers would put donated merchandise on a table and we were supposed to sort it out. There were about 10 people working in the back for community service. I talked to one couple who had been sentenced to 100 hours. They had less than three weeks to complete it. And I thought I was procrastinating.

It was interesting to see how everyone worked at a snail's pace while doing the sorting. Seriously, they were slower than some of the cashiers I've seen working at Walmart. But when I watched the regular employees do the sorting, they were lickety-split fast at folding the clothes and putting them on the hangers. They could do 10 pairs of pants in the time it took a community service person to do one. Sometimes, it seemed like the regular employees were a little irritated at our presence. We likely slowed down their productivity and they were the ones who got yelled at by the supervisors because of it.

The first thing I noticed after I had completed my first day's work was that they had padded my hours. I only worked six hours that day, but the person in charge wrote down eight. I guess they have so much work that needs to be done that they want to encourage the community service people to keep returning.

The third time I went in, the maintenance guy said I would be working with him. It was cold and rainy that morning and he had me outside pulling up weeds with my bare hands. Really? Then he had me go into the bathroom and clean the sink. (He did not make me scrub the toilet.) And we did some other maintenance stuff. After two hours, I got fed up and went home, even though that meant I would have to spend one extra day to complete my time.

I never got put on maintenance again. The next to last time that I showed up, they had me helping at the front of the sorting line. I put clothes on one side and general merchandise on the other. I was actually having a good time doing this. I was getting along really well with the regular employees. I accidentally hit one of the women in the head with a lampshade. She was shocked because she heard it go crunch and she actually thought that was the sound of her skull fracturing. She laughed when she realized that all that had happened was that we had dented the lampshade.

She told me I worked a lot harder than most of the other community service people. I made a comment to her that I needed to keep in mind that, while I only had to spend 40 hours of my life doing this work, she had to do this 40 hours each week.

I wound up with 1.75 hours left to go on my community service. I walked in one morning, did the full 105 minutes and told the guy in charge I was going. "You're leaving already?" "I'm finished. That's the end of my community service." He signed my paperwork and I was done with my obligation to the justice system.

I have never had to do community service again since. But if I do, I'll be sure to try to get into another thrift store.

Dad Gets Hitched (Part 3)

The day came of Dad's wedding came. It was scheduled to take place at 6pm in Taos, NM. Dad and Gred were going to get up there early so they could get a marriage license that day. They were going to eat dinner with the wedding party and have the ceremony at the time-share they had bought into with a group of other people. Afterward, they were going to have a Crazy Cajan feast for the reception.

Loyd and I had to drive Gred's car up to Taos. We were going to stop at Grandma Bend's along the way. I originally wanted to go to Portales to see Dr. R from the ENMU Theatre Department. Dad didn't want me to do that, saying it would take us two hours out of the way and make us late for the wedding. I argued that it was only 20 minutes out of the way. Dad started getting angry. At any rate, I decided to go along with Dad's wishes since it was his wedding day.

Loyd and I saw Grandma Bend in Ft. Sumner. She didn't say anything about the wedding. As it turned out, she was very angry at Dad for leaving Mom and declared that the only way she could deal with it was by considering him dead. Even though Mom figured out how to continue with life after being abandoned, Grandma Bend never did. In fact, Grandma Bend didn't see my father again until 2007 when they were at my wedding. My understanding was that they were civil toward each other, but she didn't talk much to him. They never saw each other again after that.

We didn't have any real problems the rest of the way to Taos, but we realized when we were on a state highway that we had forgotten to fill up with gas in Ft. Sumner and we were running VERY low. Fortunately, we came across a gas station just in time.

We showed up in plenty of time and checked into the motel. We then went over to the time-share. The wedding was held outdoors and was rather informal. Several of the other people on the time-share had gathered. I remember seeing some others just arriving a little bit after the wedding had started. The ceremony was rather brief. At the time, I had a slight case of the sniffles that I was dealing with. After it was over, everyone went over to the kitchen to eat.

Loyd and I talked to several of the other people in the time-share during dinner. One of them asked me why I was getting all emotional during the ceremony. I had to explain that I had a slight cold. That was embarrassing. I wondered how many other people thought I was getting a little choked up when my Dad was getting married. I mean, I wasn't that happy for him, but I had nothing against Gred. They seemed to truly love each other and belonged together. I guess the thing that bothered me was that, in college, I had anticipated that I would get married by the time I was 25 years old and it didn't happen. It seemed like Dad didn't have to try real hard to find someone to marry him.

One thing I should point out was that Gred's son Tad was not at the wedding. At first, he didn't care much for Dad, but Dad had tried to treat him like a son. (He was sort of the ideal son he never had. Tad was a football player in high school and went on to have a very successful career, two things I never accomplished.) Gred said she didn't have a problem with Tad not attending the wedding and never held it against him. However, years later, Tad got married in a destination wedding and Gred was unable to attend, simply because she and Dad could not afford it, which he knew. (Gred got to come to my wedding.)

Loyd and I slept at the motel. I don't remember going out and doing anything that night. I do remember that Taos' art house movie theatre was showing "The Icicle Thief," which we had shown several months earlier at the Mayan Theatre, but we didn't go see a movie.

The next morning, I got on the Greyhound bus from Taos to Denver. The bus was probably about 50% full when I got on. There was this bald-headed woman about my age sitting in the seats behind me. The bus stopped in Pueblo to pick up more passengers. I left my jacket in my seat and went to the bathroom on the bus. When I got back. A woman and her child were sitting in my seat. I told her that I had been sitting there, but she said there were no more seats together. I asked the bald woman if I could sit next to her. She didn't mind. We talked for a little bit, but my internal awkwardness took over and I couldn't think of anything else to converse with her (without asking her about her bald head). We stopped in Colorado Springs. The bus driver came back to the middle of the bus and opened up the hatch in the ceiling. I commented that I thought he was going to make us leave through the hatch. The bald woman said the same though occurred to her as well.

We made it back to Denver. It was still daylight outside, so I didn't have to worry much about waiting for a bus to take me home. Compared to my last few trips on Greyhound, it was pretty uneventful.

Meanwhile, Dad is still married to Gred. That was more than 24 years ago. Three more years, and he'll have been married to her longer than he was to my Mom.

Tad got divorced from his wife a year ago. Theirs lasted about 15 years.

Holidays aren't always fun and games

There are varying degrees to which I look forward to Christmas.



I should add that I'm referring to the family with my parents and my brother in this video. I'm not referring to my wife and child.

A few things to be thankful for

I'm known for not being a willing participant in the Thanksgiving dinner game "What are you thankful for?" I tend to be kind of cynical this time of year and just enjoy the food and time spent with family and friends.

I thought I should buck that trend on this blog. Most of the items that appear below are the result of conscious decisions on my part.

1. I am thankful that I have never been thrown in jail. I've done a lot of stupid things in my life, and some of it can be considered illegal. Even though I was taken into police custody for shoplifting when I was 15 years old, the officer did not have me placed in juvenile detention until my parents showed up.

2. I am thankful that my parents waited until my brother and I were out of the house before they divorced. I mentioned before that my father tried to leave us when I was around 17 years old. It probably wouldn't have had much impact on me since I was about to graduate high school, but it probably would have caused Loyd to create even more problems if he had been left alone with her.

3. I am thankful that I was able to wait until I was 42 years old to get married. One of the common problems I faced with the women I dated until I was 30 years old was that I tended to view them as potential wives. Getting married or having children with any of them would have caused consequences that I would be dealing with to this day. In fact, if I had been married before, the woman I eventually tied the knot with says she wouldn't have wanted to get involved with me.

4. I'm thankful I've never broken any bones in my body (excluding teeth). I've had a few close calls and even one time when I thought I cracked a rib. (That's WAY down the line.) But I've never had to wear as much as a sling around my neck in order to recover from an injury. I'm also glad that the only times I've ever had to be a patient at a hospital were when I was born and when I had to have a kidney biopsy. I actually wouldn't mind hospital stays so much if I wasn't forced to be tethered to an IV.

5. I am thankful to have been gainfully employed most of my life. I've only had one three month period in which I was utterly unemployed. (That's also coming up.) Even though I had lots of free time, it wasn't much fun without money.

6. I am thankful that I pursued my goal of attempting to make a living off my creativity. I did succeed a couple of times. I was a radio DJ when I graduated from college and worked as a reporter/announcer for a newsradio station in San Jose (coming up). Several of the people I went to college with had the same dream, but only a few of them were able to continue following that dream long after college. None of them became famous, even though they all thought they were going to. Even though chasing that dream meant that I would never end up wealthy, I feel like I am richer for giving it a try.

7. I am thankful Dad taught me how to drive a car with a standard transmission.. I enjoy lording this over my brother-in-law, who drives a delivery truck for a living, but doesn't know how to drive a stick. However, I regret that I haven't gotten another chance to learn how to drive a column shift. (I've only had to do that once and I was not able to get it out of first gear.)

8. I'm thankful to the dysfunction that surrounded me while I was growing up. This allowed me to deal with my personal stuff on my own terms. Most other people who have endured lives similar to mine likely had to have therapy for the rest of their lives.

9. I'm thankful for all the joy, sadness, fear and anger that I've experienced my entire life and my ability to hold on to it for so long. They actually make for the best blog I could possibly come up with. (However, I never really endured much disgust. Maybe that emotion just didn't want to take the wheel.)

10. And finally, I'm thankful that I have a wife and child whom I love very much and realize how empty my world would be without them. I don't need to add anything to this.

And this will cover me for the next ten years. (Although, I will probably do another article just like this a year from now.)

Dad Gets Hitched (Part 2)

A couple of days after I had arrived in Artesia so I could go to my father's wedding in Taos, NM, I made a trip to Alamogordo to see my old college friend Kird. We hadn't seen each other since before I graduated from college. In that time, he had joined the Air Force, gotten married and had a child who was now three years old.

But something happened before I got to see him. He and his wife had split up, and she was planning to move to Virginia with their daughter. However, she hadn't left town yet. I didn't know whether or not I was going to meet them. Kird told me to come see him at his parents' house.

Kird looked pretty much the same as when I last saw him, except that he had gained a little weight. We started talking and he told me about how he had entered an Air Force talent contest and won. He showed me a videotape of the performance. He did a monologue by Christopher Durang. He was up against an actor who performed Salieri's "mediocrity" speech from "Amadeus" (wearing full make-up). Kird told me he was advised to perform that monologue because if he didn't win, he could blame it on the material. Because he won, he got to take a 'round-the-world tour of Air Force bases for an entire year. He also said he was approached by several casting agents. The only problem was that he was pretty much stuck doing the Air Force thing for a few more years.

One of the surprising things Kird told me was that he remembered very little of his college experience, especially with regards to the Theatre Department. He said he could recall being in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" because he was in it with an actor he was roommates with. I told him he played a fairy and asked if he remembered those big clunky masks that everyone complained about. He said he didn't. I asked him if he remembered being in "The King & I," in which he delivered the first spoken lines in the production. He said he didn't. I told him I felt like I was carrying his memories around for him. He laughed about that.

(The strange thing was that he seemed to have no problem remembering every woman he slept with. I guess that mattered more to him than being an actor. However, I'm aware of just how selective memory can be. My Mom doesn't remember the week Kird spent a week with us in the summer of 1984, but she still remembers that time I came home from college with stinky feet.)

I told him about my parents splitting up, how my Dad was getting remarried in a few days and that I was going to go to the wedding in Taos. He told me I was doing a terrible thing by going to the wedding. "If my dad did that to my mom, I'd tell dad, 'Dad, I can't go to the wedding. I need to stay here with Mom and help her get through this.'" This actually took me by surprise. I hadn't even thought about how this was impacting Mom, the same as how I didn't take her feelings into consideration during Christmas. This emotionally stunned me to the point that I didn't even bother to point out that Dad had paid for me to come down, paid for the hotel room in Taos, etc., so I was pretty much obligated to go to the wedding. Maybe he would have toned down the harshness once I told him, but I don't know.

That still didn't affect us having a good time. We went over the house of a friend of his whom he did musical collaborations with. We were goofing around with his four-track recorder and I laid down a keyboard track on one of their songs. They were rather impressed with what I was able to improvise on the spot. (Later in life, I would meet musicians who really knew what they were doing, but they were not in any way impressed by me.)

Then we went over to see his wife and daughter. They were staying in a mobile home. (It may have been the one they had been living at.) His daughter was sleeping, but he was able to talk his wife into bringing her out. His daughter wasn't wearing any clothes. Kird held her and rubbed his forehead against hers. He was obviously hurting from not getting to see her so much. I realized that when he was criticizing me, he wasn't really talking about me, he was talking about how much he would hurt if his wife married someone else and his daughter decided to attend that wedding.

I don't exactly recall this (talking about memory problems), but I must have spent the night in Alamogordo. And I probably slept on his parents' couch. I know it was the next day that we went looking at a house he wanted to rent. As I had mentioned before, he really liked the house, but was nervous about having to commit to a one-year lease. As it turned out, the woman decided to rent it out to someone else.

And then I came back home. Kird and I would continue to see each other when I drove through town on my way to Artesia from San Diego. Every time, his situation changed. He kept reconciling and separating from his wife until he eventually gave up and married someone else.

When I had previously written about Kird, I mentioned how I was planning to try to get in contact with him. In July, I found his e-mail address. He started working for another law firm in Hobbs as a defense attorney. I told him about the blog and sent a link to the first part of the profile that focused on him. I also included a photo of my son. He sent back a response that said, "I have finally figured out who your music sounds like: The Sparks." That was all he wrote in the message. I sent a reply, mentioning how I missed cult bands from the 70s and 80s who would put out a new album every year. But he never wrote back. The best I can figure out, he looked at the blog post about him, but didn't look at Part 2. That he didn't want to communicate further with me was very disappointing. I had planned to go to Artesia with my family the next month and I was sort of hoping he would want to come out to Artesia to visit.

But anyway, in Monday's post, my Dad gets married. I will be posting articles on Thursday and Friday. One will be special. The other won't.

Dad Gets Hitched (Part 1)

My father had been divorced from my mother for less than a year before he decided to get married again. This took me by surprise because he had been very critical of his marriage to Mom. I didn't expect him to want to go through all that again so quickly, especially since he had somewhat rushed into marriage with Mom. (He was 20 and she was 19. There was no romantic proposal. They simply discussed it and decided marriage was a good idea. As bad as Dad said it was, he stuck with it for 27 years.)

He told me that he and Gred were going to get married in Taos, NM on Friday, May 10th, 1991. He wanted me and Loyd to be there. He said he would pay our way.

I planned to take a week off of work, so I could spend time with both Mom and Dad in Artesia. I also had recently gotten in contact with my old college friend Kird and made plans to drive to Alamogordo to see him. (I was going to borrow one of my Mom's cars.)

I was still dealing with the car from hell, so I was going to have to take Greyhound again to get to Roswell. Seriously, there was no other time other than 3:30pm to leave Denver and arrive in Roswell less than 15 hours later. All the other routes took at least 24 hours.

It was less hectic at the bus station this time. They only had one bus running the route, but it was almost fully packed. I remember this one guy about my age who looked like "Weird Al" Yankovic. He wore purple clothes and had an obvious Texas accent. There was another man around 40 years old who had dark hair and a mustache. This odd pair became bus buddies. They sat across the aisle from me. From time to time, the seat next to me would be vacant. This one Hispanic man sat next to me. He was carrying on a conversation with the other two. At one point, the 40-year-old man showed the Hispanic man a prescription bottle and talked about how much the pills cost.

There were no incidents that caused a delay in the bus' traveling time during the first leg of the route. We stopped at McDonald's like we had last time. Everybody reboarded the bus. For some reason, "Weird Al" and the 40-year-old guy sat separately. We were waiting for what seemed a longer than expected time. A police car pulled up next to the bus. Two officers came on board and went up to "Weird Al" One of them told him to get off the bus. "Why?" "The bus driver doesn't want you on here." "Weird Al" grabbed his stuff and walked out. Then the officer turned to the 40-year-old guy. "You, too!" He calmly replied, "I didn't do anything." The Hispanic guy said, "Yes, you did! You had drugs! You showed me!" The 40-year-old guy stood up and walked outside.

At this point, I was afraid that the Hispanic guy was going to start pointing his finger at me. I had long hair and looked like someone who would have been doing drugs. But the Hispanic guy left the bus and the officers followed. WHEW!

The bus stayed in place while "Weird Al" and the 40-year-old man talked to the police. After a few minutes, the two were able to come back on board. One of the officers apologized to the two and left the bus. As we were leaving, I could see the Hispanic guy with the officers. They looked like they were going to beat him up. "Weird Al" and the 40-year-old man shook hands.

Now, if I had been asked to leave the bus, I'm pretty certain I would have been freaking out. I probably would have told the cops that I saw the drugs the 40-year-old man had in hopes of getting out of that mess. I don't know about "Weird Al," but I'm pretty certain the 40-year-old man had experienced run-ins with the law before. After he got off the bus, the probably told "Weird Al" to keep his mouth shut and let him do all the talking. If I was there, he probably would have told me the same thing, too. I probably would have complied, unless things looked like they were going to get hairy with the cops. I'm glad I didn't have to go through that.

Despite that delay, we made it to Amarillo in plenty of time to catch the connection to Roswell. Again, Dad and Loyd picked me up and drove me over to Mom's house to sleep. After I woke up, I just tooled around Artesia for the day. Nothing of note happened, except that Mom was not very happy about Dad getting married and I was a bad son, because I didn't do anything to acknowledge her concerns. Even worse was that I was reminded of that before going to the wedding and I still said nothing.

As for tomorrow's post, I'll detail my reunion with Kird.

The Fayd and Rid Show

I had appeared in an episode of the Community Access program "Denver Diner" in 1990. Ruad, the producer/writer/director told me she might ask me to appear in a future episode. That happened in 1991.

She said she had a role as a police officer for me in her latest production. She said that the part didn't have any lines, but I would appear throughout. She had planned to do the taping on a specific day, which would have been a day that I didn't need to work at the Mayan Theatre. I agreed to do it and was looking forward to being part of another one of her productions.

A few days later, she told me that an actor she cast for one of the small speaking roles had dropped out and asked me to do the role instead. I accepted and went to pick up the script. I was to play the co-worker of the main character at the Post Office. After reading the script, I called Ruad and left a message on her machine. I told her that my friend Rid might be interested in playing the police officer role. She had met Rid at the Mayan Theatre when we held a midnight screening of the film "Cyrano de Bergerac." I gave her his phone number. She called back and left a message on my machine saying that she did remember meeting him and thought he would make a good police officer and had left a message for him.

That day, Rid called and asked about a message that had been left on his machine. He played it for me. It was Ruad's message. "How did she get the idea to cast me in her show? I'm a techie, not a performer." Whatever his reservations, he still wanted to do it so he could play a cop.

I played one of four postal workers who sat around all day playing poker. The concept was that for whatever reason, we would bully the lead character with our indifference. I was in several scenes that were shot in two different locations. One was at the Post Office, the other was in a break room. There were only two scenes in the break room, one of which involved the major players. It was the only time I got to meet the other female lead. We shot those scenes first.

The main thing that was different from the last time was that we didn't get to rehearse beforehand. Ruad had so many scenes to tape on separate dates that there was no time to get us together to run lines. Because I couldn't determine the chemistry of the group I was in, I wasn't able to figure out my character in time for the first scene we shot. As a result, my character speaks a little differently in one scene, although I only had one line.

The other scenes were all shot in one day, like the episode I had done a year earlier. There were a few delays here and there. When we were about to shoot the last scene, I was already an hour late for work. I asked Ruad if, since I didn't have any lines in that final scene, I could go ahead and leave. She said I could, but I felt like I had let her down.

Even though Rid was cast in the same program, we did not share any screen time together. There was a problem shortly before the day he was scheduled to appear. A bunch of guys ganged up and assaulted him. He walked onto the set with a very visible black eye. I can only imagine what Ruad thought when she saw that. But she was used to things going wrong at the last minute and just dealt with it. There was no attempt made to cover up the eye. I always wondered if anyone who watched the program had questions about why this one police officer had a black eye and if they were disappointed that they never found out if it was the lead character who gave it to him.

Even though Ruad told me it was a non-speaking part, there were a couple of scenes in which Rid had been permitted to ad-lib a few lines with the other police officer.

But the black eye was the least of Ruad's troubles. After she had shot the program, someone broke into her car and stole all the videotape. Several weeks later, they found the tapes in a dumpster somewhere. She was able to recover everything she shot, but some of the tapes had been damaged. The scenes were usable, but there was a noticeable loss of video and audio quality. She chose to use what was there instead of re-shooting.

The restoration of the damaged tapes took a lot longer than Ruad anticipated. As a result, she couldn't get the episode on Community Access through her usual avenues. In order for it to air, she had to cut it up into three parts and designate it as a "Denver Diner Holiday Special." While she went along with it, it could have been considered lacking in taste as one of the lead characters commits suicide at the beginning of the program. In addition, there was no reference whatsoever to the holidays. There wasn't even snow on the ground in the outdoor scenes.

When I got to see it, it was clearly her most ambitious project. But I don't know if she tried to do any more episodes after that.

After I had moved to San Diego, we kept in contact. She got married and had sent me a wedding invitation. I was not able to go or contribute to their honeymoon. (I've always felt bad about that.) Unfortunately, I found out from Bez' father that she wound up divorcing him a few years later. After that, she moved to Albuquerque. I got her phone number from directory assistance and left a couple of messages, but she never called back.

Since then, she has moved back to Colorado and lives in La Junta. She has become the Chairman of the Arts Department at Otero Junior College. She has had some of her plays produced there.

I'm glad to see that she's found an outlet for her creativity and she's been getting paid for it. I know all that Community Access stuff came out of her pocket.

Another one of life's quiet moments

This is something I was observing while I was pumping gas earlier this week.



I should note that these birds were actually flying north.

An unexpected announcement

In May of 1991, I was sitting at home reading the paper. Suddenly, the phone rang. I picked it up. It was a collect call from Chez. I hadn't heard from her since she told me she wasn't ever going to contact me again just a few months earlier.

I asked her why she decided to call me again. She told me she had something to tell me. She was pregnant. WHAT? (A little note for those who do not wish to click back through her entire history on this blog: Chez was raped by her half-brother when she was 14 years old. She was severely injured in the assault and told by a doctor that she'd never be able to have children. This was the first thought that entered my head when she told me she was pregnant.)

After the shocked silence that followed the announcement, I asked her what happened. She told me she was at a party. She had been drinking and smoking marijuana. Then, she wound up having sex with this guy she knew named Road. She didn't know why she decided to tell me, but she thought I'd like to know.

She told me that she didn't love Road and didn't want to be with him, but she did want to keep the baby if she was indeed able to deliver. However, she said she also didn't want to be with me and had no plans to leave Roswell. On the other hand, she still had feelings for me, but she didn't know what to do about that. she said she would continue to stay in contact with me and we would remain friends, but it seem didn't like there would ever be any kind of a future for us once the baby arrived.

So now, I really didn't know why she called me. I made no offer to help her out and she didn't ask. There were so many emotions I was dealing with during and after our conversation. I felt like she had lied to me last year when she swore she hadn't been having sex. I also thought she was too smart to fall prey to someone who would take advantage of her in an inebriated state. And although I had no control over it, it seemed like she didn't even consider my feelings when she allowed this to happen. Let's face it, I was thinking of myself more than I was about the tremendous burden she was about to take on. All I appeared to care about was how it was making me feel. I have to admit that was very wrong of me.

I get the idea that if Chez hadn't been told that she couldn't have children, she would have gotten an abortion. As it was, she probably figured that she was going to miscarry at some point and she wouldn't have to worry about it.

I"m not going to keep you in suspense. She did have the baby, but the story behind that is remarkably complex and will be the subject of a future post, one that will be considerably much longer than this one.

The End of My Season of Madness

You've probably noticed a common thread among most of my posts in the last two weeks. I basically did a lot of terrible things. It started in December of 1990 and went through February of 1991. It lasted all winter long. (Official winter, not Denver winter.) I refer to this period as My Season of Madness. It seemed like I allowed myself to engage in activities that I could have gotten thrown in jail for. The title of this blog indicates that I think of myself as a loser. A real loser would have gotten arrested for this nonsense, but I was just plain lucky that I didn't experience any long-term consequences. (That's actually not true. One of the incidents somewhat affected me for more than 10 years, but that will be the subject of a post WAY in the future.)

What follows is the finale for this era. This was by no means the end of serious trouble I could have gotten into, but it capped off this bizarre three-month period in my life.

One night, Rid called me to come pick him up from somewhere around Arvada and he told me to bring the Oldsmobile with me. There were four other people with him, three girls and one guy. I had only met one of the girls previously. Rid told me I needed to drive over to Sheld's house. There was someone else there who needed to be picked up. Rid told me to stay in the car while he went to the house. This tall guy I had met previously came out of the house and started to get into the car. Suddenly, Sheld came running out of the house. She was screaming that her father had just hit her. The tall guy clinched his fists and started to go back into the house. However, Sheld and Rid were able to stop him and got him to go back into the car.

We quickly took off. There were eight of us jam-packed in the car. I'd never had this many people in the car all at once. On top of that, everybody was yelling and screaming about what we were going to do next. As Sheld was now a runaway, the other guy in the car (not the tall one) kept saying stuff about her situation and followed it up with, "That's the law!" (From this point on, I will refer to him as Law Guy.) Law Guy said that he could keep some of the people at his house and we would take them there. Then Sheld asked if she and one of the other girls (named Meld) could spend the night at my house. Since I had been down that path before, I said yes, even though it meant I was harboring a teenage runaway. (I had met her father, but he had no idea what my full name was, my phone number or where I lived. It was a calculated risk.)

First, we had to drop Rid off somewhere so he could be picked up by his mom. It was in the parking lot of a shopping center. There was a dentist's office there. His mom was already there waiting for him. I can only wonder what she thought was going on with six other people in my car. As he was getting in her car, there was a sheriff's patrol car circling the lot.

We left the shopping center. The patrol car started following us. Everyone started freaking out again. Law Guy shouted, "If he pulls us over, he can't ask for the identity of anyone else in the car. That's the law!"

I dropped Law Guy, Tall Guy, the girl I knew and the girl I didn't know off at Law Guy's house. I was ready to drive Sheld and Meld over to my apartment. Sheld asked me to stop over at Rock Island and pick up this guy she knew. We went into the club. It was all ages night. Sheld found Knew Guy and we went back out to the car. Now, we could all go back to my apartment. I only had the mattress, which could hold two people and the futon, which only had room for one. Knew Guy said he didn't think he could sleep there. The girls invited him to share the mattress with him, but he declined. He decided to go find another friend's to crash at and he left the apartment. Sheld said, "You can't let him walk out in the snow alone! Go get him back in here!" I ran outside, but he vanished. I couldn't see him anywhere.

I went back inside. Sheld said, "Hey! Let's order pizza!" I said, "Okay, we can do that." "Then we can attack the delivery guy and get the pizza for free!" "No, I'll just pay for it." I ordered the pizza and pre-paid with my credit card so that the girls wouldn't go rogue on me. While we were waiting, Sheld called over to Law Guy's house to see how everyone was doing. I wasn't aware of this, but the girl I knew had been reported as a runaway and the cops had come over to the house. They took her back to her parents, but didn't arrest anybody else at the house. I got a little nervous about the prospect of the police showing up at my apartment, but was still confident that no one knew where I was.

After eating and hanging out for a bit, we went to bed. The next morning, Meld told me she just started her period and she didn't have any money to get tampons. Sheld was still sleeping, so we walked over to a Diamond Shamrock that was just a few blocks away from my house. We got to talk on the way over. We didn't really talk much to each other the night before, so this was our first chance to actually get to know each other. She told me SHE HAD RUN AWAY FROM HOME! That meant I was harboring TWO RUNAWAYS! I was glad when Sheld woke up and I could take them to catch a bus somewhere. Fortunately, they didn't ask to spend another night. They may have imposed a little, but they likely knew not to overstay their welcome.

I am glad to say I never harbored another teenage runaway again. My Season of Madness was over!

My Attempts to Do Improv

I lived a few blocks away from a restaurant/bar called Govnr's Park in Denver. On Friday and Saturday nights when I lived there (from 1988 - 1991), they had an improv show called ComedySportz. It was done as a fake competition between two teams of actors.

From time to time, they would have auditions. I tried out once in 1989. They recommended that I come see one of the performances before the audition. I went and I liked what I saw. I wanted to be a part of it.

The nice thing about it was that I didn't have to really do anything special to try out. I didn't have to try to do a cold reading, monologue, dance or sing. I just had to come up with stuff off the top of my head.

The directors, a man and a woman, said they were looking to add a few members to their troupe, but didn't specify how many. But they indicated that if they liked a lot of people, they would hire them all. (I'm pretty certain it was easier for them to only like a couple of them more than anyone else.)

We were each essentially put into different improv situations akin to the games the played during the performances. I didn't really see anybody who wasn't capable of the tasks the directors had presented. (But then again, I didn't really have an eye for that.) This meant that the competition was going to be rather steep.

The directors said they would notify us within 24 hours if they wanted us as part of the show. On the way out, I was talking to one of the other actors. We were both fairly optimistic about our chances. I went home. By the time the 24 hours came and went, I had not received a phone call.

An odd thing about the audition is that there was this one actor there. He was tall, had dark hair and glasses. I ran into this guy all over Denver during the course of the next two years, including a book signing at the Tattered Cover Bookstore. He even came into the Mayan Theatre a couple of times. I always took that as a sign that we should have become friends, but we never really had much to say beyond, "Hi, how are you doing?"

I auditioned again in 1990. It was a Sunday afternoon. I struck up a conversation with one of the other actors. He said he had auditioned a couple of times before, but he never got selected. He said it was mainly because they already had a few chubby guys in the cast. If he didn't get selected, he was going to start losing weight.

This time, it was a lot less hectic. There were probably 20 people there. The audition was pretty much the same, but what was different this time was after the main audition, they had us all go outside while they determined who they would call back. And the call back would start right after that. One of the other actresses said she didn't think she was going to make the cut because there was already a short perky girl in the cast.

The directors came out and started calling out names. I was the second name they called. I was not expecting that. I leaped out of my chair when I heard my name. In all my previous attempts at acting outside of college, I'd never gotten a call back before. And I was the only one to jump up like that. It was kind of embarrassing. I figured I got called back because I simply didn't look like anyone else. I had very long hair at the time and it made me stand out.

The audition got a little more intense during the callback. I felt like I was holding up pretty well, but I could definitely see the qualities in the other actors that the directors were probably looking for. Still, I had an original look, so I thought I stood a good chance. Again, they told us they would call in 24 hours.

The next day, close to the end of the 24-hour mark, my phone rang. But it was Mand. She asked me to give her a ride somewhere. I told her I couldn't and that I needed to get off the phone. A few minutes later, the phone rang again. I picked it up. It was Mand again. She said she would give me gas money. I told her I couldn't and got off the phone. A few minutes later, it rang again. "Please, Fayd?" "I can't!" The phone never rang again, but I figured that if I'd really made the cut, they would have called much earlier. In fact, they even alluded to it the day before.

I ran into the directors individually at the Mayan Theatre in the next few months. The woman came with a female friend to see "Cyrano de Bergerac." The man came to one of our Animation Festivals toward the end of the year. He appeared to be out on a date with this really hot woman. The strange thing was that I thought that he was married to the other director as they shared the last name.

A couple of months later, I went out on a date with a woman in a wheelchair. (It was through a personal ad that she placed. I'm not going to go into a lot of detail about that other than to say that I was fully aware of her disability ahead of time.) She was friends with someone in the show and she told me that there was all kinds of weird sexual things going on among the cast members. She said it all came about because everybody was constantly touching each other during rehearsals and the performances. She said the directors were married, but apparently had an open relationship. This intrigued me. I wanted to see what kind of shenanigans were taking place and how things led up to the sexual stuff. (Keep in mind I did not wish to participate. I just wanted to see how far things would go.)

So I got to audition again in 1991. That chubby guy was there again, as was another woman who had made the callback the last time. The chubby guy had actually lost weight, about 30 pounds. During the beginning of the audition, when we got up onstage and introduced ourselves, he pointed out that he had lost weight. He still looked chubby.

Again, I made the callback. I didn't react so strongly this time. I was actually expecting it. However, I did not get chosen again. It was disappointing, but I had really gotten used to rejection at that point. It's more or less been the story of my life.

More Bad Stuff Happens

A few days after I had gotten back in Denver since abandoning my car in Pueblo, I called the auto shop where it had been towed. I asked them if they had come up with an estimate for how much the repairs were going to cost. The person on the other end asked, "Oh, did you want us to fix it?" He said it would be a couple of days before they could give me an estimate. So, I called them up a couple of days later. They told me what was wrong with it and that I was going to need to replace the battery. They said I could bring a new battery and they wouldn't add that onto the final bill. They also told me when they expected to have the repairs completed.

I was able to get Rid and his mother to give me a ride to Pueblo to get the car. There was some reason that Rid didn't have access to a car at this time, so he had to talk his mother into helping me out. She actually took a day off work to do this.

The night before we were going to go, I got a call from Sheld. She was hanging out with her friend Mand. She said they were bored and they wanted to come over to my house to hang out. I didn't have anything better going on, so I drove (in my other car, which I could still drive on the streets) over to Arvada to pick them up and brought them over.

We ordered pizza, played music and goofed around on my keyboard. I asked them what time I needed to get them back home because I had to wake up early the next day. Sheld said they had planned to spend the night. At my apartment. WHAT? I told them we would need to call their parents and make sure it was alright. Surprisingly, they both agreed to let them stay instead of me driving them home on the icy streets. Then I told them they would need to leave early in the morning before Rid and his mother came by to pick me up. They said that wouldn't be a problem and that they would just take public transit home.

They slept on my mattress and I slept on my futon. I got up early the next morning and tried to get them to wake up, but they just kept sleeping. It didn't matter how much noise I made, they were not going to wake up. I thought, "Well, if Rid's mom doesn't come in here, it won't be a problem." I sat and waited for them to show up.

My doorbell rang. I buzzed the front door and went into the hallway. Rid and his mother came up the stairs. She said, "I need to use your bathroom." "Uh, no... You can't. The apartment's a mess." "I don't care." They came into my apartment. His mother surveyed the room and then saw the two girls on my mattress. Rid slapped his forehead. His mother held her breath and ran into my bathroom.

Rid laughed and said, "Okay, I'm outta here. You can deal with this on your own!" He started to leave, but he really had nowhere else to go.

His mom rushed out of the bathroom. We went out to her car and went on our way. While she was driving, she said, "Okay, I've only got one thing to say to you: Two of them?" "We didn't do anything! They just spent the night!" "Don't you know you could go to jail for that? Okay, that's two things!" "They had their parents' permission!" "What were you thinking? Okay, that's three things!"

The bad thing about this was that Rid's mom thought very well of me. She liked that her borderline at-risk son was friends with someone who had graduated from college, had a job and lived on his own. She thought I would be a good influence on him. However, she probably lost some respect for me that day, thinking that Rid was actually being a bad influence on me. In some respect, that was true, but I knew I could count on myself to not let things go too far.

After about ten minutes, we stopped talking about it and concentrated on getting to Pueblo. The first thing we had to do was go to the auto shop and get the old battery. We then had to take it over to K-mart so I could buy a new battery for the car and exchange the core. Dad had told me that in Artesia, if you bought a battery at K-mart and had a problem with it, you could return it and they'd give you another one without any hassle.

We took the new battery to the auto shop. The car started with no problem. I took off and Rid and his mom followed. Everything was going fine until after I passed Colorado Springs. All of a sudden, SOMETHING EXPLODED UNDERNEATH THE HOOD! Smoke and residue was coming out from where the battery was mounted. I knew something was wrong, but the car was still moving and I didn't want to take the risk that it wasn't going to start again. I just drove all the way home as fast as I could and prayed that my car wouldn't stall.

I made it home and was able to park in front of my apartment building. The first thing I tried to do after I turned off the engine was try to start it. Sure enough, the starter went "click, click, click." I opened the hood and saw what had happened. The caps were blown off the battery and acid splashed all over the inside of the engine. A few minutes later, Rid and his mom drove up and we surveyed the damage.

Before they left, Rid told me that his mom was still upset about the girls in my apartment. He said that was all she talked about on the way up. He kind of gave me a lecture, which I thought was strange coming from him. I imagine that his mother had told him to say something to me so I wouldn't do that again. It didn't work, but I'll get to that in another post.

I went inside the apartment. I found that Sheld and Mand had done a little cleaning while I was gone. One of the things they did was take all my coins that were on top of a speaker and put them in a vase I had. I remember they left a note, but I didn't keep it nor recall what it said.

In my limited knowledge about cars, I was aware that a brand-new battery is practically hard to kill. I got some water and poured it into the reservoir. I didn't have the caps, so I knew I had to be very careful. I was able to start the engine. This was good, because it meant I didn't have to have it towed. I carefully drove the car across Speer Road, where there was an auto shop just down the street. Again, Dad had told me to put it on my credit card and he would pay me back. The auto shop appeared to be staffed with people fresh out of mechanic school. They determined that the problem was with the part that charged the battery. When the battery is fully charged, it's supposed to stop sending juice. However, the switch was busted and it kept charging the battery and that's why it exploded.

They replaced the caps and I took it over to the K-mart in Denver. I brought the battery and the receipt to the auto department and proceeded to tell the guy what happened. He just got this blank stare on his face and appeared to know that I was going to ask for a replacement. He just kept staring at me after I finished. I told him flat out that I wanted to replace it per their warranty. He said it was against their policy to replace it, but he would charge the battery for free. (It's no wonder Walmart swooped in and grabbed up most of their market share.) I waited for the battery to charge and left the store.

As it turns out, the battery was the least of the problems I had with the car. I found out later that there was another car that my Dad wanted to get me, but Mom didn't like it. I eventually got that other car and it ran well. It would have been nice to have gotten that one instead.

The Worst 24 Hours of My Life

On December 27th, 1990, I left Artesia early in the morning to head back to Denver in the used car that my parents had bought me for Christmas. It was a 1978 Ford Pinto and it was the WORST CAR I EVER HAD! This started becoming apparent as I drove toward Roswell to meet Chez. I noticed that the heater wasn't blowing out warm air. I was surprised. Dad was usually pretty good about vetting these things. I didn't know if I could handle driving around Denver in the winter without a heater. I mean, how was I going to defrost the windows?

Before I left my Mom's house, I packed a Ziploc bag with leftover turkey and took a 2-liter bottle of Coke with me. I was ready to go.

Fortunately, the sun was shining most of the day while I was driving through New Mexico. After seeing Chez, I made it up to my Grandma Ogolon's house in Portales, where my Dad and his side of the family had gathered for a holiday celebration after spending Christmas in their homes. Most of my cousins were there. Dad seemed a little irritated that I had shown up several hours after I'd said I had left. It was at this time that he gave me the phone number of the police detective connected to my accident.

I spent a little time there, then I went to Ft. Sumner to see my Grandma Bend. This was the point at which she shed tears over having seen my brother and me going back and forth between Mom and Dad's houses. After about an hour, I hit the road. I was supposed to be at work at the Mayan Theatre the next day. It was 6:15pm and I had a seven-hour drive ahead of me. I was going to make it.

This is the point that started THE WORST 24 HOURS OF MY LIFE: Just before 8pm, I got onto I-40 and drove past the town of Santa Rosa. It had started to snow. Just a few miles out, my HEADLIGHTS SUDDENLY WENT OUT! I immediately pulled over. I knew there was no way I'd be able to drive through Raton Pass without headlights, so I thought I'd just sleep in my car next to the highway until the sun came up. I would still be able to make it to work on time. I put on an extra layer of clothes and got the back seat ready to sleep in.

Suddenly, a thought occurred to me: What if my car didn't start? I'd better check that out! I got into the front seat, put the key in the ignition, turned it and "click click click." The car wasn't going to start. I didn't know what I was going to do. I remembered that there was a Stuckey's about three miles back. I had no choice but to walk over there and call AAA.

I felt so helpless and alone as I was walking to Stuckey's. It was snowing and cars were driving past me. No one could see me or come to my aid. I cried most of the way over there.

It took me an hour before I reached the ramp that led to Stuckey's. When I was about 100 yards away, THEY TURNED OFF THE LIGHTS! WHAT? I thought Stuckey's was open 24 hours! I went to the side of the building and found a payphone. I just needed to pull up the phone book and find the number for AAA. When I pulled up the binder that contained the phone book, I found it was empty. I was going to have to make a plea to the people working inside to borrow their phone book.

I knocked on the front door. Someone came up. I told them my car had broken down and I needed to borrow their phone book to call AAA. The person let me inside and said I could use the payphone in there. Fortunately, the phone book was there and not missing the page for AAA. I called the number and asked the person to come by Stuckey's to pick me up on the way to the car.

The staff that was closing up allowed me stay inside while I waited for the tow truck. While I was there, several cars kept driving up and trying to get gas at the pumps. I wasn't the only one who thought they were always open. The tow truck arrived within 15 minutes. It was a man about my age and a woman in the truck. I told them the car was located about 3 miles away. We drove to the car. I pulled my travel bag and put the turkey and Coke inside. The driver was able to get the car hooked up to the tow truck. We drove back to Santa Rosa. He stopped outside a motel and told me I needed to spend the night there. The auto shop was right next door and their crew would be able to work on it the next morning.

I checked into the motel. It only cost $15 for the night. I didn't think that was so bad. The only problem was that they didn't have telephones in the rooms. I had to go to the office to use their phone to call work. I told Mr. M that I wasn't going to make it the next day because of car trouble. I then called Mom and Dad and let them know I was stuck but would get the car fixed. Dad told me to pay for it with my credit card and he would reimburse me.

I went back to my room, ate the turkey and drank the soda. I remember watching "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" on TV before falling asleep. I did not know what the next day would have in store for me.

I woke up and went over to the auto shop around 7:30am. The mechanics were there, but they were already working on two other cars. Apparently, there were a couple of other people who had to get towed in the night before. I was going to have to wait. About three hours later, they got to my car. They had to replace one part in my electrical system. They also had to replace the battery, the headlights and the taillights. Since they didn't have the parts there, someone had to run to the store to get them. I had wait even more. They finally finished up with the car around 2pm. I had to pay around $200. Fortunately, they took my credit card.

I didn't have any problems as I drove out of New Mexico through the Raton Pass. I got a few miles past Pueblo. It was around 5pm. All of a sudden, the engine stopped running. I pulled over near an exit. I tried starting the car. Again, it went, "click click click." On the other side of the underpass, there was a horse ranch. I went over there to see if they would let me use the phone. While I was walking down the dirt road toward the ranch, a pickup drove past me headed in the opposite direction. They didn't seem to pay any attention to me. I got to the house and knocked on the door. No one answered. I figured that whoever was there had left in that pickup earlier. I walked back to the highway. It was starting to get dark. I knew it would be getting cold soon. I went back to the car and put on another layer of clothing.

I was in the middle of nowhere. I looked to the north and to the south. I couldn't figure out which way was the best way to go, but I didn't cry this time. I thought it would be best just to walk back to Pueblo. After I had been walking for about 20 minutes, a patrol car pulled up beside me. The officer asked if that was my car on the northbound side. I told him it was. He told me he would drive me back to the car and call a tow truck for me. I was a little afraid because I didn't have any auto insurance. I thought he was going to ask for my proof of insurance and wind up issuing me a ticket. But he never asked.

We waited for about a half-hour before the tow truck arrived. I asked the driver how far away his auto shop was from the Greyhound station. He said it wasn't too far, but he could just drop me off over there. I told him it would be at least a week before I'd be able to come back down and pick up the car, but I wanted his shop to look at it and give me an estimate.

I went into the Greyhound station and approached the ticket counter. I asked what time the next bus to Denver was going to be. The woman said it was coming in the next ten minutes. This was the best news I had heard in the last 24 hours. I paid $15 for the ticket and waited. It actually took the bus about 30 minutes to arrive, but nothing surprised me at this point. While we were waiting, I remember this bum was going around asking for money. I remember this one woman a little younger than me who appeared particularly disturbed that this man had approached her. A few minutes later, security came up and escorted him out of the station.

There were no events of note on the ride up to Denver. After we arrived at the 16th Street Mall, I walked over to the intersection of Broadway and Colfax and waited for the next bus to arrive. The Number 0 came by, but didn't stop. Everybody at the corner started yelling, screaming and waving. Then we all just kind of sat there and grumbled about it for a few minutes until the next bus arrived.

Finally, a bus did come that would take me near my apartment. I boarded, got off at 6th Avenue and walked the rest of the way home. I was relieved to have made it back in one piece and able to work the next day. It felt so good to bring this day to a close.

I'm certain there are people out there who would read this say, "I've had much worse days than this. This is nothing compared to what I've gone through." Well, those people would be right. I guess I have had a rather sheltered life if this is the worst thing that has ever happened to me. But the worst part was having to deal with it all by myself. That could make just about any minor incident hard to bear.

Girlfriend #4: Chez

You would think that with all the drama and the buildup surrounding Chez being in love with me (here, here, here, here, here, here and here), that she would have been excited to finally have us get to be boyfriend/girlfriend. I was certainly anticipating that. But I apparently hadn't learned my lesson that things don't always go the way I expect with Chez.

After I wasn't able to stop down in Roswell on the way from Denver to Artesia before Christmas, I would be able to see her on my way back up because I would be driving a different vehicle. We were able to arrange to meet at Job Corps. She wouldn't be in class that day. She had to give pretty specific directions on how to get to the Job Corps campus. (It was very easy to get lost around the old Air Force base there.)

I followed the directions and was able to find the administrative office. I went in and told them I was there to visit Chez. They said they would call for her to come to the office. I just had to wait for her. I saw her outside walking toward the building. I hadn't seen her in almost 2 1/2 years. She still looked pretty much the same. I went outside and peeked from behind a barricade. She looked really happy to see me. I went up, hugged her and gave her a quick peck on the lips. That was the first time I got to kiss her.

She had to go into the office to get permission to leave the premises, which wasn't really a problem. We went out to my car in the parking lot and held hands as we walked. We got in the car and started passionately kissing each other for a few seconds. Then, Chez said she didn't want the people in the office to see us, so we had to stop. Chez said she was hungry and wanted to go to McDonald's for breakfast.

After we ate, we went over to a video arcade that she liked to frequent. We played a few video games. She had a rapport with the arcade owner, who spoke through one of those throat voice boxes. She talked to him for a little bit.

But the whole time, she didn't seem to enjoy being with me. I guess it was because I was only going to be there for a few hours before I had to go back to Denver. She probably felt she had no choice but to emotionally detach herself from me. Anytime we kissed, it felt like she was just letting it happen instead of trying to return the affection.

Then, we went to a park and walked around. This was the point at which we discussed our future. Chez said she wanted to complete Job Corps and get her high school diploma. After that, she didn't know what she wanted to do. She wasn't sure if she wanted to come up to Denver to be with me. She was afraid I was going to hurt her again. I told her I wasn't, but she didn't believe me. I couldn't blame her for thinking that. Another issue was that she was starting to feel like Roswell was her home and she didn't think she could live anywhere else, especially in a large city where she would feel out of place.

I took her back to Job Corps. We hugged, kissed and said goodbye. Neither one of us knew when we would see each other again.

We continued to keep in contact on the phone for the next few weeks. But one day, Chez said I was likely never going to hear from her again. She did not give an explanation.

It was kind of disappointing. This meant that our actual relationship only lasted a few hours. I couldn't get mad about it because of what I had done to her before, but it was still a major letdown. I felt that if I couldn't get someone who loved me as much as she did to want to be with me, what chance did I have with anybody else? All I could see before me was a lonely future.

But as usual, this was not the end of our story. Another chapter will be coming in the near future.

The Hardest Christmas Ever

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day of 1990 were pretty much a blur. This was the first Christmas Loyd and I spent with our parents since they got separated. Dad was living with his girlfriend Gred. I had just met her for the first time a couple of months earlier. He brought her to Denver. When he told me I was going to meet his new girlfriend, I worried that he had done the stereotypical newly single man thing and she would be someone closer to my age than to his. To my surprise, Gred was actually a year older than him and she reminded me of his mother and sisters.

I didn't realize it, but I had been to Gred's house before. 18 months earlier, Bez and I went to Artesia. Mom and Dad had gone to this party and we were taking care of my cousin Chand. Mom called the house and told us there were kids Chand's age at the party and asked us to bring her over. I remember this house had a huge backyard. This happened to be the same house that Dad had moved into.

All day Christmas, Loyd and I went back and forth between seeing Mom and Dad. Grandma Bend was spending the holiday with Mom. Loyd and I were taking everything in stride, but Mom was virtually on the verge of tears every time we left to go to Dad's house. In addition, she always had something nasty to say about Gred. I didn't know what to do, so I just kept my mouth shut anytime she did that.

One odd thing was that both Mom and Dad gave us watches for Christmas. Mom got us very nice watches, but the ones from Dad were really cheap. I made a joke about both parents giving us the same thing for Christmas and Mom started crying. I was so busy with everything that I hadn't even noticed how hard this Christmas was on her. I felt really bad. Here I was, acting like this was all normal and it wasn't. In the last couple of years, I put a lot less importance on celebrating Christmas. But she was coming to the realization that Christmas wasn't going to be the same ever again without my father around.

This meant that the days of us opening presents together on Christmas Eve, waking up Christmas Day to see what surprises Santa brought, eating the Christmas breakfast of biscuits and gravy, etc. was all gone and it wasn't coming back.

And I guess I had been misled by Thanksgiving. Mom and Loyd came up to Denver and we spent the day with my uncle Ord's family. Because there were so many people there, we really didn't notice that Dad wasn't around. This was way different. If Grandma Bend hadn't been there, Mom would have been all alone for most of the day. Things were fine at Dad's. He and Gred had plenty of friends over so he didn't really need to worry about how bad his holidays were without Mom. I actually wonder if he also had some feeling for the era that had passed. Dad was known for not sharing his feelings unless he was angry.

Christmas of 1991 wasn't so bad because Mom and Loyd came out to San Diego to spend it with me. Thanksgiving of 1992 was a bit of a challenge because Dad felt like we weren't spending enough time with him. He called us at Mom's house and asked when we were coming over. I told him we would come by later because we were doing something with Mom. He didn't say anything, but I could tell he slammed down the phone. I told Loyd we needed to get his Christmas presents (which we'd already bought) and go over there right away. We arrived and he was upset. He gave us a lecture about not letting Mom manipulate us into spending more time with her. We both felt as bad as we had two years earlier.

Since then, I have spent fewer holidays with my parents. Sometimes, it feels like it's better that way because I know I can't go back to the way things used to be.

The long bus ride home

I had planned to go home for Christmas of 1990. Even though my car was on its last legs, I felt like there was enough juice for it to drive all the way from Denver to Artesia. Mom and Dad were going to give me a used car for Christmas.

I had also planned to see Chez on the way down. We had been keeping in contact the last few months, but this would be the first time we would have seen each other face to face to try to be boyfriend/girlfriend. A lot had changed since I just barely missed her moving out of her parents' house earlier in the year. Not long after we re-connected, she moved back in with her parents.

One time, her end of the conversation got rather sexually charged. She said, "Fayd! I want to f*** your brains out!" I was taken aback by this. She'd never talked this way before. I told her I had the feeling that she had been having sex. She denied it. (It wouldn't have bothered me if she was having sex. I just wanted her to tell me the truth. I would find that truth out later.)

Sometime after that, she enrolled in Job Corps. When I visited her in Roswell before I moved to Denver, she and her siblings used to badmouth the Job Corps students, who were situated in their neighborhood at the old Air Force Base. It was amusing to know that she had become one of them.

A couple of days before I was supposed to leave for Artesia, we got a pretty bad snowstorm. It got so cold, my car wouldn't start. In addition, I needed to change one of the tires, but I wasn't able to remove the lugnuts myself. I decided to call AAA. When the weather is really bad, the AAA phone service will warn you that it will take up to 48 hours for someone to respond, unless it's a life or death emergency. Since I didn't need to leave for a couple of days, I put in my request and left my home and work numbers for them to call when someone was going to be at my house. I requested a jump start and a tire change.

About 36 hours later, they called me at work. I was able to run out to my apartment. When I got there, I saw that the AAA guy was just in a pickup truck. That meant he didn't have the pneumatic equipment needed to change the tire. All he could do was jump start the car. I would have to wait another 48 hours for them to send someone else to change the tire. We got the car started. It was working okay, but I knew I couldn't drive home with that one bad tire. (And I didn't want to have to pay someone to change it. Yes, it would have only cost five dollars, but I didn't have kind of money back then.)

I was left with one option to go home. I had to take Greyhound. I'd never been to the bus station in Downtown Denver before. I'd walked past it several times because it's on the 16th Street Mall, but I never needed to go inside. I called for the bus schedule. There was a bus that left at 3:30pm on the 23rd. It went all the way to Amarillo, TX. It was scheduled to arrive around 4am the next morning. Then, there would a bus going to Roswell leaving at 4:20am. I would arrive in Roswell around 7:00am. (Keep in mind there's a one hour time zone difference between New Mexico and Texas.)

I went to the bus station two hours early and bought a ticket. There were a lot of people already lined up to take the bus. I just got in line and waited. During this time, a blind man came up to someone in the line and asked which bus we were waiting for. For whatever reason, the person he was talking to wasn't giving him a straight answer and actually pointed him toward the restroom (Yes, he pointed). The blind man started screaming about how he missed the last bus because of that nonsense and he wasn't about to miss this bus. I was surprised that Greyhound didn't offer any kind of service to assist the visually-impaired to ensure he got on the bus.

Since it was a busy holiday season, Greyhound actually scheduled two buses to take the same route. I got on the first bus. It was completely packed. We left the station. There was a family in the back of the bus. One of the children started getting sick and went into the bathroom to vomit. We were getting on the ramp to I-25 when the bus driver pulled over and went to the back. He asked the family if he needed to turn the bus back around. The father said everything was fine, so we got on our way. The bus driver later asked on the PA if anyone had brought any soda like Sprite or Mountain Dew to help the boy's stomach settle. I don't think anyone volunteered their soda.

The boy kept having to go to the bathroom to throw up. He couldn't keep anything down, not even water. Nobody on the bus could use the bathroom because of that. Fortunately, we stopped at a few places along the way, including a McDonald's, where we all had to get off the bus and get something to eat while the bus driver took a break. We were running WAY behind and I only had a 20 minute window of opportunity to get on the connecting bus to Roswell. I asked the bus driver what the chances were that EVERY Greyhound bus in the country were running behind schedule that night. He told me not to worry about it. We would get to Amarillo in time.

I couldn't sleep the rest of the way. For that matter, no one else could, either. The boy in the back kept groaning. We finally made it to Amarillo. We all got off the bus. I ran around the station and tried to find out if the bus to Roswell had left yet. When I got to customer service, the father was there yelling at an employee, trying to get him to tell him where they could go check into a motel because they just were not going to be able to handle being on the bus anymore. While I was waiting there for them to assist him, I heard an announcement that the bus to Roswell was boarding. I breathed a sigh of relief and went outside.

There were maybe 20 people on the bus, a nice break from the overstuffed bus I had been on for the last 12 hours. I was able to get some sleep. I remember waking up as we were driving through Clovis. I thought about the two years that I had lived there and how glad I was to be living in Denver.

My Dad and Loyd met me at the bus station in Roswell. We went out and got some breakfast before driving back to Artesia. They took me to Mom's house. I just got into bed and slept for the next six hours.

This would not be the only thing that made this holiday unusual. I'll get to that tomorrow.

Some Woman I Dated: Heiz

Heiz doesn't really belong in any category of the women that I have provided for the purposes of this blog, especially since I didn't meet her through the personal ads or any other devices I used for getting girlfriends, like a job at a radio station. (I even came up short being the Assistant Manager of an arthouse movie theatre.) And we did not remain friends afterward.

Heiz was a cashier at HomeClub. Ridwas working there at the time. She was 20 years old, had long, wavy blonde hair and deep blue eyes. I met her when I had to go there to pick Rid up at work. Rid was somewhat interested in another woman who worked there. Rid had me drive that other woman to her house. For whatever reason, we went inside her apartment. There was somebody in the bedroom whom we couldn't see, but he shouted out (in Spanish) to see who was coming in. She replied and told us it was her brother in the bedroom.

Rid and I left the apartment. This was during a three-month period in which we would spend Friday nights going out to get pizza. Our paychecks were issued on rotating Fridays. One week, I would pay and the other week, he would pay. It was a really good arrangement.

After that first meeting with Heiz, Rid told me a few days later that she was interested in me. I thought, "Really?" She was very attractive. I didn't even consider myself in her league, but Rid insisted that she would like to get to know me better. One of the things he warned me about was that he had told her I was a virgin. She was actually cool with that because she was a virgin, too. (I'm pretty certain that nowadays, people could get fired for having conversations like that at work.) He got her phone number for me and I called her.

Yes, she was indeed interested in going out. We talked for awhile. She told me that her parents came from Switzerland, but she was born here in the United States. We made plans to go out for dinner one night.

I showed up and picked her up from her house. She was wearing this extraordinarily nice knitted sweater. She told me her mother had made it. I was impressed. It looked like it cost $1000 to buy at the store. We had dinner and good conversation. During the date, we started talking about Rid and the woman he was interested in. Heiz told me that the woman was actually married and that the person who was in the back bedroom was her husband. She knew this because they were good friends at work and talked frequently.

Afterward, I took her to a Unimart Wholesale Club location. That seems like an odd place to take someone, but it used to be the location for a Sound Warehouse record store. For a period of time in the late 1970's, the record store had major label musicians coming through townput their handprints and signatures in cement, like at Grauman's Chinese Theatre. The biggest names committed to slab were Billy Joel, Kenny Loggins and Bob Weir. However, all the others were groups you'd never heard of. I don't even think any of those others made any kind of impact on the charts.

Heiz was actually impressed with this. She lived nearby and never knew it existed. She put her hands down in Billy Joel's handprints. I then drove her back home. Her mother was there and I got to meet her. She had warned me beforehand that she was somewhat deaf, but would be able to know what I was saying.

All in all, it was a good date. I looked forward to going out with her again. This time, we were going to get dinner and see a movie. Before the date, I had told Rid that I was planning to hold her hand during the movie. I liked her and hoped she liked me just as much.

I picked her up at her house and we went to the Village Inn to eat. I couldn't put my finger on it, but something was off. We weren't connecting like we were on the first date. She didn't laugh at my jokes. Now, she never acted like she didn't want to be there with me, but for whatever reason, we just weren't having as good a time as we'd had before.

We went to the movie. We saw "Jacob's Ladder." I was still hoping to get to the hand-holding phase during the movie. She sat to my left. However, she placed her right hand on the other side of her body FOR THE ENTIRE MOVIE!

We didn't go anyplace else. I just drove her home and pondered what to do next. I figured that Rid had warned her ahead of time that I was trying to hold hands with her. Maybe she wasn't ready for things to move that fast. Maybe she was disappointed that I was going to make the moves that very night and had discussed it with Rid. Maybe it was the choice of movie. Maybe we should have gone to see "White Palace" instead. (While I've never seen that film, I understand there's a scene that involves Susan Sarandon performing fellatio on James Spader. Maybe "Jacob's Ladder" was the better choice.)

Whatever, I still wanted her to like me. So, I went to my old standby and had flowers delivered to her house. The day I sent them, I was working at the Mayan Theatre. Rid came by to see me. He told me that Heiz was rather freaked out by the flowers. While we were talking, Heiz called me at the theatre. She told me that she liked the flowers, but didn't really like getting them this early in the courtship. She told me she didn't want to go out with me anymore.

I told Rid what happened. He was telling me that I shouldn't have sent the flowers. We were joined by one of my female co-workers. She said that she would have been disturbed as well if that happened to her. After a little while, Rid went out to his car. He came back with flowers to give to the co-worker. He had apparently developed a crush on her after meeting her a few times before at work. I guess, even after she said that, he didn't want his money to go to waste. She really wasn't interested in him, especially after she found out he was five years younger than her.

Rid never told me if he had revealed my hand-holding plan to Heiz. But he almost made it sound like Heiz was actually interested in him based on conversations he had with her following our "break up."

If I hadn't sent her flowers, I wonder if she would have freaked out if I'd bought her an engagement ring for Christmas that year. (Oh, that was SO not going to happen.)

I don't know what has become of her. She probably found someone else to get married to and have kids with.

And afterward, I always waited to send women flowers until I was certain they wouldn't mind receiving them.