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.
Tuesday, November 10, 2015
Monday, November 9, 2015
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.
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.
Friday, November 6, 2015
The stupidest thing I've ever done (Part 2)
On December 27th, 1990, I was driving from Artesia back to Denver. I had to stop in Portales, NM, where my father and his side of the family were celebrating the holidays at Grandma Ogolon's. While I was there, Dad told me he had gotten a message on his answering machine from a detective in Golden, CO with regards to the accident I had been involved in. He gave me the detective's name and phone number and told me to get in contact with him. I told him I would.
After I got back to Denver, I contacted my ex-girlfriend Bez' father, Mr. T. He told me to call the detective and arrange a meeting with him and he would go with me. He also said he would send me a rate sheet for how much he was going to charge me. He said he would give me a discounted rate. When I got the letter in the mail, it stated that he would be charging me $50 an hour, plus expenses. If we were to be in trial, he would charge $150 an hour. On top of that, I needed to pay him a $200 retainer for him to start representing me when meeting with the officer in Golden. I signed the agreement and paid the retainer. I hoped the whole thing would take just four hours of his time. WRONG!
I called and made the appointment with the detective. Because there was a chance I might get arrested, Mr. T agreed to drive me to the meeting. This meant that I would be paying for the mileage he put on his car, as per the agreement.
We met with the detective. He said it was a good thing I called, because he was about to send New Mexico State Troopers out to my father's house. (They wouldn't have found him at his apartment. He had moved in with the woman he was going to marry at that point.) The first thing Mr. T asked was if he had a warrant for my arrest. He said he wasn't going to arrest me. Mr. T said I could answer his questions. I told him about trying to turn left and waiting for the traffic to clear after the light turned red. I said I saw the other vehicle whiz right by me and crash into a metal pole on the side of the road. I said I didn't think I hit him and continued on my way. (I was not going to admit to hitting the other car.) The detective asked me if I had pulled over. I said no (even though that wasn't true). The detective said that the person in the car behind me said that the light was red, but that the other driver said his light was green and the left turn lane on that side had a protected turn signal.
Since I didn't bring the car, the detective said he would have to come to my house to look at the car at some point in the future. He would be calling me beforehand. Mr. T and I went out to the intersection to observe how the light work. We went to the side where the other driver came from. Sure enough, the left turn arrow came on after our side had been green for a while. Like I said yesterday, my side did not get that protected left turn, even though there was a seemingly never-ceasing flow of traffic coming from the other direction. When was I supposed to get across? And how was I going to know when their light had turned red? We were surprised there weren't more accidents in that area.
A week later, the detective called me to come out to look at the car. He arrived and saw the damage to my car. He issued me a ticket. I was charged with making an illegal turn, leaving the scene of an accident and not having insurance. All together, the charges came out to 20 points. In Colorado, if you got 12 points, your license got suspended. I was about to be in big trouble.
But then I got in even more trouble later that week when I got pulled over with Knod and Sheld in the car and got a ticket for not having insurance, which would mean another 4 points. When I first told Mr. T, he said he wasn't going to represent me on that one, because I should have already learned my lesson and gotten insurance. However, I was able to convince him that the officer should have left us alone once he determined that my temporary tag was valid.
(One of the things I found out during that traffic stop was that the police did not need my driver's license to determine my identity. My main reason for running from the accident was completely unfounded. I knew then that I wouldn't have been arrested on the spot. This knowledge would have kept me from getting into so much trouble.)
The only bad thing about this case was Mr. T had a meeting to attend on the day I was supposed to be arraigned for the single proof of insurance charge. He told me to just take a plea deal if I liked what they offered. I went in to the courthouse and the first thing I had to do was meet with THREE PROSECUTORS. WHAT? This was just a simple lack of insurance charge. I could see this on the hit and run, but I guess they really wanted you to feel ganged-up on. I had bought insurance (ironically enough, from the same company that insured the other driver in the accident) and brought that proof with me. They said it was good that I had that, but there wouldn't be any plea deal for the charge. It was pretty straightforward. I didn't have insurance at the time, so the charge was going to have to stick. I told them I shouldn't have gotten the ticket in the first place. I would bring my attorney next time and we were going to fight this. They told me I wasn't going to win.
I went into the courtroom and waited my turn for arraignment. I pleaded not guilty and got a court date. It was going to take place in about a month. This time, Mr. T was able to come with me. Before the trial, he got to meet with the prosecutor and interview the officer. I was out of the room while this was going on. Somehow, he was able to get the prosecutor to dismiss the charges without us going to trial. We made a brief appearance before the judge, who validated the dismissal. MAN, AM I GLAD I HAD A LAWYER!
As we were leaving, I told him that if I had money at the time, I would have bought him lunch. He said he would just buy the lunch and put it on my bill. I said that would be acceptable.
He would send me periodic statements for the amount I owed. I kept paying him what I could afford and he even had me come to his house to do some work to pay off some of the debt. However, when I got the statement after the no insurance case, I noticed he had charged me the trial rate for that time. But we didn't actually go to trial. I contested it. He justified it by saying he used his trial skills to get that dismissed. I told him if he truly felt he deserved that, I would pay it, but that wasn't the contract I signed. He relented and charged his regular rate for that time. Even with him, those jokes about attorneys padding their billing hours turned out to be true.
Next came the arraignment for the hit and run. We drove out to Golden and met with the prosecutor. They already had a plea deal waiting for me. The would drop all the charges, including the lack of insurance, if I pleaded guilty to reckless driving, which was an 8-point violation. I would pay $1,000 fine, $500 in restitution to the other driver for the damage to his vehicle (covering his deductible) and 40 hours of community service. Mr. T and conferred briefly. He told me he could probably beat it. However, I knew I needed to take responsibility for my actions and this was the price I was going to have to pay. I realized we were lucky with the earlier case. If I accepted the deal, I would get to keep my driver's license.
I got a quick look at the paperwork the prosecutor had. One of the main things I noticed was my driving record. It still had that "UR" (unpaid referee) on it. I'm surprised the prosecutor didn't see that and have me arrested on the spot. With everything else going on, I didn't have much room to worry about that. I also saw a statement from the other driver. He stated that the accident affected his ability to work overtime, so he wasn't making as much money. He also said that the doctor appointments were taking time away from his family. I was genuinely sorry that I did something that caused this guy to get injured, but that didn't stop me from thinking that if he was working overtime before, he was already spending less time with his family. He also wrote that he thought that a suitable punishment would be for me to go to traffic school and learn how to drive. But I couldn't really blame the guy for wanting to hurl insults my way.
I was able to get a loan from my credit union in Artesia to pay the fine, the retribution and Mr. T. He was probably expecting that I wasn't going to be able to pay the full amount, but I'm certain he was surprised when he got the cashier's check. It seemed like after that, he actually treated me with a lot more respect.
But it wasn't 100% behind me. The insurance company was coming after me because they reached a settlement with the other driver for $60,000 and expected me to pay. There were consequences that arose from that and I will get to them in a future post.
The accident happened 25 years ago next month. The fact that I caused injury to another person, someone I'd never even met, has caused me distress every single day since it happened. Sometimes, I feel like the other driver is going to show up at my front door one day and ask me if I know who he is. I will respond by calling him by his name (which I still remember). If this happens, he will hear my side of the story for the first time ever, including my car having been stolen. He's still not going to like me because of the pain I inflicted on him, but he'll probably be a little understanding about my (unfounded) reason for leaving the scene. I believe we will be able to have a civil discussion.
After I got back to Denver, I contacted my ex-girlfriend Bez' father, Mr. T. He told me to call the detective and arrange a meeting with him and he would go with me. He also said he would send me a rate sheet for how much he was going to charge me. He said he would give me a discounted rate. When I got the letter in the mail, it stated that he would be charging me $50 an hour, plus expenses. If we were to be in trial, he would charge $150 an hour. On top of that, I needed to pay him a $200 retainer for him to start representing me when meeting with the officer in Golden. I signed the agreement and paid the retainer. I hoped the whole thing would take just four hours of his time. WRONG!
I called and made the appointment with the detective. Because there was a chance I might get arrested, Mr. T agreed to drive me to the meeting. This meant that I would be paying for the mileage he put on his car, as per the agreement.
We met with the detective. He said it was a good thing I called, because he was about to send New Mexico State Troopers out to my father's house. (They wouldn't have found him at his apartment. He had moved in with the woman he was going to marry at that point.) The first thing Mr. T asked was if he had a warrant for my arrest. He said he wasn't going to arrest me. Mr. T said I could answer his questions. I told him about trying to turn left and waiting for the traffic to clear after the light turned red. I said I saw the other vehicle whiz right by me and crash into a metal pole on the side of the road. I said I didn't think I hit him and continued on my way. (I was not going to admit to hitting the other car.) The detective asked me if I had pulled over. I said no (even though that wasn't true). The detective said that the person in the car behind me said that the light was red, but that the other driver said his light was green and the left turn lane on that side had a protected turn signal.
Since I didn't bring the car, the detective said he would have to come to my house to look at the car at some point in the future. He would be calling me beforehand. Mr. T and I went out to the intersection to observe how the light work. We went to the side where the other driver came from. Sure enough, the left turn arrow came on after our side had been green for a while. Like I said yesterday, my side did not get that protected left turn, even though there was a seemingly never-ceasing flow of traffic coming from the other direction. When was I supposed to get across? And how was I going to know when their light had turned red? We were surprised there weren't more accidents in that area.
A week later, the detective called me to come out to look at the car. He arrived and saw the damage to my car. He issued me a ticket. I was charged with making an illegal turn, leaving the scene of an accident and not having insurance. All together, the charges came out to 20 points. In Colorado, if you got 12 points, your license got suspended. I was about to be in big trouble.
But then I got in even more trouble later that week when I got pulled over with Knod and Sheld in the car and got a ticket for not having insurance, which would mean another 4 points. When I first told Mr. T, he said he wasn't going to represent me on that one, because I should have already learned my lesson and gotten insurance. However, I was able to convince him that the officer should have left us alone once he determined that my temporary tag was valid.
(One of the things I found out during that traffic stop was that the police did not need my driver's license to determine my identity. My main reason for running from the accident was completely unfounded. I knew then that I wouldn't have been arrested on the spot. This knowledge would have kept me from getting into so much trouble.)
The only bad thing about this case was Mr. T had a meeting to attend on the day I was supposed to be arraigned for the single proof of insurance charge. He told me to just take a plea deal if I liked what they offered. I went in to the courthouse and the first thing I had to do was meet with THREE PROSECUTORS. WHAT? This was just a simple lack of insurance charge. I could see this on the hit and run, but I guess they really wanted you to feel ganged-up on. I had bought insurance (ironically enough, from the same company that insured the other driver in the accident) and brought that proof with me. They said it was good that I had that, but there wouldn't be any plea deal for the charge. It was pretty straightforward. I didn't have insurance at the time, so the charge was going to have to stick. I told them I shouldn't have gotten the ticket in the first place. I would bring my attorney next time and we were going to fight this. They told me I wasn't going to win.
I went into the courtroom and waited my turn for arraignment. I pleaded not guilty and got a court date. It was going to take place in about a month. This time, Mr. T was able to come with me. Before the trial, he got to meet with the prosecutor and interview the officer. I was out of the room while this was going on. Somehow, he was able to get the prosecutor to dismiss the charges without us going to trial. We made a brief appearance before the judge, who validated the dismissal. MAN, AM I GLAD I HAD A LAWYER!
As we were leaving, I told him that if I had money at the time, I would have bought him lunch. He said he would just buy the lunch and put it on my bill. I said that would be acceptable.
He would send me periodic statements for the amount I owed. I kept paying him what I could afford and he even had me come to his house to do some work to pay off some of the debt. However, when I got the statement after the no insurance case, I noticed he had charged me the trial rate for that time. But we didn't actually go to trial. I contested it. He justified it by saying he used his trial skills to get that dismissed. I told him if he truly felt he deserved that, I would pay it, but that wasn't the contract I signed. He relented and charged his regular rate for that time. Even with him, those jokes about attorneys padding their billing hours turned out to be true.
Next came the arraignment for the hit and run. We drove out to Golden and met with the prosecutor. They already had a plea deal waiting for me. The would drop all the charges, including the lack of insurance, if I pleaded guilty to reckless driving, which was an 8-point violation. I would pay $1,000 fine, $500 in restitution to the other driver for the damage to his vehicle (covering his deductible) and 40 hours of community service. Mr. T and conferred briefly. He told me he could probably beat it. However, I knew I needed to take responsibility for my actions and this was the price I was going to have to pay. I realized we were lucky with the earlier case. If I accepted the deal, I would get to keep my driver's license.
I got a quick look at the paperwork the prosecutor had. One of the main things I noticed was my driving record. It still had that "UR" (unpaid referee) on it. I'm surprised the prosecutor didn't see that and have me arrested on the spot. With everything else going on, I didn't have much room to worry about that. I also saw a statement from the other driver. He stated that the accident affected his ability to work overtime, so he wasn't making as much money. He also said that the doctor appointments were taking time away from his family. I was genuinely sorry that I did something that caused this guy to get injured, but that didn't stop me from thinking that if he was working overtime before, he was already spending less time with his family. He also wrote that he thought that a suitable punishment would be for me to go to traffic school and learn how to drive. But I couldn't really blame the guy for wanting to hurl insults my way.
I was able to get a loan from my credit union in Artesia to pay the fine, the retribution and Mr. T. He was probably expecting that I wasn't going to be able to pay the full amount, but I'm certain he was surprised when he got the cashier's check. It seemed like after that, he actually treated me with a lot more respect.
But it wasn't 100% behind me. The insurance company was coming after me because they reached a settlement with the other driver for $60,000 and expected me to pay. There were consequences that arose from that and I will get to them in a future post.
The accident happened 25 years ago next month. The fact that I caused injury to another person, someone I'd never even met, has caused me distress every single day since it happened. Sometimes, I feel like the other driver is going to show up at my front door one day and ask me if I know who he is. I will respond by calling him by his name (which I still remember). If this happens, he will hear my side of the story for the first time ever, including my car having been stolen. He's still not going to like me because of the pain I inflicted on him, but he'll probably be a little understanding about my (unfounded) reason for leaving the scene. I believe we will be able to have a civil discussion.
Thursday, November 5, 2015
The stupidest thing I've ever done (Part 1)
On Monday night 12/09/90, I was driving up to pick up Rid. We were going to run around for a bit and it involved going to the Mayan Theatre. But something happened on the way up that had a significant impact on the next several years of my life.
I was waiting at a light to make a left turn from the highway onto the road that led to Rid's house. While the direction I was going had a green light, it did not feature a protected light for those making a left turn. I pulled out in the middle of the intersection and was waiting for the light to turn red and the traffic to clear so I could make my turn.
The light turned red and a couple of cars from the other direction ran through. I thought the next driver was going to stop, but he didn't. The left side of my bumper struck his wheel. I could see the vehicle run into a metal post on the side of the road. I was able to complete my left turn and pulled over. Even though I didn't have insurance, I knew I had the right of way. I got ready to get out of my car to see if the driver was okay.
Suddenly, a thought occurred to me: My car had been stolen twice in the last six months. Both times, it was recovered before I had reported it stolen. I didn't have my ID on me. If the cops came and saw the damage to my steering wheel and I wasn't able to prove who I was, they were going to arrest me on charges of possessing a stolen vehicle. There was no way I was going to let that happen. I just drove off.
While I was driving off, I saw a vehicle in my rear view mirror follow me for a little bit, stop and then turn around. I was pretty certain that person wrote down my license plate number, so I knew I wasn't going to get away with this. It was still better than being thrown in jail.
But that still was not the end of my troubles as I was driving up the winding road up to Rid's house. There was this vehicle on my tail the entire way up. Every time I made a turn onto another street, this car was following me. Road rage wasn't a thing back then, but I was afraid that this person was going to start beating me up for leaving the scene of an accident without me getting a chance to explain myself.
I took the final turn to Rid's driveway. The car behind me just kept driving. OHHHHH, man! They just happened to be going my direction. I went inside the house. I was a bundle of nerves the whole time, but Rid didn't seem to notice. In fact, he even made some joke about us getting arrested.
As we went on our way back down the road, I told Rid that I was probably about to get arrested. He was shocked. I told him what happened and that we were about to drive past the scene of the accident when we got down to the highway. When we got to the intersection, the vehicle that I struck was still there and a police car was behind it. I could see a police office speaking to the driver. Under normal circumstances, we would have turned right and driven within feet of the two vehicles. We decided to take another route to Denver and kept driving straight. I was afraid the driver was going to see my car and say, "Hey! That's the car that hit me!" and the police would have been on my tail. That didn't happen.
The next day was torment for me as I was expecting the cops to show up at my doorstep at any time. That didn't happen. On Wednesday, I had gone to a special preview screening of the film, "The Godfather Part III." In the middle of the movie, I realized that I had stopped thinking about the accident. I thought that since nothing had happened the day before, maybe it was all behind me.
I was wrong. I got a call from my Dad that weekend. He said he got a message from an insurance company regarding the accident. (My father's name was still on the registration.) I didn't know what to do. It wasn't the cops who contacted him, it was the other driver's insurance company. If it had been the police, I would have been upfront with him, so I told him it wasn't me. He told me I needed to call the woman from the insurance company and tell her that.
I figured I could just lie to her and I wouldn't have to worry about this again. To be on the safe side, I called her from the Mayan (so she couldn't trace the call to my apartment.) She informed me that the other driver was injured in the accident. I wasn't expecting that. I mean, when I drove by the accident scene, there was no ambulance. Just the other vehicle and the police car. I told her that someone I knew "borrowed" the car, but didn't tell me he was in an accident. She told me I needed to file charges against him if that was the case, otherwise I was going to have to take the blame for the accident. She also said she was going to talk to the authorities.
I didn't know how long I could continue lying about this. All day Monday and Tuesday, I was in absolute agony. I wasn't able to sleep and I was certain I was developing an ulcer. I couldn't eat anything. I figured I needed legal help. I got on the phone Tuesday night and called Bez' parents. Her mother answered the phone. I told her I needed to talk to Mr. T. She said he was in Lincoln, NE dealing with a family matter. I told her it was really important and she gave me the phone number. I called him up and explained what happened. He told me that I didn't need to be talking to the insurance company. The only people I needed to talk to were the police. He said I didn't need to do anything until they tried to contact me or my father. He said that if I needed him to represent me, he would do it, but I was going to have to pay him for it this time. I said that was fair.
Immediately after I got off the phone, my stomach felt a lot better. I could not believe how he was able to relieve me of so much pain. The next day, I called my father and told him the truth. He didn't say it, but I could tell he was very upset with me. I told him to call me if the police ever tried to get in contact with him. I told him Mr. T would represent me and I would be taking responsibility from here on out.
And the police did indeed get in contact with my father. I'll pick up with that tomorrow.
I was waiting at a light to make a left turn from the highway onto the road that led to Rid's house. While the direction I was going had a green light, it did not feature a protected light for those making a left turn. I pulled out in the middle of the intersection and was waiting for the light to turn red and the traffic to clear so I could make my turn.
The light turned red and a couple of cars from the other direction ran through. I thought the next driver was going to stop, but he didn't. The left side of my bumper struck his wheel. I could see the vehicle run into a metal post on the side of the road. I was able to complete my left turn and pulled over. Even though I didn't have insurance, I knew I had the right of way. I got ready to get out of my car to see if the driver was okay.
Suddenly, a thought occurred to me: My car had been stolen twice in the last six months. Both times, it was recovered before I had reported it stolen. I didn't have my ID on me. If the cops came and saw the damage to my steering wheel and I wasn't able to prove who I was, they were going to arrest me on charges of possessing a stolen vehicle. There was no way I was going to let that happen. I just drove off.
While I was driving off, I saw a vehicle in my rear view mirror follow me for a little bit, stop and then turn around. I was pretty certain that person wrote down my license plate number, so I knew I wasn't going to get away with this. It was still better than being thrown in jail.
But that still was not the end of my troubles as I was driving up the winding road up to Rid's house. There was this vehicle on my tail the entire way up. Every time I made a turn onto another street, this car was following me. Road rage wasn't a thing back then, but I was afraid that this person was going to start beating me up for leaving the scene of an accident without me getting a chance to explain myself.
I took the final turn to Rid's driveway. The car behind me just kept driving. OHHHHH, man! They just happened to be going my direction. I went inside the house. I was a bundle of nerves the whole time, but Rid didn't seem to notice. In fact, he even made some joke about us getting arrested.
As we went on our way back down the road, I told Rid that I was probably about to get arrested. He was shocked. I told him what happened and that we were about to drive past the scene of the accident when we got down to the highway. When we got to the intersection, the vehicle that I struck was still there and a police car was behind it. I could see a police office speaking to the driver. Under normal circumstances, we would have turned right and driven within feet of the two vehicles. We decided to take another route to Denver and kept driving straight. I was afraid the driver was going to see my car and say, "Hey! That's the car that hit me!" and the police would have been on my tail. That didn't happen.
The next day was torment for me as I was expecting the cops to show up at my doorstep at any time. That didn't happen. On Wednesday, I had gone to a special preview screening of the film, "The Godfather Part III." In the middle of the movie, I realized that I had stopped thinking about the accident. I thought that since nothing had happened the day before, maybe it was all behind me.
I was wrong. I got a call from my Dad that weekend. He said he got a message from an insurance company regarding the accident. (My father's name was still on the registration.) I didn't know what to do. It wasn't the cops who contacted him, it was the other driver's insurance company. If it had been the police, I would have been upfront with him, so I told him it wasn't me. He told me I needed to call the woman from the insurance company and tell her that.
I figured I could just lie to her and I wouldn't have to worry about this again. To be on the safe side, I called her from the Mayan (so she couldn't trace the call to my apartment.) She informed me that the other driver was injured in the accident. I wasn't expecting that. I mean, when I drove by the accident scene, there was no ambulance. Just the other vehicle and the police car. I told her that someone I knew "borrowed" the car, but didn't tell me he was in an accident. She told me I needed to file charges against him if that was the case, otherwise I was going to have to take the blame for the accident. She also said she was going to talk to the authorities.
I didn't know how long I could continue lying about this. All day Monday and Tuesday, I was in absolute agony. I wasn't able to sleep and I was certain I was developing an ulcer. I couldn't eat anything. I figured I needed legal help. I got on the phone Tuesday night and called Bez' parents. Her mother answered the phone. I told her I needed to talk to Mr. T. She said he was in Lincoln, NE dealing with a family matter. I told her it was really important and she gave me the phone number. I called him up and explained what happened. He told me that I didn't need to be talking to the insurance company. The only people I needed to talk to were the police. He said I didn't need to do anything until they tried to contact me or my father. He said that if I needed him to represent me, he would do it, but I was going to have to pay him for it this time. I said that was fair.
Immediately after I got off the phone, my stomach felt a lot better. I could not believe how he was able to relieve me of so much pain. The next day, I called my father and told him the truth. He didn't say it, but I could tell he was very upset with me. I told him to call me if the police ever tried to get in contact with him. I told him Mr. T would represent me and I would be taking responsibility from here on out.
And the police did indeed get in contact with my father. I'll pick up with that tomorrow.
Wednesday, November 4, 2015
My car got stolen... TWICE!
Up until June of 1990, I'd never had anything really bad happen to the cars that I drove. I'd had them run out of gas, get flat tires, break down, involved in accidents and even been hit and run on. But I always knew where they were at all times. That all changed one Friday night.
After working a box office shift at the Mayan theatre, I walked out to the parking lot. I walked all over the parking lot, but couldn't find my car. I did find some shards of shattered glass on the ground near where I thought I parked it. I started panicking. I knew my car had been stolen.
I went back into the theatre and called 911. (I know that was the wrong number to call, but at the time, if you tried to look up the police number in the phone book, they ONLY listed 911. There was no non-emergency number to call. I really didn't have a choice.) I gave them all the information. They said an officer would come to the theatre to do the report in about an hour. An hour and a half later, no officer had arrived. I called 911 again. They said someone would be there in about 30 minutes.
Finally, someone arrived. It was a female officer. She took my information. Then she asked me if I had been informed that my car had already been recovered. I told her that no one did those two times I called. She said that it was found abandoned and that it was apparent that it had been stolen. Perhaps one of the windows had been smashed (which might account for the shattered glass I saw in the parking lot). She gave me the information for the impound lot.
I felt very violated. I didn't feel safe walking home. I asked Lerd (who had been managing that night) to give me a ride home, even though I lived just a few blocks away. He obliged and I contemplated what I was going to have to do.
One of the problems with the impound lot was that I was not able to go there on the weekend to retrieve my car because I was working. I was going to have to wait until Monday. The bad thing about that was that I was going to have to pay more money for each day it was at the lot. Fortunately, Rid was able to come over that day and give me a ride there (and without having to slash his arm to do it.) We went into the lot and someone on the staff escorted me to my car. Fortunately, none of my windows were broken. (The broken glass turned out to be from another vehicle the thieves had tried to steal before they decided to try mine.) However, the steering column had been broken so they could gain access to the ignition. The impound guy showed me how to start the car by pulling on the piece of metal that was protruding out of the column. But the car wouldn't start. We determined that the car was out of gas. This was probably why they had abandoned it. (I think I only had a couple of gallons in it when it was stolen. Thank goodness for being cheap.)
Rid and I drove down to the nearest gas station and asked if they had a gas can we could borrow. (I'll bet they had that request all the time.) We bought a couple of gallons and went back to the lot. The car started and there didn't seem to be any other problems. I paid the fee and drove the car home.
I knew that it would probably cost at least $500 to fix the steering column. I didn't have that kind of money, so I just wrapped a towel around the column and hoped people wouldn't figure out why it was covered up like that. I had been a AAA member for the last year. My father reminded me that AAA was a tow insurance and I could probably call them to get reimbursed on my fees. I did that and they sent me a check for $35. It didn't cover all the fees, but it was nice to be able to get some money back.
For a few months, I wouldn't drive to the theatre. I always walked. We didn't have any more incidents of attempted car theft at the theatre, so I felt a little more secure in driving the car to work again. But in November, the car was stolen again. The assumption was that the same guys who stole it last time saw it in the lot and figured it was easy pickings, and they were right. And again, the police had recovered the car before I reported it stolen.
My co-worker Cynz and her kids drove me to the impound lot. This time, there was major damage to one of the wheels. It looked like they had driven it across some railroad tracks. However, the tire was still inflated and there was still gas in the tank. I slowly drove home while Cynz followed. I didn't have any major problems on the way home, but I knew I could never drive the car to the theatre again.
Obviously, the guys who stole my car were never caught. However, I'd like to think they got arrested for something else and received a sentence that made them wish they had been been arrested for stealing my car.
I just consider myself lucky to have never had another car stolen since then.
After working a box office shift at the Mayan theatre, I walked out to the parking lot. I walked all over the parking lot, but couldn't find my car. I did find some shards of shattered glass on the ground near where I thought I parked it. I started panicking. I knew my car had been stolen.
I went back into the theatre and called 911. (I know that was the wrong number to call, but at the time, if you tried to look up the police number in the phone book, they ONLY listed 911. There was no non-emergency number to call. I really didn't have a choice.) I gave them all the information. They said an officer would come to the theatre to do the report in about an hour. An hour and a half later, no officer had arrived. I called 911 again. They said someone would be there in about 30 minutes.
Finally, someone arrived. It was a female officer. She took my information. Then she asked me if I had been informed that my car had already been recovered. I told her that no one did those two times I called. She said that it was found abandoned and that it was apparent that it had been stolen. Perhaps one of the windows had been smashed (which might account for the shattered glass I saw in the parking lot). She gave me the information for the impound lot.
I felt very violated. I didn't feel safe walking home. I asked Lerd (who had been managing that night) to give me a ride home, even though I lived just a few blocks away. He obliged and I contemplated what I was going to have to do.
One of the problems with the impound lot was that I was not able to go there on the weekend to retrieve my car because I was working. I was going to have to wait until Monday. The bad thing about that was that I was going to have to pay more money for each day it was at the lot. Fortunately, Rid was able to come over that day and give me a ride there (and without having to slash his arm to do it.) We went into the lot and someone on the staff escorted me to my car. Fortunately, none of my windows were broken. (The broken glass turned out to be from another vehicle the thieves had tried to steal before they decided to try mine.) However, the steering column had been broken so they could gain access to the ignition. The impound guy showed me how to start the car by pulling on the piece of metal that was protruding out of the column. But the car wouldn't start. We determined that the car was out of gas. This was probably why they had abandoned it. (I think I only had a couple of gallons in it when it was stolen. Thank goodness for being cheap.)
Rid and I drove down to the nearest gas station and asked if they had a gas can we could borrow. (I'll bet they had that request all the time.) We bought a couple of gallons and went back to the lot. The car started and there didn't seem to be any other problems. I paid the fee and drove the car home.
I knew that it would probably cost at least $500 to fix the steering column. I didn't have that kind of money, so I just wrapped a towel around the column and hoped people wouldn't figure out why it was covered up like that. I had been a AAA member for the last year. My father reminded me that AAA was a tow insurance and I could probably call them to get reimbursed on my fees. I did that and they sent me a check for $35. It didn't cover all the fees, but it was nice to be able to get some money back.
For a few months, I wouldn't drive to the theatre. I always walked. We didn't have any more incidents of attempted car theft at the theatre, so I felt a little more secure in driving the car to work again. But in November, the car was stolen again. The assumption was that the same guys who stole it last time saw it in the lot and figured it was easy pickings, and they were right. And again, the police had recovered the car before I reported it stolen.
My co-worker Cynz and her kids drove me to the impound lot. This time, there was major damage to one of the wheels. It looked like they had driven it across some railroad tracks. However, the tire was still inflated and there was still gas in the tank. I slowly drove home while Cynz followed. I didn't have any major problems on the way home, but I knew I could never drive the car to the theatre again.
Obviously, the guys who stole my car were never caught. However, I'd like to think they got arrested for something else and received a sentence that made them wish they had been been arrested for stealing my car.
I just consider myself lucky to have never had another car stolen since then.
Tuesday, November 3, 2015
Little Sister: Knod (Part 2)
After the run in with police, Knod, Sheld and I hung out together a few more times. One of those times, Sheld had to go to the emergency room for simple cold symptoms. While Knod and I waited in the lobby for the staff to give us the okay to go back and see her, we were keeping each other entertained by making fun of stuff that was on the TV in the lobby. Knod had a very sharp sarcastic wit that kept me in stitches.
Not long after, Knod and Sheld had a falling out and weren't speaking to each other. Knod still wanted to be friends with me. I had some music she wanted to hear, so she invited me over to her house one afternoon. Her mother was there. We went into Knod's room and she shut the door. I asked her if her mother was okay with us hanging out. She said her mom didn't have a problem with it as long as I didn't mess with her head. While we were listening to the music, she showed me a scrapbook of photos taken in the last year.
During this time, Knod became friends with another girl her age named Deld. The three of us hung around quite frequently and went to the movies several times. (It was nice that I could get in just about any movie theatre for free.)
In the meantime, Sheld got pregnant by this jerk named Lard. (I've been dying to use that as a name for someone. I'm glad it's this guy!) Before I left Denver to move to San Diego, Sheld held a Halloween party a few days before I left. Knod was also going to be there. (Deld was not there.) Sheld was pregnant at the time and allowed me to take photographs of her. Knod showed up wearing a cat suit.
After I left for San Diego, Knod and I wrote each other frequently. When I had planned a trip back to Denver for my vacation, Knod said she wanted to come out and hang around in San Diego. She had a friend named Cald that she had invited along. This outing will be the topic of another post way in the future. (I'm just providing a summary of our friendship here.)
Sheld had her baby boy, but got involved in an ugly custody battle with Lard. In the meantime, Knod became romantically involved with Lard and thus became a bitter enemy of Sheld. Knod moved in with Lard and help to raise his son. They planned to get married. However, it was clear that Lard was very jealous of Knod's friendship with me. She sent me this letter:
It reads, "To my understanding, (Lard) says that you have called at least 10 - 15 times a day. He knows this because of Caller ID. I want to ask you to please not do this. With the phone ringing off the hook, it's hard for them to care for S_____ and keep S__ on his routine with this annoyance."
WHAT? I wasn't doing that. One thing I know for certain was that my phone number wasn't showing up on their Caller ID because numbers in California wouldn't appear at the time. California was the last state to get the Caller ID feature. Until then, all California numbers were displayed as "Unknown Caller." The best I can figure is that a fax machine from California was calling their number by mistake and would keep calling them back because the fax didn't go through. I'll bet he even answered it once and knew it was a fax machine. He likely just let the thing keep calling so he could blame me for harassing them. The nice thing was that even though Knod thought I was responsible, she still wanted to be friends with me. I decided not to address the issue and hoped that she would find out on her own that he was a twerp.
She did find that out, after she got pregnant. He left her for someone else and didn't want to have anything to do with Knod or their baby. I got to see Knod just a couple of months before she gave birth. Her daughter was born on my birthday. Not long after she was born, Knod came out to California with her older sister and her kids for a trip to Disneyland. I got to see Knod and her baby. I also got to know her sister a lot better. Way back in Denver, anytime her sister was at Knod's house, she acted like a stuck-up little princess and never talked to me (even though she had two kids). It was nice to see that she matured into a responsible young mother.
The next time I went to Denver, I got to hang out with Knod and her daughter. We went out to get something to eat. Sheld joined us. She and Knod had become friends again. I hadn't seen her in more than six years, but she didn't act like she had changed much since I used to know her. About a year after that, I had planned a trip to Denver. Knod asked me if I could take Sheld and S_____ to San Diego with me. They would stay with me temporarily. I guess she wanted to get back at Lard. I agreed, because I wanted to get back at him, too. A few minutes after getting off the phone, I knew I would ultimately regret doing that and really started to dread going to Denver. However, Knod never mentioned it again before my trip. I asked her about it, but she said it wasn't going to happen. WHEW!
Not long after that, Knod met another guy and got pregnant. They planned to get married in 1999 after the baby girl was born. I was invited to the wedding and actually made the trip out. I did not know anything about her fiance, whose name was Sond. The day before the wedding, I came over to Knod's house. I got to see their baby for the first time. I was holding her when Sond came home from work. He was tall and very muscular. I could see rage starting to build in his eyes. I introduced myself and said, "Well, I guess I need to hand your daughter over to you." I have a feeling he did not like the idea that Knod had a male friend who was coming to the wedding. He was probably successful in keeping all of her other male friends away, but not me. She was likely able to use the argument "He's like a brother to me!" in order to get him to allow me to be there. I think he was afraid I was going to make some kind of scene. But that didn't mean he had to be nice to me. I'm certain that was the worst first impression with him seeing me hold his little girl. I didn't know what to make of this. I didn't know if he was another jerk like Lard.
But I found out quickly that he wasn't. After the wedding, he was really nice and very pleasant toward me. I guess that was because I didn't set fire to the chapel or do anything else to disrupt the proceedings. I definitely approved of him. (And I'll add that he adopted Knod's oldest daughter. Yes, he's a good guy.)
I came back and saw Knod and Sond a couple of years later. They were still living at her mom's house. I didn't get to go back to Denver until December of 2009. My cousin Jend had passed away and I came for the funeral. I was able to see Knod the day I was going to fly back home to San Jose. My brother Loyd also got to meet her. He had actually gotten to meet her before, in December of 1990, but neither one of them remembered that. We also got to see her youngest daughter, who was home sick that day. Loyd, as usual, pulled his old stunt of trying to get my friends to like him better than me. He pulled out all the stops on this one. He brought his guitar and played a couple of children's songs he'd written for his elementary school students. Afterward, he said, "Nope, that didn't work."
Knod and Sond have both been through a lot of different jobs and they've managed to stick together as a family. She has since gotten involved in burlesque performances and has quite a following. I'm Facebook friends with her, Sond and her mother.
I have no idea what happened to Sheld or Lard. I found S______ on Facebook. He became a father in January of 2014. He's also Facebook friends with his half-sister (but does not list her as a family member). He's a shift manager at a Carl's Jr. Deld still lives in Arvada. She had a daughter and is Facebook friends with Knod.
It's hard to believe that I've continued to be friends with Knod after more than 25 years. I never saw that coming, especially considering she got hauled away by police because she was riding in my car. But when friends are meant to be friends, they don't let incarceration stand in the way.
Not long after, Knod and Sheld had a falling out and weren't speaking to each other. Knod still wanted to be friends with me. I had some music she wanted to hear, so she invited me over to her house one afternoon. Her mother was there. We went into Knod's room and she shut the door. I asked her if her mother was okay with us hanging out. She said her mom didn't have a problem with it as long as I didn't mess with her head. While we were listening to the music, she showed me a scrapbook of photos taken in the last year.
During this time, Knod became friends with another girl her age named Deld. The three of us hung around quite frequently and went to the movies several times. (It was nice that I could get in just about any movie theatre for free.)
In the meantime, Sheld got pregnant by this jerk named Lard. (I've been dying to use that as a name for someone. I'm glad it's this guy!) Before I left Denver to move to San Diego, Sheld held a Halloween party a few days before I left. Knod was also going to be there. (Deld was not there.) Sheld was pregnant at the time and allowed me to take photographs of her. Knod showed up wearing a cat suit.
After I left for San Diego, Knod and I wrote each other frequently. When I had planned a trip back to Denver for my vacation, Knod said she wanted to come out and hang around in San Diego. She had a friend named Cald that she had invited along. This outing will be the topic of another post way in the future. (I'm just providing a summary of our friendship here.)
Sheld had her baby boy, but got involved in an ugly custody battle with Lard. In the meantime, Knod became romantically involved with Lard and thus became a bitter enemy of Sheld. Knod moved in with Lard and help to raise his son. They planned to get married. However, it was clear that Lard was very jealous of Knod's friendship with me. She sent me this letter:
It reads, "To my understanding, (Lard) says that you have called at least 10 - 15 times a day. He knows this because of Caller ID. I want to ask you to please not do this. With the phone ringing off the hook, it's hard for them to care for S_____ and keep S__ on his routine with this annoyance."
WHAT? I wasn't doing that. One thing I know for certain was that my phone number wasn't showing up on their Caller ID because numbers in California wouldn't appear at the time. California was the last state to get the Caller ID feature. Until then, all California numbers were displayed as "Unknown Caller." The best I can figure is that a fax machine from California was calling their number by mistake and would keep calling them back because the fax didn't go through. I'll bet he even answered it once and knew it was a fax machine. He likely just let the thing keep calling so he could blame me for harassing them. The nice thing was that even though Knod thought I was responsible, she still wanted to be friends with me. I decided not to address the issue and hoped that she would find out on her own that he was a twerp.
She did find that out, after she got pregnant. He left her for someone else and didn't want to have anything to do with Knod or their baby. I got to see Knod just a couple of months before she gave birth. Her daughter was born on my birthday. Not long after she was born, Knod came out to California with her older sister and her kids for a trip to Disneyland. I got to see Knod and her baby. I also got to know her sister a lot better. Way back in Denver, anytime her sister was at Knod's house, she acted like a stuck-up little princess and never talked to me (even though she had two kids). It was nice to see that she matured into a responsible young mother.
The next time I went to Denver, I got to hang out with Knod and her daughter. We went out to get something to eat. Sheld joined us. She and Knod had become friends again. I hadn't seen her in more than six years, but she didn't act like she had changed much since I used to know her. About a year after that, I had planned a trip to Denver. Knod asked me if I could take Sheld and S_____ to San Diego with me. They would stay with me temporarily. I guess she wanted to get back at Lard. I agreed, because I wanted to get back at him, too. A few minutes after getting off the phone, I knew I would ultimately regret doing that and really started to dread going to Denver. However, Knod never mentioned it again before my trip. I asked her about it, but she said it wasn't going to happen. WHEW!
Not long after that, Knod met another guy and got pregnant. They planned to get married in 1999 after the baby girl was born. I was invited to the wedding and actually made the trip out. I did not know anything about her fiance, whose name was Sond. The day before the wedding, I came over to Knod's house. I got to see their baby for the first time. I was holding her when Sond came home from work. He was tall and very muscular. I could see rage starting to build in his eyes. I introduced myself and said, "Well, I guess I need to hand your daughter over to you." I have a feeling he did not like the idea that Knod had a male friend who was coming to the wedding. He was probably successful in keeping all of her other male friends away, but not me. She was likely able to use the argument "He's like a brother to me!" in order to get him to allow me to be there. I think he was afraid I was going to make some kind of scene. But that didn't mean he had to be nice to me. I'm certain that was the worst first impression with him seeing me hold his little girl. I didn't know what to make of this. I didn't know if he was another jerk like Lard.
But I found out quickly that he wasn't. After the wedding, he was really nice and very pleasant toward me. I guess that was because I didn't set fire to the chapel or do anything else to disrupt the proceedings. I definitely approved of him. (And I'll add that he adopted Knod's oldest daughter. Yes, he's a good guy.)
I came back and saw Knod and Sond a couple of years later. They were still living at her mom's house. I didn't get to go back to Denver until December of 2009. My cousin Jend had passed away and I came for the funeral. I was able to see Knod the day I was going to fly back home to San Jose. My brother Loyd also got to meet her. He had actually gotten to meet her before, in December of 1990, but neither one of them remembered that. We also got to see her youngest daughter, who was home sick that day. Loyd, as usual, pulled his old stunt of trying to get my friends to like him better than me. He pulled out all the stops on this one. He brought his guitar and played a couple of children's songs he'd written for his elementary school students. Afterward, he said, "Nope, that didn't work."
Knod and Sond have both been through a lot of different jobs and they've managed to stick together as a family. She has since gotten involved in burlesque performances and has quite a following. I'm Facebook friends with her, Sond and her mother.
I have no idea what happened to Sheld or Lard. I found S______ on Facebook. He became a father in January of 2014. He's also Facebook friends with his half-sister (but does not list her as a family member). He's a shift manager at a Carl's Jr. Deld still lives in Arvada. She had a daughter and is Facebook friends with Knod.
It's hard to believe that I've continued to be friends with Knod after more than 25 years. I never saw that coming, especially considering she got hauled away by police because she was riding in my car. But when friends are meant to be friends, they don't let incarceration stand in the way.
Monday, November 2, 2015
Little Sister: Knod (Part 1)
Something unusual happened to me when I was in my mid-20s in Denver. I suddenly made friends with several teenage girls. I wasn't trying to date them, but I found myself getting swept up in their family issues. And I honestly never expected to get close enough to one to the point that we would act like brother and sister, but that's what happened.
This all came about because of Rid. Rid had made friends with several people who were Goth. Many of the people in the crowd tended to be teenagers. There were times when he couldn't provide a car, so I would get called in like the cavalry to help pick people up and take them to their destinations, whether it be an all ages club, Muddy's Java Cafe, Denny's or someone's house.
It all started on a Friday night in January 1990. Rid asked me to come pick him and a friend up in Arvada. His friend's name was Sterd. When I first met Sterd, he kind of had a mean look in his eye. But I got to know him a lot better (and he even wound up working at the Mayan Theatre). He really wasn't mean, but I guess he liked to give that as a first impression. While we were en route to their destination at Muddy's in Downtown Denver, Sterd told me about how he rang in the New Year with his new girlfriend Jused. However, he almost made it sound like he'd never had a girlfriend before.
We went into Muddy's. At that time, Muddy's would have you pay a cover charge of $4 on Friday and Saturday nights. They would give you a card and you could use that as a credit toward your order. Jused was there. There was also a good friend of Sterd named Haved and he was there with his girlfriend Vad. Haved was an interesting character. He worked in the mailroom for the Environmental Protection Agency. He got to wear his full Goth gear while on the job.
We all sat at a large table in one of the corners of the cafe. There were a couple of other people sitting with us. One of them was Knod. She was a 14-year-old girl with dyed black hair and large brown eyes. She sat between me and Rid. I didn't really get to talk to her that night. I remember Rid giving her a lecture on not treating people right with regards to some teenage boy that everyone was giving a hard time to.
We did not all stick to the table all night long. I went exploring around the cafe. They had a upper level with several bookshelves. You could choose any book you wanted to read while you were there at the cafe. At one point, I saw Knod talking to this guy named Daed between a row of shelves. I couldn't really hear the entire conversation, but it seemed like they had been going out and he was trying to convince her to come back to him. He had an intensity in his face that was a little intimidating.
The next Friday night, I had plans to go to Muddy's because the Rocky Mountain Theatre Guild was doing a production of Steve Tesich's "Lake of the Woods" in the basement and the director JA said I could have free tickets to the opening night. I told Rid and he was interested in going. He asked me to get three additional tickets. I asked JA for four tickets and he said it was okay. Then Rid asked me to drive to Arvada to pick Knod up from her home. She was going to go with us to the play. It was snowing, but not so hard that I wouldn't be able to drive. Traffic wasn't too bad. It probably took me about a half hour to get to her house.
I found her house and knocked on the front door. She answered. There didn't seem to be anyone else at home. She had to spend a little more time getting ready. While I was waiting, I looked at the photographs of her and her family scattered around the living room. Then she was good to go. We didn't talk much on the way to Downtown Denver. I remember going over a hill on I-70 and yelling, "Wheeee!" I also recall her singing along with the songs "Just Between You and Me" by Lou Gramm and "Dangerous" by Roxette when they came on the radio. That surprised me because I thought she was all into Goth music and shut out anything that was mainstream. I was wrong.
I drove Knod over to Haved's and Sterd's apartment. Rid was there. Haved was feeling bad because Vad broke up with him. Rid said he was going to hang out and help Haved get through this crisis. He told me and Sterd to go ahead to Muddy's and he would catch up to us later. Sterd and I didn't have to pay the cover because we were going to the theatre in the basement. The production started and there was no sign of Rid, Haved or Knod. I got to see several people who were involved in the production of "The Three Musketeers." After the play ended, Sterd and I went upstairs. I saw Haved sitting at a table with Knod and he was doing most of the talking. We found Rid and hung out for awhile. I had to go home and work the next day.
The next night, Rid called me and asked me to come over to Haved's and Sterd's place. We were all going to go hang out at Muddy's again that night. While we were on the phone, Rid told me that Knod thought I was a little weird when I went "Whee!" over that hill. When I arrived, I could hear Knod screaming, "I WANT TO DIE! I WANT TO DIE!" Apparently, something happened between Haved and Knod the previous night and he just told her he was getting back together with Vad. Rid, Sterd, Haved and I all went to Muddy's. Jused stayed with Knod to help her through this crisis. When we came back, Knod and Jused were gone, but we found a message on the bathroom mirror. There were a couple of streaks of blood along with words written in eyeliner, "These are the tears that I have cried. I will always love you. Knod."
I saw Knod sporadically over the course of the next year. During that time, I became friends with this girl named Sheld. We would hang out from time to time. She also happened to be a friend of Knod's. On Friday, January 04, 1991, we had gone out to meet some of her friends, including Knod, at Denny's in Arvada. I remarked about how it had been a year since I first met Knod.
The next Friday night, Sheld asked me to come over and pick her and Knod up to go out. When I went into Knod's house, her mother Ms. B was there. This was the first time I'd met Ms. B. She looked like an older version of Knod. She didn't seem to mind at all that her teenage daughter was hanging out with some guy in his 20s.
Sheld, Knod and I were driving around, trying to find this guy that Sheld liked. He was one of those guys who made himself up to look like Robert Smith from The Cure. Sheld had us go to the halfway house where he was living at the time. She said he told her that he was under curfew and wasn't permitted to leave the house that night. When we arrived, he wasn't there. "But what about his curfew?" "He doesn't have a curfew on Friday or Saturday night." The person there told us he was at Muddy's. We drove over there. Along they way, Knod kept telling Sheld, "He LIED to you! It's pretty obvious he doesn't think you're his girlfriend!" But Sheld wouldn't listen.
We got to Muddy's and asked around for him. One person asked, "Does he look like Robert Smith? Yeah, he was here, but he left already." We went back to the car. Sheld thought that the only way he could get back to the house was by taking the bus, so she figured if we drove back, we'd be able to beat him there. We got back to the halfway house and did a stake out. We were out there for about an hour before Sheld gave up and wanted to go home.
Shortly after we started off, Sheld saw a 7-Eleven and asked me to pull in so she could make a phone call on a payphone. I turned left at the stop light, pulled in and parked the car. The next thing I knew, there were police lights flashing behind me. An officer got out and instructed us to stay in the car. He asked to see my registration and insurance. I had registration, but no insurance. He said that the issue was that he couldn't see the temporary tag on my car. This was car #3, a 1978 Ford Pinto that did nothing but cause problems. (A much more detailed post will be coming up on that later.) I'd only had the car a couple of weeks. I didn't have my ID. I thought I was going to be arrested, but he asked for my name, date of birth and Social Security number. He was able to verify my identity. He had me get out of the car and showed me the tag on the back window, which had been all fogged up because of there being three people inside for the last hour without the heater going. Another officer asked the girls to get out of the car. My officer asked me how old my passengers were. I said one was 15 and the other was 16. "Just friends!" (At the time, I thought Sheld was 15 and Knod was 16. They were both actually a year younger than the ages I provided.)
In the middle of all this, another police car showed up. This was apparently the crime of the century going down at the 7-Eleven. The next thing I knew, an officer informed Knod that there was a warrant out for her arrest. He held her hands behind her back and put handcuffs on her. She started crying. "No, you can't. I'm just straightening my life out right now." My officer game me a ticket for not having any insurance and told me that Sheld and I were free to go. I drove Sheld back to her house without incident. On the way, Sheld told me she was surprised she wasn't arrested because she was aware of a warrant for her. I think the cops may have been confused because I said the girls were 15 and 16. Since Knod was the 15-year-old, they probably thought Sheld was 16. Sheld also gave the cops the nickname she went by and not her real name. When they were checking the database for a 16-year-old named Sheld, nothing probably came up.
However, after the cops took Knod down to the station, it was determined that the warrant had been suppressed. Someone had to call the judge up in the middle of the night to verify and she was released to her mother. While I was glad it turned out okay, I was concerned about the impression I was leaving on Knod. It seemed like anytime I drove her anywhere, it just led to trouble. But it didn't bother her and it didn't bother her mom.
The stupid thing was that if Sheld hadn't decided to make that phone call, I would have crossed the street and been in a different town, where the cops on my tail had no jurisdiction. I would have been able to keep on driving without getting a ticket or Knod getting arrested.
This marked the second time that I became friends with someone after getting into a tussle with the police. The first was Rid.
I'll have more on Knod tomorrow.
This all came about because of Rid. Rid had made friends with several people who were Goth. Many of the people in the crowd tended to be teenagers. There were times when he couldn't provide a car, so I would get called in like the cavalry to help pick people up and take them to their destinations, whether it be an all ages club, Muddy's Java Cafe, Denny's or someone's house.
It all started on a Friday night in January 1990. Rid asked me to come pick him and a friend up in Arvada. His friend's name was Sterd. When I first met Sterd, he kind of had a mean look in his eye. But I got to know him a lot better (and he even wound up working at the Mayan Theatre). He really wasn't mean, but I guess he liked to give that as a first impression. While we were en route to their destination at Muddy's in Downtown Denver, Sterd told me about how he rang in the New Year with his new girlfriend Jused. However, he almost made it sound like he'd never had a girlfriend before.
We went into Muddy's. At that time, Muddy's would have you pay a cover charge of $4 on Friday and Saturday nights. They would give you a card and you could use that as a credit toward your order. Jused was there. There was also a good friend of Sterd named Haved and he was there with his girlfriend Vad. Haved was an interesting character. He worked in the mailroom for the Environmental Protection Agency. He got to wear his full Goth gear while on the job.
We all sat at a large table in one of the corners of the cafe. There were a couple of other people sitting with us. One of them was Knod. She was a 14-year-old girl with dyed black hair and large brown eyes. She sat between me and Rid. I didn't really get to talk to her that night. I remember Rid giving her a lecture on not treating people right with regards to some teenage boy that everyone was giving a hard time to.
We did not all stick to the table all night long. I went exploring around the cafe. They had a upper level with several bookshelves. You could choose any book you wanted to read while you were there at the cafe. At one point, I saw Knod talking to this guy named Daed between a row of shelves. I couldn't really hear the entire conversation, but it seemed like they had been going out and he was trying to convince her to come back to him. He had an intensity in his face that was a little intimidating.
The next Friday night, I had plans to go to Muddy's because the Rocky Mountain Theatre Guild was doing a production of Steve Tesich's "Lake of the Woods" in the basement and the director JA said I could have free tickets to the opening night. I told Rid and he was interested in going. He asked me to get three additional tickets. I asked JA for four tickets and he said it was okay. Then Rid asked me to drive to Arvada to pick Knod up from her home. She was going to go with us to the play. It was snowing, but not so hard that I wouldn't be able to drive. Traffic wasn't too bad. It probably took me about a half hour to get to her house.
I found her house and knocked on the front door. She answered. There didn't seem to be anyone else at home. She had to spend a little more time getting ready. While I was waiting, I looked at the photographs of her and her family scattered around the living room. Then she was good to go. We didn't talk much on the way to Downtown Denver. I remember going over a hill on I-70 and yelling, "Wheeee!" I also recall her singing along with the songs "Just Between You and Me" by Lou Gramm and "Dangerous" by Roxette when they came on the radio. That surprised me because I thought she was all into Goth music and shut out anything that was mainstream. I was wrong.
I drove Knod over to Haved's and Sterd's apartment. Rid was there. Haved was feeling bad because Vad broke up with him. Rid said he was going to hang out and help Haved get through this crisis. He told me and Sterd to go ahead to Muddy's and he would catch up to us later. Sterd and I didn't have to pay the cover because we were going to the theatre in the basement. The production started and there was no sign of Rid, Haved or Knod. I got to see several people who were involved in the production of "The Three Musketeers." After the play ended, Sterd and I went upstairs. I saw Haved sitting at a table with Knod and he was doing most of the talking. We found Rid and hung out for awhile. I had to go home and work the next day.
The next night, Rid called me and asked me to come over to Haved's and Sterd's place. We were all going to go hang out at Muddy's again that night. While we were on the phone, Rid told me that Knod thought I was a little weird when I went "Whee!" over that hill. When I arrived, I could hear Knod screaming, "I WANT TO DIE! I WANT TO DIE!" Apparently, something happened between Haved and Knod the previous night and he just told her he was getting back together with Vad. Rid, Sterd, Haved and I all went to Muddy's. Jused stayed with Knod to help her through this crisis. When we came back, Knod and Jused were gone, but we found a message on the bathroom mirror. There were a couple of streaks of blood along with words written in eyeliner, "These are the tears that I have cried. I will always love you. Knod."
I saw Knod sporadically over the course of the next year. During that time, I became friends with this girl named Sheld. We would hang out from time to time. She also happened to be a friend of Knod's. On Friday, January 04, 1991, we had gone out to meet some of her friends, including Knod, at Denny's in Arvada. I remarked about how it had been a year since I first met Knod.
The next Friday night, Sheld asked me to come over and pick her and Knod up to go out. When I went into Knod's house, her mother Ms. B was there. This was the first time I'd met Ms. B. She looked like an older version of Knod. She didn't seem to mind at all that her teenage daughter was hanging out with some guy in his 20s.
Sheld, Knod and I were driving around, trying to find this guy that Sheld liked. He was one of those guys who made himself up to look like Robert Smith from The Cure. Sheld had us go to the halfway house where he was living at the time. She said he told her that he was under curfew and wasn't permitted to leave the house that night. When we arrived, he wasn't there. "But what about his curfew?" "He doesn't have a curfew on Friday or Saturday night." The person there told us he was at Muddy's. We drove over there. Along they way, Knod kept telling Sheld, "He LIED to you! It's pretty obvious he doesn't think you're his girlfriend!" But Sheld wouldn't listen.
We got to Muddy's and asked around for him. One person asked, "Does he look like Robert Smith? Yeah, he was here, but he left already." We went back to the car. Sheld thought that the only way he could get back to the house was by taking the bus, so she figured if we drove back, we'd be able to beat him there. We got back to the halfway house and did a stake out. We were out there for about an hour before Sheld gave up and wanted to go home.
Shortly after we started off, Sheld saw a 7-Eleven and asked me to pull in so she could make a phone call on a payphone. I turned left at the stop light, pulled in and parked the car. The next thing I knew, there were police lights flashing behind me. An officer got out and instructed us to stay in the car. He asked to see my registration and insurance. I had registration, but no insurance. He said that the issue was that he couldn't see the temporary tag on my car. This was car #3, a 1978 Ford Pinto that did nothing but cause problems. (A much more detailed post will be coming up on that later.) I'd only had the car a couple of weeks. I didn't have my ID. I thought I was going to be arrested, but he asked for my name, date of birth and Social Security number. He was able to verify my identity. He had me get out of the car and showed me the tag on the back window, which had been all fogged up because of there being three people inside for the last hour without the heater going. Another officer asked the girls to get out of the car. My officer asked me how old my passengers were. I said one was 15 and the other was 16. "Just friends!" (At the time, I thought Sheld was 15 and Knod was 16. They were both actually a year younger than the ages I provided.)
In the middle of all this, another police car showed up. This was apparently the crime of the century going down at the 7-Eleven. The next thing I knew, an officer informed Knod that there was a warrant out for her arrest. He held her hands behind her back and put handcuffs on her. She started crying. "No, you can't. I'm just straightening my life out right now." My officer game me a ticket for not having any insurance and told me that Sheld and I were free to go. I drove Sheld back to her house without incident. On the way, Sheld told me she was surprised she wasn't arrested because she was aware of a warrant for her. I think the cops may have been confused because I said the girls were 15 and 16. Since Knod was the 15-year-old, they probably thought Sheld was 16. Sheld also gave the cops the nickname she went by and not her real name. When they were checking the database for a 16-year-old named Sheld, nothing probably came up.
However, after the cops took Knod down to the station, it was determined that the warrant had been suppressed. Someone had to call the judge up in the middle of the night to verify and she was released to her mother. While I was glad it turned out okay, I was concerned about the impression I was leaving on Knod. It seemed like anytime I drove her anywhere, it just led to trouble. But it didn't bother her and it didn't bother her mom.
The stupid thing was that if Sheld hadn't decided to make that phone call, I would have crossed the street and been in a different town, where the cops on my tail had no jurisdiction. I would have been able to keep on driving without getting a ticket or Knod getting arrested.
This marked the second time that I became friends with someone after getting into a tussle with the police. The first was Rid.
I'll have more on Knod tomorrow.
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