(Continued from Part 3.)
I dated one girl at our store and her sister who worked at the other store, and they didn’t seem to mind it in the least that I was dating them both. Yes, I was a horrible womanizer, and I’m ashamed of myself for that. If I could only change the past – that is one of the things I would change. One girl I was dating worked in the back room, in accounting. I didn’t even know her name when I first asked her out – and didn’t really care. Sadly, I ended up marrying her. That was a huge mistake. The first time I went out with her, she introduced me to her mom and dad. He was a really nice guy, when she introduced me to her mother, she said – and she was right in my face, to say: “I don’t think I like you.” It never got any better, after that. I was dressed well and was polite – but her mother didn’t like me.
After I married that girl – my third marriage, I worked a lot of Private Investigations jobs – many times I was working two full-time positions, so I wasn’t home much. One gig involved working undercover for a retailer called Alden’s. They had a store that sold returned merchandise. The two weeks leading up to Christmas – found six of us Investigators working plainclothes and two off-duty Chicago cops, as backup. We averaged 25 arrests per day for shoplifting – we kept busy. I was staying with a fellow Investigator overnight, rather than go home after a 12-hour shift, and it was a 50-mile drive to get home. This went on for two weeks, and when I did manage to get home, when I opened the front door, I found all my clothes and guns in a pile on the living room floor. My wife had left me! When I called her at her parent’s house – she told me that she still loved me, but she and her mother decided that we should get divorced, but that we could get together again later. Talk about playing a mind game!
That wife was pregnant, and she wouldn’t even let me know when she had the baby. Two weeks later her doctor called me to let me know I had a baby. However, per my wife’s instructions, he couldn’t tell me if I had a son or daughter. It wasn’t until two weeks later that I got a copy of the birth certificate to find out that I had a daughter. While we fought in court, I was given visitation rights, but every time I tried to visit with her, no one would let me in the house. I finally gave up. Then, just a few short years ago, my never-before-seen daughter decided to find me. I was never hard to find. I paid to fly her out to Oregon to meet me, but I learned she was nothing more than a con artist, and I haven’t seen her since.
As an aside, I used to love riding motorcycles, and many times I could take part of the summers off and just ride. I wrecked practically every bike I had – always doing dangerous and stupid stunts. In 1975, my third wife and I finally divorced. I spent way too much time drinking and doing some light drugs with my old buddies in my old neighborhood – that lasted until 1977.
EMT and PA Work
From 1975 until 1977 I took a job as a truck driver – wanted something different to do. During this time I was going to school, studying to become an EMT. I loved working on an ambulance crew. Besides working on a Chicago Fire Department ambulance I also worked on a private ambulance for quite some time. I was watching the Jim Bakker show on August 17th, 1977 that I became a Christian. Say what you will about Jim Bakker, but it was through his ministry I came to The Lord. I stopped drinking and taking drugs that very day.
At one point, after I had become qualified as an EMT, I asked my family doctor if he had any work for me. The next day I was working for him, screening patients. He also had three nurses working for him. fairly soon, they all quit and it was just me working for him. I had no idea how hard the work was going to be. He worked from 11:00AM until as late as 2:00AM — I kid you not. I got a full medical education working for him for close to two years. We’d leave the office – very early in the AM, and go to the hospital and make rounds after we had just an hour or two of sleep.
I even assisted him with two baby deliveries. I also delivered a couple of babies on my own – while waiting for the ambulance to arrive – both were in the doorways of department stores. I even learned to do some suturing – that was harder than I thought it would be.
After I stopped working for the doctor, I opened up a clinic right across from his office. We did house calls for the doctor. At one point the Illinois National Guard came and asked if we would do enlistment physicals for them. They promised we’d be paid within 30 days after we submitted the bill for the physicals. But it was five months after we went out of business when we saw our first check for those physicals.
Meeting Mary
In 1979, I saw an ad in a Chrisitan magazine, recruiting summer camp counselors. It sounded good to me – they sent me brochures showing a swimming pool, hiking trails, campfires, and various sports. I applied and was interviewed over the phone and was hired. I flew out to Portland, Oregon. I had never been to Oregon before this. The camp looked great. And shortly the campers arrived. Now, they forgot to mention that we had to entertain kids all summer long – it was quite a job, to be sure.
During my stint at this summer camp, I became friends with everyone. But one girl in particular, Mary, became more than a friend. We kept our romance so secret that most of the staff were not even aware that we were seeing each other. In October of that year, we were married. Yes, it was a short courtship. However we worked together every day, and on our brief days off, we spent time with each other. I was a guy from the big city (Chicago) and she was from a rural farm/ranch in Southern Oregon. How could this ever work out? Well, it did, and we are coming up on our 44th wedding anniversary, believe it or not. And, that’s not to say, we haven’t had a few bumps in the road – and a few big bumps. But here we are, all these years later, with two wonderful daughters.
I spent a lot of time studying for the ministry. The Salvation Army, who ran that summer camp several times promised me different ministry positions. But none of them ever came through. But we still tried to attend their “Officers” school so we could work for them. That never happened. One big excuse we were given was that I had “multiple” marriages in my past. Well, I had two of those marriages annulled. Still, they wouldn’t take us into their ministry. Such is life!
During our early married years, we traveled all over the country, trying to find where we might fit in. When we were first married, the Salvation Army gave me a job as a lifeguard at one of their youth centers in Portland – that wasn’t about to make do. At $3.35 per hour, it wasn’t enough for a newly-married couple to make ends meet. I was also working as a short-order cook at a retirement home.
Nuke Security
I ended up taking a security position. I worked 12 hours per day, over the weekend, and they paid me $5 per hour – that was decent money in 1979. I also took a job as a security officer at the Trojan nuclear power plant, outside of Portland. My shift was Monday through Thursday and it was from sundown until sun up. This paid $10 per hour and we had a K-9 partner. That was a great job until the owner of the company wanted us to patrol outside the perimeter fence wearing camouflage face paint and crawling around in the mud. He just went bonkers. So I quit that job.
It was hard for us, Mary had just finished school to become an elementary grades teacher – but there we no openings. I got an FFL and started selling firearms and that helped us make ends meet for a while. I was also a partner in a new Private Investigation business, and I took on a partner in the gun business. In short order, both partners stole from me. One of them stole at least $10,000 that we could account for, and the other one, I learned, was buying and selling stolen guns.
We moved around a lot after that, taking whatever jobs we could find. Mary was working at a daycare – way below her level of training. We moved all over the place, after that. I spent two years back in the Chicago area, where Mary worked in a Christian book store and I worked for a big Detective Agency as their lead investigator.
The owner of the aforementioned company was spending more money than he took in. Quite soon, he had our headquarters building burned to the ground for the insurance money. However, I put two and two together and figured in all out. I got one of the arsonists to turn state’s evidence and I was promised a ten thousand dollar reward. In 1984 we moved to Colorado Springs, Colorado. The BATF had me come back to Chicago to testify in the arson trial. Then the BATF told me that they wouldn’t pay me the ten grand. I was to testify the next day, and told them that my memory wasn’t as good as it used to be without the money that they had promised me. They didn’t put me on the witness stand, and they lost their case.
While in Colorado, I met a guy who sold guns at gun shows. He turned out to be a great friend, and we applied for an FFL and sold guns at gun shows as well as through his gas station as a storefront.
Back to Oregon
In 1988, Mary and I moved back to Oregon. And worked at several jobs, while waiting for our second daughter to arrive. We lived in a tiny shack – and it was a dump of a shack – and paid $125 per month rent. We ended up moving to Klamath Falls, Oregon after that, and I worked for the Salvation Army once again at their youth center. Mary was working with the kids on their homework, and I operated the center.
Gradually, I got into writing. Over the years I’ve been a writer for a lot of publications. These included: Guns & Ammo, Guns, Gun World, American Handgunner, American Survival Guide, Knives Illustrated, Combat Knives, Knife World, We The People (a newspaper), and several Christian magazines. I’ve also written for annuals produced by Guns, American Handgunner, and Guns & Ammo. And, of course, since March of 2011, I’ve been on the paid staff of SurvivalBlog.
(To be continued in Part 4.)