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Wow, what a week.
Started off with a drive to Arizona, 2300 miles round trip in 2 1/2 days. Along the way I caught a upper resperaotory infection that combined with my asthma has made it hard to breathe and cause me to all but loose my voice.
Played some cribbage tonight, been 6 years since I played my first 10 games and still whooped some booty. Problem is cribbage takes os long with 4 players headed for a thousand and my wife fell asleep at the table before we were through. There went our plans.
Oh well, can't say with 4.5 children that missing once and a while hurts too bad. Sorry being the scientific fool I am, had to test the theory of Rum and it's effects on illnesses. My throat may now be any better but heck I don't give a damn anymore.
Got some eggnog and here I am still nursing my last triple Morgan and Coke. Use to be a pretty heavy drinker. Ran restaurants in bars and bounce after they closed. All I could drink was on the house. Dated a bartender and naturally she would like to drink after hours, and had a boss that twice a week would crack open the bartenders handbook and start mixing shooters he had never mixed.
That change one night as a 17 year old punk with a fake ID decide the drunken boncer made an easy target at an after hours party. He worked at the bar and passed the state licquer board inpectors review with that licence. I found out his real age the hard way. We started the fight with him driving a 5th bottle of vodka mixed half and half with orangejuice into my mouth. Saw some karate movies and thought he was Steven Segal. I am well versed in Kypo, Judo, and Ti Chi so he proceeded to throw everything at me and I proceeded to block.
After a while I was getting smashed and he started landing a few. He hit me in my face and I retrned a haymaker that missed, spun on some boards at that old stoned cabin and saw stars as I hit the ground, real ones no knock out. Got up facing the wrong way and heard him laughing behind me, so like a dummy I tok two steps forward and hit the stone wall. That pushed half my knuckle out the back of my hand, never saw it again, I turned toward him and said, " Come here bitch." and we locked up one last time. I hit him in the gut so hard it ruptured an ulcer and sent hime to the window spitting up blood.
We rushed him to the E.R. and waited 4 hours till the coast was clear. His family arrived and was talking to on lookers and we found out his age. My heart sank, if he died I would surely get the death penalty, as was I would be looking a 3-5 for asault on a minor. Mike pulled through, and his dad came to me and said he respected the fact I stood by his son despite what I was facing. He said he knew nothing of the ID and would have a talk with the boy, what happened next blew my sox off. He started to tell me how I had a great group of friends who told him the whole story, and he couldn't see me waiste my whole life over something out of my control. He said he would make sure Mike said nothing and that I should go home and put the whole thing to rest.
The end result was nearly 2 years without a drop, and I have never let drinking take control since. I can still tie one on at New Years, on my B-Day and occasionally just for the heck of it, like tonight where I feel like SHIT, but for the most part it takes 30-60 days to finish 12 beers. I would never advocate complete abstenece from alcohol, met too many beautiful women with it, some because of it. Yup coyote love. But I will tell you that old uncle Al can be a biotch if you let it take control and ask that if you find yourself going to the bar with a full pocket, leaving with an emptyone and haven't bought me a drink. You may think it's no problem, but talk to an expert to make sure. All it takes is one mistake to really mess up big. I got lucky.
Jacksonville Florida, 21 years ago on Thanks Giving Day someone was not so lucky. Seems a drunk driver crossed the line at the top of a main bridge downtown with no center divider. He was doing 80 and nailed a motorcycle head on. All 3 riders were killed instantly. My half sister, her fiance, and my 3 month old nephew in a papoose pack wer on the bike. Never met any of them because Uncle Al went uncecked. Never forgive that moron, he got off in 5 years and went and repeated the same stunt, on probation he killed a family of 4. To show how injust the courts are, the bastard got another 10 without parole. Killed 7 people for a total of 15 years in prison.
In all my drinking, I have never failed to take a designated driver, or just pain drink at home. Why then do so many think they are lords of the road and take the chance.
My last call as a firefighter in Quartzsite Arizona was a single vehichle rollover. Seems this guy has been drinking all day in Havasu City and his wife was witnessed begging him to let her drive home to Blythe California. He knew he was in control.
We arrived and he was sitting in the median, small cut above his left eye and saying oh my truck. My Truck, we jsut mentioned the wife. I went arount to the drivers side to see if I could gain access from there to help free his wife and my heart sank as I saw a cold and lifeless limb of a small child. Blue fingers, blood everywhere, no pulse. The wife is screaming my baby, my baby, a sound that brings tears to my eyes today. We assumed she meant the child in the back seat. Since there were less than 10 minutes from call to arrival out came the porta power and we pealed back the roof. Here lay a 4 year old girl with her head in the seat beside her.
As you are trained to do, we dropped everything and went to the aide of the woman, we tried to tell her not to worry we weree doing all we could. She was pinned so hard between the dash and her seat that it mearly cut her in half. We stated asking questions for the reports as we began extracation, but non of us believed in our hearts she stood a chance. No chance, we pulled back the dash and within minutes she had bled out. Two down, and here we go, Captain Browning and myself both go after this nasty bastard who could think of nothing but the truck. Even when we told him bout his wife and 4 year old it didn't sink in. We would have killed him if it hadn't been for 6 firefighters and 2 DPS officers pulling us back.
The next day, post accident recvery went out to inspect the cleanup and see to highway recovery. Seems that in the very back of the truck was a safety seat we had missed. The woman was holding an 8 month old baby when they rolled and the baby was ejected. They found the body of the infant 80 feet from the roadway about 3/4 of a mile before the stopping point. This sick bastard had killed his wife and 2 children, and seemed only worried about his prescious SUV would get 7 years for manslaughter if convicted. Our illustrious county attourney let him plead out to assault with a deadly weapon, dropping it to 1 year, probation after 4 months. they should have let us have hime and gave us a deal like that.
Thirtytwo and I have seen a lifetime of anger and death. I have seen crack heads, and prostetutes who I cold honestly relate too. Just think, you're raped at 12 and abused to the point you have spent nearly half your life in a hospital. This poor girl, she had 4 pins in her jaw from the job her father had done to her. Nearly died 4 times and despite being removed from the home 3 of those times was returned after 30 days counceling. Each time she was beaten for having subjected him to that kind of shame and ridicule. This girl prayed to die and even her prayers were not answered.
Angel as we knew here on the streets was about 2 years older than I was. When we net she was turning tricks at one of the truck stops my dad painted at. She was 14, and heavily addicted to the one escape she had. Meth had become the one good feeling in an otherwise ****ty life. Her father had been the one to turn her out, but that was finally his downfall as another pimp wanted her more and drove a 7 inch knife through his ribs. That's when she was doped for the first time. The abuse had continued and she feared for her life and when the chance came to hop a truck she was bound for California.
She was tired, scared, and hungry. For such a young girl she looked 30 and had sen more than most every pray. She loved art, she would wander by and stare from a distance as my dad would paint on these trucks. After a while she finally started to talk with my dad about how he got into what he was doing. Later that day she became the first dope head, or hooker for that matter to ever dine at our table. the things her life had lead her through never crossed the table as descussion topic, though each of us would talk eventually with her about what had gotten her from pont a to point b. We gave her shelter and attempted to make her a part of the family, helped her get in to a halfway house and she tried for a while.
Foster care placed her with an older coule and things went fine at first, but as the father figure started to learn of her past he began to use her as his private whore. She was 16 and pregnat with his child when we saw her next. He found out about the baby and kicked her out before she could tell his wife. This time she stayed with us for nearly a month before she went to stay with a christian driver friend of ours. He and his churched helped her complete highschool, get some minor plastic surgery to repair some of the years of abuse, and she entered Art School. Two years later she was out of school, had a degree, but because some idiot descided they should get on a high and mighty note and bring up her past she could not find work.
She left her baby in that stable home, and went out to see if she could find a job in another town, she wanted so bad to be able to provide for her child. She was raped and beaten, left for dead in Denver. Her brain was damaged and she became more unstable with each passing day. She was on so many perscriptions that she knew up not from down. History repeats itself and when you know only one sure fire way to put food on the table she went back to hooking. The last time we saw her she was lost, a shadow of this poor girl we had once tried to help, she was violent, and wild, and saw men as a means of getting a meal and a fix. She didn't even remember the child she had or us for that matter.
Why am I telling you all this? T.V. paints two pictures to two extremes with no in between. They show happy endings, and they show criminals that refuse to change, hardend by the streets. People drawn to bad choices without a care in the world. But, as I have seen there are too many people like Angel who have fallen through every crack in the system, run out of people to trust, and know no other life than the one the have been delt. They are survivors on the meanest streets in America, and sometimes they choose an escape, for some that escape is suicide and Angle is no longer with us. Not 24 hours after we ran into her last her body was found in a bathoom, she had mainlined enough meth to kill an elephant. T.V. painted a picture of a junkie prostitute in and out of jail, moving from town to town. She was listed as mentally unbalanced and then she just put herself out of all our misery.
They failed to mention the child, the young girl victimised, raped, abused, turned out on the streets by her own father. They failed to memntion she tried to turn her life around but because some hypocrit at the church that was suposed to be helpingher decided he needed to feel a little better about himself, was reduced to life she wold live the rest of her life. They mentioned the suicide, but not the fear, and the depression, the lonliness, and the fealing of being forsaken that lead her there. They did not ask how, why, or even begin to hold our system that just kept sending her back accountable.
I ran for public office to make a difference, and you know what? I became a victim myself. People in general don't like to hear stories like these, they are too hard to look at. You know in your heart that you our system is set up to protect us, and most see no way that system could fail that badly. Instead they see a broke down junkie making excuses. I tried to be pro growth, and pro youth. I believed whole heartedly that eduction, protection, and oportunity were our responsibility at a local level. I tried to work with churches, schools, and state offices to provide a future far greater that the one offered to so many like Angel, and stop a trend of peole leaving town at 18 and returning at 81. I was ridiculed, recalled, and they even tried to kill me twice. Had 2 businesses put out of business before I decided to move. Now my own brother was set up in Quartzsite in a mock court and faces 7 years probation and a felony that will impact the rest of his life.
the deck was stacked, there were 12 witnesses who were only hearsay, a judge that allowed my brother right to a speedy trial to be trampled, he was there waiting trial for over 420 days when he should have been tried in 150 or released. Key evidence was withheld and 3 public defenders swore that Martin had no chance. The witness list read from the roles of my recall, and with the recent heart and lung problems my father has had Martin decided to take a deal. Our only hope now is to get a pardon, so please stay tuned to this blog, or any of my others as I will be annoncng a petition in the near future to try and win one through either the Govenor of Arizona or our departing President.
Maybe we can all be a part of making sure that in at least one case, justice prevails.
Andy
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