A Flawed Legacy - 34

Tampa was nice, Tampa was hot and I was really not dressed for the heat.  My bag was back at the bus station and I was looking for a cool place to spend the rest of the day.  At least I found what was known as the "Mission" on the streets, but it wasn't what I believed a Mission ought to be.  It consisted of two young girls, volunteers from a nearby church, who knew about Sunday services and that was about it. They turned up their noses at the thought of "any body" working in "this heat".  I headed back to the bus station.  One guy had told me that Orlando had a "neat" Mission.  So, I caught another bus.

There was a bathroom on board and a good place to change clothes.  It was just as hot in Orlando.

I asked about the "Mission" and could find no one who seemed to know anything about one in Orlando, even the Police who were wondering about me.  They stopped me and asked for ID.  "From Texas, eh? What are you doing in Orlando?" and then before I could answer, "Where were you last night?"  It was a good thing that I had kept my copy of my bus ticket.  There had been a rape in downtown Orlando last night and the witnesses had told the Police, "He looked like a transient."  

They told me about the "rescue" Mission and I headed there, being told I would have to wait in line to get a bed  and it was a long line, in the heat   I was really not interested in a bed,  I was interested in finding friends on the streets.  One of the guys ahead of me asked if I knew about the "Coffee" house that was nearby.  "They don't have beds, but they do have good coffee and good music."  I got out of the line and headed for the Coffee house, which was open, even though it was still morning.

I walked in and found some guys sorting through food donations and old clothes.  I asked about the music and was told that it started around Seven in the evening, but they did not have any coffee.  I left to discover more about downtown Orlando.  The first place I found had "rooms" to rent and I signed up for a week.  "Are you sure you want a week?" the clerk asked.  "Yes, of course.  Why do you ask?" "We don't get many white guys in this place" was his answer and I assured him, I wanted to stay a week.  I headed along the same street and came to the Orange Blossom Trail that I had heard about when we were coming back from Miami a couple of years before.  "That is where the 'action' is' I was told then, so I headed South to see what I could see.  Sure enough, I came across a couple of 'ladies' who wondered why I was walking.  I gave them some 'smart aleck' answer and then asked them if they knew Jesus.  "I just knew he was a 'preacher boy' when we saw him coming down the street," one told the other one, "Where are your 'tracts', preacher man?"

I ignored the question and then told them I was just passing through town.  "Any chance there is a place close where we could get a beer?" I asked and they pointed to a place down the street.  "I'll be heading there and if you ladies would like to have a beer with me, come on along."  It did not surprise me that it took awhile, but they eventually joined me.  They had to be in their early twenties and one thing led to another until I had to ask, "Why?"  What did surprise me was that the younger of the two had a tale to tell and when she paused, the other one shared hers.  They had a "man" and I would learn, he lived in the same place I had just rented a room.   That did not surprise me, either.  "I will tell you what I can do if you are interested.  There was a hotel I passed across the street from the Rescue Mission.  Give me a couple of hours and I will rent you a room in that hotel.  Just give me the names you would be are using." They looked at one another and then wrote something down on a piece of paper they got from the bar tender.  It was their names and i told them, their room would be available by 4PM.

They left and the bartender laughed as he had obviously overheard our conversation.  "Man, that was cool and you get to shack up with them for the rest of the night, eh?"   "No sir, I probably will never see either of them again, but if I do, I bet they will be interested in the "Jesus" who they will discover was the name of the guy who rented their room for them."  They were gone from the street when I left the bar and I was glad about that.  If I was to stay in Orlando, I didn't want a reputation of dealing with hookers.

I guess I walked a couple of miles along the "OBT" which was what the 'natives' seemed to call it and when I got tired, I took a cab back to the hotel I had mentioned to the 'ladies'.  With a tip in advance, I had no problem of paying for the room in advance for my "cousins" who would get there about 4PM. He was really surprised when I told him that I was paying for a week in advance.

Then I headed back to the Coffee house and sat down outside of the door that was locked.  I knew that others would be joining me and it didn't take long.  My clothes were not new, but they had been used and I knew that fact would help others to join me.  All I did was ask a lot of questions and listen.  When they told me they thought they were out of coffee, I excused myself and headed for the restaurant across the tracks.

On my way, I took a $50 bill I had hidden in my socks and asked for the manager when I walked in.  "I want to buy a case of coffee," I told him,  "and have you deliver it to the Coffee house down the street. Have your man tell them that it came from Jesus, when He had heard they were out, OK?   It was a deal and I walked the other way to be certain that no one would believe it came from me.

A Flawed Legacy - 27

I spent a week with Blake and Eleanor, the first and last times we would ever be that close.  Of course, I was raised with my grandparents and Blake was like a big brother to me, although we were never too close.  I will never forget the first day I met Eleanor.  They were about to get married (January 10),one of the coldest nights I will ever remember) and they dropped by on Sunday, December 7, 1941 - the day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.

Blake offered to get me back on the road, but first he wanted to show me what Yale - our previous home) looked like.  It had hardly changed, we did stop and see a friend and then, Mina Armstrong, my grade school teacher).  Of course, we went by the farm which had really changed and down some side roads I could recall.  Finally, we wound up near Capac where the highway headed for Inlay City, and a main highway headed for Detroit.  Blake seemed to think I had a lot of courage, hiking around America as he saw it.

My first ride suggested a highway that I did not know about, one that went around Detroit rather than through it and took me far enough to get on his recommended route.  Only thing, it passed by a prison and when a guy stopped, he made sure I wasn't an escaped convict he had just heard about.  He was headed for a town in Ohio that I forget its name for good reason.  He drove into the heart of the city and as I was trying catch a ride, the police stopped and made me show my identification, before telling me I could not hitch hike in the city.  I said OK, walked a dozen or so blocks and stuck out my thumb.  That was a poor decision as the cop came back and told me - at first, he was going to take me to jail for breaking the law.  Instead, he took me to the outskirts of town - far away from any traffic, and let me out.  I'll bet I was there for an hour before I saw one car and that was a local., who turned off a block from where I was standing.  The sun went down and I began to wonder what I could do.  Fortunately, a big Lincoln pulled up, asking where I was headed and told him Columbus - as that was the only city I could think of in that direction.

Turns out he was a nice guy, an ex-USAF pilot and when I told him I had used to "boy-sit" (not baby sit) for Colonel Paul Tibbets at Eglin AFB, he told me that they were friends.  (Tibbets was the pilot on the Enola Gay that dropped the A-bomb on Hiroshima in Japan.  Now he was in business at the airport in Columbus)  With that info, he suggested I stay at his house that night and he would rake me to see the Colonel the next day.  He had a small mansion and had me sleep in their pool house for the night.  I had just got into bed and I heard someone dive into the pool.  I peeked out and saw a woman - in the nude, in the water.  Good idea, I made sure the door was locked, the curtains pulled and I got into bed and went to sleep.

He called me about 7AM and had me come to the house where he had prepared breakfast and we left a few minutes later.  He dropped me off at Tibbets' office, wished me luck and drove off.  I discovered the Colonel was flying in later, learned the boys I knew were all in school and I found some magazines to read while I waited.  A hour or so later my "benefactor" came back, we learned that Tibbetts was going to be much later and said he would take me to the bus stop where I could get a bus going to Charlotte, NC, which had been my original goal.  With that, he gave me a ticket envelope with a bus ticket for Charlotte and a $50 bill - the second one I had received along the way.  We parted ways as he told me, the next time I was coming through Columbus to call him and gave me his business card.  I discovered he was an official in the local city government.

I was in Charlotte by 4PM and found the YMCA where I got a room and went downstairs to get a cold drink and met a moving van driver looking for a "lumper" to help him the next day.  I was his man and he met me at 6:30 the next morning.  It was an easy job and he asked if I would like to ride with him on future jobs.  Yes, sir.  The next day, I discovered a Labor office and was sent to Coca Cola for the day and wound up lifting cases of 32 ounce filled bottles off the line and onto a pallet and I began to think I could not do that for eight hours.  I started to ask the supervisor when he told me they were shutting down that line and sent me over to a "testing" area where they were testing drinks.  All I had to do was start up a line as directed and stack cases of 12 ounce product on special pallets.  That would be my job for the next six weeks.

My moving van driver came by to pick me up for a couple of weekend jobs where we loaded up on Saturday mornings until we were done and I got two days pay.  I opened a bank account to take care of the money I was earning.

Meanwhile, I was studying my Bible on the evenings and was getting used to talking about what I was learning from my studies, all the while going to church, whichever was the closest one, wherever I happened to be.

I had no work scheduled one week, so I got a bus ticket and went to Charleston, SC, where I had always wanted to visit and found it to be expensive until a Police office told me about a Mission just outside of the city.  I found it and discovered some new friends, a couple who had started it in an old house with a half dozen potential bedrooms, so I stayed with them and spent my days looking for people who could help us fill the bedrooms with cots and places to hang clothes.  By the end of the week, we had discovered a lot of help.  Charleston has many significant families, wealthy people willing to help us get the Mission underway.  I had a call from my van driver and would spend the next two weeks travelling with him.  

A Flawed Legacy - 24

With our boys gone and technically, subject to a "breaking and entering" charge, and another of my former wife's maneuvers, I sat down and cried.  "What had I ever done to deserve this?'  One thing came to mind, I was not going to blame her, nor the boys.  They had lived in the midst of lies that were beyond even my most vivid imagination.  And I began to recall the day I went up to Santa Barbara to talk with her father.  I had had no interest in knowing him, especially as her mother had claimed that she was conceived after a one night's stand.  Even that proved to be a lie.  Now, how could I blame Janice, not understanding her life before we came to know each other?

Her father did not deny the claim, nor did he offer any advice to me.  Janice was a by-product of what some might claim to be, a sordid affair.  He offered no apologies, nor did he want t be saddled with any relationship.  He was married, had children of his own and had no interest in revealing his past to his current family.  I thought I understood and let it be.  I never mentioned that conversation to Janice and actually, I felt sorry for her.  She had a father who would not even acknowledge their relationship and I had a father who - as far as I was concerned, had never acknowledged ours.  Life offers us strange "coincidences" at times, I was beginning to realize.

My job turned out to be another fiasco.  The owner was completely paralyzed, caused when he dove into an empty pool at a Holiday Inn and sued them.  I thought I could "minister" to him as he acted as if they were at fault and the sizable settlement he had received was not sufficient to cover his costs.  And he assumed that everyone else was as corrupted in their thinking as I came to realize that he was.  We were not meant to be together and I have often wondered why I even considered his offer.

As I left the owner of the space in which the offices were located wondered why I was leaving and I gave him my impression.  How much does it cost to open an agency, he asked and to make another longer story shorter, we went into business together in another spot in the same building.  It was slow going at first, but there was a huge blizzard in the Buffalo, NY, area and I had access to a list of engineers from that area who were stuck at home.  It was an easy interview by telephone.  I had potential clients in the Texas area where there was no snow and the temperature was in the mid-70's and 80's which made the change very plausible.  In the next 45 days, we placed eight engineers at significantly higher wages than they were used to and best of all, their new employers paid our fees.

What had turned out to be "sour grapes" suddenly turned into expensive wine.

There was a former Cowboys player working in the same building and we met one evening at a new restaurant on the ground floor.  I knew about him and he became very interested in me and what I was doing and within the month, he offered me a part-time job that paid a lot of money.  I had used some of my earlier earnings to employ a lawyer in case Janice came up with some financial obligations and now, considering the fact I would no longer be representing a company or my name, I asked him to look at the possibilities of an illegal scheme.  All I was doing was to quote a price on a variety of products that they were purchasing and schedule a delivery.  It paid very well.  But my lawyer questioned some of the transactions and apparently, discussed it with the police.  They came to see me, plain clothed officers who examined the records I was keeping and left saying I was doing a good job.  Then, one of them came back to me with an offer to sub-let his apartment while he and his wife moved into their new home.  It was a good deal.  Three months later, they offered me another job in another city.

I went to see my lawyer who had drawn up a plan by which he would have me pay the State of California a substantial sum to offset any potential claims for past or future child support and when I learned that my "part-time" job was coming to an end, I decided to close my other business as well, and instructed unpaid fees to be sent to the lawyer's office to be added to the amount we would be sending to California.

All the while, I had been attending church regularly, sometimes one church and another, and whenever possible attending Bible studies as well.  I had quit drinking all together and spent a lot of my time in various "missions" offices around the city.  Knowing the trial and tribulations I had suffered through, I was convinced I would be able to help others - not with money, but with my impressions of how God had worked in my life and was changing the man that I was to become the man I hoped to be.

With no job at hand and no interest to go back to what I had been doing, I asked God what He wanted me to do.  It was just a passing thought, but within moments I swear I heard Him say, "Go, be with My people."  I never questioned that.  I got up from where I was, called a friend to come and dispose of everything I was leaving behind and with my keys hanging in the door, I literally walked out of town