I set aside my misgivings and went ahead and enrolled in the program anyway. I packed my belongings and moved into an apartment with Lana. We had been dating for two years and were engaged to be married so it seemed perfectly natural to live together. We set a wedding date for the summer I would graduate from the program.
It was kind of fun and interesting going back to school. To me it was like what I should have experienced in junior high or high school. The only thing I had to do was concentrate on my classes.
Engineering is tough because it’s ninety percent mathematics, physics, and chemistry. I didn’t have to take any math because I had taken all the required math classes through engineering correspondence courses. I was mostly interested in the actual design of steel, concrete and wood columns and beams that assembled a structure. I consumed hours and hours doing engineering and physics calculations for required homework assignments. We had a good no-nonsense structural engineer for an instructor.
I’d performed heavy construction out in the real world so it was kind of difficult to sit in a classroom and learn about things I already had experience with. Sometimes I got frustrated and bored with the classes and instructors. Their approach to some of the methods used wasn’t the way things were done in the real world of construction. I’d thought about quitting many times, but with the support and encouragement of Lana and her mother, I didn’t. I knew they were right, so I hung on and took everything one day at a time.
While away at school my first year, I learned my old train hopping buddy, Mitch, had died at the age of thirty-two from throat cancer. When I thought about Mitch dying of cancer I also thought about his favorite song “Spirit in The Sky.” The story I’d heard, was that one winter morning he stepped outside his door in his pajamas to grab his newspaper which was stuck in a snow bank. As he reached for that paper, he keeled over and died right there, collapsing into the snow bank. Mitch smoked menthol cigarettes like they were a source of oxygen. It was Mitch who turned me on to smoking at the age of fifteen. After hearing of his death I could only imagine a black hole in his throat that eventually ate him up. It didn’t take me long to realize cigarettes were dangerous. One day a year or so after his death, I was sitting on the couch and imagined myself gasping for my last breath. I don’t know where that thought came from, but in that instant I threw away the pack of cigarettes in my pocket and never smoked again.
At times I wished I would have run into Mitch or Clem out and about so we could’ve sat at a bar one more time and talked about all the stupid shit we did so many years ago, but I guess it wasn’t meant to be.
One weekend when Lana and I went home to visit; I ran into an old friend, Scott Moser. He had spent thirteen years in the Marine Corps—even becoming a drill instructor. He wanted to go all the way to the top making sergeant major, but that dream wouldn’t happen because of a surprise piss test. He was administratively discharged because he tested positive for marijuana in his urine. We went out to the bars and reminisced about the days in junior high when we stood on the street corners of our old neighborhood throwing eggs at cars. I asked him if the Marine Corps were the same as it was when I was in. I was surprised when he told me it had changed dramatically. He said drill instructors couldn’t beat or berate the recruits anymore. There were so many guys I knew who had joined the Marines; I wondered how they were all doing. I wondered how many of them turned angry or hostile because of the way they’d been treated.
I recalled when we were in junior high; Scott would grab a few bucks from his old man’s wallet, and then buy us all candy to eat in class. We brought pockets full of red licorice into our classes. I thought Scott was basically a good guy. He grew up without a mother and had to fend for himself in a large family. My old friend also revealed he was the one who stole the silver dollar my father gave me for my thirteenth birthday. I was disappointed in him for that, but glad to learn what really happened to that coin because it had an unexplainable if not special meaning to me. There was something about the exchange of that coin—how it rolled out of my father’s hand across the table and into my hand. It was a moment I’ll always remember.
That was one of those unnoticeable moments in my life, that at the time seemed to have little significance, but over time, it dramatically enhanced the way I thought about my old man. Even if he hated me most of his life, it seemed like in that moment maybe he felt something for me.
Chapter 29
Meeting Lana was one of the best things that had ever happened to me. She may have even saved my life. After I started going out with her, I became more aware of the things about myself I had to change. I cut way back on drinking, quit smoking and instead of wandering aimlessly here and there looking for jobs and acceptance, I found dependability and an ally in her. Her sisters didn't think I was right for her; they all thought she could have done better than get hooked up with a guy trying to make a buck doing small construction jobs. And some of her married sister’s husbands made snide uncalled for comments about my way of life. I knew I could’ve pounded one of those guys into the ground, but withheld any aggressiveness for fear of embarrassing Lana. Besides I was trying to make new friends and fit in somewhere. I didn’t want a bunch of new enemies to have to sit across at a dinner table. Lana and I were as opposite as north and south in many ways, but we decided we enjoyed each other’s company and it didn't matter what anyone else thought.
By my second year in school, I had secured a part-time job as a supervisor on a high-rise hotel renovation project downtown. The boss of the operation was an intimidating woman. She wore sexy form fitting skirts, stiletto high heels, had her nails, eyes and hair all done to perfection. She could have had her picture on the cover of any magazine. I sat at the interview internally drooling at the thought of working with her. She was also a no-nonsense project manager who set up shop on the ground floor of the hotel. That job was just what I was looking for. When I filled out the job application I’d failed to reveal the truth on the application question asking if I had ever been convicted of a crime. I thought I wouldn’t even be considered if I let them know I was a convicted felon. Everything was humming along smoothly as I positioned myself into the role of a part-time supervisor on the hotel renovation and going to engineering school.
Then one day a few weeks after being on the job, the boss lady called me into her office. I sat down in the chair in front of her desk. I could smell her perfume and imagined what it would be like to have such a beautiful and powerful woman like her as a girlfriend. Looking me right in the eye, she asked me why I had lied on the employment application. I tried to explain to her I was not proud of the things I had done in the past and didn't think I would get the job if I had told the truth. She was looking at a piece of paper, and then started rattling off everything I had done since I was first arrested at the age of fifteen. She said the hotel owners hired a private investigator to dig into my background.
After reading the evidence against me the expression on her face told me everything. She looked at me as if I was a loser and told me to take off my security badge and leave the hotel immediately. I had always been good at schmoozing women. They usually gave me the benefit of the doubt. Like an old friend I tried to barter and plead for a second chance. "Nothing doing," she replied. She looked so good on the outside, but on the inside if she didn’t like what she was doing she sure didn’t show any sign of her displeasure in firing me. There was no thank you for the work I had already done. She refused to look at me and went about her work like a snotty little bitch who thought she was better than me. Once again I was treated like something that had to be taken out with the trash. Two minutes later a security officer escorted me out of the hotel. It was at that self-esteem busting moment I realized I would most likely never have an equal chance to do what I really wanted to do because of the petty bullshit I let myself get into more than fifteen years ago. My reckless past was going to follow and haunt me in everything I tried to do. This is the dilemma for those like me who’ve paid
for crimes in the past, but have to go on paying for them time and time again long into the future.
I have come to the conclusion we live in a society of unforgiving hypocrites. I can’t count the number of Sundays I sat in Lana’s church and observed people sitting in the pews nodding their heads in agreement as the preacher read from scripture about forgiveness. Yet once people are out of church and in the world of greed and control most seem to forget what they were in agreement with. I did the crime and did the time, but still have to answer questions about those crimes on job applications years and even decades after the fact. If one skirts the issue, it’s a cover up, if I tell the truth, I’m eliminated from the process. Even if I don’t commit another crime for the rest of my life, I will be buried and condemned as a criminal. No man will forgive me, but I am always told Jesus will. It is my position that it should be mandatory to restore all civil rights to a person after a given time of crime free living especially when the crimes were petty things with no bodily harm done to another person.
Like every other time when things didn’t work out I just shrugged off the dismissal and moved on to something else. My philosophy about life was easy-come easy go. Screw it! If life would become a series of small projects I did on my own, so be it.
I became friends with a classmate named Mike Westlake who one day asked me to design and draw a set of plans for a self-storage warehouse for him. He could draw plans too, but he liked my drawing style and confidence when it came to architectural plans. I have to credit Parker for showing me little tricks for turning boring lines and plain words into works of art. Parker said that drawings should be like the draftsman’s own signature; like putting your heart and soul down on paper with unique line and lettering style. I practiced drawing until I developed and perfected my own style. Some of my instructors in the drafting department commented on how artistic and professional my drawings looked. Like the old cliché, one door closed and a window opened up. The new structure Mike wanted me to design was masonry block for the walls and wood framing for the roof structure. When I finished the plans, Mike asked me if I would put the roof trusses together and then sheath the roof deck with plywood too. I agreed. The job went well, my crew finished on time and Mike and I became even better friends.
It was a tough road to graduation. I suffered panic attacks along with debilitating bouts of depression from all the stress of passing exams, rejections from employers, and thinking about getting married in just a couple of months. But the two-year battle finally came to a successful end. I accomplished one of my lifelong dreams of earning a degree in structural engineering.
I went to the graduation ceremony with the other eight members of my class wearing a cap and gown and feeling proud as my mother, Leland, and Lana watched me walk across the stage and receive my diploma. When it was over, we all headed to a popular neighborhood bar frequented by students and had a few drinks and appetizers to celebrate. It made me feel good to have some of my family there. Leland was the only sibling interested in watching me graduate. I guess it was his positive outlook on life that attributed to his understanding the importance of the day for me.
After I graduated from the engineering program I started my own business again to build houses, additions and do remodeling jobs with a renewed sense of purpose. I could use my creativity with my newly gained engineering knowledge to design and build intelligent, solid, livable structures.
****
By the time I graduated Jack was forging a promising future for himself as well. He was starting a metal fabrication business. Jack had spent the last ten years working at a metal fabrication shop and he observed how much money there was to be made if only a guy had some of his own equipment. I was surprised he actually liked to do that kind of work. I never had the patience for standing in front of a machine and cranking out thousands and thousands of the same part. I also hated being ruled by a set of buzzers and clocks that signaled when you could take a break or stuff a sandwich down your throat.
But somehow Jack endured the tedium of all that and started his own business in the small wooden garage behind his house. At first it was just a place for friends to hang out and bullshit while Jack bent and drilled steel. It didn't matter if Jack couldn't see a pinhead at fifty paces, he could still use a magnifying glass the same way the old man used one when he was a machinist. Most of the loiterers chuckled about the operation, but that didn't faze Jack; he saw the big picture; he saw the future and worked every day to nurture the thought of one day owning a multimillion-dollar factory. Then one day Jack announced he had purchased a commercial building. He was going for the gusto, taking the risk of fortune or failure. I was very happy for him. The building needed a lot of work so he rounded up whoever was available to help and we went to work helping him fix it up. I did mountains of electrical work and helped him design and build equipment for handling material and bending steel. It was amazing what we could do ourselves. I said hallelujah to that! There was no reason we couldn’t be extremely successful. We had been taught we could do anything we put our minds to doing by seeing our old man never give up despite his disadvantages. We saw him as he struggled with limited eyesight trying different ventures.
We were the two boys who were drilled day in and day out by our overbearing father to “use our heads for something besides a hat rack.” We had indeed devised a plan for showing our old man and the world just how smart and talented we were. Jack had managed his time and money to go to night school and earn a two-year degree in industrial engineering. We were high school drop outs, but now we both had associate degrees. We wanted to show the old man up even if he was dead—just to gain the self-respect we’d lost somewhere along the way.
The other boys in the family didn't get the same kind of behavior modification from the old man that Jack and I got. They were like kites in the air. In their earlier years they always needed some wind in their sails to get them going and keep them moving. Jack and I led the way with our big ideas and intention to produce something. Eventually the younger ones came around and made something of their lives too.
Chapter 30
Roped and tied. Lana and I planned a big wedding reception at a historic building where thousands of others had celebrated the beginnings of a new life. It was a hot summer and the thought of wearing a tuxedo and standing up in front of hundreds of people made me nervous, but it was something that had to be done. My brother Jack was my best man and the other two guys standing up in the wedding were in-laws on Lana's side, except for Mike Westlake, my buddy from engineering school.
The fall before our wedding Lana and I bought a building that had been used as a dance hall, worm farm, and junk storage facility. The purchase also included a buildable lot across the road. It was all just a few miles from the farm where she grew up. We purchased the old building and lot on a land contract with the owner, a distant relative on Lana’s mother’s side. We thought the old building with its fifteen-foot high ceilings and maple hardwood flooring would make a nice woodworking workshop that I could use for cabinet and furniture making. We’d eventually build a house on the one acre lot across the road. The building didn’t have any plumbing and had only limited electricity. With me graduated from school, the upcoming wedding and the building purchase we decided to leave the big city. Lana quit her job and we moved into the building making it our temporary home for the summer—a camping adventure. As winter approached, it got too cold to stay in the old building so we moved into an apartment across the street. Lana had gotten a new job and I was doing some work in my shop when one day I got the idea to divide the old building into part living space and part workshop.
We talked to a loan officer numerous times about the project we had in mind without any positive feedback from her. Then I figured I should draw up a full set of architectural plans for the proposed renovation to actually show our ideas on paper so others could see for themselves what we were talking about. I went to work and hand drew the detailed floor plan and elevations on m
y drawing board. My design called for separating the building into one-third living quarters with a loft bedroom and two-thirds workshop. To give the drawings a professional look I had them blueprinted at Parker’s office.
The next time we went to the bank, I took the plans and laid them out for the loan officer to see. As soon as she saw the professional looking plans she was sold on our idea and asked us how much money we wanted to borrow. We all agreed on a figure and the money was deposited in our personal bank account so we could get on with the project. The yes from the loan officer was a victory for us because it got us started in the plans I had always had for building a house, then living in it while I built another one. My plan was to build a house then live in it for a couple years—start another house—move into the new one when finished and sell the one we moved out of. The whole process would repeat itself until I got tired of building houses or became a millionaire. That was my plan for success. Once I explained my plan to the lending officer at the bank she seemed more than happy to help us make it a reality. When we got the okay from the bank Lana was apprehensive at first about borrowing such a large amount of money. To me this was just another roll of the dice. I told her not to worry everything would work out almost as if I knew it were meant to be.
Chapter 31
Even if I lost some of the rights I was born with, it didn’t make that much difference to me. I still had my imagination and the talent to be able to create. I was glad to be a free man and to have made it this far.