HERE’S TO YOUR HEALTH
This week’s HTYH is a continuation of Tim’s story: If I didn’t get what I wanted, when I wanted it, I became sullen, angry, resentful, restless, irritable and discontented. I was outside of Salt Lake City, Utah and I suddenly decided I wanted what I saw on billboards. I wanted the good life; I wanted to be a middle class hero with a house, a “new” car, a wife, a yard, kids on swing-sets with a dog and a picket fence. I saw other people along the highways that had all that stuff and I wanted it too, the American Dream.
I was hitchhiking with a friend and some guy who picked us up on the interstate dropped us off a few exits from Salt Lake City. There was nothing on that road, no stores, gas stations, houses or any signs of civilization; just a road running up into the mountains. We slept there that night and almost froze to death. When we woke up we knew if we didn’t start moving around somebody would discover our bodies frozen to the ground. It was six o’clock in the morning and when we walked back to the exit ramp, at the end of that ramp, all by itself, sat a six-pack of Olympic Beer. I drank three beers, my buddy drank three and I said to him, “If I ever get back to Cleveland, I’m going to settle down and marry the first girl I see.” You have to have a woman because it’s part of the American Dream.
I made it back to Cleveland and although I wasn’t allowed in my mother’s house when my stepbrother was there; he wasn’t there. I took a shower, changed my clothes, borrowed my mother’s car, drove to the nearest quick mart to buy cigarettes, picked up a girl who was hitchhiking and we got married. I was 18 and she was 15 years old. It was not a marriage made in heaven. We didn’t know anything about responsibility, marriage or love. I didn’t know if I loved her, but I was tired of being homeless. We lived in my brother’s van in the driveway of my mother’s home, but we were not alone anymore. I got up in the morning and got drunk, she got drunk and then we beat each other up; that’s how it was. We did that one-day-at-a-time for the next 7 years.
I traveled a lot. I had more important places to go than work and so I was back on the road again. I kept running into a man wearing a long black robe and every time he banged that gavel; it meant back to the slammer. Trouble was my constant companion. I was a sixties child, a rebel without a clue. For 12 years, I was either getting ready to go to jail, was in jail, or getting ready to get out of jail. My third grade report card said, “Bad attitude. Tim doesn’t play well with others.” I was only eight years old, had never taken a drink of alcohol and everybody around me knew that I had a serious problem. To be continued.
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