"A STOLEN LIFE" ...... CHAPTER 4

NEW YORK CITY ......   AUTUMN EARLY 1990's ......

  The telephone rang at 4 o'clock in the morning, ripping through the apartment like an air-raid alarm.  He was almost knocked out of his bed by the shrill ringing.  It was his sister on the other line sounding very shook up.  "Are you alone?",  Are you sitting down?",  "Its Johny ......"  she whispered on the phone.  She had called to tell him that their brother had died alone in his rented bungalow the day before.  He had been found passed away in his bed at only 30 years old  from cirrhosis of the liver, just as his own father had died of the disease at 49 years of age.  He stood there in the dark of the apartment, shocked and in disbelief.  He could not express any emotion but a stoic silence.  He knew that he that would had to leave in the morning to meet one of his sisters to go to their Mothers home, and try to come together to deal with this new tragedy in a family of addiction.  The Mother however was living a full-tilt life style of alcohol addiction with her much younger out of control  alcoholic partner, who the siblings detested for many, many well founded reasons.  This made coming together and grieving almost impossible for them.

SOUTHERN NEW ENGLAND ...... ALSO AUTUMN EARLY 1990's ......

    The young man that they found deceased in a rented bungalow off a small country road in a small charming New England town, was totally unrecognizable from the very handsome, tall and athletically built young man from just 10 years before.  He had been a high school athlete and good student in his early years, and had been very popular with the girls.  He had turned in to a bearded, wild, straggly, long haired and extremely overweight recluse, a hermit who looked decades older than he really was.  He even appeared to be a homeless derelict when locals saw him on his frequent trips to the liquor store.  Johny had intense bouts with agoraphobia, and became a virtual shut-in avoiding all outside people and even his long-tme friends from the past.  He also refused to speak with anyone on the telephone except his brother and Mother.  It was impossible for anybody to conceive or believe how this could happen to him.  It would be very easy for anybody to believe, if they only knew his families true history and the degradation that he and his siblings experienced in their stolen youths, due to their alcoholic Father's selfish, abusive and neglectful character.

TRI-STATE AREA ...... DECADES EARLIER ......

    True to life (the addicts life),  he had grown up in an unfunctional home with a dysfunctional family.  Nothing in the house was ever fixed and the Father was never home.  There was no hot water heater that was functioning or any heating oil most of the very cold winter ( I am not repeating myself in my story's, I am merely telling how the circumstances are within all of these families of addiction and so these are all common place effects with all of these families).  He had adored his Father despite all of these hard facts, who was his hero and a World War two hero as well.  The Father however, could never bring himself to do the right thing by his own family and the children lived in disgrace.  Their Grandmother (the Mother of their Father), still pampered and babied her son with large amounts of cash each week and waited on him hand and foot whenever he visited her.  He always took the cash with a million promises to buy a hot water heater,  to buy heating oil, and to fix the house, but he never did.  The cash always remained in his pocket and the family suffered and continued to live in shame.  The Mother, also a drinker and smoker truly suffered as she worked full time and actually had to pay for most of the house bills out of her own salary.   This seemed to go on forever, and nothing was ever addressed or resolved or repaired as the Father slipped deeper and deeper into addiction.  He died of cirrhosis of the liver on a bleak, winter day, leaving the family literally to the wolves. The Fathers family in turn practically abandoned them the day that he was buried.
    The day that the bottom fell out for Johny, was right after the family received all of their Fathers personal belongings from the hospital including his wallet that he always kept hidden for some strange reason.  One of his sisters was going through the wallet when she pulled out a huge, thick white paper wrapped wad from a hidden fold in the wallet.  She opened it, and found over two thousand dollars in one hundred dollar bills neatly and tightly folded and hidden within the white envelope.  At first they were over joyed at the discovery as they had very little money at that time, but then the cruel reality of the hidden money set in.
    It was a statement made by one of his sisters best friends that sent Johny over the edge forever.  She looked at cash and said ...... "I don't believe this,  your Father could have bought a new hot water heater, and a full tank of furnace oil, and still had thousands left to himself".  Johny was destroyed, and his Fathers heroic image died right there that day.  Johny realized that his sand-castle hero was never going to buy a hot water heater, or furnace oil, or fix the dilapidated house.  He was going to keep them living there like that forever and never do the right thing by his own children.
   Johny soon went out of control after that suffering psychological and emotional problems and started smoking, drinking alcohol and experimenting with other things.  He was soon on the same road to addiction as his Father.  The Mother who suffered so much during this marriage also went off the deep end after her husbands death, when so many stark, harsh truths and realities set in.  It also set her off on a one way path of even worse co-dependent relationships with other selfish, immature alcoholic "men", like her daughters would also then do.  Everything after that, was even more wrong than before leading up to Johny's sad final years, and early death at only 30 years old.


DECADES LATER ...... SOUTHERN NEW ENGLAND ...... AUTUMN EARLY 1990's ......

    He never enjoyed the last ten years of his life spent like a hermit all alone,  drinking and trying to medicate himself out of the pain and trauma of his younger years and family, especially so the memory and reality of his fallen hero his Father.  He slowly lost everything ... his youth, his looks, his hopes, his dreams, and ultimately even his life.  It was truly one that had held great promise and potential at one time but was not fulfilled due to the ravages of addiction in the family.  It was a stolen life.

"BLINDED BY THE LIGHT"...... CHAPTER 2

 

   I recently had a disturbing flashback (or I thought I did), to a long forgotten memory of a tragic and enigmatic incident told to me by my late Uncle.  It was the tale of a teenage boy who disappeared while hitchhiking at night on a remote country road, only to turn up dead (after several days of being missing),  just a few yards off that road in a wooded area,  under very mysterious circumstances.  In fact the memory was so foggy and I wasn't sure if it really happened or if I imagined it, as I was probably only six or seven years old when it occurred.
   I went to the local library looking through dusty, old newspapers until I found what I was searching for and indeed my memory was correct.  I discovered a brief story there about the strange and unsolved occurrence.   I even found the name of the newspaper's reporter and called him on the telephone and yes he did remember the article that he had written many years before as well as the shock and disbelief of the victims family.
   It was the mysterious death of a young man who was found dead of exposure just yards off a country turnpike, after having disappeared two nights before.  It was a sad and unanswerable tale of a lethal combination of alcohol abuse and youthful impulsiveness, or was it ? ...

Somewhere in rural Pennsylvania.... dead of winter.... sometime in the late 1970's

  The mystical and reverbing intro to "Blinded by the Light" came on just as the gorgeous symphonic chorus of "Dancing Queen" faded out.  The pony tailed, nineteen year old at the dumpy, roadside bar had just finished his third bottle of beer and was about to head home and out on foot into the chilly winter night.  "Denny-Yves"  had to walk the five miles plus home though, as he had lost his drivers license after acquiring several tickets for driving under the influence.  Patrons at the bar said that he seemed to be fine when he left the tavern, but he was never seen alive again... until he was found dead, face down in a half frozen forest stream just within view of the country road that he was walking on.
  There were many strange questions to his death and why he was found where he was. He was discovered in an area that made no sense to hike through as it was a very swampy and overgrown part of the forest with painful thickets of green-briar, pricker bushes and impenetrable thorny vines.  Why would he try to enter the woods there with all of those obstacles?  It would only be heading in the wrong direction to deeper forest and not to any road or path home.  It turns out that there were an abandoned small group of bungalows half a mile into that area, that many young people went to drink alcohol, smoke and do whatever else.  Was he going there to meet someone, or maybe just to rest?  But why there, after being in the bar all night?  Nothing made sense and still doesn't make sense today, all these decades later.  He was found with bruises on his shins and a bruise on the side of his face where he fell (supposedly fell).  It seems to be that after all of these years since this mysterious death that no one knows what really happened to D-Yves but he himself, or they're not talking, and it could just be that it comes down to alcohol impairing better judgement with deadly consequences.
   He was buried on Valentines Day at nineteen years old.  He was a slim but very fit youth of French Canadian descent and so everyone found it shocking and unbelievable, that he could just fall in the woods and die of exposure in the manner that he was reported to have died.   It was said that he would often hitch hike to get around and knew short cuts through the power lines and deep forests of the area.  So why did he end up in this swampy area that lead to nowhere?  His parents were clueless and had no knowledge of the life that he had been living under their roof.  He was leading a secret orbital existence of abusing alcohol and other substances every day,  all fueling an uncontrollable drive to be out on the road with or without a car, constantly .
   The case of D-Yves came and went like a brief cold wind and no findings of his mysterious death were ever released.  Strangely, know one ever discussed it again and forgot about him and his tragic ending almost immediately.  It was possibly that toxic combination of alcohol and the irrational behavior that comes with it that ended a life at only nineteen years old.  Years later,  the patch of swampy, roadside forest where he was found is now an asphalt-paved over area of small stores and no one in that town even remembers the name of the hitch hiking boy who died there mysteriously.

                        "HIGH-BY-NOON"

                          BY: FRITZ VON LUDWIGSLUST



"A TRILOGY OF MEMORIES"            CHAPTER 1




  ... Sometime in the mid-seventies New York state ...

   The old tarnished ashtray was a mountain of crumpled dead Viceroy cigarette butts by nine o'clock in the morning.  No one cigarette ever went out without lighting the next one from its glowing, embered tip. She probably reasoned that she was chain smoking to save on matches. The viceroys were all washed down with a whole pot of coffee, (black, strong, no sugar) and a half eaten poached egg on a single piece of kosher rye toast. The first can of beer was cracked open by ten-thirty, (not first thing in the morning, she told herself, that would be too much). Then came the second and the third can of hops and alcohol just before twelve, and she would be ...  "High-By-Noon".
  After that she would scour the volcanic ash tray and trash bin for any butts.that were still long enough to be smoked when she ran out of cigarettes.  It had been Pall Mall filter less and Rheingold with her mother and then it was passed down to her daughter, with Salem lights and champagne hidden in the vegetable crisper or under frozen food cartons in the back of the freezer.  This bizarre behaviour pattern seemed to be handed down from one generation to the next and I said to myself... "How could she not see what she was doing to herself?"  No one ever discussed it as if it was perfectly normal daily behaviour and so it went on and on as it had throughout the years, with these otherwise beautiful, hard working and loving women.  Women who always chose the wrong men in their lives though, wrong in every possible way.  Men who were not real men, but alcoholic, physically and verbally abusive narcissistic ''boys'', who made their wives and children live in squalor and poverty.
    I often wondered how and when did it all start and with whom in the family as the cycle of addiction, abuse, denial, degradation, and co-dependency was reborn and flourished with each new generation.  I remember she told me that her grandmother banned any tobacco or alcohol from her home, even cooking sherry proclaiming that it was the Devils water and evil. What would cause such a reaction like this?  Was it possibly a result of previous family members with the same addictive behaviour and destructive traits? One can only imagine what this woman experienced to be so against any alcohol of any kind.
  Time went by and yet she still started every day with the same ritual of coffee, tobacco and alcohol  and all in excess, possibly to fill the void that can not be filled with these vices. This continued throughout all of these women's lives as did similar patterns of living in dilapidated houses, left stranded in a crumbling shack without a car to escape this prison.  They were made to live without a working hot water heater and without heating oil for the ice, cold furnace. There was always unfinished paint and repair work that never got done and no feeling of safety in the house with out-side lights that did not work, doors that did not lock properly and a man who was never really home, not even when he was there in person.



Personal thoughts ......

... "I'm going back, back in time, I keep flashing back to those memories of them now, for the first time in my life, so why now?"

  Goethe said ... "It is only in our later years, that we truly understand what we went through in our youth". Many psychologists confirm, that people frequently begin to ponder and question their youth, and what happened to them then, between the ages of 38 to 42, so why should I be any different?




...... Winter early-eighties Tri-state-area ......

  The oven was on full blast, on a frigid winter night in December. Thank God they had an electric stove, which could be left on for hours without danger (excluding the danger of having no electric). There were huge old pots of water on each burner steaming in the still chilly kitchen, as she was preparing to carry them upstairs to the bathtub to fill it up so a bath could be taken, as the hot water heater in the basement was not working again and the father was still no closer to having it fixed than he was when his mother gave him the money to repair it countless times, countless Winters ago.  It was a time consuming and humiliating task and was just one of many degrading effects of the father's selfish and almost single, bachelor like life-style.  The thermostat was also down to the lowest it could possibly go, as he wouldn't pay for a full tank of heating oil either and so this is how their lives went on with this degradation never being addressed or spoken about.  It was almost as if he was saying this is what you deserve, this is how it is, no questions asked... but he always had cigarettes, beer and Four roses Irish whiskey in the otherwise empty cabinets and money for the dive tavern that he went to every night to drink away their money and to play the numbers. The bread basket drawer had one rumpled bag of wonder bread in it, with two stale pieces inside as well as an empty opened box of English muffins, but there were always two full cartons of cigarettes, Viceroy and Marlboro. The cabinets were also mostly empty, with scattered near empty boxes of cereal and a few useless canned goods, but there were always several quart bottles of Seagram's 7 and Irish whiskey.  It was very evident what the priorities in this household were, tobacco and liquor, everything else came second or not at all.
   If this was happening today in 2014, any children in this shambles of a house would have been removed from it, until counseling, treatment and drastic repairs and changes were taken and made.  It was however a very different time then and the children suffered immensely, in terms of lack of self-esteem, direction, nurturing and a feeling of safety, leaving them to continue this vicious cycle, as lives of under-earners, victims, co-dependents and possible addicts themselves.







...Sometime in 1904, Lewis county, New York ...

  "The Mystery of Margaret"

  Daddy Jim as they called him, was raised by Florence and her husband Vern, in a village in upstate New York. They were not really Daddy Jim's parents, you see, Florence was really his Aunt, the sister of his late tragic unwed Mother Margaret. The story of Margaret was a dark secret in the family, and never, ever discussed. Margaret had been one of seven sisters born to long-time Adirondackers of solid Scottish, French and Scandinavian stock . They all knew how to fish, farm, garden, knit, can food and how to literally make something out of nothing, when needed. Margaret had been the youngest of the girls, and was a quiet and shy soul, who loved sitting alone and reading, as well as making quilts together with her older sisters.  She went hiking up in the woods often,  berry-picking and writing in her diary, sitting on the island like out crops of giant rocks  by the lake, where the family had a cottage.
  In a strange turn of events all six girls got married, (except Margaret), but only one of the girls, Lilly, actually had children, (except Margaret). The tale went, that Margaret fell in love with an American Indian-french Canadian boy, and was with child, unmarried at the age of 16. Terrified in a time where this was shocking and grounds to be thrown out of the church, Margaret took to drinking, all day everyday, in secrecy. This was an era when we did not know the real health hazards of alcohol and tobacco, and so Margaret really can not be blamed for her behavior. She must have been so scared and fearful of her unwed pregnancy, and probably went off into her own little world to escape the reality of what lay ahead. The boy disappeared on Margaret, yet she still went ahead and carried his baby for the nine months, until her son was born. Margaret died of alcohol consumption and a broken heart, shortly after Jim was born, and her sister Florence took Jim in as her own.
      Daddy Jim grew up, had a big farm outside of Gouvernour,  got married, and had two daughters of his own.  Daddy Jim was a wonderful, loving father and family member, but unfortunately, the alcohol addiction was then (unknowingly), passed down to who would have been Margaret's grand daughter, ironically also named Margaret, (who went on to run a tavern-bar in the Syracuse area, until her early death of cirrhosis of the liver like her long lost mother that she never met), and then it was passed down on to her great grandson.
      Years later, Margaret's last remaining sister Lilly lay in her bed near death, nearly sixty years after Margaret herself had died. Her niece who stayed by her side those last days, said that Lilly looked up to the ceiling, and whispered "Oh Margaret",  just as she passed away. You see, Lilly was the grandmother from my first story, who had banned all alcohol a nd tobacco from her home, even cooking wine or liquor flavored confections, and it was her own beloved sister Margaret who had perished at a young age from alcohol poisoning just a short time after the birth of her son Daddy Jim.


Copyright @  October 13 2014  AllRights Reserved.
All storys written by Fritz Von Ludwigslust.