Cal2

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Last seen: 4 weeks ago

Cal is a 62 year old man from Little Rock, ARKANSAS, USA

May I tell you a story that I know is true, as it is about me?



In 1985 I found myself working in California, repairing air conditioners, living with my wife of thirteen years, and our two children. I got up each day, went to work and came home each night were I sit in front of the TV and drank beer, (pretty exciting so far ain't it?) Needless to say I felt empty, my wife was doing her own thing (playing soccer and going out with the girls), the kids were doing their school thing, and I was acting as stated above. We may have gone along like that, (I think many people do), but my wife violated one of the strict rules I had set up for other people to live by (S), she stayed out all night. What could I do? I had to be in control and do something, but what? I did what I had so often done before; I made the big grandstand play, but this time with a variation. I announced that we were moving to Arkansas! Now neither one of us has ever set foot in the state of Arkansas, and everything that I knew about it was from a Mother Earth News magazine, but I said that is what WE were going to do. Of course my wife being more sensible than me announced in return that she would see me go to *** before she went to Arkansas.

One month later I packed up our two kids, ages 10 and 6 in a 1963 Chevy step van, and off to Arkansas we went, after all she would see how much she needed us (read that me) and would beg to join us. Well, things did not work out as I had planed. Keeping the old van running was harder than I had thought, and after a month on the road I blew the clutch in Pyatt, Arkansas. So here I was, somewhere in the Arkansas hills, with two little children, little money, a broken down van, and not the slightest idea why I was there, or really even were "there" was. I am slow sometimes, but even I could figure out that everything had turned to sh**. At that time I took the hands of my children and prayed to a god I did not really believe in. Now I had sent the kids to Sunday School, while we lived in California, because I thought it would be "good for them," but I was a man who could make it on my own. And if I needed help, I went to a doctor to find out what was wrong, and he fixed it. But on this occasion I prayed, do you know what happened?, Nothing! No burning bush, no angel from heaven, everything was as it had been, what a bummer.

The next day I took my kids by the hand, and hitch hiked to the nearest real estate agent, and told them I was looking for a place to buy. Now get this, here is a rather dirty, unshaved man with two kids tagging along, who walks into an office and asks to be shown property, he is from out of state, and says his vehicle is broken down twelve miles away; the real estate agent promptly loaded us into her car and begins to show up places, and buys us lunch each day. I notice that each time before she eats lunch, she says a silent grace, but never says anything about things other than property.

I do not know if you have ever drank, now I am not talking about social drinking, but drinking with a real purpose about it :-) I am 7 years younger than my sister, and 10 years younger than my brother, so in my childhood I felt that there were four adults and me in the house, I am different. I am of extraordinary size, and always have been, turning six foot in the sixth grade, I am different. And so on and so forth, now this is not an excuse for running away, but run away is what I always did. I would daydream all of the time, thinking of all of the great things I was going to do. I drank a lot of booze, and took some drugs (grass, LSD, coke) but mostly I drank and thought of how it was going to be. Anyway to get back to the story, I quit drinking while I was in Arkansas with the kids, after all quitting was not hard; I had done it lots of times (smile). After I found a house in which to live, I borrowed money from the man who was selling me the house, in order to be able to make a down payment to the bank so I could buy the house (that bank has been taken over by the Feds later). I then took the kids back with me to California to get our stuff and make one last attempt to persuade my wife to come to Arkansas with me.

I had planed to go to Arkansas, buy a house and return in about three weeks, however as it worked out, it was three months before the kids and I returned. When I contacted my wife I found that she had made a life for herself, which did not include me at all. I was destroyed, it was as if someone had reached inside of me and just grabbed a handful of me and ripped it out, this was not what I had planed at all! I only stayed in California two days, my daughter agreed to return to Arkansas with me, and my son stayed with my wife. In the Bible Paul speaks of praying continuously, I think I know what that means, because even though my wife was not with me, I was always speaking to her. I tried to entertain my daughter, tried a little too hard, we walked down the street of a Arizona city singing the theme from the old Monkeys Show "Here we come, walking down the street, get the funniest looks from the everyone we meet, Hay! Hay! We are the Monkeys". But I could not eat, and at night I could not sleep, after all, "How could she do this to ME!!??" Wasn't I always a good husband? Didn't I promise to take her places? Didn't I bring home money? I gave her freedom, (as if freedom was something that I could give another person, and not something that comes from God).

In Okalahoma I stopped drinking again, which I felt I had to do to be a good father to my ten-year-old daughter, who I was going to have to raise all by myself (read poor me). So now I didn't eat, didn't sleep, and didn't drink. I picked up my daughter from her nice hotel bed, put her in the front of the U-Haul truck and left Okalahoma for home at two in the morning. We stopped in a rest stop as we entered Arkansas, and I pushed her in one of those playground marry-go-rounds, as I pushed her I thought of her Mom; and as I thought of her Mom I pushed faster and faster. Finally this little girl, who I felt was the only one who loved me, flew off of the marry-go-round and hit the ground crying. She was crying, and I was crushed, here I had hurt the one person that was true to me. It was then that I thought of the big runaway. I decided to put Laura on a plane back to California, take my .357 magnum, and walk out into my pasture and blow my brains out. Then THEY would be Sorry!!!!!!

On the last stretch home, all I could think about was the half pint of vodka I had in the freezer at home. When I got to the house, some neighbors came over to help me move in, so we took everything out of the U-haul and put it into the house. When they left I poured the vodka into a glass and drank it like it was put in the bottle. After some days of no sleep, the vodka put me out. When I came too, the real estate agent's husband was there next to my chair. He talked to me a moment, and I just kind of blurted out all that I just told you. He caught me by surprise when he said that the same thing had happened to him. Could it be that I was not different?

I was going to get drunk that night, but he said something about living my own life, and living it one day at a time. If you do that, who knows what will happen? He also said that he and his family had been praying for me, and he had a feeling that my wife and I were going to get back together. In case he did not understand, I explained to him r-e-a-l slow that my wife was running around with some hard ass dope fiends, and told me she was in love with one of them. He however did not change his statement.



I did not kill myself (s), and having stopped drinking for about the thirty-ninths time, I went about the business of trying to start a life, and raise my 10-year-old daughter. I decided that she needed to have more spiritual teaching than I felt worthy of giving her, I use the word worthy here but I did not feel worthy of anything. My self-image was the very worst, and I still had that .357 in the back of my mind, and in my sock drawer. Anyway, I took Laura to the church building that was next to the real estate office. Set your mind to imagining a small group of the biggest hicks you have ever seen, and you will not be far off. These people meet in an old converted store, there were folding chairs to set on, no carpet on the worn wood plank floor, and an old out-of-tune upright piano set to one side. My little girl went upstairs with the rest of the kids, and after some introductions the service began. I don't remember anything about what was said, but I came away with the clear impression that those people loved me. Finding myself about to burst with pent-up fear and hate, I asked the minister if I could talk to him, and he agreed to meet with me the following Monday. It is a long time between Wednesday and Monday when you feel as I did, but I accepted this and went on. The following day, Thursday, I had to take my daughter to her "pee-wee" basketball practices. Now this practices was not normally held of a Thursday, but for some reason it was that week. The bad feelings were swelling up in me to a point of eruption, so my idea was to take her to her basketball practice, and then drive across the county line (it so happened that I broke down in a "dry" county) and buy that old bottle of vodka. However as you may imagine, I knew that the use of alcohol was the root of many of my problems. I wanted the relief that I knew it would give, but at the same time I did not want to drink! Once again I tried something, remember that prayer that "didn't work"? I said "God Help Me!"

At those practices I had briefly talked with a man who also had a daughter playing, and he looked very nervous as the practice wore on. He finally walked over to me and asked if I would watch his daughter, as he had somewhere to go. Now I was not used to all of the customs in Arkansas, but this seemed so odd that I asked him were he needed to go so badly. His replay, after looking a little sheepish, was he had to chair an AA meeting in half an hour. Basketball practice promptly stopped at that point in time, I asked him if I could come too? Once he got over the shock, he replied that if I had a desire to stop drinking I was welcome. I have not drunk since the vodka I had upon returning to Arkansas on 10/25/85. I asked Jesus to come into my life the next Monday, in that country preacher's office. I still did not have a wife, so I was using this new found "power" I had, to ask God to make her come crawling back to me!! That of course did no good at all, and our poor relationship steadily got worse. After a little education in my newfound faith, I changed my prayers to asking that God's will be done in her life. On New Years Eve we made an agreement on the phone to reunite, and she joined me in Arkansas on 1/22/86, which is also her sobriety date. I have a real, personal, God interested in my life, who loves me and who guides my every action if I let Him. I have left out so much that has happened in our lives, because my typing skills and your patients could not let me write them here :-) But I want to tell you one thing more; last Christmas (this was written in 1996) we returned to California for what will probably be our last family vacation. After we were there for a while, my daughter said to me "You know Dad, I was always mad at you for taking us from California, and moving to Arkansas; but you did the right thing." Nothing could have made me more proud.



You may be interested to know that my wife and I have been married for 34 years as of March 10, 2006, we celebrated that day on the other side of the world, in Australia. Our daughter was married on May 4, 2002 and works as an engineer for the federal government, she had a daughter in January of 2006. Our son was still single and worked around the country on communication towers, when he died in a fall from one of those towers, on October 24, 2003.



Love You

Cal