The Poems And Confessions Of A Mad Man Page 8
We were coming from different classes so when we met in the hall we both thought, “Oh shit! We are busted.” We put on our game faces and went into the office. When we entered, the office ladies in there were giving us dirty looks. We weren’t sure if they knew something or if they were just being their old miserable selves. Our worst fears were confirmed when we walked into the Principal’s Office and he was holding a copy of the Senior Will in his hand.
We acted as though we didn’t know what was going on. The principal asked us what our Will meant. I said, “Oh we were just leaving you something because nobody ever leaves you anything and we didn’t want you to feel left out.” After I said that, I could hear my words catching up to my mind and it was like watching an accident happen in slow motion. That was the worst excuse ever. I should have let Boe do the talking. When I looked at Boe, he looked like I’d just stuffed a Cadillac in his ass end. He was speechless so when the principal asked him, he said, “Yeah, we wanted you to have something.”
The principal glared at us and probably wished he asked us separately. Then we would have answered differently and our story would have unraveled. He had no proof that the fish were ours, so there wasn’t anything he could do. He let us go and we’ve laughed about it ever since.
4 Wheel Drive
By: Andrew J. Green
In December of 1985, I took my much needed leave from the Army. I would have 3 weeks to raise hell with my best friend and our girlfriends. We basically went out every night, partying and having a ball for most of my vacation. I knew I had to get as much of American living in me as possible, because on January 2, I would be shipped overseas for 18 months. During that vacation, I think I lived a whole lifetime. What a vacation. I think I’m still recovering.
We did a lot of things that I barely remember, but one of the things we did, we will never forget. We decided that since we lived in central New York State and there was 3 feet of snow on the ground, we should go and see how a 4 wheel drive vehicle would go in the snow. We had only heard the legends of how they could go anywhere and rarely get stuck. I drove a 4 wheel drive vehicle when I was stationed in Texas, but there wasn’t any snow or anything like that to play in. Besides, in the Army if you roll a vehicle or damage something, you’re in an ass load of trouble.
Neither of us had a Jeep or anything that was 4 wheel drive, so we had to find someone who did. Who better to go to than a car dealer? We rolled up to a local dealer and we could see the vultures looking through the show room windows, get all excited. They thought, “Here comes some suckers.” The salesman’s name was Bob. He looked like the guy who always got wedgies in high school. His pants looked like the guys in the office had just given him a fresh one. This guy had Nerd written all over him, but he was a car salesman and that made him very dangerous.
He gave us the usual pitch about giving us a great deal and all of that crap, so we played along with him. I told him what I wanted and that I’d just received my Army enlistment bonus for $5000. I lied. I really didn’t have any money but I needed him to think this sale was so good, that he would let us take the vehicle without riding along. We found the perfect vehicle. It was a Renegade Jeep in the used car lot. It had off road tires and it looked pretty good. All I was interested in is that it had 4 wheel drive and that it worked.
He gave us the keys and we were off. The Jeep had just over a quarter of a tank of fuel, so we wouldn’t be doing any long distance driving. We just wanted a field or swamp or something. Hey, we couldn’t get stuck, we had a 4 wheel drive. My friend knew of a place in Marcy New York, that use to be an old drive in theater but it was now just a big open area. Whoever owned it, took out all of the poles that held the speakers for the cars.
When we got there, it was covered with about 18 inches of fresh snow. This was going to be great. We did our spinning around and little stuff but we got bored with that after 5 minutes or so. When I was driving I saw a small trail that went off into the woods with snowmobile tracks on it. I thought we should go down that trail. When I started down the trail, my friend asked me if I thought we should really be going down it. I said it would be fine because we had 4 wheel drive and we couldn’t get stuck.
As soon as we went a quarter of a mile in or so, the Jeep seemed like it was really starting to spin a lot so we decided to stop. The problem came when we tried to turn around. The trail had become so narrow that there was no room to maneuver the vehicle. Instead of choosing to back out, I decided to go deeper into the belly of the beast. When we came to a small frozen pond, my friend said we better try to turn around before we got any closer. He said that if the pond isn’t frozen, the Jeep could fall through. There wasn’t really enough room to turn there either unless we made a 50 point turn. I saw a great place to turn around but it was across the pond. I told him we should go for it and try to drive across.
Just then, we heard a loud crack and the jeep jolted. I put the jeep in reverse and tried to back up but it wouldn’t move. We both exited the Jeep to see what was wrong. We kept hearing what sounded like ice cracking under our feet. When we cleared away some snow from under our feet, we realized we were already on the edge of the pond and the Jeep was starting to fall through. We panicked and knew we had to get the hell out of there. We both jumped back into the Jeep and I wildly turned the wheel back and forth trying to get the tread to catch. Finally, the Jeep grabbed and lunged backward into a tree. At least we were out, or so we thought. I started my 50 point turn and the Jeep broke through again, this time for good. I attempted the same maneuver as before but the Jeep was buried up to its axles and we began to take on water.
Within a few minutes, the inside of the Jeep had water up to the brake pedal and the Jeep continued to slowly sink. We knew we weren’t getting out of there without help, so my friend walked to the road and flagged down a car. He caught a ride to the dealership while I stayed with the Jeep and continued to watch it sink. When he came back, half of the 4 wheel drive trucks in the dealership showed up but only a small Ford Bronco II could make it down the narrow trail. The salesman that let us take the Jeep out, shook his head and said, “Looks like you guys had some fun.” He had a look on his face like he had a broom stick stuck in his ass.
He pulled the Bronco II close enough to the Jeep to hook a Come Along Ratchet Winch to the bumper. We no longer wanted to have anything to do with this mess, so we watched the salesman do his magic. He obviously had no idea what he was doing because when he started to crank on the winch, the Jeep bumper ripped through, and the high tension on the winches cable caused it to fly through the Bronco’s grill. All I could say at that moment was, “It wasn’t me.” The salesman assured us it could be fixed. He then tried to pull the Jeep out with the Bronco after turning the Bronco around, but it also broke through on the right side and it was lying on its side. This beautiful new Bronco II with an invoice on its driver side window that read $16,000., was now lying sideways in a swamp.
About this time, a group of teenagers on snowmobiles came up the trail and tried to help get the Bronco out. The trick was for all of us to balance ourselves on the Bronco’s left rear bumper and hope that it would be enough weight to allow its left wheels to grab. It worked, but as the Bronco jerked forward, the right side that was in contact with the ground, was digging the paint off its side. When it was free, the pin striping on that truck was just hanging there.
Word about what was happening, somehow made its way to different people in the Utica area and a guy named Joe that I use to work with on a farm when I was a kid, showed up. By this time, the salesman and a few of his coworkers were planning to have a sky crane helicopter fly in and lift the still sinking Jeep, out. Apparently they have done this before because they knew it was $600. per hour and it had to come from someplace an hour away. They said the entire project from when it left its base and got back to base would be 3 hours. That’s $1,800. that someone would have to pay for this to be done. I hoped it wasn’t me.
When Joe heard this he said, “I’
ll get that Jeep out.” He went 4 wheeling all of the time with his friends and ran into problems like this regularly. He did this stuff for fun. He got a chain from his truck and hooked from the Bronco to the Jeep and instructed his other friend, who was now driving the Bronco, to get a running start and yank the Jeep out. Well, it worked. We were all going to go back to the dealership but not before Joe showed everyone how to 4 wheel. He said, “Hey Andy watch this.” There was a giant mound of snow in the swamp that he wanted to fly into and have the snow blow all over the place. You know, kind of like what you’d see in a commercial. I asked him if he was sure it was a good idea and he assured me it would be great. He revved the engine and popped the clutch and was doing about 15 miles an hour when he hit the pile of snow. The only problem was that it wasn’t a pile of snow. It was an 8 foot boulder covered in snow. Everyone’s jaws dropped as they watched the Jeep ricochet off of the giant rock. When he got out of the Jeep to look at the damage, all he said was, “Rock and roll!”
The Jeep’s front left solid steel bumper was bent like a banana into the tire. The alignment was screwed up because the tie rod and some other stuff was wasted. When the salesman saw the damage, he was still trying to sell me the Jeep by saying, “This isn’t anything a crow bar and sledge hammer won’t fix” I thought, “You’ve got to be kidding me. How stupid does he think I am?” When the Jeep was driven back to the dealership, it made a loud growling sound because the front bumper was ripping into the tread on the tire. When we got to the dealership, the tire was almost flat.
We watched as the sales manager motioned to our salesman to come into his office. We heard as the manager started reaming the shit out of the sales guy. He went on and on about how much it would cost to fix the damage done to the Bronco. All of the other salesmen in the dealership were laughing their balls off. One of the men said that this isn’t the first time Bob had done something stupid. I asked what would happen to him and the man said, “Oh, he’ll get fired and get a job at another dealership down the road. He’s already been fired at 3 other dealerships.” We worked our way out of the building and said we’d be back tomorrow to pick up the Jeep. They didn’t even know our names.
That night we told my best friend’s dad what happened and I asked him if we could get into trouble. He said they couldn’t do anything and that we should go back, just to bust their balls. He hated that dealership because they screwed his father in law when he bought a car from them a few years ago. We did go back the next day, but only to show our girlfriends the damage on the truck and Jeep. The repair men who were detailing the Jeep in the repair shop thought we were like, war heroes or something because of what we did.
The manager heard we were back and rushed outside and asked us if we came back to pick up the Jeep. I said I had reconsidered because the 4 wheel drive didn’t work like I thought it should. The manager asked who we thought was going to pay for the repairs? My friend told him to call his cousin, the best attorney in Utica. We left the building and never looked back. The manager watched us leave and couldn’t do shit about it. Whenever we told people what happened on that December day, they think we’re making it up. I just tell them to go ask Bob. He’ll be working at a dealership down by the river. What a wild ride and a great vacation.
The Year Of The Ghost Train
By: Andrew J. Green
My grandfather was a member of the Ina Island Club back in 1956. The year that would become known of as, “The Year Of The Ghost Train.” Grandfather liked to refer to the Island as, Ina I. Many of Grandfather’s associates belonged to the elite club. Most were heirs of old money. These were the kind of people who have never experienced lack of any kind or whose definition of poverty is having a net worth of less than 10 million dollars. These were people of power and authority. The kind of people who could keep big stories from being published and who could convince the local authorities to turn a blind eye to what was an obvious problem.
A body washed ashore on Ina I in November of 1955. The body was unidentifiable until an autopsy was completed. It was a woman of about 23 years of age. The woman was with child and she died from lack of oxygen and a crushed esophagus. There was bruising on her throat done by someone with an 11 inch hand, measured from thumb to pinkie. A very large and powerful hand, or so I’m told.
In ‘56 some of the guests heard what sounded like a train howling through the downstairs. Many of the guests stayed in their room as the ghost train came through the house at 2:00 a.m. The great noise sounded for only a few moments but for the club members, it seemed like an eternity. However there was one guest named Johnny Winters who was in the smoking room alone when the ghost train came through. He witnessed it first hand they say. When the house was quiet again, the guests began to filter out of their rooms only to gather around poor Johnny Winters. His face was as pale as ash and his skin was cold. His eyes were glazing over, as the eyes of the dead often do. He was sitting on a chair, slumped over. His cigarette burnt down to his fingers. Whatever Johnny Winters saw had frightened him to death.
Some superstitious guests believed it was the soul of the dead woman that washed ashore in ‘55.They feared she was looking for the body she once inhabited. The imaginations began to run wild as the stories of the dead woman began to surface, more tales and speculation than facts. Guests tried to keep the stories of the ghost train to just themselves but strange things began to take place at Ina I. On one occasion it was reported that a brick fell off the chimney, and killed a groundskeeper in July of ‘56. Another time in early August, a female guest, while running from the boathouse, slipped on some rocks by shore and sustained a fractured skull. Her friend saw her through a window on the second floor and she said the girl was running as if she was being chased or as if she had seen a ghost, so she says. The doctors’ at the hospital stabilized her but she died 12 days later due to complications of a tubule pregnancy. Her companion, Billy Shivers, was a large man who could pick up a watermelon with one hand and squeeze it so, to leave his whole hand print in it.
Grandfather said that sometimes candles would flicker and blow out in the dining room. The candles blowing out weren’t the only strange thing, but at what time they would blow out. It would happen on the stale, motionless, hot August evenings. Guests often heard knocks on their doors while in bed only to answer and see a black shadow in the darkness moving away. They said it would steal their breath away. Their spouses would usually say it was just the shadow cast as the light from their room moved into the hallway, but the person answering the door would contend that it was something different. Some said it was the soul of the girl who died in November of ‘55. They said she was trying to take the breath from the living and come back alive again. Many believed that Ina I was haunted.
In late August of ‘56, Billy Shivers’ bloated body was found in Goose Bay by a fisherman who thought he had snagged a log. Billy’s body had a fractured skull and his right hand was cut off. After an autopsy was preformed, it was recorded that Billy Shivers died of strangulation and a broken neck. The bruises on Billy’s neck were made by someone with a very large hand measuring 11 inches from thumb to pinkie. Billy had hands of this exact size. Billy’s fractured skull happened after his death. Chimney brick residue was removed from Billy’s skull during the autopsy.
The deaths at Ina I in November of ‘55 and ‘56 have been passed off as accidents and many of the local residents of the region have never even heard of them. Perhaps because the guests at Ina I didn’t want publicity to taint their little retreat. They liked to keep their problems to themselves. What happened at Ina I, stayed at Ina I.
Oh, by the way of ghosts, the ghost train was passed off as chimney fires. Chimney fires do sound like a train coming through a house, and can cause bricks to fall off of the roof, but Grandfather doesn’t remember any fires being lit in the muggy hot summer of ‘56, or as he likes to refer to it as, “The Year Of The Ghost Train.”
Death On The Mat
By: Andrew J. Green
&nb
sp; When I was in the military, I became best friends with another soldier named David Norton. David was an expert in Tae Kwan Do martial arts since he was a boy. He could do things with his hands and feet that amazed everybody that knew him. I was injured while stationed in Europe so I had a lot if time off. Coincidentally, David also wasn’t able to work because he was diagnosed with a deteriorating spinal column and was hoping to get a medical discharge. By this time, we had grown tired with the military lifestyle and we were both waiting out our time. We still had 15 months left to serve.
Since we were always together, I asked David to teach me Tae Kwan Do. He thought that would by great but he said when he becomes my instructor, he wasn’t my friend. He said if he taught me, then I was going to learn to take a beating. He assured me that when he was through teaching me, I would never need to worry about ever fighting someone better than he was. He wasn’t exaggerating either. He also said I wouldn’t ever be beaten as hard by anyone as he was going to beat me during my training. He wasn’t being a sadist, he was just being honest. He didn’t go out of his way to hurt me, but he didn’t hold back on his punches or kicks when we sparred.
When we weren’t doing the work the military usually sets aside for the men who have been hurt, we were sparring and he was teaching me. The average time spent teaching me was 6 hours a day. This was everyday for 365 days a year. We never missed one day. During this time, he had broken a finger on my right hand, given me numerous black eyes, sprained my left ankle, bruised my ribs 6 times, and had given me countless contusions all over me body. When I was hurt badly and I didn’t want to train with him, he would ask me if I thought an attacker would leave me alone if I had a sprained ankle or a broken finger. I told him that he was going to kill me when we sparred. He said, “Then you need to fight hard and turn off the pain.” I thought he was whacked in the head. He said that I needed to learn how to fight when I was in the greatest pain, so I would know how good I could be at my worst point.