Another eventful night I was out and met a girl who offered me a ride home after the bars closed down. On the ride home I had her stop out near an isolated building figuring nobody would be around at two in the morning. The bush in front of the empty building looked like a perfect place to relieve myself. I could hop out, take a piss, then jump back in and go. It would be as easy as one-two-three. Right after mother-nature called, out jumped the devil! There happened to be a night watchman with a sheriff’s auxiliary badge keeping an eye on things, and he made sure nobody was going to piss on the real estate during his watch.
The little guy came up to me out of nowhere and asked me what I was doing. “Just watering the tree,” was my response. “Well, you can’t do that,” he said. I replied, “It’s two in the morning and nobody can see me. What’s the big deal?” The little man barked back with an authoritarian tone, “I did, and I am calling the police. You stay right there!” I looked at that little pipsqueak of a man and snatched the walkie-talkie from his hand and said, “Now what are you going to do—you aren’t so fucking tough now are you?” “You better give that back to me right now!” he demanded. “Fuck you! You cops think you’re pretty tough with your little radios and your guns; you all need to have ten guys just to take one man down. I don’t think you’re so tough now,” and then I threw the radio at the rent-a-cop, jumped in the car, and told the girl “Get the fuck out of here fast!”
She was stupid, drunk, and didn’t understand what just went down. The cop was able to run up to the car and use the radio to smash her window before she could drive away. So she just sat there and cried while the rent-a-cop radioed for help. Before I knew it, I was arrested and thrown in jail for disarming a cop and disorderly conduct for pissing on the bushes. I could never figure out how something as natural as taking a piss out in the middle of the night could be such an outrageous crime. Of course I had to answer to a judge in the morning for my intolerable offense.
Chapter 24
Bad luck for Ma Barker. For some reason the power to the house had been cut off and one hot summer night there was a thunder storm with massive air to ground lightning. A destructive bolt of lightning struck the house, forcing everyone out in the middle of the night. With nothing but the clothes on their backs, Ma, Jack, Leland, Joe, Jake, and Jenifer stood and watched as the house burned to the ground.
The fire department was called by neighbors to come and put the fire out. People we knew with police scanners told us later that the police department actually laughed when they learned it was our house burning. They said, “A blaze of laughter crackled over police radios.” “The Barker house is burning down HA-HA-HA!” I knew the police didn’t like us, but I never thought they would stoop so low as to laugh about such a tragic life threatening situation. They didn’t know if we were all trapped and burning up inside or what the real deal was. When I heard about the police laughter it just increased my contempt for authority ten-fold. It didn’t surprise me that people felt that way about us. We could always see the look on their faces when we said the name Barker. It was like they had run up against someone from a different planet.
The next day, as I stood there poking around the mess with the rest of the family, looking at the burned ruins. The police and fire department were also there to start investigating the fire.
The police suspected I might have had something to do with the fire. The head honcho in charge of the investigation asked me questions about where I was that night. When I told them where I was, I could sense they didn’t believe me. I had an alibi. I was at the house of an old classmate who was a sheriff’s deputy. The cops still wanted to arrest me for something just because I was me, and they thought I was somehow involved, but they didn’t have any evidence to support their gut feelings. They figured I was the oldest and the leader—nothing happened at the Barker house without Frank knowing something. At least that’s what they thought.
The fire department arson team found fused together wires in the wood framed interior walls that were still standing. They determined the house had been struck by lightning. Maybe the house wasn’t actually struck by lightning because of the storm, maybe it was the hand of God that actually destroyed that house because the inhabitants harbored so much lawlessness and disrespect for his word. We were told by the fire department when the power is shut off in a building, the wires can act like a huge coil, conducting and actually attracting lightning.
The uninhabitable house looked eerie and spooky. The upstairs bedroom Jack and I shared looked like a scene from a Saturday night thriller. The walls were all black and it smelled like a mixture of burned plastic, wood, and rubber. Almost as if the devil himself had paid a visit leaving behind a breath of the foulest smelling destruction. Being in that room was enough to suffocate the spirit. It was a strange feeling. It looked and even felt like death. I thought about how my father would react if he knew what was going on in our little corner of the world. We destroyed everything he stood for.
The house was insured for tens of thousands of dollars which was paid by the insurance company a month after the fire. Ma Barker had plenty of money to play around with again. Things were changing fast now that the house was gone. Ma wanted another house on the spot where the old one had been, but the town officials now had the advantage. They rezoned the property so it could no longer be used for residential purposes. None of that made any sense, so Ma hired a two-bit real estate lawyer to fight the zoning restriction. He didn’t know squat about fighting for a person’s rights. She wanted a double wide mobile home in place of the burned down home and had it delivered.
Her lawyer cited a laundry list of reasons why she should be able to have that double wide and still live on the property, but it didn’t seem to matter. Then there was Rubin Johnston, who owned the property next door. He had ties to city officials and was bound and determined to get his hands on the real estate. He could have been the one who threw a wrench into the legal actions of Ma’s lawyer. The fight went on against city hall for almost a year draining a good chunk of her insurance money. The lawyer she hired was not very productive and didn’t seem to have the kind of legal savvy needed to actually persuade anyone, or come up with a good enough legal argument to support the constitutional rights of a property owner, or elicit enough sympathy for a widow with children.
I thought he was just another bum looking to line his pockets while draining the family out of money and hope. To me lawyers were all in it together, one big happy family of degreed and licensed con-men. It didn’t matter if they were prosecutors or defense attorneys; they were all just good ole boys to one another—playing a game like chess or checkers with the lives of the desperate and down and out.
The brand new double-wide mobile home had to be removed or she would have faced some unbelievably ridiculous three-hundred dollar a day fines. Ma had the mobile home dragged off the property sending it back to the seller—taking a hit on her returned money because she lived in it for a while. Needing a place to live fast, because she was still supporting the two youngest kids living with her, she temporarily moved in with her mother and father. A house built by the lumber baron for his laborers almost a hundred years ago.
They were little stucco houses all stacked together just across the street from the mill, a reminder of the wealth and power the lumber industry once had. The three of them stayed in the basement. Her father was an alcoholic who hated her kids and he wasn’t afraid to say so. Her and her two young ones moving in must have been too much for the old codger because shortly after moving in, he died sitting on the couch while he was playing with his favorite cat. Even though he was our grandfather, none of my brothers, sisters or I shed a tear over the man who had never treated us with any love or respect.
The only thing left at the lake house, other than memories, was a concrete slab and the block building Clem, Jack, and I used for detonating our homemade explosives and a smaller wood structure which was used as a workshop. A few junk cars littered the property and h
ad to be hauled to the scrap heap. With the house gone, there were no more parties, no more friends. It was like everything ended. I hadn’t seen Clem for a couple of years. Little-T was gone, and nobody ever heard from him again.
The property was virtually worthless because we couldn’t build anything on it. Ma eventually sold it after exhausting darn near all the insurance money on legal fees and city fines. I don’t recall who the buyer was, but it most likely ended up in the hands of Rubin Johnston. That piece of real estate will always live in the minds of the hundreds of people who used it as a refuge to enjoy a bit of freedom and excitement. We were all getting older and trying to find our places in the world. The days of so much turmoil and excitement at that place were over.
Leland, Michelle and a buddy drifted down to Texas looking for adventure and work. They had been down there for a couple of weeks without much luck finding anything exciting. The three were sitting in a park making plans to head back up north when they met a guy who said he owned a ranch and needed someone to act as a ranch foreman. He also said he had a house in Corpus Christi he was fixing up. Leland’s buddy was a skilled carpenter so it all sounded pretty good. They stayed and filled the positions of ranch foreman and carpenter going back and forth from the ranch to the house in Corpus Christi. There wasn’t much for Michelle to do at the ranch but keep her nails painted and her hair styled to perfection. She certainly wasn’t going to leave Leland there alone to party with a Texas millionaire so she stayed on and helped with ranch duties. After all with so much money floating around there were bound to be available single women who would want to get their hooks into her man. She was not about to let that happen even if they both threatened to strangle each other. Eventually they all got to be good friends and before long comingled in each other’s personal lives.
The Texan told Leland his parents were killed in a car accident making him heir to everything. He was a college graduate with a degree in business, but lived and acted like a spoiled little child. When he got drunk or angry at his girlfriend he punched holes in the walls. Leland was called at all hours of the day or night to fix the holes.
One day in the fall, a year after he’d first landed the foreman’s position, Leland called me from Texas with a job opportunity. He asked me if I would be interested in building a small ranch guest house for his boss. When Leland gave me the details, I was more than happy to go down there and do the project. Jumping at the chance to finally design and build a house was like a dream come true. I packed everything I owned into my broken down pick-up truck and headed for Texas. At twenty-five years old I figured it was a great accomplishment to be a self-employed builder.
Chapter 25
Texas here I come. I set out to make my dreams come true. Leland, Michelle, Joe, and two of their close friends were also going to be part of the project. The six of us had a good time on the ranch and in the small Texas town while we built the house. The only thing to do on that ranch for excitement was rattlesnake hunting or going into town to the laundry-mat to play the two video games while we washed clothes. Sometimes we drove south for fifty miles down to Corpus Christi seeking a steak house for a few drinks and some good food. The weather was hot and muggy, but it felt good compared to bone chilling weather back home.
I put down three-hundred dollars and rented a mobile home for thee-hundred-fifty dollars a month for my brother Joe and me to live in while we built the guest house. The owner of the mobile home was a guy like Rubin Johnston. He had that same air of superiority about him. I hated plunking down that security deposit. I knew from the minute I walked in the door to his office getting my deposit back would be like pulling teeth.
The first thing I saw when I walked in the door of the rented mobile home was a green chameleon holding fast to a window screen. My immediate response to the critter inhabited, filthy mobile home was that it was owned by what I would consider a slum lord. Joe and I scrubbed up the house the best we could. At least we made it livable. Our temporary house was bare bones until a few weeks into the project. Once I started getting paid I bought a new stereo and TV.
As I spent time at the ranch I realized my brother and his buddy were influenced by the Texas millionaire and they were both into the rich man’s drug of choice—cocaine. I didn’t particularly care for the guy because he had so much money and so little respect for anyone.
Except for a few minor injuries, things moved right along on the house. Before we could start building we had to tear down an old shack where the new house was going to be built. A piece of the old house was saved and incorporated into the design of the new structure. With the old part being saved, I had to design the elevations to match up between the old and the new. It was a tricky task to do considering I hadn’t built anything on sand before. In Texas everything is built on top of sand using piers to distribute the building load onto the ground.
The first day of the tear down I sliced my little finger open on steel roofing of the old house. My wound required six stiches which slowed down my end of the work. We worked on the project just about every day for lack of anything better to do. One of Leland’s buddies was a construction rooky. His lack of understanding and skill caused a few bickering moments, but other than that the project moved along very well. My house design had an open concept with the kitchen and living area separated by a wet bar that I would design and build. The interior was mostly car siding and paneling. The bathroom and laundry room were finished textured drywall. A sleeping loft was accessed between the living room and kitchen. The exterior was all cedar siding.
I learned a great deal about house design and running a crew on that job—knowledge I could use on future jobs. After four months the little two bedroom guest house was finished and I had had enough of Texas and the whole ranch scene. The weather was getting too hot and humid for me.
While building the house, I had gotten to know two women who owned and operated the lumber yard where I had purchased all the materials for the project. We had talked about the possibility of my going to work for them when I was finished building the house, so I gave it a try. They pushed a buzzer every time a customer came in needing lumber. There I was, marching to the sound of a buzzer every fifteen minutes. A couple weeks of that and I felt like a dog being signaled to obey every time the buzzer went off. I had to let the ladies know the job wasn’t working for me.
I had heard about a multistory project being built on the gulf on Mustang Island in Port Aransas. I figured I would go home for a couple of weeks then come back and apply for the job in Port Aransas. I packed and cleaned up the mobile home to head back home. When I went to return the keys and get my security deposit, the owner, another Texas good ole boy refused to give me the three-hundred bucks security deposit. He didn’t have any real reason other than he owned the property, and he wasn’t going to give it to me. He gave the excuse that it wasn’t clean enough. It was a typical landlord claim for keeping the security deposit. I thought, “Yea, that figures, another rich and greedy dickhead who owns the whole damned town and he still has to scam those who have to work hard for a living.” As I left his office, I let the wind catch the combination screen and storm door knowing what could happen. “Oops!” The wind gust caught the door and wrecked it. The greedy chump then tried to blame me for the damage and threatened to have me thrown in jail; making it known he was good friends with the local sheriff. Needless to say, I got out of town as fast as I could and vowed to never ever go back to Texas. I didn’t want to end up eating tacos for six months in some Texas jail.
Shortly after I left Texas, Leland got into a car accident with the ranch’s work truck. The truck was totaled and my brother almost lost one of his legs. The Texas millionaire paid the medical bills, but refused any kind of workman’s compensation or any other form of financial support until he was able to walk and work again. Leland was left with a permanently scared and damaged leg and never received one penny of compensation for his disability. He was never the same after that accident. To me it was a
nother story of greed and denial of responsibility on the part of the owner. My brother claimed they were such good friends, but I didn’t see it that way when I was there. It looked to me like my brother was just the rich man’s mess cleaner.
I tried to convince Leland he would regret spending his life working for a guy like that. He didn’t listen to me—but why should he—I never listened to what anyone had to say either. Leland worked for the Texas millionaire for almost ten years before he returned home and started using and dealing cocaine. He met up with a gal who he thought was the love of his life and the two of them lived like a couple of movie stars from the profits of all their drug deals, often traveling to Mexico or Hawaii on a whim. They showered Ma Barker with expensive gifts for Christmas and birthdays.
The Tarnished Shooter Page 19
