My Life

What I am about to reveal to you good readers is the gospel truth, no matter how fantastic it may seem to you. Every word that I will write regarding my life is completely true.
My life now is pretty darn good. I have a wonderful husband and the coolest kids on the planet. We have two awesome dogs (basically stupid, but good dogs nonetheless). We have a home, electricity, running water, food on the table and presents under the tree at Christmas.
Sounds pretty simple, doesn't it? But, compared to the first three decades of my life, it is wonderful.
My father, who is currently residing somewhere in the Sunshine State, was, and I am sure still is, a violent alcoholic. When he was sober, he was fun, charming, and the best friend a person could have. Unfortunately, sober was not something he ever aspired to be. I have not seen nor spoken to him in 20 years. He has never seen his grandsons. He never will. But there has never been another person who has impacted my life and personality more than he. What follows is the true story.
When my father was drunk, he was mean. I don't mean just cranky, I mean Mad Dog Mean. Vicious. Embarrassing. Loud. Obnoxious. Maudlin. VIOLENT.
He would occasionally disappear for days or weeks at a time, leaving my mother with three kids, no money and no food in the house. I can't tell you how many times I saw him beat her. It was too many times to count. She had three kids, and nowhere to go, as Domestic Violence was not even a word yet. Cops were less than useless, and there were no shelters or services available to her. She had no choice but to stay.
Our "home", meaning whichever apartment in whichever state he decided to move us to always was violent. Even games were violent.
He had two favorite games to play with my older brothers and myself when my younger brothers were too young to be interesting.
First was the belt game. We all stood in a circle, facing inward. Each of us had a leather belt, and the purpose of the game was for everyone to just whip their belts out striking each other as hard as possible over and over until only one person was able to withstand the pain and was the winner. If you cried, you were a pansy. I was five years old.
Second was the shoe war. We would split into teams, my father and I vs. My two older brothers. We would divide the house into territories, each team controlling a territory. Then we would race to gather as many shoes as possible. We would then stalk throughout the house throwing shoes at each other to try to take over territory. If you got hit, you were dead until your teammate revived you.Anyone remember shoes in the 70's? Wooden clogs, Penny loafers with hard soles, Wing tips, etc. HARD, very hard. I was eight years old. My oldest brother got his nose broken for the first time during that game.
Those were fun times. Imagine punishments.
That was also the year that my father decided to buy some property on a mountain in Pennsylvania. They bought ten acres, eight of which were forest surrounded on three sides by more than 5,000 acres of state forest.
I remember we lived in tents on the property for three months while we built the cabin which was finished in July of 1976. It took a long time to build because there was no electricity on the mountain, so we had to use hand saws and tools to build.
The cabin wasn't really a cabin, more of a shack, actually. One room for five people. By this time, my older brothers had gone to live with their mother, so it was my parents, me, and my two younger brothers, the youngest of whom was six months old when we moved in. There was a wood stove in the center of the room that my mom cooked on, bunk-beds on the right hand wall, my youngest brother's crib beside it. We had a table and chairs on the other side of the stove from the beds, and a sofa on the left wall. There was an old sink at the foot of the bunk-bed with a drain hose that ran out under the cabin.
We had no electricity and no running water. My father had a "water witch" come out to the meadow 100 yards below our cabin and divine the water source, and we dug a well and put a hand pump on it. It was spring fed, crystal clear and cold. Whenever we needed water to cook, clean or bathe with, we had two five gallon buckets that we had to haul water uphill in. The outhouse was a ways down the hill from the cabin.

More later.