I left the town of Arcola, Texas around 11:00 a.m. on Monday, the 6th, with no idea nor plan as to what
I was going to do the rest of the day, nor especially the rest of the week. All I knew was that I was going to likely have several days of freedom.
I had a delivery to complete before I could leave town, and that was on the far west side of Houston.
I completed that about 1:30 p.m. There was no reason to ever return to my estranged-wife's house,
but I knew I would eventually have to face the realities of my life and go back in a few days.
I needed to get the H*ll out of Dodge for 24 hours and get some fresh air and exercise. In my younger
days ( 1987 ), it would have been a no-brainer. I would have headed for the Sierra Madres, most likely
to make a futile attempt at solo-hiking to the top El Pico de Candela ( I never made it even half-way to the top )
So I was now driving through northwest Houston pondering what to do about lunch.
I called up my estranged-deranged-biological-father and asked him if I could come visit and tell him happy birthday in person for his 79th Birthday. He sounded non-interested at best.
I explained that I may not get another chance to visit until Christmas, and he subtly replied, “so what.”
( or maybe like "who gives a sh*t ? )
A little background on all my drama before I continue. 60 years and one month ago, my mom
was a junior in high-school in Oak Cliff ( south of Dallas ) and she got pregnant to some jerkwad
alcoholic abusive moron. Every since that tragic-conception, every single tiny aspect of my life has been
an enormous clusterph*ck.
In May of this year, his wife of 44 years, passed away after nearly ten years of dementia. He has been alone ever since, living in a nice house, but he does not keep it clean. A part of me, sadly feels that there is an opportunity for he and I to make up for these lost 59 years. But he just likes to berate me humorously, that he doubts he is my father.
In the past 40 years, I have only briefly visited him for a few hours around Christmas. I always leave driving like a bat-out-of-hell out of the drive way with him cussing up a storm lots of awful sh*t.
I was passing near one of my favorite restaurants, "Niko-Niko's," so I decided to get a really
nice lunch. From there, I drove to Midlothian non-stop via Hwy 6. thru College Station and Waco.
Whenever on a road-trip, I ponder things, daydream, plan things, worry about things etc. I had learned
the day before that the grandson of my paternal-grandma's older-sister had passed away and nobody told me nor did anyone I knew know about it. I had just stumbled onto it will doing obituary-research. He
was ten years older than me and I had not seen him in over 45 years.
The weather was perfect for a road-trip and there was a nice sunset as I was passing the traffic-scam-community of Reagan.
I arrived at my biological-father's house about at 7:30 p.m. I always know that I will be walking into
a fire, so I have to do some yoga first. Most often, I will stop a few blocks away and meditate and pray that an asteroid strikes the house before I get there. When I got there, he was standing in the garage with the door open and it was dark, and some weird lady about 40 years old was sitting in his lounge-chair.
Turns out she was a meth-head that lived next door and was recovering from a really bad car-wreck and he
was Ubering her around. We all went inside and I gave her the left-overs from my lunch at Niko-Nikos,
just to try to break the ice, or pretend to be nice. Then comes in some prostitute about 24 years old that looked like a young Michelle *b*%a. My dad and the hooker, went to go take care of business, and the wacko-crackhead left to go home next door. So I just went straight to bed. The air was so dusty and stagnant that I breathing was uncomfortable, and I thought about bailing out and going to get a motel.
Fortunately, his wi-fi was working as I woke up at 11 p.m and it took me a while to fall back asleep. I was concerned about the following day. I was sure, I would have to bail out suddenly and drive back to Houston, but his 79th birthday was still 36 hours away, and I had vague hopes of making it to the November meeting of the DFW Grotto.
He let me sleep in, as he had to drive the crackhead-lady to the store. I had never in my life, been alone in my dad's house in 59 years. It was awkward, especially since the house was really his deceased-wife's and he had just mooched off of her for 44 years.
When he got back he had a long list of chores he wanted me to help him with. I knew this would be problem. I have told him a thousand times that I am having trouble with my hernia, and he always berates me very toxically, saying something angrily such as "go to the ph*cking doctor you d**khead. It is really unbearable to be around him.
Eventually, we decided to go to lunch and he drove way across town in his junker-crappy truck that my younger very estranged-brother had gifted him, and we ate lunch at "The Cotton Patch." He made a big stink about me ordering a salad, and so it was an unpleasant lunch. I told him that having lunch with him was his birthday-gift and that was the best I could do this year. And he replied, "I don't care about that sh*t."
So I went back to his house and took a shower and watched a movie on his Prime Freevee channel, "Bourne Legacy." I had never seen it. I ate the left-over salad.
Then I tried to watch some ridiculous British tv show called "Return to the Land of the Lost," or something like that. It was awful, so I went to bed early, and surfed the web to see what all was going on in the Middle East. The channel ILDV ( Israeli tv ) seems to have the most accurate propaganda, and by far the hottest news-caster on the planet, Miss Amit Harari.
I still did not know what my plans were on Wednesday, and it seemed grim that I would make it there
long enough in Midlothian in order to make it to the grotto meeting.
I called my sister in Mansfield about 30 minutes away, and practically begged her to let me come over
for a minute to say hello. [ Her and her husband are nice to me, but they both work remotely from home and are big-wigs at a defense-contractor, and so they have hectic life. ] I got there in time to see my brother-in-law. He changed his mind and said he and his wife would take me to lunch. But
they are super duper extra-finicky about about eating out and so they drove me clear into Arlington to a Mediterranean Grill. I didn't need to eat that cr*p nor waste that kind of money. And that got
me all off schedule.
Afterwards, I called my biological-father and he sounded drunk and didn't want me to come back. So I changed course and started heading towards the grotto-meeting a few hours early.
I stumbled upon an antique-mall in Arlington, so I figured I would frolick there until 6 p.m. I found a roaster-pan, that Magdalena had been wanting. The old aluminum kind from the 1960's. It was in great shape and I knew she would love it. She has three, but had mentioned she wanted one more. I also found some hippie-bell-bottom jeans for Dalena that looked like new-condition. So I bought those
too.
I went to the grotto-meeting. The drive there was past my physical-limits as I had not had
my daily nap. I got there totally wiped-out. My hernia was really bothering me, so I decided not to
eat any barbecue. After the meeting, I called my biological-father up and I told him that I was leaving
Irving and heading to Houston. He said that he would leave the back-door unlocked. He has
never done that for me in 59 years. As I was driving though Dallas, I was listening to the radio.
The music stations in Dallas are really good, and the ones in Houston are extremely awful. A song I had never heard was playing, "Washington Square" by The Village Stompers from 1963. That
was really uplifting.
When I got to his house, the same hooker was back for the third time, and she was parked in the driveway, but
by the time I was getting ready to watch tv, she was leaving. I watched "The Bourne Identity," which
I had likely seen it in the theater way back years ago when I had premiered. I went to bed, and
the hooker's g-string was laying on the floor. He hadn't even changed the d*%n sheets. Her name
is Mineh May or something like that. She was about 24 and skinny like a heroin-addict.
One good thing about the house, is that the shower in the master-bath has the walkin-spacious style with the glass door and large tile. The water-pressure and hot-water and quality of the water are awesome. But he has a $ 5 shower-head from The Five Below Store. That just rankles me. The toilet is in one of those fancy private closets, but it is a real kiddie-toilet. It is tiny little things like that make this BnB the worst on Earth.
I left early on Thursday, and had lunch at "The Waffle House" in Corsicana. I tried to hook up with a caver there, but they were in Dallas.
My next stop was to pretend to look for caves near the ghost-town of Cayuga. I was really just trying to get some fresh air and exercise. I had hoped to drive around the Gus Engeling Wildlife Management Area on the other side of the town of Bethel, but I ran out of time, and the weather was misty, and very cloudy.
https://tpwd.texas.gov/huntwild/hunt/wma/find_a_wma/list/?id=10
I finally made contact with my daughter and her college via text. I was going to have to drive recklessly for almost two hours to get to her college in Nacogdoches on time. I got there and gave to her the bell-bottom jeans from the antique-store and then drove her around campus for 10 minutes, and then we sat outside her math-class and talked for five minutes. I had hoped to get her old iPhone from her so I could trade it with her mom's old iPhone. But Dalena was not ready to give it to me yet.
I stopped in Livingston at the famous Catfish King restaurant. I had not eaten there in at least 31 years. Then the rain came down. I knew the wipers on my Sequoia were rotten. I had not driven in the rain in months.
I had a delivery in downtown Houston that I wished I could have worked on. I was downtown, and only about 45 minutes early. But I had forgot to find a printer and print out the stuff that I needed to deliver. Coupled with the rain and being totally exhausted I decided to blow off my work. I know that will come back to bite me in the a%#.
It is 10 p.m. now and Magdalena is sound asleep on the couch with the tv blaring just as she has done every night since she became an empty-nester two months ago. She is not even the same person anymore.
to be continued..... ( or edited ).
