I ended up spending two weeks with my father during the month of July, 1988. I was 15at the time and had never done any kind of real work. He had a car crushing business at the time along with a trucking company. I imagined he had those businesses by not paying the 20 dollar a week child support that the court had ordered. I had never been around my father until the trip to Chattanooga and when we arrived back in Kentucky he asked me to stay with him for a while and help him with his car hauler business. He paid me 20 dollars for that first trip and so I eagerly agreed. I thought I was rich after all, at that time mom brought home 75 dollars a week so I was making more then her per day!
The work was unbearable we were going through a drought and every day was over 100 degrees. There I was in the middle of a big junk yard tearing off gas tanks before he crushed them. It was horrible! Gas would come out of those tanks some times and it burned something awful if it got on me. My feet were on fire but he didn't care he just told me to walk it off. He had another guy my aunt's husband working with us and he was a real smart alec. They thought it was hilarious that I was having so much trouble. At lunch one day Bud (my father) told Johnny that this one is slow but little Bud was going to be a fast worker (as I write this little Bud sits in Jail!) I felt like crap when he said this, here I was working my heart out for this guy and he bad mouths me like this to that jerk.
One day when we are on our way back to his place sitting up there in that big semi and the heat of the day I was falling asleep. My head was nodding off he stops on the train tracks and screams train to which I nearly came unglued, I am terrified of trains, in school they had showed us a movie of train hitting people and peoples heads actually flying out the windows! Now this big bully was pulling this trick. I nearly peed my pants! He just laughed and laughed the big jerk! When the end of the week came he gave me fifty dollars. I was still well pleased. I went home for the weekend and came back Sunday night to go to work again. Of course I gave my mother the fifty bucks.
One evening when we finished working he was out mowing the yard my little brother thought it was o.k. to be hitting me with some rope. I would walk away and tell him to leave me alone. I made no attempt to hit the little brat back but I wasn't going to stand there and take his crap. Bud (he's no father to me) got off the mower and grabbed me by the arm and said why are you walking away from him he's just trying to play if you want to be around me then you have to be good to him. Like it was such a privilege to be around this man. At the end of the second week I only got 20 bucks his woman (they never married) said it was because I had given the 50 to my mother. Well of course I did she raised me and she has it really hard. I called my mother and had her to come and get me. I was ticked off. But I still was determined to try and have a relationship with him. I just wasn't going to work for him any more. The first thing I did was take a bath. At Bud's they actually all used the same bath water even though Bud was filthy from working it was so gross you can't even imagine! Still I would go back to Bud's trying to have a father and though unsuccessful it would lead to the greatest event in my whole life and I would have a Father the best father anyone could ever have and I would have an uncle that was kind of like a father to me.
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