Take my daughter's credit card off my account I keep trying but when I sneak back around it's popped back up without a sound doncha know she'll call the police ya take her money out why can't I enter mine its got the same amount sorry lady but the card number you giving us goes the nonexistant route you bank say it does not belong to an active bank account. Take that word outta the book em-ess I sent you clowns get autobography outta the title of the book on which you all don't pay no money d...

1. PROLOGUE: Dad’s Wife, Cuckoo One Saturday night when we were already in our pajamas, four children under eight years old, Mom said she was going out to the garage to kill herself and not to open the door or the fumes would get us, too. Nothing like this had ever happened to us before, and we were in shock. We could hear the engine roar occasionally. Once we opened the door a crack and the garage was filled with smoke and stink. We had no ideas regarding what to do. Then the garage door wen...

Pockets of Change 1. Dad, Woods Owner One Saturday night when we were already in our pajamas, four children under eight years old, Mom said she was going out to the garage to kill herself and not to open the door or the fumes would get us, too. Nothing like this had ever happened to us before, and we were in shock. We could hear the engine roar occasionally. Once we opened the door a crack and the garage was filled with smoke and stink. We had no idea what to do. Then the garage door went up...

It's sad for me to see a photo of Dad with sons 9 and 7 standing beside him, coming to the top of his swimming trunks. Little boys on a trip out west with their dad, so excited about buffalo and coyotes, canyons and Indians. That's when he should have been with them every single day--because soon enough, he was going to have to live another 24 and 37 years without them. Those should have been the years he took off during. But we never know, and neither of them would ever say their time with h...

Once I sold newspaper subscriptions in the meanest Tampa Housing projects , unworried because my boss, Dan, was always able to keep me at ease, somehow-- I knew I was safe. I'd seen him respond to a coked-up black stranger waving a cocked and loaded gun at him with "Get that gun out of my face ; I can't talk with a gun in my face." The authority and mellowness all rolled into the voice were the perfect combo to make the guy sit down and shut up--usually really stupid; you never show a gun at...

Those disks we fly-fishing homes are so familiar with-- yellow, 3.8 pound test, Platyl leader material, 60 feet, made in West Germany; a baseball signed by every Detroit Tiger when they won the World Series in 1968--boy were we charged then! And this box I don't get at all: The first envelope, postmarked "Quincy, Mass." and "1937", has 56 drawings slathered in pink ink, all different people, one in bowler hat, one in glasses, one a female--and says "In honor of the 200th anniversary of the bi...

Kids weren't supposed to come home after 18 (16, she'd maintained).She wanted me gone back to Florida because Dad was running off with me every day. Once he took me to Manley Bennett to see what the stock market was like, the lights, the frantic pace. He'd quit drinking after two or three times at a bar with me, once bringing me home just in time for me to vomit in the toilet by the front door as Mom stood a foot away saying,"WELL?" But I was still some source of cotention between them and Gr...

Kids weren't supposed to come home after 18 (16, she'd maintained).She wanted me gone back to Florida because Dad was running off with me every day. Once he took me to Manley Bennett to see what the stock market was like, the lights, the frantic pace. He'd quit drinking after two or three times at a bar with me, once bringing me home just in time for me to vomit in the toilet by the front door as Mom stood a foot away saying,"WELL?" But I was still some source of cotention between them and Gr...

Once I had a tape recorder--the only thing I'd wanted for Christmas, to tape my soap opera, Dark Shadows, which came on when I had to make dinner (Debbie and I alternated cooking and dishes)or while we were at the cabin with no TV. Mom was carrying on in her style which she always told Dad I was lying about. I taped it. Debbie and the boys came into Terry's room, where I was taping her rant, and Debbie said, "Mom, she's taping you." Mom threw my taperecoder at a dresser and busted it. Debbie ...

Dad was a shy but playful, teasing rascal as a boy, pretending to eat a hotdog without chewing by running it alongside his mouth in profile, playing practical jokes. In high school he was President of the French Club, President of the Student Council, and a member of the track team and editor of the sports section of the yearbook and newspaper. In a little sketch by classmates it was decided on December 16, 1939 that in twenty years he'd be a zoology professor. Raised by a sportsman and his s...