Back in Wisconsin

We hitch hiked and got a ride all the way into Janesville and right to my parents house from Niagra Falls. The weather was snowy and cold. I did not miss snow while I was in Europe and Africa for the last couple of years. We had no place to stay so we asked my mom if we could stay down in the basement there for a couple of days. She told us it was ok but then my dad threw a fit that we could not live in sin under his roof. I had to get him to explain the sin part. He did not know we had gotten married and thought we were just sleeping together in sin. We explained that we were actually married and he relented but still acted weird toward us.

A little history is in order here. I have not gotten along with my dad ever in my entire life. I don't know why. He has always disliked me and he shows it every chance he gets. As a kid he beat the crap out of me every time he could find an excuse to do it. I am the only one in the family he does this to. I do not know what his problem with me is.

I left home to go to school at the University of Wisconsin in Madison after finishing highschool. While I was a student there, I was arrested during an anti Viet Nam war riot and beat up by the police in Madison. When I was arrested I was not involved in the riots. I stepped out of the school library after writing a paper inside the library and as I walked away from the library door about thirty police officers attacked me and beat me to the ground with their night sticks then handcuffed me with plastic handcuffs and threw me in a police car making sure to bash my head against the car as they put me inside the car. I was held in jail for three days then charged with multiple pages of trumped up felony charges including rioting, arson, murder, attempted murder, bomb making, and on and on. The whole thing was so bogus I have never trusted any police officers ever again in my life. In court the public defender had all the charges thrown out except for trespassing on school property which I was convicted of because I did not have my student ID in my possession when I was arrested. I had to pay a $75 fine for not having the ID card with me and was released. The police violence against me and the $75 fine they gave me motivated me join the anti war movement after I was released from jail. I made sure it cost the police many times their $75 fine. I helped organize and lead many rallies from then on. The arrest ironically ended up making me ineligible for the draft later on so I was never drafted for the war effort despite my draft lottery number being elevan.

When I went home to my parents house a couple of days later my dad rushed at me like he was going to punch me. I didn't flinch and if he had hit me I was prepared to take him down. He out weighed me by over a hundred pounds but I was no longer a little kid. He started yelling and screaming at me about how much I had embarrassed him by making the front page of the local paper for my anti American behavior. All he cared about was his own image. He told me to get out of his sight becausee I was so disgusting. My mom got her two cents in also. I had had enough abuse from them and I left the house, dropped out of college and left Wisconsin for California that same day.

So I was not expecting a prodigal son welcome when we arrived back after wandering around the country then Europe and Africa for a few years. As expected, we did not get a warm welcome back home. My mom was nicer than I expected but my dad was the same old jerk to me. He will never change. He is 92 now and still treating me like dirt. My other brothers and sisters were never treated like I was by our dad. They do not understand why I have rejected him as an adult. They tell me today that I am mean to him. I have merely refused to accept or tolerate his abuse any longer and to do so I have ended any sort of relationship with him. My siblings fault me for this but that is life. I will never again allow anybody to treat me like my dad did while I was growing up and like he still does treat me. He acts all innocent around them but then digs his daggers in when they are out of earshot. I have given up even trying to be nice to him.

We ended up staying in Janesville when my grandmother asked us to move in with her. She needed somebody around the house because she was elderly and having some problems. We lived upstairs in her house and helped her out. I really liked my grandma. She was one of the most even keeled, fair minded, tolerant and decent people I had ever met in my life. She treated everybody nicely. She was exactly the opposite of my dad. I enjoyed living with her and talking about her life growing up and raising all her children. She was very warm, open and honest and would talk about almost any topic we brought up with her.

Unfortunately for us, there was very little in Janesville for jobs. We could not find decent work so we had to leave and go to California where I had a well paying job waiting for me. We tried to find someone else to live with my grandma but did not find somebody before we left town. A few days after we left, she fell down the stairs and spent a couple of days injured on the floor before somebody found her. She never recovered. She had a stroke while on the floor and her brain was damaged so that she could no longer carry on a conversation. She just rambled on talking to herself mindlessly no longer able to communicate with anybody. I couldn't stand to see her like this. She had been so sharp witted before her accident I just cried when I visited her now. She lived about another fifteen years without ever recovering her faculties. I think that if we had still been living with her that earlier medical treatment would have prevented this from happening to her.

We hitch hiked out to California from Janesville to find work. We planned on saving enough money to take off traveling again to India and South East Asia then on to Australia. I had worked for a farmer when I first arrived in California and he offered me my old job back. I took him up on his offer and Kirsten got a job working at a drugstore. We went to work saving up for our next adventure.