Rise and Fall

Copyright © 2016 by G. Thomas Fensom.

ISBN:      Softcover      978-1-5144-1267-1

      eBook         978-1-5144-1266-4

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Rev. date: 08/09/2016

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Contents

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY ONE

TWENTY TWO

TWENTY THREE

TWENTY FOUR

TWENTY FIVE

TWENTY SIX

TWENTY SEVEN

TWENTY EIGHT

TWENTY NINE

THIRTY

THIRTY ONE

THIRTY TWO

THIRTY THREE

THIRTY FOUR

THIRTY FIVE

THIRTY SIX

THIRTY SEVEN

THIRTY EIGHT

THIRTY NINE

FORTY

FORTY ONE

FORTY TWO

FORTY THREE

FORTY FOUR

FORTY FIVE

FORTY SIX

FORTY SEVEN

FORTY EIGHT

FORTY NINE

FIFTY

FIFTY ONE

FIFTY TWO

FIFTY THREE

FIFTY FOUR

FIFTY FIVE

FIFTY SIX

FIFTY SEVEN

FIFTY EIGHT

FIFTY NINE

SIXTY

SIXTY ONE

SIXTY TWO

SIXTY THREE

ONE

Memories of my childhood that keep coming back to me over and over again is standing in my mother’s yard watching Dad ride off on his old Indian motorcycle. Never knowing for sure if he would ever come back again. It was not a pleasant sight for a three year old toddler to endure.

Dad was not a big man but his long hair and shaggy beard matched his biker image. He always wore his club vest with its symbolic name across his back knowing that he was one of the very first members. A feathered friend would provide the club’s logo and he was one of the original patch holders.

Back in those days I never really saw him much while I was growing up. He had discovered the benefits of being a big shot in a motorcycle club long before I was born in 1951. His local chapter had actually formed in the 1940’s. As one of the founders of the club he was required to travel a lot while taking care of money making endeavors. Later on I learned of all his drug use and girl chasing. It was easy to see why his marriage had failed with Mom. Although she tried to hide her emotions, I knew she was devastated. Children have a way of sensing when things are not right with their parents.

During those early years I was raised primarily by my Mother. She worked very hard to provide a good life for both of us. Most of the time she worked as a maid for various motels around our home town.

She would also clean several houses for some rich folks around town to earn extra money for us. Her experience at the motel allowed her to take over management of my uncle’s truck stop which also had rooms for rent. He had developed quite a business out on Highway 71 on the edge of town.

Whenever Mom was at work I usually stayed with my Aunt at her house. My Aunt Claudia was like a second Mother to me. Uncle Floyd tried his best to be the Father that was never around for me while I was growing up. It worked for awhile, but as I grew older my rebellious side took over me. It wasn’t long before I rebelled against any type of authority. Maybe I was headed down the wrong path way back then.

TWO

In the summer of 1964 I made a deal with my mother and my Aunt. I had been ditching school a lot the previous year and was always threatening to quit for good!

A neighbor of ours had a 250cc Honda Scrambler for sale and I had decided I could not live without it. My plan was to trick them into buying the motorcycle for me with the solemn promise that I would quit ditching and finish high school! Knowing full well that it was just a ploy to get what I wanted at the time. As soon as school would start I would be back to my same old ways.

I rode that Honda from sun up to sun down almost every single day! A few months later and too soon for my liking, the engine locked up on me. Already experienced in small engine repair with lawn mowers, I decided to tear it apart and try to fix it myself.

My Uncle Ed owned a small gas station in a tiny unincorporated community called Iron Gates. He also served as the small town’s Mayor. I always admired my Uncle Ed for his ambition and drive to make a difference in people’s lives. His gas station was located on the main road with a small attached house that he and my Aunt called home. The basement had a garage that served as a repair shop and a storage place for cases of oil. My Uncle would let me use his shop and tools to work on my motorcycle whenever I wanted to.

As I was tearing apart the engine, I removed the gas tank to drain the fuel into a large drain pan. Just as I was concentrating on not spilling any gas on the floor, the nearby hot water heater kicked on. The flame from the pilot light flared up and quickly ignited the gasoline fumes close to the hot water tank.

The fire spread instantly and I was barely able to run out the basement garage door to safety. No sooner than I reached the lower driveway, the flames reached all the cases of oil stored in the basement. Now the rapidly spreading fire was burning out of control due to all the oil and gas in the area.

Fire Departments from all the surrounding areas responded fairly quickly considering they were mostly volunteers. The fire was now visible from as far as my relatives house more than twenty miles away.

Luckily the first firefighters on the scene began spraying down the above ground storage tanks with a steady stream of water. Next they started spraying around the gas pumps that led to the underground storage tanks. Their quick and alert thinking prevented what could have been a massive explosions and serious injuries.

Thank God there was one single fire hydrant in Iron Gates and it was only a couple hundred feet from the burning gas station.

However the entire place was destroyed all the way down to the concrete foundation.

Being the smart business man that he was, Uncle Ed carried plenty of insurance. The first investigator’s report confirmed what we already knew and that was the fire was just an accident.

In fact my Uncle Ed came out way ahead because he got the station and his house rebuilt brand new and bigger than before.

I can remember thinking at the very moment as I was watching the fire burn out of control that this fourteen year old boy had really screwed up big time! Never ever realizing what might happen to me down the road.

But as it had turned out it gave my Aunt and Uncle the fresh start they had needed to build and expand their soon to be profitable oil business.

Not long after that and on my Uncle Ed’s fiftieth birthday he slumped over the steering wheel of his tanker truck dead from a massive heart attack. He had been making all his own gasoline deliveries to his other stations to save money on weekly payroll expenses.

After all that had happened to him the previous year, it was so very hard to believe that he was gone. All that he had worked for was left to his wife and their teenage son Larry. Larry graduated from High School later that same year and took over the family’s oil business. He worked extremely hard those first few years after his father’s death to build the company into the thriving oil business that it is to this day.

THREE

I was living with my other Aunt and Uncle when I was fourteen. My Mom was having a hard time controlling me and thought my Uncle could help. Well he helped so much that I ran away from home shortly after I had moved in with them.

I had become very good friends with an older guy named Milton. He had the slickest ’58’ Chevy Impala coupe that I had ever seen. He had convinced me to go with him to Miami Beach for awhile. After a few weeks of partying and chasing beach bunnies we were ready for a change of scenery. It didn’t take long for us to get tired of all the retirees and old people in south Florida. All the young people who lived down there called them FOPS which stood for ‘fuckin old peoples’!

We had both heard about the huge month long party down in New Orleans during Mardi Gras. So without any further hesitation we headed in that direction.

After several weeks of what seemed like non-stop partying we headed back home to southwest Missouri.

We had been discussing for weeks a plan to get a significant amount of money saved so we could move to California for awhile. After working various jobs and hustling as much as we could we headed for the west coast.

Like a couple of idiots we started partying on the trip west. Drinkin and smoking grass was something we did all the time and we saw nothing wrong with doing it out on the highway.

Milton’s driving must have been pretty bad because we only made it as far as Santa Rosa, New Mexico. That’s where we were stopped by Border Patrol for fitting the profile for drug smugglers out of Mexico.

After a thorough search of our vehicle all they found were some marijuana roaches and a lot of empty beer cans.

We were both hauled in to the local police station. Milton was charged with possession of marijuana since they were found in his car.

It did not take long for the authorities to discover that I was only fourteen years old. They threatened Milton with contributing to the delinquency of a minor for all the empty beer cans that were found all over the back seat.

I was given two choices of calling my Mother or heading straight to Juvenile Hall. It did not take long for me to decide that I would call home and beg for help. After explaining my situation to Mom, she agreed to get her husband to ride with her and come to New Mexico for me.

My punishment was to withstand their verbal tirade all the way from New Mexico to Missouri.

Milton served three days in the County jail and was back home the following week.

As soon as he got back to town he stopped by my house and I was gone again.

FOUR

Milton had some relatives down in south Texas that were hooked up with some Mexicans who had tons of marijuana for sale. We could get as much as we wanted to us. If we didn’t pay them we would most likely be killed if they ever found us. We wanted to pay them in full each time so we could keep getting a full load to take back to Missouri. The quality of the weed was really good for our area. The bricks were wrapped in different colored plastic depending on the grade. Each brick weighed exactly one kilo. The blue and red wrappers were usually the best. It was easy money and worked for almost a year without a hitch.

On one of our trips we were so high on gold bud that we decided to take a few pictures of our Mexican friends! We all sat around Milton’s 58 Chevy with kilos of weed stacked on the trunk, top and hood! It was a symbolic picture that I would keep for many years.

Not long after that first year I turned sixteen and passed my driver’s test which enabled me to now drive legally anywhere I wanted to go. Milton began letting me make solo trips to Texas when he could not make the trip. It was not long before I had saved enough money to treat myself to a little vacation.

My plan was to visit my cousins in Chico, California. As I headed west alone I decided to help out a couple of hitch hikers that were sitting on the side of the highway. The two hippies were headed to Las Vegas for some reason which they had chosen not to share with me. They were quite a bit older than me with long greasy hair and rough scraggly beards.

It looked like everything they owned between them was stuffed in one large tattered suitcase and the two back packs they were carrying.

When they got in my car they both smelled like they had not bathed for days. But what seemed even stranger was the brown funny smelling stuff they were both chewing vigorously! The smell was like nothing I had ever smelled before. When I asked them about ‘it, they told me that they were chewing Peyote buttons. They gladly offered me a couple of them that one of them retrieved from his small pouch hooked to his leather belt.

Trying to look cool I popped both of the brown buttons into my mouth without hesitation. The taste was revolting and I had nothing to rinse them down with. The two hippies had a jug of wine laced with some other drugs that they would not share with me.

I decided to stop at the very next service station to grab a cold soda. I grabbed my keys from the ignition and left them both tripping in the car. As I chewed these strange objects inside my mouth they began to swell. I was not enjoying the feeling or the taste was about to gag! Like a fool I took a big drink of my soda and swallowed both of the Peyote buttons.

By the time we approached Galup, New Mexico I was tripping big time! Coming down out of the mountains, the town of Galup looked like one giant pinball machine!

I soon realized that I could no longer drive safely, so I pulled into the very first truck stop on the out skirts of town and began walking. To this day I still don’t know what happened to my two hippie friends. They probably bailed out as soon as the car stopped in fear for their lives. It was easy to see how totally screwed up I was!

As I walked up the main street of Galup the pavement had turned into what looked like bright plush carpet in every color imaginable. By this time I was losing it for sure! After what seemed like forever I made it to the local Dairy Queen and insisted that the young girl working at the counter rent me a room.

Somehow I had mistaken the self storage units behind the Dairy Queen as small motel rooms for rent! Fully believing in my mind that she was there working in the rental office. After arguing for quite awhile with the young lady I was confronted with the fat ass cook that was working in the back. She identified herself as the owner and told me to leave immediately or she was calling the cops!

Mad as hell I stormed back out on Main Street passing a barber shop with those red and white swirling signs by the front door.

Looking up into the night sky I could see all the telephone poles along the street swirling now as well! The hallucinations were increasing by leaps and bounds. I ended up spending that first night wondering around a nearby City park trying to find shelter under a picnic table and then later a park bench. Next I would try to hide up in a tree until I soon realized that I was stuck. I really went nuts when all the birds began chirping as the sun began to rise that morning.

Somehow later that morning I ended up at the City Mission for homeless people. They gave me a safe place to stay for a couple of days until I came