Last Monday, as I told you last week, Victoria didn’t feel well.
“I don’t feel like going to school,” she announced mournfully.
But at 12:30 p.m., she decided she was well…but I didn’t feel like getting her ready at that late date, and I was a little leery of sending her, especially if she felt anything like I did; so I told her she’d better stay home. Too bad; it was the first day she’d missed all year.
I was still a little queasy Tuesday, but I tried to make up for lost time. Quickly before the garbage men arrived, I took out as much garbage as I could find. What a strange concoction of multitudes of jetsam and flotsam there was around those cans! Looked like whoever lives here was moving, did.
I loaded over a hundred boxes into the trailer and moved a conglomeration of furniture and this and that out of the way in the garage so that I could park the Suburban in it again, finally. I don’t like to leave it outside, poor sun-baked thing.
After the children went back to school that afternoon, I went to the post office, the bank, and paid a few bills. At the bank’s drive-through, the lady at the window told me it would be just a few minutes, so I reached over and turned on my radio as she walked away. It was almost time for the 1:00 news.
However, it was not the news that came on. Instead, it the horridest noise masquerading as ‘music’ you could ever hope to hear. I hastily punched the ‘Seek’ button to go to the next station.
Nothing happened, and the discord blared on.
I pushed the Down-Volume button.
Nothing changed, even though the dial showed that the volume was descending; but the cacophony continued to blast relentlessly away.
I pushed the Off button.
The radio lights went off--but the hullabaloo didn’t stop.
How could that be?!! Mortified, and sure that that horrible clamor could be heard all over the entire bank, right through the speaker system, I gave up on the radio buttons and simply turned the Suburban off, half expecting the radio to keep booming away regardless.
But, thankfully, it stopped.
I cautiously restarted the Suburban…and was greeted with--blessed silence.
Whew! Whatever got into the critter? Could it have been the awning I was under?
I went home and started cleaning around our little shed in back of the house, wherein is housed an enormous mélange of toboggans, bikes, outdoor grills, rakes, hoes, shovels, inner tubes, hoses, and UFOs (Unintentionally Fin-de-siècle Objets d’art).
It was not long before the garbage cans were full again--and so was the ground all around them. Let us hope we are not struck with a mighty windstorm before the garbage men return!
The children helped me clean up piles of leaves by the back fence. Hester washed all the bird feeders and put them into boxes. The trailer isn’t packed as well as it was the last time, because it seems that all the boxes I’ve packed that have flaps or lids are lightweight things, whereas all the heavy ones have things sticking out the tops and there are no lids or flaps. So I put the heavy boxes atop the flimsy boxes. The flimsy boxes promptly cave in, and the stack winds up whoppyjaw with me backing warily away, hoping not to wind up at the bottom of a landslide. Boxslide. Avalanche.
Larry came home that evening with the parts to fix his pickup, which he immediately did. Maybe now it will start better. Something was wrong with the ether injector (or maybe it was the ozone interpolator) (hydrocarbon intra-trajector?), so it wouldn’t fire properly, and it often wound up running the battery down before he could get it started.
Since it was ‘Taco Tuesday’, I went to Taco John's for some of those 50¢ tacos--but I got nary a one. I bought taco bravos, instead. Mmmmmmm…yummy.
Larry finished his pickup and went out to the house, where he finished sanding Victoria’s room.
Hester again went to stay with Mama while Dorcas and Pauline, the girl who stays with Mama from 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., went to violin practice at church. Hannah is playing, too, but she says it has never before been so difficult to find time to practice. Babies come first, you know! Bobby was practicing his saxophone with our little band when the small orchestra was through, and Hannah came over here with baby Joanna when orchestra practice was over.
Joanna smiled and smiled and cooed at us. Dear sweet little baby; she’s absolutely beautiful. And then Bobby came with Aaron, and I heard him asking for “Maw-maw” (‘grandma’) as he came down the hall. The first thing he does is to show me his shoes, in spite of the fact that they are old now; but it’s gotten to be a ritual that he mustn’t sidestep. He fleetingly handed me his stuffed kitty, which is his favorite stuffed toy; he calls it his ‘teez’, which is short for ‘kitties’, which is, in Aaron’s lingo, singular and plural both.
That night, I finished the mending:
a) let out hem in Hester’s black-with-white embroidered-bodice Easter dress;
b) fixed hole in waist of Lydia’s navy ruffled dress;
c) put buttons on Lydia’s purple knit vest;
d) sewed buttons back on my blue skirt;
e) mended hole and rehemmed Caleb’s blue striped shirt;
f) sewed button-front shut on two of my skirts. They always get ripped out (yes, of course I’m ladylike; it’s the wind that does it); so--I sew them shut, most of the way up. (One should leave enough room to get in and out of said skirts.)
g) well, I know there was a g), but I can’t think what it was.
And then suddenly it was 1:30 a.m., and Larry was informing me rather petulantly that it was bedtime. Petulantly, I suppose, because I left a large stack of suits on his side of the bed, suits he’d piled on my sewing machine. He says some are worn out, but I don’t know which ones; he will have to pick through them, and he doesn’t want to. Too tired, too busy, and so on. (He did finally do it, and I hauled two big bags of suits to the Goodwill.)
There was no school Wednesday for the kindergartners.
“We don’t have to go to school tomorrow,” little cousin Jamie explained to Lydia, “because Mrs. W. has to go to her funeral!” (Actually, the funeral was for the teacher’s mother-in-law.)
Since she didn’t have to go to school, Victoria ‘helped’ me dig up bunches and heaps of my flowers--daffodils, crocuses, miniature tulips, striped squill, and glories of the snow. It’s a hard job, because the ground is harder than a brickbat, and I can jump madly up and down on the shovel to absolutely no avail whatsoever.
I tried my hand shovel. First, I used a sturdy one with a nice rubber handle. Didn’t work, because it was too blunt, and I couldn’t even get it into the ground. I was pleased to find another one with a nice big rubber handle--and it was much sharper--, I rushed out to the garden.
With the first scoop, it bent back alarmingly, rather like some of my fine Marquesas spoons when Larry is trying to dig ice cream out of the bucket. On the second scoop, the handle came entirely apart from the spade. AAAAUUUUGGGHHHH!!! Dumb, stupid thing! Dumb, stupid people who make such inadequate, ineffective, and unsubstantial implements! Dumb, stupid people who buy them!
I went back to using the big shovel. It’s the one that used to be Teddy’s, the one Larry used when he tried digging that intractable mulberry tree out of the middle of my flower beds, the one that suddenly said CRACK!!! when he tried making it serve double duty by using it as a pry bar, too, the one that has been in two pieces ever since. Until Tuesday night, that is, when Larry pounded the broken piece out of the shovel hilt, sanded the bottom of the handle till it fit into the haft again, and then screwed it back together again.
“There!” he declared triumphantly, checking it for sturdiness, “It’s just your size now,” said he, “because it’s a good five inches shorter than it used to be!”
I poked him.
I wondered if the people at the school were looking out the windows, watching me dig, and thinking how awful I was to be digging up all the flowers that Sarah might like to have (Sarah is Esther’s mother; she and her husband Eugene are going to buy this house). I thought maybe I should make a billboard and plant it on the front lawn:
“She said I could, because they’re going to rototill it anyway.”
After the children went back to school after dinner, Victoria and I took the flowers out to the house, along with my wood-post trim, and I planted them (the flowers; not the posts). There were six heavy boxes full of flowers.
We found Larry and Keith’s vehicles at the house; they were putting primer on Victoria’s walls and ceiling. Larry had taken the carpet out of her room.
It was windy and a bit chilly here; but out there, the wind was blowing three times harder, I think. Dirt was blowing everywhere; I felt like I was covered with it. Three big bags of foam carpet backing blew all the way down the hill to the fence.
When the flowers were planted, which didn’t take nearly so long as digging them up, on account of the ground being so much softer out there, I vacuumed and swept the cubbyhole in the sewing room. Next, I mopped it thoroughly with some good-smelling Lysol disinfectant. Then I got everything out of Caleb’s closet so I could paint it--but by then, it was almost 3:30 p.m., time for me to go. The children would be home from school.
Caleb came running to meet me, all excited because he’d gotten a gift certificate from the man to whom he’d been a secret pal: $7.00 for Dairy Queen.
Once again, I gladly sunk into a hot, fragrant bath. Ahhhhh… After that it was Victoria’s turn, and then it was naptime. I indulged in a peanut butter and honey muffin, in spite of the fact that I’d eaten a bowl of cereal earlier. I curled my hair, taking a whole lot longer than I usually do, just because I had time to do so before church--and it didn’t turn out one little bit better at all than when I do it as fast as ever I can. In fact, it turns out better when I do it fast. Disgusting.
Larry got the ceiling in Victoria’s room textured that day, and was pleased that he was able to cover so well the places he’d patched. There are cracks in the wall again around the chimney here and there in different rooms, even where he’s used vinyl strips of SomethingOrOther to cover the cracks before putting texture paint on top of that. It will probably continue to do that for a year or so from the house gradually settling. It was built on a basement that wasn’t ‘true’, so now that it has been set down on one that is nearly perfect, things are askew here and there.
“I’m going to do the best I can and forget about it,” he avowed with a sigh, “and someday, a long, looong time from now, I’ll put ¼” Sheetrock over the plaster like I’ve done in the music room and bedroom on the middle floor. Sheetrock is a lot more flexible than plaster.”
We listened to the radio for a while after church, learning that earlier that day, Baghdad had been hit with missiles. War is an awful thing, isn’t it? But letting a man like Saddam Hussein stay in a position where he can perpetrate all manner of unspeakable crimes against humanity is unthinkable.
At 11:25 p.m., the phone rang. I always wonder if something bad has happened when it rings that late. But it was just Richard A., the new neighbor up on the hill, wanting to talk to Larry. Larry was sleeping in his recliner, but I gave him the phone… Mr. A. wanted to talk about a hearing that was coming up Friday; Jim C. was taking him to small claims court, trying to extract $1,000 from his hide for moving a few items that Jim C. says was on property that is public right-of-way but Richard A. says was on his property, and he says he has the papers to prove it.
Aaauuuggghhh! Whatever will we do with these soon-to-be neighbors of ours??! Guess we’ll agree with both of them, and hope to goodness we never meet up with both of them at the same time.
No matter whose property it is, Jim C. did not do $1,000 worth of work, not by any stretch of the imagination. I think Jim C. is trying to run Richard A. off that land, that’s what I think. I feel sorry for him, in spite of his Big Mess. Or maybe because of it. Anyway, I feel sorry for him, even though I really think he’d be doing everyone a big favor if he just lit the Big Mess.
Then, “Are you a veteran?” asked Mr. A.
“No,” Larry replied, grinning, “I’m not quite that old.”
“Have you been listening to the news about the bombing of Iraq?” queried the man.
“Yes,” answered Larry.
“It’s no good, no good,” declared Mr. A. “Bombing is only hard on the women and children, because it destroys things three miles away from the drop zone.”
Umm, what about the people directly under the bomb?
Thursday, first things first: the fish tank absolutely had to be cleaned out. It had been exactly two weeks, and I got by not doing it that long only by exchanging several gallons of water in the tank almost every day. But finally, even that wasn’t good enough.
When the children got home from school, we went to Wal-Mart, where we purchased milk, juice, fish food, fish filters, soup, and crackers. Quite a combination, eh? I was just paying for our things when there was an announcement over the intercom: free paring knives were being given away in the men’s department. I rushed to get one.
It took longer than I’d expected, because a lady put on a long performance with a big knife that never needs to be sharpened, cuts anything, etc., etc., etc. It was $19.95…but if you bought it, you got another for only $3.00, another one free, a filet knife worth $25.00, four of the $5.00 paring knives…plus two little ‘juicers’. They are to be stuck into an orange; the orange is squeezed, and then the juice can be drunk straight from the ‘juicer’. Over a hundred dollars worth of things for only $23. And only one man bought.
The rest of us went away happily with our free knives. Yep; it looked like a good deal; but there are entire knife sets--good ones--over in Wal-Mart’s cutlery department, and it’s only $15.00 for a set of ten. Still…that big knife is supposed to saw wood… steel…frozen foods…tin cans…and never get dull… But I don’t need to saw wood and steel and tin cans.
Later that afternoon, I dug up enough flowers to fill six boxes. I found a seventh box outside by my flowers, where I’d accidentally left it the day before. Luckily, it had rained a little, so the poor flowers were still fresh as daisies. Columbines. Skunk weed. Something.
Larry came home then, and we ate supper--classic chicken noodle soup and crackers. He headed out to the house, and we followed shortly. We found Teddy and Amy there, with Larry talking to them and peering under the hood of an old orange and white pickup Teddy was driving. It had a new motor in it; he’d traded his S10 pickup for it and is planning to sell his Ranger, too. He likes money better than prestige, that boys does. Or maybe he needs money more than he needs prestige. He’s a thrifty sort, is Teddy. So is Amy, I think.
I planted the seven boxes of flowers by the headlights of the Suburban, getting colder… and colder…and colder… The children played ball in the hay field north of our lane, and Black Bandit played, too, although it could not be ascertained whether he was playing soccer or cricket. It is possible the dog is British, as his bark sounds more on the order of “Auf! Auf! Auf!” rather than “Arf! Arf! Arf!”
Along came Jim C., asking if we were about to move in, commenting on all the work we’ve been doing--and then all of a sudden bellowing his head off at poor Bandit.
“GO HOME!” he roared in a dreadful distortion of voice, making the children whirl around and stare with large, reproachful eyes.
Poor Doggie went home, ears down, tail dragging. But the girls called him back soon, and here he came again, wagging his great appreciation.
“We’ll have to tell Jim C. that we like the dog,” I consoled the kids.
They nodded somberly, taking turns scratching Black Bandit lovingly behind the ears.
We went back to town after a time and used Caleb’s $7.00 gift certificate at the Dairy Queen, purchasing miscellaneous flavors of Blizzards for everyone. We put Larry’s into the freezer for a bit while we read a story together.
Then Victoria came with me back to the house; the others took showers and went to bed. And yes, we remembered to take Larry his Dairy Queen blizzard. The digital thermometer at the corner of 42nd Avenue and Howard Boulevard (Caleb used to call it ‘Uncle Howard Boulevard’, after one of his favorite uncles) read 39°, which explained why I got cold planting those flowers.
I first painted Caleb’s closet, and then carried fourteen bins of fabric and two bins of lace into the sewing room cubbyhole. There being lots of space left, I put three bins of yarn and one of flowers in there, too--and there is plenty of room to spare.
Friday, I packed bunches of boxes from the hall closet--sheets, pillowcases, pillows, towels, cloths, pads, you name it. I tell you, those closets held a lot of stuff. Hannah, Aaron, and Joanna came and kept me company, and they are very good company indeed. Baby Joanna was smiling and cooing…did I mention that she’s a beautiful baby? Aaron is talking more and more all the time. Have I told you lately how smart he is?
When they arrived, Hannah helped Aaron into the house first, then went back to get Joanna out of the stroller.
Aaron always comes rushing to find me. “Hi?” he says questioningly, looking here and there. “Hi?” He peeks into another room. “Hi?” He trots on down the hall. “Hi?”
“I’m right in here,” I call, and he soon locates me, generally all surrounded by boxes.
He stands and looks things over for a minute. Then, “Hi,” he says in a declarative demeanor.
“Hi,” I responded, grinning at him.
He turned and pointed at the door. “Mama,” he told me.
“Is your Mama coming in too?” I asked.
He nodded. “Beebee,” he added.
“Is she getting the baby?” I inquired, and he nodded again, pleased I understood.
“How did you get here?” I queried.
“RRrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrRRRRRrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrRRRRR!!!” explained Aaron.
“Oh, you rode your firetruck?” I guessed, and he beamed at me; I was right on the money.
After the children came home from school, we went to Wal-Mart for dishwash detergent and more boxes. I filled several with winter sweaters, then carried a multitude out to the trailer.
I dug up another columbine and my ‘chin and hicks’, as Teddy always calls them (hen and chicks, really). I tried to dig up the poppy and the hyacinths, but the ground was too hard.
“Pour a gallon or two of water on them to soften up the ground,” I requested of Hester--and then ran out of time and energy and remembery to go try again. Mañana, mañana.
When Larry came home from work about 7:30 p.m., he didn’t feel well. He had a headache because they’d been working at a factory where there were diesel fumes blowing in his face. We ate supper--green bean casserole, which the kids, after declaring some time ago how they loved the stuff, have decided they don’t like at all at all at all--and then went out to the house, after Larry took a short nap while the coffee maker made us fresh, fragrant coffee.
Before leaving town, we went to AceIsThePlace Hardware to rent a big, heavy machine sander to finish getting the floors ready to varnish. It cost $45 for the machine, $3 each for the foam pieces that fasten onto the machine, and $7 apiece for the sandpaper sheets that go under the foam. And it would take quite a few sheets of sandpaper before the job was done.
While I planted hen and chicks and columbine, Larry tried out the machine on our bedroom floor, which was still covered with glue. It worked great--for a little while. But soon the glue balled up on the sandpaper, and then the machine couldn’t sand the floor nicely, because the wads of glue kept the majority of the sandpaper from even touching the floor. He quit with the gluey floors, laboriously picked off the glue wads, and took the sander to the rooms where he’d already removed the glue with citrus stripper. And there it sanded the floors beautifully. Sooo… the way we’ve been doing it is the only way, I guess: put on citrus stripper first, then scrape the floor, and finally, sand it down. After the floors are all sanded, Larry will apply a couple of layers of polyurethane. When it dries, we will move in, walls done or not. Walls can be finished later; furniture does not rest on walls, nor do humans walk on walls. Not normally, that is.
While Larry worked on the bedroom and then my sewing room, I moved all those 200 boxes in the dining room to other locations: the things for the kitchen went downstairs, except for one big box of pans that was too heavy for me to lug down those steps. Most things went into the washroom--and of course they will have to be moved again when we are ready to put the washer and dryer in there. Hester and Lydia’s things went downstairs, along with wrapping paper, Christmas decorations, and Victoria’s kitchen toys. The worst thing is that I had to put all of the clothes that are too big for Victoria down there, too, because there wasn’t any other place to put them, as her cubbyhole isn’t cleaned out yet. So, as soon as the cubbyhole is done, I shall have to tote those two talllll stacks of boxes up two flights of steps. Guess I won’t be getting out of shape from lack of exercise anytime soon!
Saturday, I dug up more columbine and hyacinths, filling three boxes…but I couldn’t get the poppy up, because it was all stuck amongst the red maple tree’s roots. Larry, who’d been out working on the floors at the house, came into town for more sandpaper and stripper. He stopped at home so that we could go out to the house together. He dug up the poppy for me, winding up cutting the roots much too short on account of those obstinate tree roots. It’ll probably die. Bother! I’ve had just the most tryingest time ever trying to grow poppies. Several times I murdered them in cold blood. Other times, they committed suicide without the slightest warning at all. And then there was the time when Hannah, thinking they were noxious weeds, plucked them up by the roots. She replanted them after being subjected to a haranguing tirade by her mother, but only one survived. And that’s the one that got its roots clipped entirely too short.
“Poppies!” proclaim my flower catalogues and planting guides. “Hardy and tough, perfect for all sorts of terrain and weather!”
Hah. Big joke. If one lives in Antelope Valley, perhaps.
The children played with their cousins and the neighbor boy while they waited for Larry and I. All of a sudden, there were Jamie and Victoria putt-putting down the sidewalk in Victoria’s big Barbie jeep, laughing their heads off because Caleb and Tatum, the neighbor boy, were running backwards in front of them, pretending to be frightened out of their wits that they were going to be run over.
Out at our house, I planted the flowers, including the poor poppy that may or may not be hardy and tough, perfect for all sorts of terrain and weather, and Hester watered the flowers I’d planted Thursday and Friday. Most of them are looking well; the crocuses have even opened new blossoms.
Jim C. came along with his metal detector to put a post in at the property line. He wouldn’t want us tethering our bison on his side of the lot line, you know! Larry must have inadvertently buried his property marker, I guess.
Black Bandit was on the porch, wagging so hard he was about to bend in half, and I was petting him, when Jim C. came walking through. He greeted the children and me, and asked where ‘the boss’ was. He explained what he was doing, then looked again at the dog and informed me, “You know, you can tell that dog to go home, and he’ll do it.”
The dog leaned against me as if for protection, and I answered, “Oh, he’s okay; we really like him. The children enjoy playing with him; he’s a nice dog. Why,” I added enthusiastically, “if he’s not around when we come, we call for him!”
Jim laughed. “Well, then I guess you can’t blame him,” he remarked, gesturing at the dog.
So that’s taken care of.
Later, the children were all going for a walk, along the south side of Richard A.’s property, over to old Rte. 81, and then north on the lane back to our house. They saw Mrs. A. open her door and call the black dog: “Winston!”
And ‘Winston’ came.
So that’s his name. The old man said he didn’t have a name, and we could call him anything we wanted to. So much for ‘Black Bandit’. He’s Winston. (Wonder if he’s any relation to Churchill?)
The children talked with the lady, and proclaimed her ‘very nice’.
Hester put lathing (is that what it is?) into the wheelbarrow and hauled it to the woodpile. Lydia and Victoria took turns watering the flowers, and Larry showed Caleb how to drive the little tractor--it looks just like the little Allis-Chalmers tractor that was in one of the cubbyholes in his room. The tractor had a scraper hitched to it with a tire strapped on top to give it weight. After backing over the scraper only a couple of times at the most, Caleb was off and running. Driving. Riding. He smoothed down some of the lumps on the hillside; later, Lydia took a turn.
Teddy came then, and used the big sander on a couple of the bedrooms. I put the rest of Caleb’s too-big clothes into his cubbyhole. There was plenty of room, and still enough for some of his many toys. I then vacuumed and swept out the bathroom cubbyhole under the stairs, ripped out the icky vinyl flooring, and mopped with Lysol disinfectant. I want to have a shelving unit installed in that cubbyhole for towels and washcloths.
Next, I spent hours and hours and hours and hours and hours pulling staples out of the stair steps. Good grief, those people must have been using a staple gun something on the order of a 9mm MK II Sten submachine gun. There are a million staples in each step, and sometimes three staples in one staple hole! And you know I never, ever, ever exaggerate.
Later that afternoon, we used our campstove to make grilled cheese sandwiches. Mmmmm… just what the doctor ordered. We opened up some cans of fruit, and that was supper. It was enough to hold everyone for a couple of hours, but after that, stomachs were once again rubbing on backbones. So, after going home, we got some ready-made chef salads and seven-layer salads at Hy-Vee, along with strawberry cream cheese bars and fresh strawberries.
Teddy and Amy came that night so that Larry could cut Teddy’s hair.
Last night, as usual, I stayed with Mama. Periodically, she turned on her transistor radio to hear what was happening in Iraq. We learned that five of our soldiers, one of them a woman, had been taken prisoner. Isn’t that awful? They'll doubtless be mistreated terribly.
Larry is continuing to sand the floors today, and hoping that tomorrow he will be able to varnish them. But that glue is so stubborn and refractory and cantankerous, it might be Wednesday before he can. He wants to varnish all the floors at once. It is cool and cloudy today, and a few raindrops fall now and then; so I don’t need to go water my newly-planted flowers yet.
You have probably been wondering what is happening with Joseph. Well, we heard some news about him last week, and I have decided to send you a copy of a letter I recently wrote to his attorney, the county attorney, and the judge. It will give you a quick overview of the troubles we have had with him for the past year. Here it is:
Monday, March 10, 2003
Judge Patrick M.
County Courthouse
1234 - 56th Street
Columbus, Nebraska 68601
Honorable Judge M.:
I am writing this letter in regard to our son, Joseph S. Jackson, who has been charged with trespassing at the Bible Baptist Christian School and is being held at the Girls’ and Boys’ Home in Grand Island, Nebraska.
I am aware that Joseph’s story has been less than factual; and I thought that it would be to your benefit to have the following information about him.
On January 30, 2002, when I went to awaken the children for school, I discovered Joseph missing. A car that we had been letting him drive was gone, although he was not supposed to be driving it that week because the insurance on it had been canceled.
A couple of days later, we learned that he had broken into my brother-in-law and sister’s home next door and had stolen a bag containing about $1,600 worth of cash and checks belonging to the Bible Baptist Sunday School, for which my sister is treasurer.
He had also taken money from at least five of his siblings.
Joseph was found in Kearney a week later. He had spent about $1,200 of the money. He was put on probation for up to a year, but upon retribution and the completion of 100 hours of community service work, he was taken off probation.
In February, 2002, he used his older brother’s credit card to make phone calls to a pay-per-minute ‘adult’ phone number, racking up over $200 in charges. He also stole the gift his brother was planning to give his fiancée for Valentine’s Day.
He did not admit to any of this until he was face to face with the proof, and even then he sometimes tried to lie his way out of it. For a time, then, it seemed he was trying to do better. He had a good job, and began saving some money.
But he began crawling out of his window in the middle of the night to visit his girlfriend and do who knows what else. Time and again, he promised to stop with such behavior, behave acceptably, be honest… Finally, in the early morning hours of November 19, 2002, he went out his window and didn’t come back. I heard him climb out, walked outside into our backyard, and saw Joseph near his window. When he saw me, he ran. My husband, Larry, found him a few days later at the Seven Knights Inn. He was using a different name and owed the motel over $200.
He’d told the owner that $500 had been stolen from his room, accusing the maid of taking it. The maid had not been in his room that day, however. He said he was a software salesman from Omaha, had made a big sale to Becton-Dickenson, and his boss would be wiring him some money shortly. In the meantime, he’d given the motel owner his nearly new camera (a gift from us), my coin collection that he’d stolen from my jewelry box, and several other things as collateral for the money he owed them.
While he was there, he took a video camera from a car belonging to the owners of Big Apple Bagel. Larry found it in the motel room. Joseph said he bought it at the Pawn Shop. But Larry found an ID card in the bag. He later called the phone number, and learned that it had indeed been stolen. The owners of Big Apple Bagel told Larry that a ladder had been propped against their building the same night the camcorder was taken; somebody had been on their roof. Meanwhile, Joseph hastily returned the camcorder to the car. Then he tried to tell Larry he had taken it back to the Pawn Shop, not knowing Larry had called the owners.
We told Joseph that he would have to sell his bike to pay the motel bill. He then stole his older brother’s bike during the night. After a good deal of denying knowledge of anything about it, he finally directed us to the bike, which he had hidden.
He rifled through three of his sisters’ purses, taking $55 from one, $11 from another. The third, fortunately, had no money in it. He took his little brother’s wallet, in which was $31 of his birthday money. He stole his older sister’s ATM card and took a blank check from her checkbook, which he wrote out for $300, forged her name to, and twice tried to cash. He took a check from a box of checks of ours, forged his father’s signature, and attempted to cash it. It was made out for $350. Neither check was cashed, thanks to alert tellers.
On October 19th, he cashed a $200 check I had made out to him in March of 2002. I had taken the check back and told him he could not cash it until we found out what the phone company was going to do about the charges he’d incurred, as he might owe that money to his brother. I added that amount back into our checkbook, and told him I had done so; he knew it would cause troubles if he cashed it. It did cause troubles: eighteen checks bounced. At $20 per check, that cost us $360 at the bank alone. Two checks were sent back; the businesses to which they were returned charged $25 each.
One morning the owner of Seven Knights Inn called to tell me that Joseph had again been found in one of their rooms; evidently he had kept the key or had a duplicate made when he stayed there a week earlier. She said the remote was missing from the room. She called the police and got a restraining order against him. Larry took him to the police station, where they issued him a warning for trespassing. Larry was informed that we were responsible for him until he turned 18, and that we must ensure that he had food, clothing, and a warm place to stay. Larry told them that we had a camper in which Joseph could stay, since he would not stay at home; the officers told Larry that this would be satisfactory.
This, then, is what we did, and Joseph did stay in the camper for several nights. We stocked it with food, clean clothing, and made sure it was warm enough for him. I spent many hours taking him to businesses around town to apply for a job, and to register for classes to obtain a GED.
Although Joseph did not want to stay at home, as witnessed by his climbing out windows and running away, he would nevertheless wait until we were gone and then sneak back in--usually via a basement window--to get not only his own things, but also things and money that did not belong to him, in spite of the fact that he knew we would have given him his belongings anytime he asked for them.
He broke into the Bible Baptist Christian School some nights during the week of December 22‑28. He took the keys to the big garage west of the school and to the kindergarten, which is farther north on 42nd Avenue. He took candy from the Christmas bags in the church. He ate pizzas belonging to one of the teachers. He took the cash box from the library and cash in a container by the copy machine. When the kindergarten keys were found to be missing, the building was searched, and Joseph’s clothes were found secreted away in one of the rooms. It was that night, December 29th, that he was caught breaking into the building.
On March 7, 2003, it was discovered that someone had been in the basement of a home at 43rd Avenue and 17th Street. It was Joseph, for there were cushions from the church pews arranged into a bed, BookIt tickets for free pizza belonging to his younger siblings, blank booklets of BookIt tickets, the keys to the big garage, and the cash box from the church. There were also coats and food that he had taken from the upstairs of the home, and a gun, too, lying right beside the ‘bed’. The man who lives at the house had previously reported the theft of his gun.
The fact that Joseph had that stolen gun causes us a great deal of concern.
We noted, when we were in court the afternoon of February 27, 2003, that Joseph had admitted to taking the big garage keys and the food from the school, but denied taking any money. The discovery of the cash box in the basement of that house, along with the other things he’d taken, proves otherwise.
For more than a year now, Joseph has caused our entire family much heartache and trouble. We have not raised our children to behave thus; indeed, he is the only one of our children--he is the fifth of nine--who has ever acted this way; the others are a joy. Joseph knows we love him dearly; but he will obey neither our rules nor the laws of the land.
I trust that this information will direct you to better decide what steps should be taken with Joseph, and to understand that the blame for the situation in which he now finds himself lies squarely upon his own shoulders.
Sincerely yours,
Mrs. Sarah Lynn Jackson
1759 - 42nd Avenue
Columbus, Nebraska 68601
402-563-1902
We were told that the Girls’ and Boys’ Home cost $110.00 a day, and that we would be responsible for that cost. Imagine! That’s more than Larry makes, even in the busy summer months.
Well, just last week, we learned through a mutual friend that Joseph has been staying with an estranged aunt (Larry's sister) and uncle. They live in Omaha and have not been in contact with the rest of their families here in Columbus for over ten years.
So much for Terry’s promise to Larry last year that he would let us know if he heard anything from Joseph, eh?
And why are we legally responsible, financially, for Joseph, but the powers that be can take him out of detention, lower the charges against him (from burglary, breaking and entering, to the misdemeanor of trespassing), and place him somewhere without letting us know? Things aren’t quite equitable.
I can’t think what help Terry imagines he will be to Joseph, as he is very bitter against us and truly hates us. Furthermore, he is having his own problems with his daughters.
But, as I said before, some things we must leave in God’s hands.
Please remember to pray for us, won’t you?
Now, I must get back to filling that trailer. The dryer just dinged--and it’s the last load of clothes! Uh, I forgot. I was going to wash the living room curtains. Back to work!
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.