Dinosaur On An Island

Prologue: A note from the therapist

Go on, be honest, you walked into work one day and had the unfortunate luck to get stuck with a handi-crapped bed bug…of all the things you could do in this world and you choose to work with veterans- - Vietnam veterans no less! Maybe we should get you checked out by the doc

-Greg

So you want the truth? I’ll tell you how it happened. I work as a clinical social worker in a private practice run by a wonderful neuropsychiatrist. I walked into work on a September morning and stopped by the boss’ office to say a quick good morning before getting into a full day of sessions. We exchanged the usual pleasantries and just before heading out he said, I’ve got a new client for you. There was an ever so subtle hesitation. I’m not sure it’s going to be a fit, he’s a veteran. I must have given a puzzled look because he clarified; a Vietnam vet. I still couldn’t grasp why this was different, the boss chuckled a little and said, just give him a call and let me know if you can take the case.

I spend a few days brushing up on my Vietnam knowledge before giving this new client a call. I dialed the number, told him who I was and asked to set an appointment for the following Wednesday. I offered him an 8am slot and I’ll never forget his response, young lady, that warms the cockles of an old man’s heart!

8am on Wednesday came. At 7:42am, in walked Greg, complete with a cane and as I was soon to learn, a lifetime of grumpiness (one of Greg’s favorite words). Most clients wait for me to ask the questions during our first meeting. With Greg however, this was not the case. It was clear that Greg had been to countless initial intakes over the years. He was familiar with the standard questions care providers ask. Where were you and when were you there? was always one of the first, followed by a complete list of all his medical conditions incurred as a result of being in Vietnam. I was starting to understand that Greg’s experience with other providers was not all that positive and almost always ended in him being more frustrated and grumpy than when he entered.

Despite his previous experiences, I found that Greg was eager to share and did so with a clever sense of humor; a well-crafted defense mechanism that he began cultivating at an early age. During Greg’s first session he took me on a meandering journey through his career, marriage, and subsequently his initial interaction with the Department of Veteran Affairs (VA). During that first meeting, I remember laughing… a lot. Surprising, as I was sitting across from man in obvious physical pain and presumably just as much emotional pain. I soon learned that Greg was on a mission to improve his overall health. He was determined to ditch the cane, lose some weight, and hopefully be less affected by everyday triggers that got in his way.

This is where we began our work. I don’t claim to be a world renowned psychotherapist or researcher. What I do claim however, is a passion for understanding people and assisting them on their individuals journeys to improving their circumstances. Within an hour, I was committed to Greg’s healing (even if I wasn’t sure how we were going to get there!).

Over the next several sessions, Greg and I talked about his PTSD and the ways in which he was affected in daily life. What I discovered was a unique presentation of how his trauma showed up. You see, Greg is a story teller and I underestimated this quality as simply being part his personality. Many of these stories swirled around a central theme: history always repeats itself.

Greg spent years, decades in fact defending himself and trying to prove what quite frankly was always in plain sight. Here was the key to Greg’s healing. It was so simple. I believed him.

That belief combined with Greg’s love of sharing stories and history was how this book came to be. I began having Greg write weekly as part of his treatment and it started to help! I began to see a shift in Greg and after a few months of writing, he asked if I would assist in publishing the work he had been doing. I was honored.

What stands before you is a man’s collection of stories from a lifetime of lessons, friendships, and the hard times as well. They changed my life and perhaps they will do the same for you.

INTRODUCTION

Throughout history, society rested on a bed rock of family (tribe), religion and country. Pick any era, Neanderthal, Cro-Magnon, Aboriginal, BC, AD, Medieval or Native and you will find they all shared similar priorities to protect family, show respect to some form of deity and to increase the odds of survival through partnership with like-minded individuals. If one cares to look at these extinct societies, they offer a millennium of proven life lessons to which insight, deterrents and enlightenment can be gained.

Today we discount and disregard the past; forgotten is a primary canon of existence, history always repeats itself. The world now worships a digital reality, young and unproven by comparison. Today, modern man eats his fast food in the slow lane and when time comes for a dirt nap, he is simply erased from memory. Computer programmers endlessly tap away at the fabric of our existence.

The following fictitious yarn follows a single soul orphaned in a world long gone. Left to raise himself as best he could, he did what was necessary to survive. A natural product of his environment, his personality traits lean toward utilizing history, simplicity, honesty and sarcasm to solve problems. He has a plain vanilla view on life, to error is human, but if you really want to screw it up buy a computer. Considered a foreign concept by today’s standards, his attitude is abrasive to many, they refer to him as a Dinosaur on an Island.

Fighting to persist in the real world, he leans heavily on self-reliance, experience gleaned through hard times, a complete distrust of authority, loyalty to a few proven friends, and a most unusual patch work of family. He refuses to be a victim of life’s circumstances and intends to go down swinging. Nestled deep in the arms of brutal reality, he has taken some hits and landed a few.

Even those who support him find his life bewildering. He does not, e-mail, text, Zoom, Facebook, Instagram, print, copy, comment, snap, tweet, facetime, emoji, forward, save or store anything. To him a cloud is where rain comes from. A true blasphemer, he simply chooses to exist as a human being!

Giggle if you must, and snicker if you will, perhaps you should put down your state of the art mobile device. Think hard on where the stress in your life originates. After all is said and done, you both cohabit the same reality. In his world, the current situation is a big f—king problem! However the virtual world deems it to be a minor issue.

Prior to his a fight a reporter asked heavy weight boxer Mike Tyson, your opponent has a plan does that concern you? Mr. Tyson replied, everyone has a plan until they’re punched in the mouth. Somewhere in Washington D.C. a programmer, high on weed, is about to delete your social security number. Surprise you no longer exist! The only transactions left between you and your government is the reimbursement of your student loan and a death tax. Be happy, don’t worry, government computers will automatically transfer both payments.

It may be time for you to stop playing video games and exit your moth-er’s basement. Is it too late? Guess you’ll have to read the book. Why yes, Thad you can download it onto your tablet. Too busy? No problem, have a flash drive placed in your coffin along with both proof of payment printouts. Welcome to brutal reality

Brutal Reality Rules Of Life

•Rule #1 Life is not fair.

•Rule #2 There’s no cure for stupid.

•Rule #3 Never date a red head (God’s warning label).

•Rule #4 The dead ones can’t hurt you, it’s the live bastards you have to look out for.

•Rule #5 God may forgive you and Jesus may love you but no one else does: trust no one.

•Rule #6 Joe, Mike, Pete & Bob will always beat up Lance, Bruce, Chas & Thad

•Rule #7 Never ever trust a lying, thieving, snake wiggling politician.

•Rule #8 Assume what you hear, see or read in the media is false.

•Rule #9 Computers are not Gods. The Old Testament, New Testament and the Koran never mention a computer.

•Rule #10 Infants and corpses do not text. Start to finish we exist in a realistic world. There is no undo key.

•Rule #11 The grass is always greener over the septic tank.

•Rule #12 Don’t put a loaf in the oven, unless you own the bakery.

•Rule#13 The grass may look greener on the other side of the fence, but it’s just as tough to mow.

•Rule #14 It doesn’t matter what he says, you’re not the town pump.

Early Lessons in Life

Err…no, I did not see Sky King, Roy Rodgers or Andy’s Gang this week. You have a color TV. Well, I guess that’s good for you…congratulations. Me? I read the paper. Why? It has the want ads and racing form. No Bruce they are not new shows.

It was a small one horse town; the old wood frame apartment was positioned on a two lane main road. Its location ensured a car or two would pass, between mosquito bites, breaking the mind numbing boredom of another hot, humid summer night. If the wind was right, the fragrance of the DPW’s settling ponds would drift down adding to the nuance. Some say home is where the heart is; technically, this was home, but in my heart, I was certain there had to be something better.

This couldn’t be a home, at best, a dwelling place. A structure reflecting limits far beyond money. It was void of positive human emotion affection, joy, and especially optimism. However, you could find ample indifference, anger, despair, jealousy and mounds of pigeon dung in the attic resulting from decades of open windows. I thought of it as icing on the cake.

There was no need for a clock; the cooler air pronounced it was around 11:00p.m. time to go to work. The old man wanted help with the rent. He and my mother were now separated (Catholic soft speak for living apart, breaking each other’s balls). With her and both older brothers gone, he was experiencing some temporary financial difficulty. A temporary but serious situation, he might even have to cut back on his three packs of cigarettes a day!

I was the only life form left in the apartment. However, the legal age to acquire working papers was sixteen and posed a problem. The law was intended to protect against child labor abuse. My father, always a cautious man, had to improvise. He reasoned that if his son was never paid a salary, then he could not possibly break any employment laws.

So when he approached a neighbor to offer my labor, the terms of payment were cash, only payable to him. If asked why the money went to him he would respond, I put all his money in the college fund, he wants to study medicine. You know how kids are, he would only waste it on baseball cards and candy. You have to give the old man credit he had more angles than a pool shark and I admit, I liked candy.

Naturally, the fee for each service was negotiable. Picking up old lady Large’s weekly suppositories cost less than cutting Milliotti’s lawn. For the neighborly milk man with aging legs, he negotiated three nights a week, Thursday to Saturday from 11:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. He reasoned the hours were viable since school began after 8:00 AM and the remaining Sunday evening (so far) was mine. I settled into the weekly rhythm, assuming that’s how all fourth graders spent their weekends.

I started down the rickety rear stair case, careful not to use the hand rails, eliminating any possibility for splinters. At the bottom, I hopped over the decaying brick stairs and into the parking lot. It was a short walk over to Don Hall’s house. I could see through the kitchen window that Don was kissing his wife and infant son goodbye. We climbed into his car and headed for the garage that housed Pine Ridge Dairies’ delivery trucks. The Dairy had thirty plus identical, small white, bull dog nosed, milk trucks. Ugly and slow, each had one seat, and dual controls allowing the driver to drive sitting or standing.

Each driver was given a route and acted as a distributor for the dairy. He would buy dairy products wholesale and sell them at retail. Due to their special design, the dairy provided the trucks. No returns were allowed and any breakage (all bottles were glass) was his problem. All products including cheese, eggs, milk, orange juice, cottage cheese etc. not sold within the expiration date, was deducted from his profit. In effect, each driver ran a small dairy retail business out of his truck.

Don’s business skills were almost as bad as his driving. So my night started early and I made most of my money illegally from re-capping dairy products with a new sell by date. Since I was the only one in the garage too young to prosecute, I performed this task for all the drivers. Young but street wise for my age, I kept my mouth shut and was paid accordingly. When finished, I returned the re-cappers to their hiding place behind the garage’s large ice machine.

The old man knew what I was paid to deliver milk. However, he had no idea how profitable re-capping could be. He would never know, since Don and the other drivers could be terminated if word got out. The next chore was to load the truck and shovel mounds of ice on everything. Ice in large quantities countered the age of some products in the heat and humidity of summer nights. Finally, the drivers came together sharing profanity, cigar smoke, and slightly wet pink and white forms. After the garage manager’s review, the doors were opened and they set forth in a cloud of smoke.

The unsurpassed quality of Pine Ridge Dairy products were balanced by the behavior of their delivery men. Don was typical, get the crap off the truck as fast as possible with minimum effort. The margins of his route book were covered in milk man shorthand. Each page was painstakingly printed with a needle point pencil. Even as the small truck bounced along cobblestone streets, the crisp ledgers were easily read with the help of a tiny dashboard bulb. The vertical monetary margin carried unpaid balances from Wednesday, Don’s collection day. If you were behind in payments, you got recapped milk. At the bottom of the page he very lightly, insuring easy erasure, entered details on tonight’s delivery.

The top horizontal margin outlined directions in unique milk mans’ short hand; quickly guiding the little truck from stop to stop. It served as the forerunner of today’s GPS systems. Our rate of delivery was further enhanced by the late hour, absence of traffic, and Don’s total disregard for traffic lights of any color, one way street signs, or blinking danger warnings.

Hudson County was comprised of cities, boroughs, and towns that were not blessed with affluence. Don, based upon his work record, was assigned a majority of poor, crime ridden neighborhoods. The kind local police patrolled with a minimum of two officers per car. Naturally, there were no walking patrols. They parked just outside these neighborhoods, between 1:00 a.m. and 4:00 a.m. Always a wave and a smile for us as our truck rambled by, heading deep into a world most people never see. They bet on whether Don and I could get in and out unscathed. There is a reason why people say it was as different as night and day. Perhaps they spent a night working on a milk truck in the slums.

All milk was sold in one quart glass bottles. The milk carriers were stainless steel and held twelve quarts. Based upon rampant theft, customers insisted their delivery instructions be adhered to. Milk was left in hallways, milk boxes, on window sills, or placed directly in the refrigerator. Every milk box, house, apartment, and ice box had a lock on it.

Carrying twelve quarts and rings of keys up and down endless five story walk ups, while keeping your pants from sliding off was exhausting. Reading hand written notes scribbled by immigrants, keeping the key rings in order, opening and closing locks, and returning empties was equally grueling. As the night wore on you felt your knees go first, then your back, and finally the legs cramped. No time for a break, the clock was an evil task master. I was paid $5.00 for the short route and $7.00 for the long one. But, I received $20.00 a night for a half hour of sitting down re-capping milk. Some say, crime doesn’t pay?

Under fringe benefits there was a free education in the lessons of life. I learned what it meant to be homeless, along with lessons in alcoholism, drug addition, wife beating, and prostitution. Each night, the bars in Hudson County closed at 2:00 a.m. as required by law. By 2:00 a.m, Don was usually parked in front of Shirley’s diner on 35th street. This was the milk man’s lunch hour. So while Don ate, I ran the store. To his credibility, he usually returned and gave me a small coffee with a buttered roll.

Regardless of season or weather conditions, I was left in the truck to keep an eye on its contents. Milk trucks are provided with a small heater that worked sometimes but no air conditioning. Given the hour with the bars closed, my clientele consisted mostly of prostitutes. Just about every one of them purchased chocolate milk. Young and naïve, I assumed it was for self-consumption. Older and wiser, I now realize it was purchased for their children. The 1950’s were a different time; convenience stores were still decades away and legalized abortion was not even discussed (lucky for me or I would not be writing this).

Even in the worst neighborhoods, a milk truck could be found on the way home. As time passed, I became familiar with many of the neighborhood ladies and developed a respect for them. They made the best of the cards they were dealt and fulfilled their responsibilities as single parents. In addition, they thought I was cute and often tipped me. Their generosity when added to the recapping money covered me for the upcoming week. Don never knew, so my old man never knew.

Unfortunately, a typical night had ugly situations too. It was not unusual, when entering an apartment lobby or climbing stairs toward a landing to run into one of life’s unique and dynamic individuals. Stairwells were tight and these lost souls could not be avoided. When the hallway’s low wattage light bulb was working I could avoid the bottle, needle, feces, vomit and urine. I carried no money and they knew it. Confrontations were avoided by acknowledging their existence and showing them a token of respect. Usually a simple good evening boss, sorry to disturb you would do.

One year, Dad had a close encounter and was almost exposed to a judgmental society. Unknown to him, Friday’s homework assignment included an essay entitled, How did you spend your weekend? The following Sunday with my best #2 pencil in hand, I outlined, in detail my milk runs from that Friday and Saturday night. The title I chose for my manuscript was All prostitutes Like Chocolate Milk. I handed it in on Monday, figured a B+ at least, and never gave it a second thought. Early Tuesday morning my home room teacher, Sister Dennis, was standing over my desk stuttering and shaking. I was hauled into the principal’s office.

My old man was already in the office facing a mix of concerned religious faculty. All were eager to hear his explanation as to how one of their fourth graders could write such an accurate paper describing a drug, alcohol, and sex filled weekend. God bless him. Completely blindsided, the old man got on a roll and never looked back. Without hesitation, he threw me under the bus. I was surprised to learn I had undergone a drastic change stemming from desertion by my mother. Dad was at his wits end trying his best to raise me as a good boy. On weekends he arranged for a babysitter so that he could attend church functions. Obviously he was shocked to learn what the sitter exposed me to.

I said nothing because I was completely baffled. Every line in my essay was true and reflected personal experience. How did an old milk man suddenly become a babysitter? Dad squeaked by and quickly left the office. From then on I was forbidden to hand in any homework without his permission.

During an unusually cold week in January I headed for Don’s house to begin another working weekend. Mrs. Archer answered the door and explained, Don left. He just couldn’t take the grind anymore. That Wednesday he headed south along with all the payments collected from his customers. On his way out he added the contents of the dairy’s safe. Don had gone from milkman to embezzler in just one day. Once again, brutal reality touched my life. Still worse was the fear and concern on his young wife’s face as she juggled their child closing the door on my first job. What the old timers say is true; all you have left are the memories. Go figure.

Part II

Your mom said not to hang out with me? No, I don’t have to go home when the street lights come on. I don’t understand why are the street lights dangerous? No I don’t play little league, that takes time and I work. Yeah, that’s right I work. Eh…no Chas, work is not like little league. To this very day, I am still suspicious of street lights.

For me growing up in America in the 1950’s was all about suburbia. Early rock and roll was beginning to give way to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. TV shows such as Leave it to Beaver and Father Knows Best gave children and their parents a look at how society viewed the ideal family. Well-mannered house wives were the norm, divorce was rare, abortion unheard of, crime was low, and politicians were considered honorable. In short, it was a very different time. Giggle if you must and snicker if you will, honest simplicity resulted to a great extent in a stress free life style.

A kaleidoscope of problems be it religious, social, medical, political, criminal, mental,