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Power House
Carl Hiassen, the south FL detective story writer, said it best. Damn hard to make fiction when the truth around you is so strange. My family is a vein of material that extends endlessly. Had a little brother. He's dead now. Cause of death unclear. He would have been drunk as usual. Either fell down a flight of stairs, threw himself down, or was thrown down by a girl friend. Given his history I tend to the middle choice. Kept alive in a vegetative state for maybe 2 years. We called him Power House when he was a child. Back then no one knew anything about ADD, but that was likely his condition. Never stopped, and perfectly unencumbered by the thought process. Early 90s. I can't remember which phone call came first. I'll say it was the "next of kin" call. PH was still in Daytona, the town of our childhood. Daytona isn't only one town. It's made up of several municipalities. So I had to call several different police depts before I was able to get a track on him. Finally finding him I learned he had been shot. He was a security guard at a supermarket. Store was robbed, armed robbery. PH went down on the thief. Thief shot first, wounding him. PH shot next, killing the guy. "I got my man." PH said proudly. PH working as a security guard is a scene right out of Clockwork Orange. Remember how the hoods become cops? Next phone call is from Galveston. PH had hooked up with some street people who had stolen a calling card, which is what he used. Back in Daytona he had been working for my favorite uncle. Everybody called him Capt. A career criminal who specialized in smuggling and growing marijuana. Capt 's associate at the time was a Jewish mafia boss. Everybody called him the rabbi. So PH was sent down to the islands in a sailboat with a sailor who was supposed to know how to sail. They were given $10,000 to buy marijuana. Trip down to their destination went smoothly. Coming back with their contraband they first got lost. Off course, when they saw land to their west they figured it was the Keys. It was Cuba. They were met by a couple of policia patrol boats, told to come ashore to the nearest fishing village. PH said the villagers treated them well. Fed, housed, feted them. Then the Cuban authorities let them go and the villagers provisioned them. In the Straights a bad squall came up, bad enough so that it broke their mast. In the middle of the storm the sun shown through. PH knew it was the Lord and that he would be saved. Became a born again Christian that day. After the storm, without a sail, they were stuck in the water. Gulf current started carrying them north and east of land. A container ship found them, brought them on board. The captain called in to the Coast Guard, asking what should be done with the sailboat. He was reminded of the law of the ocean. Boat had to be skuttled. Boat with marijuana was sent to the bottom. When the ship made it to Galveston PH's partner called Daytona. He was told the rabbi had put a price on their heads and they better stay away for awhile. Eventually PH would make it back to FL, once the rabbi had settled down. When we got off the phone I called the Capt. Told him eventhough he was my favorite uncle I would be pissed if anything happened to my sorry, no good brother. He said he would take care of it. PH sobered up for awhile, went straight. Got a good job with the Salvation Army as a cook and kitchen manager. Even had benefits. And he was allowed to preach. Only, he got to reading more than the Bible. Read the Apocrypha and then discovered the Gnostics. He felt they were closer to the teachings of Jesus than was the Pauline tradition. Lost his job, lost the benefits, got to drinking again. There is much more to his story of misadventures, but just amounting to a steady decline. Of the 4 boys in my family 3 of us were raised in Datona. I am the only one to survive its decadence and violence. Not all that strange, actually. At age 16 I got the hell out.
Scroll down in the link to the trilogy, Daytona in Three Movements.
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Tere
Last edited by Terreson, Nov/3/2013, 3:23 pm
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Nov/3/2013, 3:20 pm
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Re: Power House
dear tere
is this strangely true or fiction?
what a great film script this would make!
what great characters - PH / Capt / Rabbi!
really you should expand this & make a movie script
so funny & so sad!
enjoyed immensly.
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Nov/7/2013, 4:03 am
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Re: Power House
Tere, a completely compelling story, as is or whatever else you do with it. A sad story too,
Chris
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Nov/7/2013, 10:34 am
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Katlin
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Re: Power House
Hey Tere,
You have known some interesting people in your life, and some of them were relatives. It seems PH had 9 lives and used them all on hard living. It kind of hurts the heart. I remember the Daytona trilogy of poems but enjoyed rereading them with more of the backstory in mind. Some folks set characters down on the page; other folks are characters. Some few, do/are both.
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Nov/7/2013, 6:13 pm
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