Ellex Book Proof

Ghetto Life

School Dress Code

We wore khaki pants and red Pendleton shirts on our shirts, shiny patent leather shoes, short hair cuts. I combed my hair back on the sides so I could wear a (paño), which was a bandanna, red for northern part of the ghetto or blue for being a southerner. Paños were popular with homies in prison, so, of course, we wanted to be cool like real Hispanic criminals. I wore a black one. Black was my favorite color. It also meant that I didn’t belong to any one group. But anybody who was anybody definitely wore shiny black, patent leather shoes. So I had a brand new pair, but there was a flaw in the heel of the right shoe.

The right shoe didn’t have all the nails in it, which caused the heel to pop out to the side. I didn’t know it until one of my homies saw it and started laughing. He said, “J.R., it looks like you got a flat right tire.” Then he pointed at my right shoe, because I didn’t know what he was talking about.

When I looked down and saw heel sticking out the side of my right shoe, I got mad and hit this outside of my shoe against a nearby pole just to knock it back into place. When I got home, I took my shoe off to check it out and saw that all the nails were missing but one. So when the glue broke loose that one nail was all that was holding the heel in place, which caused the heel to swing to the outside.

I got mad and popped both heels off my shoes and wore them without the heels. The next morning at school, we were hanging out against the office building wall smoking when one of my homies noticed the heels were gone. He said, What’s up with that?” I told him I knocked them off my heels, because I wanted low-rider shoes. Everybody laughed. Then my homie said he was going to do the same thing to his shoes, and before I knew it, all of us Chicanos wore our shoes that way. We had low-rider shoes to go with our low-rider cars.

Dad Tried

Dad took us all out of school and moved us to a small town where he worked. He talked to me a lot. He told me I needed a good job and a good wife, that life was short and I needed to find success and happiness by working hard and always looking to improve my life. But I was angry.

I didn’t want to follow the rules. I didn’t want to work hard and make a good life for my future family. I wanted revenge. I was mad at the whole world, especially anybody in authority, and I wanted to make them pay for all my pain.

Dad thought a change of scenery and getting me away from my unruly friends would change me. He thought they were the problem, but he was wrong. I was the problem. I didn’t fall in with bad company; they fell in with me. I was always the leader, the instigator. If I could think of any way to cause trouble, I was hell bent on doing it.

Moving to a new place was fine with me. A new place meant new adventures, a chance to make trouble for new people.

Learning to Smoke

First, though, I needed to learn to smoke. The cool kids all smoked, and I needed to be cooler than anybody else.

The older boys, seventh and eighth grade homies, always smoked on the corner next to the school bus stop. They looked cool. Since I wanted to look cool, I realized I needed to learn how to smoke, and I knew where to find all the cigarettes I wanted resting on top of our refrigerator where dad kept them. As soon as everyone was asleep, I pulled a chair up to the refrigerator and opened up dad’s carton. Cigarettes came ten packs to a carton, and I knew he’d never miss a pack once in a while.

In the morning, I simply hid the pack and some matches in my sock under my pant leg. No one suspected. Once I rounded the corner headed to the school bus, I lit up a cigarette and started puffing.

It was tough at first. I was coughing my head off. Eventually, though, I realized if I took small puffs a few seconds apart that I could puff away without coughing up a lung. Little by little, my lungs built up an immunity to the noxious fumes and I could inhale bigger and bigger puffs without coughing. I could smoke with the best of them. I had earned the right to hang out with the cool kids.

Finally, one day the older homies saw me smoking. They stopped and one of them asked if I had anymore frajos (slang for cigarettes), and I said 55mon: That was slang for yes, and I bent down and pulled the pack out of my sock and handed them to him.

“Hey look,” he said, “the little homie smokes Pintero frajos.” My dad smoked Camel Shorts, non-filter cigarettes. All filter-less cigarettes, Camel, Pell Mell, Lucky Strike, were called Pintero Frajos. Pintero was slang for the kind of cigarettes homies smoked in prison. They were stronger, so they lasted longer before you needed another one.

The coolest homies were the ones in prison, and they couldn’t afford to spend a lot of money on cigarettes. So they had to make theirs last as long as possible. But when I reached for my pack of cigarettes, the homie refused to give them back.

I said, “You better give them back.” I was eleven. He was probably fifteen and a lot bigger than I was. But, I had cajones even back then. Those were my frajos, and I meant to get them back.

He said, “Or what?”

Then one of the other homies said, “Hey, you give the little homie back his frejos, or I’ll give you what for, Esse.” So I got my frajos back without a fight, a fight I could not have won.

Pennies to Dimes

Life was not always about hanging out and looking cool or causing problems for people in authority, though. I was a kid. I wanted to enjoy life and have fun. Most days after class, a couple of my homies and I to went to a little mom and pop burger joint to eat lunch and play on their pinball machines.

The pinball machines took dimes, but we didn’t have very many dimes. So, we made our own. We went outside and filed down pennies on the sidewalk until they were the same size and thickness as dimes. Then we played on the machines until we used up all our ground down pennies. Eventually, though, the owner got wise. When he emptied the machines, he got some dimes, but mostly he just got filed down pennies. He called the school and complained to the principal.

The principal called my dad and together they got in the school vehicle and drove to the burger joint where they caught us outside filing down pennies on the sidewalk. The principal suspended me for a week.

My dad shook his head and took me home. He told me we were going to have a talk when he got home from work. My punishment was to do all my brothers and sisters work for the while I was suspended from school. My brothers and sister loved it. They had a vacation from doing work for a week.

New Guy in Town

Everybody wanted to know who the new guy in town was. Of course, I found the worst dudes I could to hang out with.

The new school had a dress code, but I had never had a dress code anywhere else. I dressed however I wanted at the old school. If I wore brown pants, I wore a brown shirt, brown socks, and brown shoes. If I wore black pants, then I wore a black shirt, black socks, and black shoes.

I was cool and I wanted everyone to know it. I always wore long sleeve shirts with only the bottom buttoned. I kept my shirttail out and my shoes were spit shined like black mirrors. I always wore shoe protectors.

When I walked by, everybody knew I was coming, because my shoes made a loud clicking sound. My hair was down past my shoulder, way too long for the school dress code. I believed dress codes were for lame people, and I thought I was the coolest kid in town.

Racial Tension

We lived in a black and Chicano ghetto. I only walked four blocks to catch the school bus, but, sometimes, that walk felt like a hundred miles. I was the oldest of five kids and we were all in school.

Kids fight. That’s just a fact of life, and it was my job to take care of my younger brothers and sisters. So, I fought a lot during those first few years. When I had to fight another kid, we always fought in a field next to the bus stop. We kept that field busy during those early years. If you wanted to survive in my neighborhood, you had to fight and I learned young.

To make the matter worse, our neighborhood was mostly black. Less than 10 percent or the residents were Hispanic or poor whites, and I’m a light skinned Mexican American. If I fought a Mexican kid or a white kid, we usually traded blows for a few minutes before one or the other gave up, and that was it. We either became friends, or we learned to leave each other alone.

But, if I got into a fight with a black kid and he was losing, the rest jumped in to make sure I didn’t win. It was a question of honor. They could fight one-on-one against each other, but they couldn’t let a white kid or a Hispanic kid win, so they joined in to whip the outsider. Because of that, I learned young how to fight several guys at the same time. It was survival.

After a couple of years, a new black kid named Anthony moved into our neighborhood. People moved in and out all the time. Most of them grew up in the same neighborhood where they were born, but there were always new people, guys like Anthony, moving in and out. He moved into the corner house next to the open field.

I didn’t know it then, but Anthony and I were destined to be close friends. It started one day when I was defending one of my little brothers. A group of kids were attacking me from all sides, when suddenly, Anthony stepped in to help me. They immediately started calling him names like Wetback lover and uncle Tom, and then they started fighting him, too. They said he was a traitor to his own race.

He told them it didn’t matter what color my skin was, he didn’t intend to stand by while a group attacked one guy, because it wasn’t right to gang up on someone. Anthony had an advantage over those other guys and me, though. He had older brothers, and when they saw what was happening, they came to our rescue. They slapped and kicked them and called them F-ing little niggers and little black mother F-ers, Pretty soon the guys who attacked me started crying and leaving. They yelled that they were going to tell their moms and dads.

After that, Anthony became my best friend. His brothers nicknamed him King, because they did whatever he wanted. They took care of their little brother. They treated him like a king, so that’s what they called him: King.

Anthony seemed more like a brother than a friend. Sometimes I ate at his house. I loved his mom’s cooking. I called her Mama and she called me son. Whenever mama had friends over, they asked her who’s that little white Mexican calling you mama. She always told them, “He is my son.” We were very close.

Alcohol and Drinking

In my part of town, if you wanted something, you could find it, and I had an advantage that most of the guys didn’t have. At least I thought it was an advantage. I started drinking beer at the age of ten and smoking at the age of eleven.

My family was always having parties. We had a big family and there was always a birthday or someone was getting baptized, and, of course, that meant a party. And parties meant free beer. The grownups had lots of parties in my neighborhood. My dad always butchered a pig or goat and cooked or barbecued it. They always filled a couple of big metal tubs with ice, soft drinks and beer, and when no one was looking because they were busy talking or dancing to the music, I started sneaking beer out of the tubs and getting drunk. That’s how how it started.

School Fight

When I started high school, I got into a fight with a big white guy. We both got sent to the office, and the vice-principal told us to make up and be friends. I said, “Hell No,” so the vice-principal said we could take three swats of the paddle instead.

Back then you could get the paddle or get suspended from school for a week. The big guy took the paddling, and I took the five-day suspension. The vice-principal asked me why I wouldn’t take the paddling and go to my next class. I told him “The only ones I let whip me was my mom or dad. And you’re neither one.”

He asked me where I lived, so I told him the name of my neighborhood, and he said, “Now I understand why you are the way you are. That’s a long walk.”

I said, “I don’t ride the Bus. I drive to school and park in the hospital parking lot across the street, because I don’t have a parking permit for the school parking lot.”

I didn’t tell my mom I was suspended, but the school called and told her. I told her not to tell my dad. Dad was mean. When my dad got mad at me, he hit me with anything he could get his hands on: a belt, a water hose, a broom, an extension cord, anything that was near him.

One time my dad was going to whip me because I beat up my brother, and I ran and climbed up a big tree in our backyard. He told me to come down, but I said no, because he was going to hit me. So he started throwing things at me: pop bottles, rocks, wooden blocks, anything he could get his hands on.

Then my mom told him that the neighbors were watching and might call the cops, so he tried to talk nice to me. But I still didn’t come down. It was getting dark, so my mom told him to pretend he was going to the store to get something she needed. He took other the kids to the store. They get excited when they go to the store. They knew my mom could get me to come down after they left.

So dad said, “Come on. Lets go to the store to get some stuff for your mom. He said it loud so I could hear that he was leaving. After my dad left with my brothers and sisters, my mom told me to come down from the tree and get in bed. She said that she would tell my dad I was asleep. So I came down from the tree and went to bed. I pretended to be asleep when they got back from the store.

Sex in the Ghetto

Even sex was easy in the ghetto back then. The girls wanted it just as much as the boys did, and nobody seemed to worry about the consequences, at least not until they were pregnant.

I met a blond haired girl at the neighborhood store once. Even ugly blonds were rare back then, and she was gorgeous. She was buying beer. She was probably only seventeen, but nobody asked for IDs. If you didn’t look too young, you could buy all the beer you could pay for. I was excited about her long blond hair and her shapely body. I was only twelve. But I knew a beautiful woman when I saw one, and I was not bashful.

I told her, “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

She flashed the most wonderful smile I had ever seen at me and said, “Thank, you.” Then she asked if I wanted to go to her house and have a beer. Her name was Mandy.

“Yeah, cool. I’d like that.”

After we had each drunk a couple of beers, she asked me if I had ever had sex before. I told her no, that I never had and that made her smile again.

She said, “Oooh, I love showing a guy who’s never been with a girl how wonderful it is the first time.” Then she took me by the hand, led me into her bedroom, and took off all her clothes. I guess she could tell I was worried, because she looked at me and said, “Relax. Don’t be nervous.” Then she started taking my clothes off and pushed me onto the bed. We had sex all night.

The next morning, she peeled the label off one bottle of beer and eyed the four dots on the inside of it. She told me “When high school kids have parties, they peel the label off the beer they just drank. If you got one with one dot, that means a girl has to give you a kiss and then sign it. If you got one with two dots, the girl signs it and you get a hug, a kiss and a hickey. If you get one with four dots, the girl signs her name, then she gives you a kiss, a hug, a hickey, and a screw.”

Mandy smiled and said, “You’re lucky. My Label had four dots.” Then she signed her name on it and handed it to me. I told her thanks. She laughed and kissed me again.” That was the last time I saw her.

Changing the Dress Code

Eventually, the principal told me I had to get a haircut. I said I would just to get him off my back, but I had no intention of cutting my hair. One day in gym class I decided not to change into my gym clothes.

The girls were playing basketball on one-half of the court, and the boys were playing on the other half. The coach sent me to the office. I headed across the gym, but the girls physical education coach yelled at me and told me not to walk on the gym floor with my street shoes. I yelled back at her and asked her what she wanted me to do: float in the air? I told her I didn’t know how to do that, and everybody started laughing. Then she yelled again and told me to tuck my shirt tails in.

Instead, I continued walking out the gym with my shirt tail out and my shoes scratching up the floor. I slammed the door behind me and went straight to the restroom to smoke. I stayed in the restroom until time for the next class, but the girls’ gym coach saw me getting a drink at the water fountain. She told me again to tuck in my shirttails. I told her if she wanted my shirt tails tucked in for her to do it. She grabbed my shirttails and shoved them down into my pants. I spoke as loud as I could so everybody cold hear, “Ooh, babe squeeze it harder.”

She jerked her hand out of the front of my pants as quickly as she could, but everyone was already laughing. Instead of embarrassing me, she was the one who was embarrassed. Then, she went to the office and told the principal what happened. The principal came to me and told me if the girls’ gym teacher saw me again and told me to tuck in my shirttail, to tuck them in. He also warned me to get a haircut, or he was going to suspend me for three days. He gave me one week to get it cut.

Some of the girls asked me what was I going to do. I told them I guessed I wouldn’t see them for a week, because I was not going to cut my hair. The next thing I knew the girls organized a sit-out on the lawn at lunch time in front of the administration building, and the students refused to attend class. They wanted to change the dress code. The principal changed the dress code, and I didn’t get expelled. Then, everyone went back to class.

Cut My Hair

I cut my hair that weekend before I returned to school. The principal said he couldn’t figure me out. I got the students to do a sit-out to change the dress code so I wouldn’t get suspended: Then I turned around and cut my hair after I wasn’t required to anymore.

He shook his head, and then he told me if the girls P.E. teacher saw me and told me to tuck my shirttails in to do it. He said please, as a favor to him, just tuck them in. He said I could pull them back out after she left. I told him I would. He thanked me and left shaking his head.

He pointed up and waved his hand. I think he was asking God to help him. Or, maybe he was asking God why he was being punished.

Everything was alright for a while. Then I got busted for cutting class and smoking in the restroom. When the teacher called roll, a guy told the teacher I was in the restroom smoking.

When I walked in during the middle of class, the teacher sent me to the principal’s office for cutting class and smoking in the restroom. Instead, I went to the restroom and smoked until the bell rang for my next class. When the principal came to get me, I was in the restroom smoking. He took me to the office and suspended me for the rest of the week.

He told me that when I returned the following week, I had to report to Continuation School. I was not allowed to return to the regular school campus. He said if he ever caught me on the regular campus again that I would be expelled from school permanently. So I started Continuation School.

Smoking in School

Continuation School was where they sent the trouble makers. You could smoke there, not in class but in a designated smoking area. The smoking area had coffee cans filled with sand where you could put your cigarette butts. Instead of using the cans, though, we just threw the butts on the ground. Also, Continuation School only held class until noon. Since I lived out of town, that meant I had to wait until 3:30 to catch the bus back home. That gave me plenty of free time to get into more trouble.

One day a teacher made us stay after school and wash her car. She drove it onto the grass by the principal’s office and said she would be right back. After we finished washing her car, I realized she left the keys in the ignition. I started the motor and started spinning “broadies” in her car on the grass. My homies all laughed. When I got tired of tearing up the grass, we went into the office to let her know we were finished. But there wasn’t anyone there.

They had a lady’s break room, and I saw there was a coffee maker and donuts. My homie said “We better get out of here, or we’ll get in trouble.”

I said, “What are they going to do? We’re already in Continuation School.” So we got some coffee and a couple of donuts.

Naturally, our teacher caught us in the break room and saw us drinking coffee and eating donuts. She said, “You’re not supposed to be in here.”

I put my finger to my lips and said “Shush. We’re having a meeting.” My homie started laughing and sprayed coffee from his mouth onto the floor.

She said, “Clean that mess up and to get back to the room.” She made sure we cleaned it up really good. But when we got outside, she saw the broadsies I had spun on the grass in her car after we washed it. Then she got mad and said, “Did you do that with my car?”

I said, “Yes, it was a lot of fun. You want to try it”

Then she really got mad and told me no and that I was going to get in trouble.

I said, “No, if they ask, you’re going to tell them that I did it in my car, and you got mad and ran me off. If they don’t ask, just don’t say anything and everything will be alright.”

Principal’s Car

I actually preferred Continuation School over regular school. I had more freedom, and I was associating with other young troublemakers who appreciated my rebellious nature. I gained a whole new group of like-minded homies.

My homies and I were leaning against the office wall having a smoke break one day when I spotted the principal’s car. He had a little sports car. I think it was a Mazda Miata. There were a couple of trees on the grass behind the curb.

I asked if my homies if they would help me do something to make the principal, Mr. Westley, angry, and we could all watch. They asked what was it I wanted to do to make him mad. I said, “Let’s pick up Mr. Wesley’s car move it between those two trees.” So we picked up the front of his car and put it on top of the curb. Then we picked up the back end and put it up on the curb. Then we went picked up the front again and set it next to tree on the right. Then we picked up the back of the car and set it in front of that other tree. Mr. Westley’s car barely fit between the trees.

By the time we finished lunch was over, so we went back to class. Continuation School only lasted until noon, but we stuck around to see what happened. We were leaning against the office wall and smoking when the principal tried to leave for lunch.

We wanted to see how he was going to get his car out from between those two trees. There was only about three inches clearence on each end, front and back, between the car and the trees. He was shocked to see his car between the trees. He asked if we knew who did it, or if we had anything to do with how his car got there.

I answered that we were wondering how he could park so good between those two trees, and we were waiting around to see him drive out of that tiny little space. We wanted to learn how to park a car in such a tiny little space the way he did. He was furious, but he couldn’t get his car out.

After a few minutes, he called a tow-truck. But one truck couldn’t do the job without damaging his car, so they had to use two tow-trucks to get it out without damaging his car. It took a while, and Mr. Westley was fuming by the time they finished. Not only did he have to hire two tow trucks, he missed his lunch. After it was all over, we all had a good laugh and went home. The next day they told us that Mr. Westley put a hundred dollar reward on the bulletin board in the school’s main entrance for anyone who would identify the person or persons who had moved his car. But nobody came forward to collect it.

Bad Company

Stole a Corvette

There were two campuses: the East Campus and the West Campus. Continuation School, where they sent me, is located behind the East Campus regular high school. Some students from the regular high school had classes at the other campus in the afternoon. Buses left at noon when we got out of school, so sometimes Berto and I sneaked on the bus to go to the West Campus. We both had girlfriends at the West Campus.

Continuation School students were not allowed on the buses during school hours. We rode the buses going to school and going home before and at 3 o’clock after school, but not to go to the other campuses at lunch time. So we had to sneak on the bus to have lunch with our girlfriends at the East campus. One day Mr. Westley, the school principal, caught us on the noon-time bus, and took us off. He always kept an eye on me after our prank with his car. He knew I was behind it, but he couldn’t prove it. We hardly ever rode the bus going home, because we didn’t want to wait until 3 o’clock to ride home.

Berto and me were walking home one day when we spotted a ‘65 Corvette convertible in the jewelry store parking lot. I looked inside. The keys were in the ignition, so we hopped in. I started it up and backed out, but it had a really sensitive clutch. I let the clutch out too fast, and the car jerked a couple of times and then it died. Berto told me to hurry up and go, because we could get charged with Grand Theft Auto. I started it again and we took off down the alley. I stopped at the cross street and realized we were going the wrong way. A cop car passed right in front of us and didn’t notice we were going the wrong way.

We left town and headed into the country. Then we spotted the bus from the high school carrying my brother and sisters. I honked the horn at them, and they started waving their hands out of the windows of the bus. I started peeling out and spinning broadsies in it. Berto told me to let him drive, because he wanted to try it. So I let him drive and he started peeling out and spinning broadsies in it.

Then the car started sputtering and I realized we were running out of gas. I told Berto to drive down this ditch bank towards a clump of trees so we could come back that night and strip the car. We didn’t reach the trees before it ran out of gas, so we pushed it off the bank and into the ditch so nobody could see it. By this time we got home it was getting dark, so we got some homies together and got in mom’s car. Then we drove out to the country where the car was. We took the mags, stereo, carburetor, generator and seats and left it sitting in the ditch.

Stabbed

Once, we went to a Quincentera at the fraternal hall in town so we could drink and dance with the girls. Some dudes from another town showed up, and one of them tried to cut in on one of my homies while he was dancing. The fight was on.

I knocked my guy out, but there were two dudes beating on one my other homies. I grabbed one of the two dudes and slugged him hard on the side of his face. I felt him slug me in the stomach. Then he ran. I told my homies we better go before the cops got there. So we all left in the car. I was feeling pain in my stomach where he slugged me. So I rubbed my hand just above my belt.

My stomach felt wet, and I thought it was because I was sweating. But when I pulled my hand out, it had blood on it. Berto said the guy I pulled off him must have stabbed me. I thought he slugged me.

I was so buzzed from the liquor and hyped up from fighting, that I didn’t realize it when I got stuck. My homie Jesus passed me a pint of Black Velvet whiskey. I took a big swallow and then I poured some in my stab wound.

I took my bandanna off and pressed on it to soak up the blood. The wound was not deep, so they dropped me off at home. I told my mom that my stomach hurt really bad, and I needed to stay home from school the next day. She called me in sick, and I stayed home for two days. I hurt for a while, but I healed up pretty good.

Suspended from Continuation School

I got really close to a girl at the regular school. She always wanted to be with me. One day she invited me to meet her sister, so we walked to her sister’s house. Then she told me her sister wasn’t home and talked me into climbing through the window. We went into one of the bedrooms and she started kissing me and taking her clothes off. We had sex until time for my bus home.

Later, the principal suspended me from Continuation School, because they caught me smoking on the bus. That’s when dad put me to working in the irrigation department where he was a supervisor. He thought if I saw how hard I would have to work without an education, that I might straighten up and act right. He put me in the hardest fields to irrigate with the best of his irrigation employees and told them to teach me how to do the work. I suspect he also told them to give me all the hardest, dirtiest jobs.

To his surprise, and mine, I loved the work. I was making good money for the first time in my life, and I made friends with the sons of my father’s friends. I had gone to school with a couple of them. Two of them were brothers, and their dad let them use his pickup truck on the weekends. We partied and played pool at a local bar. Dad let me keep twenty bucks per week out of my check for spending money. It felt like a fortune.

Go to Work

Taught to Work Hard

My dad taught me to work hard when I was still young. He expected me to work ten times better and harder than any other person. I always did. I worked my way up until I was my dad’s second in command at that company. It was hard work, but I enjoyed it.

Then my friend, the son of my dad’s friend invited me to go on a double date with him and his girlfriend's sister. To my surprise, my date was the same girl I had sex with in Continuation School. By then, she had a daughter by one of my friends. We dated for a while, then she got pregnant by me. She got mad at her parents and wanted to move in with me. We lived together for a while, but I wouldn’t let her boss me around, so she left after a while and went back home to her folks.

Note: This is the woman who got hooked on drugs and ended up dead in an orange grove. The mother of his oldest daughter. They never married.

Bar Fight

My homies from the city where we lived before came to visit and party with me. We went to a bar to play pool, but one of my homies got into a brawl over a pool game. The fight rolled outside and guys were clubbing each other with pool sticks when one guy pulled out a gun and started scaring anyone that came near him. He ratcheted the gun back like he was sliding a bullet into the chamber. I could tell he didn’t have any bullets, because he just kept ratcheting the gun back. So I pulled my gun out and yelled at him, “Hey Mack, look.” I fired two shots in the air and told him my gun had bullets.

I knocked him out and took his gun away, then somebody hit me with a pool stick and addled me for a minute or two. I shook my head until my sight came back. The idiot that hit me was standing in front of me with a broken pool stick, waiting to see if I fell down. I smiled at him and said, “You’re mine now. You should have run when you had the chance.” I beat him senseless and left him lying on the ground. Then I went back into the bar to get another pool stick, but the owner had hidden them so we wouldn’t break any more. So I headed out the door, but the guys we were fighting were coming back inside and they still had their pool sticks. They were between me and the door. My homies had all run to the car.

I grabbed a couple of pool balls and began throwing them at the guys trying to surround me. I threw one at a guy who was headed straight toward me. It hit him in the forehead, right between his eyes. I remember his head made a hollow sound like when you break a coconut with a hammer. He moaned and dropped to the floor. His friends jumped back outside when they saw their buddy go down. I was yelling at them to come back. Who’s gonna be next? Who wants to go down with him? Meanwhile, I kept sneaking closer to the front door.

They just stared at their buddy lying on the floor while I made my way outside. They didn’t know what to do, but I did. I ran to my homies and jumped in the car. They were yelling at me to hurry up before the cops came. One of those dudes was chasing me. I stopped and threw a pool ball at him. He turned sideways, trying to get out of the way, but it hit him in the middle of his back. It sounded like hitting a drum. He went down and rolled around on the ground in pain.

We all laughed as I jumped in the back of my homie’s Ford Ranchero. We went back to the ranch where I lived and drank beer and laughed at what happened at the bar. I told them I knocked one guy out with a pool ball inside the bar, so I could get out the door. Then one of my homies said, “and then you left one flopping around on the ground like a fish out of water.” We all laughed and drank more beer. We were really pleased with ourselves: real bad men.

My homies went back home the next day. When I got home, my dad was pissed because he found out what had happened. He just come from the hospital to see how Tino was doing. I told my dad I was defending myself, that he was coming at me with a pool stick. I didn’t know the guy I knocked out was in the hospital, and I had no idea he was one of my dad’s friends. I told him that I didn’t care who they were. If someone attacks me with a pool cue, I’m going to defend myself. It was him or me.

Gang War

One time, me and my homies were kicked back in front of my house when some black guys walked by. Barry, one of our biggest guys was feared in my neighborhood. He was dangerous, real dangerous, always in and out of jail. One of the black dudes called Barry an F-ing Beaner. Then Barry called him a “stupid, dumb nigger,” and the fight was on. We were winning the fight when they took off running. Barry chased them for a few minutes and then turned back and said, “I’ll be back. I’m gonna get my homies.”

We said, “We’ll be waiting.” We knew what was going to happen, but we did not want to wait until it got dark. Barry and his homies lived in another part of the city. He and his homies played by their our rules. We figured we were about to learn something. My homies went home, got their guns and came back. My Chango (Spanish for Monkey) homies lived just a few blocks away. Some of our other homies waited in a nearby vacant field with their guns. Me and my homies waited at my house with our guns.

About midnight a car drove really slow by my house and started shooting. My homies and I ducked down, but we started firing at them as soon as they stopped shooting. Then they sped away and turned left at the cross street. We knew they would. It was the closest route back to their homes on the south side. They had to drive by the gas station on that corner. Our homies were hiding in the open field.

When they turned south, my homies opened up on them with every weapon they had. They kept shooting until the south-siders backed their car up to the gas station between Barry’s homies and our homies. They were boxed in. They turned their car around and tried to escape in the other direction. They didn’t realize we had two groups firing at them.

By then my homies and I had moved into the open field in back of my house where we could cut off their retreat. When they approached, we started shooting them at them again and forced them to back up to the gas station again. They tried driving back the other way, thinking my other homies had left. But they were wrong.

My other homies started shooting at them again until they backed the car up to the gas station again. They tried going the other way again, but my homies and I were still waiting. We opened up on them once more and kept shooting until they backed the car up to the gas station one final time. We could hear them crying and screaming.

One of them jumped out of the car and opened the car trunk. He grabbed the spare tire and tossed it through the gas station window, so they could use the gas station phone to call the cops and an ambulance.

When the ambulance showed up, we put our guns in a sack and hid them in one of my homies’ house three blocks away. We knew the cops would check with the neighbors to ask if we knew anything about the shooting. Of course, nobody admitted knowing anything.

The next day I bought a newspaper. I excited to find out how many guys we had killed. I figured we had killed two or three of them and injured the others. People said the car looked like the Bonny and Clyde’s car; it was riddled with bullet holes on both sides. We were all disappointed to find out nobody died. Only two guys got shot: One was hit in the arm, and the other one was hit in the butt. The cops never found out what really happened. They thought it was a gang war, so they didn’t arrest anybody.

Beach Party

“One weekend we went to the beach to party. We planned to sleep on the beach. We brought some wood for a fire and bought beer and hot dogs from a local store. We roasted the weenies on our fire and then kicked back drinking our beer. There was a group of dudes and girls partying farther down the beach from us. The guys got into an argument with the girls, so the girls got angry and walked over to our campfire.”

“They said they wanted to get to know us, because we looked chilled. The other dudes came over to our little campfire and tried to get the girls to go back with them, but the girls said they wanted to stay with us. So I told the guys to leave them alone, that the girls didn’t want to go with them right now. One huge dude told me to shut up, and I told him to shut me up.”

He rushed me, but I grabbed a burning stick from our fire and started beating him on his head and face with it. My homies did the same thing to the other dudes. Pretty quick they jumped in their truck and took off.

The girls were still there. They were drinking our beer and waiting for the winners. They were totally wasted from the booze, so my homies each picked a girl and had sex there on the beach. The two leaders chose me. They took me to their car and had their way with me until I passed out from the booze and exhaustion. Both of them gave me their phone numbers and told me to call. Then they drove off in their pickup.

On the way back home, we stopped for more beer and something to eat. I slept all the way home. When I got home I told my dad I needed to lie down for a while, because I was tired from swimming in the ocean all night. He made me wash the cars for being gone for two days and not letting him or my mom know where I was.

Burrito goes to the Army

My buddy Burrito got busted stealing a car. The judge told him if he joined the Army, he would dismiss the charges. Back then, lots of dudes joined the Army to avoid going to prison. The judge said if Burrito didn’t bring proof that he had enlisted in the military within the next 30 days, he was going to sentence Burrito to three-to-five years in prison for grand theft auto. When he left for the Army, we gave him a going away party.

Married

1st wife

One day after work I went to town and saw some girls I knew at the park. A new girl I never saw before was with them. I waved at them as I drove by, and they all waved back, except for the new girl. She was so beautiful. I had to get to know her.

When I drove back to the park, I saw her walking towards the other girls. I waved at her, but she flipped me off. I love a challenge, so I stopped to talk to the girls.

Lupy introduced me to the new girl, her cousin Cindy. I tried to make her laugh to break the ice. She told me they were visiting for the summer while school was out and then they were going back home. Every day after that, I went straight from the ranch after work to the park in town, because I knew they would be hanging out there.

I had to earn her trust, so I was very polite and respectful. One day I told the girls I was going to the store to get a Coke and asked them if they wanted anything—my treat. I asked Cindy if she wanted to go with me, and Lupe and the other girls told her to go with me. She waited in the car while I went in the store. When we got back to the park, Cindy’s two brothers, Mundo and Ronny, were there, so I offered to buy them whatever they wanted. They wanted beer.

We bought some beer and stuff to eat. Then we went to a secluded area and built a campfire to roast our hot dogs and drink our beer. We went there every day after work just to relax and have a good time. I always went to the park and visited with the girls. Cindy’s brothers and I went to the same place and partied until time to go home. We always built a little campfire to roast hot dogs. Then we drank beer and had a good time relaxing and partying.

When summer ended, Cindy and her brothers had to go back home. I was heartbroken, but Cindy gave me her phone number so we could stay in touch. She told me to call her at 4 o’clock before her dad came home from work. I called her every day for a couple of months. Then she told me her birthday was come up, so I asked her for directions to her house so I could go see her on her birthday. I told her to tell her brothers to be there so her dad would think I was there to see her brothers.

When I got there, I she and her friend were riding horses. I stopped at a corner gas station and honked my car horn. She met me in the parking lot and we talked for a while.

She said her father was very strict about who his sons friends were. But when I met him, I found out he and my uncle had played in the same band when they were young. He immediately liked me and didn’t mind if I slept in my car in his driveway so I could visit his sons the next day.

When he left for work, Cindy told her mom she was going to her friends house down the street. She told me she would wait for me there. Her brothers left for work, so we said our good-byes. Then I went down the street to see Cindy. I picked her up, and we drove around for a while.

I took her to eat, and then I asked her to run away with me. She said she would. So I took her back to my home, about a three-and-a-half hour drive. Late that night, after my folks were asleep, I took her to my room. In the morning I told my mom I had brought my girlfriend home, that she had run away with me. My parents were upset. They called her parents and told them that she was with them and she was safe. They promised that they would bring her home, so we could all talk about the situation.

My parents told them Cindy and I wanted to get married. Her dad said she was only 15 years old and asked my dad how old I was. Dad told told him I was 19 years old, that I was a hard worker, and I would be a good provider for her. Her father said he could have me put in jail since she’s a minor, but it wouldn’t solve anything and it would probably be worse if she was pregnant. He said no one would want to want to marry a young girl with a baby. So he gave us his blessings.

Her father told me, “Don’t try to bring her back. She’s only 15, and she doesn’t know how to do anything. She can’t cook. She doesn’t know how to keep house. She can’t warm water without burning it. So, we’ll just have to pray you can make a good life together.”

Two sons and two daughters later, I was still working with my dad at the farming company. He was the superintendent, and I was his second in command. Life was good, but my world was about to change from good to terrible.

Invincibility of Youth

When I was young, I thought I was tough. I was the self appointed protector of people I cared about. I was the one who took revenge on other bad guys. I thought I was invincible.

I was fearless. People were afraid of me. I walked through life knowing I was the most dangerous man around. I was stabbed twice and survived both times. Another time, three carloads of thugs beat me senseless and left me for dead, but I survived to fight another day and took revenge on all of them.

I always got even with anyone who hurt me or anyone I cared about. I had money, lots of money from a dozen illegal ventures. I didn’t worry about God. Who needed God? Believing in God was a crutch for weak people, not me. If there was a god, and I didn’t believe there was, he didn’t care about me or anybody else in this world.

I thought I was smarter than the other thugs. I was invincible. I didn’t worry about death. My father always told me, “When you die, you’re dead. There’s nothing else, no Heaven, no Hell, just nothing, like turning off a light bulb,” no different than a dog or a cat dying in the street. My father tried to teach me how to be a proper man, but he forgot the most important part of being a decent human being. He forgot God.

Reckoning

Nearly Died

Most of the young punks eventually grow up, get good jobs, get married and give up the gangster lifestyle. Not me. I never did anything the easy, safe way.

Years later, I had just washed and waxed my car and told my wife I was going for a cruise around town. I planned to come right back.

While I was cruising around, I saw my brother-in-law’s car parked at the liquor store. My sister and my nieces were in the car waiting for him to come out. When I stopped to tell them hi, my nieces start screaming at me. My sister told me that on their way to town a pickup truck with two guys in it were driving slow swerving all over the road. When my brother-in-law attempted to pass them, they tried to run him off the road.

My brother-in-law was finally able to pass, but nearly lost control and wrecked. When he came out of the store, I told him to get in with me and let my sister drive the girls back to the ranch. We followed her home to make sure she made it back safely. Then my brother-in-law and I drove back to town to look for the guys who tried to run them off the road.

We drove for hours until it started getting dark and all our beer was gone. Then, as we started home, we saw their pickup truck in a parking lot. I backed my ride up next to the front of the pickup and asked the driver what was up. He said they were just sitting there drinking a beer. Then he asked me where the party was.

I told him, “Right here. We’re going to have a party. Do you know my brother-in-law?”

He looked at him and said, “No. Should I?”

I said, “Yea, don’t you remember a nice looking low-rider coming into town?”

Then my brother-in-law jumped in and said, “Yeah, I was in the low rider you tried to run off the road, and I almost lost control, and my family was with me.”

So, I told him, “If you got something against my brother-in-law, why don’t you get down and take care of it?” as I opened his pickup door and told him to “get down.”

He said, “I got somebody right here that does my talking for me.” He pulled a 12-gauge shotgun out and set it between his legs.

I guess he thought I was going to run. Instead, I smiled and said, “Oh. You you want to dance. Okay, let’s dance.” Then I reached into my sweater and pulled out my .360 German Luger from my shoulder holster. Boy was he surprised. His eyes got so big just about popped out of his head they .

He punched the gas peddle and banged into my car. That really made me mad, and I started shooting at him. I could see the sparks fly when my bullets hit his door. He ducked down while he was driving, so I couldn’t see him. My brother-in-law and I jumped into my low rider and chased him. I was driving a hundred miles an hour to catch up to him. My brother-in-law grabbed the gun. He wanted to shoot the guy, but he didn’t know how to hit anything. I couldn’t drive and fight him for my gun at the same time, so I let him have it.

I didn’t realize the guy had leveled the shotgun out of the window of his pickup so he could shoot at us. When we got even window with his window, my brother-in-law ducked down to the floorboard, and the guy shot me in the right shoulder with his 12-gauge shotgun.

The blast threw me into shock. I couldn’t control my body. My arms spread out to each side. My legs stretched out straight, the right foot flooring the gas peddle. I saw the speedometer hit 115 miles and hour, but I couldn’t take my foot off the accelerator. I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t turn the wheel. I could see everything that was happening, but I couldn’t do anything.

I could see a huge canal alongside the highway. We were headed right for it, and my foot was still pushing down the gas peddle. We were drifting toward the road, but I couldn’t straighten the steering wheel. My brother-in-law was hanging halfway out of the window, firing back at the pickup when he realized we were drifting off the road.

I tried to tell him to grab the steering wheel or to take my foot of the gas peddle, but I couldn’t talk. I was yelling and screaming, but nothing, no sound, was coming out. I could see everything that was happening, but I couldn’t do anything about it. My body was locked in place. I knew then I was going to die.

The car flew off the highway and into the canal. I could feel the wind blowing past me. When we hit the water, the car stayed afloat for a few seconds, seconds that seemed like hours. I was slumped over the steering wheel. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t move my arms or legs. I was still frozen in place, pushing down hard on the gas pedal even after the motor drowned out and stopped running.

I could hear my brother-in-law banging on the car door, trying to open it. But he couldn’t. The water pressure was too strong. I heard him climb out the window. My eyes and my body were locked straight ahead. I still couldn’t move my arms or legs. I could hear everything. I heard him splashing through the water as he swam to the canal bank. I heard him talking to someone, but I couldn’t turn my head.

I could see the water rising higher and higher in the car. I was still slumped over the steering wheel, unable to move. The steel chain steering wheel was reflecting the sunlight into my eyes. I could see it, but I couldn’t move. My low-rider was sinking. The water was already up to my face, but I still couldn’t move. I heard someone ask my brother-in-law if there was anyone else in the car. His voice was clear and easy to understand. The clear water was up to my face now. I heard the man asked my brother-in-law if he was alone in the car. He said, “Yes.”

I remember thinking, “I’m in here, and I’m going to drown and you’re telling them you were alone.” Then I heard the man ask him again if there was anyone else in the car. Finally, he finally came to his senses and told him I was still in the car. I know now he was still groggy from banging his head against the windshield when we hit the water and was probably in shock himself. But right then, all I knew was that I was going to die.

They jumped into the water to get me. I could hear them splashing around as they swam. The water was up to my ears by then, but I still couldn’t move. My face was in the water. I knew I needed to hold my breath, but I couldn’t stop breathing.

I still couldn’t move. Nothing. The shotgun blast didn’t kill me. Instead, I was going to drown, and I still couldn’t move. I just needed to move. I needed to hold my breath. But I couldn’t stop breathing. I wasn’t in control of my body. I was breathing, but I was breathing in water, not air, not oxygen. I could feel the water going in and out of my mouth. I could hear it gurgling in and out. No coughing, no gagging, just breathing water in and out.

Suddenly, my brother-in-law and the other guy grabbed me by the top of my sweater and pulled me up. My head was out of the water. I could see the water shooting out of my mouth. It was like a water fountain shooting up into the air.

They must have been swimming under water, trying to save me. When they came up for air, they lost their grip on me, and I went under again. I still couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t close my eyes. I couldn’t stop breathing. I couldn’t move my arms or legs. I couldn’t talk. Nothing. I couldn’t do anything. It was like I was somebody else, watching the water around me while I drowned.

The second time they brought me up out of the water, I saw the water shoot out of my lungs. It was a fountain, a huge fountain of water shooting up out of my body. That’s when I started coughing. I tried to talk, but no words came out.

They dragged me out on the opposite side of the canal. My dad’s boss was there. They carried me out of the canal into his backyard. He had heard the police scanner and came to see what was going on.

When they pulled me up onto the canal bank, my boss and the night foreman were there. Apparently, someone had forced the water out of my lungs. I was breathing again. That was when the pain came. My neck was hurting, but nothing else. I couldn’t feel anything below my neck. I couldn’t feel my lungs drawing in new air. I couldn’t feel my feet, my legs, nothing below my neck. No pain, no sensation, nothing.

I could talk. I opened and closed my eyes, but the pain in my neck kept getting worse and worse. I tried to move my head to the side, but they grabbed my head and told me not to move. Every time I moved my head, a gush of blood came out of my neck. My Saint Christopher medal had stabbed me in the neck, and every time I moved, it released another spurt of fresh blood. I told my boss I needed to move my head, because something was bothering me. I asked my boss to remove it.

He told me the buckshot had shoved the chain into my neck. I asked him to take it out, so he got some wire cutters out of his van and cut the gold chain away from around my neck. It felt a lot better then. Then the ambulance rushed me to the hospital.

I must have passed out. I was drifting in and out of consciousness. One moment I could hear and see what was going on around me, and then, suddenly, everything shifted and I was on a gurney being pushed into an elevator. When I came to again, they were rushing me down a hallway. Then suddenly, I was in an operating room, surrounded by doctors and nurses. They put a mug over my nose and mouth and told me to breath in deep, big deep breaths. I did.

Then I saw the doctor with a knife in his hand. I told them, “Wait a minute. I’m still awake.” He didn’t smile. He just told me to relax that I would be unconscious soon. He told me to count backwards from 100. I only made it to 97.

When I woke up, they were taking me from the operating room to I.C.U. I heard my mom ask the doctor if I was going to make it. He told her he didn’t know.

“He’s still on a fine line. He can go this way or he can go that way.”

Later, I have no idea how much later, I heard my family’s voices, my aunt’s, cousins, brothers and sisters, mom, and my wife. I couldn’t open my eyes, but I could hear their voices, sometimes one or two, other times several of them at one time. I could hear them, but I couldn’t see them. I couldn’t open my eyes. I wanted to tell them I was okay, but I couldn’t talk. The words were in my head, but nothing came out of my mouth. More than once, one of them asked the doctor if I was going to make it, but he always gave them the same answer: “He can go this way or that way.” I knew what he meant, but I didn’t want to admit it to myself.

I don’t know why those words kept playing in my mind. Some times when I woke up, some of them were crying. Some even tried to wake me up. They didn’t know I was already awake. I just couldn’t open my eyes.

I couldn’t speak. I was there. I was awake, but only in my mind. My body was ignoring my brain. I wanted to reassure them, to let them know I was okay. But I wasn’t okay. I wasn’t even close to okay. I think it was them crying that hurt me most. I wanted desperately to let them know I was alright, but I couldn’t. I guess I slept a lot. Whenever I woke up, I knew who was there by their voices. But I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even open my eyes. My mother kept asking if I was going to be okay, and the doctor always said the same thing, “He’s still on that fine line. He can go this way or that way.”

I didn’t know why that kept playing in my head. Then one day I woke up and saw my dad. He was sitting next to my bed. He was watching television. I tried to open my mouth to say, “Hi dad,” but when I tried to talk, my eyes closed and I couldn’t open them again. When I woke up again, I saw the TV news. There was a shooting. I found out later the victim was in the bed next to me. He had been there for days. The first time I opened my eyes my dad was clean shaved, but this time he had long whiskers. Again, I tried to call him, to let him know I was okay, but my eyes closed again and I couldn’t open them any more.

Later, I have no idea how much later, I heard my mom talking to my aunt, and I could hear one of my cousins talking. I opened my eyes and then my mother looked at me. I tried to talk, but nothing came out, and then I was asleep again. Once more I woke up and could hear my mother talking. I had my eyes open. This time my mother saw my eyes and ran to my side. I tried to talk, but the words wouldn’t form in my mouth. Then nothing. I was asleep again.

The next time I managed to open my eyes, I decided not to speak. I wanted them to know I was awake, but every time I tried to speak, I immediately fell back to sleep. This time I kept my eyes open, waiting for them to notice. My mother was holding my hand, telling me, “Hi, Mijo, I love you.” I was looking at all of them. I wanted them to see that I was awake, that I was still with them. Mom said, “Look, he doesn’t know where he is. He can’t talk.”

I wanted everyone to see I was awake before I tried to speak. I didn’t want to fall asleep before they knew. I decided I would try to talk really slowly. Very slowly, I said, “Hi, Mom.” Then everyone was happy. They were all talking at once, excited to know that I was still with them. They were all smiling and thanking God. I asked my mother where my father was. I told her I saw him watching TV.

“That was three days ago,” she told me.

“How long have I been here,” I asked.

She said, “Seven days.”

Rehabilitation

Then I told everyone I was feeling tired, and that I was going back to sleep. A Candy Striper woke me up I woke up three days later so she could take me down to the basement for physical therapy in a round, whirlpool-like tub. She used a large crane-like contraption to lift me up and set me in one of the tubs so she could rub me down with iodine.

She used huge swabs while I was in the whirlpool to clean the bullet wound in my shoulder. The swabs looked like giant Q-tips. She told me she was cleaning my wound to keep infection from forming. She was being careful not to hurt me, but I told her not to worry because I couldn’t feel anything anyway. She called me, Mr. J.R.

After they had treated my wound for several days, the doctor stitched my shoulder up and brought me back to I.C.U. Later that day, my wife and mother brought my kids to see me, but the kids weren’t allowed in the I.C.U. So, I grabbed hold of my I.V. and walked down to the visiting area. I didn’t care what anyone said, I intended to see my children.

Be with my Children

My son was only three years old; My daughter was barely two. Both of them were born in 1976, the boy in January and the girl in December. I called them my bicentennial children. The kids were afraid when they first saw me. I must have looked like a Frankenstein monster with all my bandages and stitches and dragging my I.V. pole around. I was practically skin and bones, because I had lost so much weight. I didn’t look anything like their father. They wouldn’t come near me.

I stayed close to their mom and kept calling my boy. He finally recognized my voice and came to me. I hugged him, and then my little girls followed her brother. I asked the doctor if I could go home later that day. He told me no, because I was still taking morphine injections for the pain. They were supposed to give me the injections every four hours, but I was hitting the buzzer long before it was time for my scheduled injections.

I begged him. Thanksgiving Day was only two days away, and I wanted to be with my babies. He told me if I could make it with nothing more than Vicodin and not ask for morphine through the next two days, he would let me go home. I’m sure he thought the pain was far too severe for me to make it, but he didn’t know me. I didn’t ask once. The Vicodin helped, but not much. It didn’t matter, though, I was going home, no matter what it took.

Pain is a wicked master

Pain is a wicked master. If you let it take control, it destroys everything: your pride, your health, even your will to live. I had never let pain control me, and I wasn’t about to let it keep me away from my family. I was home with my babies for Thanksgiving. The doctor knew I was in pain, so he gave me a prescription for Vicodin. I was supposed to take one tablet for pain every four hours.

When I left the hospital, the pain was so bad I took two at once. I told my mother I needed the extra pill because of the extra pain from moving so much and all the walking I was doing. Those first two days were tough. The pain was so bad I was popping Vicodin pills like a three-year-old holding a candy jar. Then on the third day, the pain grew a lot less. Evey day after that was easier and easier.

It took a year, but I finally got the feeling back in the rest of my body. It started with tingling in my arms and hands, and day-by-day it got better. After a year, I was finally able to go back to work.

Near Death Experience

People all over the world talk about their Near Death Experiences. They talk about seeing Jesus, about loving the light, about walking through Heaven. I got a little taste of Heaven, but I didn’t meet Jesus.

I got a good look at Hell, though, and I don’t want to ever go there again. An angel took me to there just to look around and see where I was headed. People tell me there are different levels of Hell, different degrees of punishment. If Hell gets worse than what I saw, then I don’t want to go any deeper. I can’t imagine what could be worse, but I know it must be way worse than I saw.

A Visit to Hell

I figure God looked down on me and decided things had gone far enough. I was too stupid and hard headed to figure it out on my own. It was time for Him to intervene. He saw I had a good heart, despite all my hate and anger. So when I was in that coma, God’s angel took me to Hell. I suppose it was the first level. I understand each level gets worse. I don’t ever want to go back, and I certainly don’t ever want to see the lower levels.

Where he took me was dark and hot. It looked like a seedy looking bar with barely any lights. But it wasn’t like any bar I ever saw. There were people there, playing poker, drinking and having sex, but it was hot, miserably hot, the kind of hot that makes you want to take all your clothes off and jump into the nearest body of water, the kind of hot that takes your breath away. Every breath scorched my mouth and lungs, but I wasn’t on fire.

People talk about burning in Hell, and, yes, it was hot, really hot. But nobody mentions the smell, the putrid smell of death and rotten flesh, a smell so bad I can’t begin to describe it. The smell was so bad that it almost gagged me, worse than a rotting rat, worse than a decaying human body. I’ve smelled dead animals and even a dead person, but they were nothing compared to how badly the place stunk. The smell was actually worse than the heat.

The place was burning hot, but I couldn’t see a fire. It was unbearably hot. It was like a big, dark, unbelievably hot, stinking bar. The people were drinking, smoking and doing drugs. Some were even having sex. Everywhere I looked, there were thousands of people fighting, having sex, doing drugs and trying to kill each other. They seemed to be used to the burning pain, the darkness, and the putrid smell.

I remember wondering where I was. I looked at my hands. They were both open, and I clapped them together real hard. When I felt the pain I realized it was not a dream. It was really happening to me. I could feel the presence of the Spirit. I could feel Him talking to me, but it wasn’t a voice. I could feel it talking in my heart. He said he brought me there because he wanted me to go back to the living and describe what I saw, to describe it so well that it would open their eyes to what that world was really like. It was a hot, stinking, dark place filled with misery and hopelessness.

In some ways, it was like life here on Earth. People were drinking, and smoking, and doing drugs. They were laughing and screwing all over the place. It was like one big, desperate orgy-like party, but without music: no band, no MC, no one cheering on the other party goers, and barely any light. Some people were laughing, but nobody was smiling, and they only seemed to laugh at other people’s misery.

Then a big, white dude showed up. Somehow, I knew he was new there. He went straight to the bar. It looked like the bartender was the information desk. Then a woman went up to the bar next to the big white dude and told the bartender to make her a drink. I remember she had long, wavy black hair and full, beautiful lips. She was wearing stiletto style, black high heel shoes. She wore a really short, black dress. It was so short you could see her pubic hairs. It was black and skin tight and cut so low in front I could see her nipples. She had a knockout body, probably 36-32-38. The new dude smiled and she giggled and smiled back at him. He put his open hand on the side of her breast and slid it down the curve of her body, all the way down to her thigh. Then he slid it down all the way and cupped his hand along her bottom.

I saw a man sitting at the bar, drinking and talking to the bartender. Then a girl came to the bar to get a drink. She was a dish. She was wearing a skin tight, black dress. The dress was low cut, really low: I could see her breasts. Her dress was so short, I could see she wasn’t wearing any panties. She had on black, high heel shoes. She had beautiful, black wavy hair and full lips. She was gorgeous. She didn’t look like a demon. She looked like a real, live, gorgeous woman. The guy smiled at her and told her he just got there. She smiled back. He reached out his hand and started running it down her side all the way down to her bottom.

Then, this big, mean looking dude came and grabbed that guy’s hand and jerked it off the woman. He said, “Take your hand off of my old lady.

The woman said, “Frank, I’m not anybody’s old lady.”

The new guy looked at the big dude and said, “She says she’s not your old lady, man. So, why are you saying she is?”

The big guy said, “I don’t care what she says,” and then he pulled out a big knife. It looked like Rambo’s knife, and it was razor sharp. He started stabbing the new guy in the neck and his chest. Then he jammed it in the side of the guy’s stomach and sliced the knife across the man’s stomach.

I saw the new dude’s stomach open up and watched him grab his guts to keep them from falling out on the floor. Back on Earth, he would have died, but here he was already dead, yet there he was holding his intestines inside his stomach. No one paid him any attention. It was as if they saw the same thing happen all the time. The guys playing poker didn’t even look up. They just kept playing cards. Meanwhile, the woman was yelling curse words, screaming at the big man, and kicking as he slapped her and dragged her away.

The big guy wiped the blood off his his blade on that new guy’s shirt and grabbed the girl by her arm and took her to the other side of the bar. Then he started drinking and smoking and doing drugs with some other guys, acting like it was just another day.

The new dude grabbed his guts and asked the bar tender if there was a doctor in the place. The bartender told him, “See that table over there, those guys playing cards. The one with his back to us was a doctor. The one on his right was a cop. The next guy was a judge, and the one next to him was a priest. The one next to him was a lawyer. They’re all just one big miserable group.”

The new guy held onto his guts and went over to the table where the men were playing cards and said, “Hey, Doc, I need you to patch me up.”

The doctor told him “In a minute. I’m winning right now.” Then the new guy looked over where the girl was. She smiled at him and picked up the front of her dress with her finger so he could see that she didn’t have any panties. I could see everything.

I wondered then if I was actually in Hell, or if I was dreaming. I was wearing a white shirt, white pants and white shoes. I clapped my hands together and I could feel it. I decided I wasn’t dreaming. It was real. Then I felt the Spirit tell me I was actually seeing Hell. It wasn’t a voice. It was like He was telling me in my head without speaking. It was weird, but it was as real as anything I’ve ever experienced. Then that new guy smiled back at the girl. He got all excited and he shook the doctor’s arm.

He said, “Hey Doctor, you got to fix me up now. Then the doctor pulled out a big gun. It looked like the .44 magnum I always carried. He pointed it at the dude’s head and told him to sit down and wait till he was finished with his poker game, or he was going to blow a big hole in his head and that was something else that he would need to patch up.

So the dude shut up sat down still holding his insides up. After a while, flies began swarming around, and it looked like may the guy was starting to rot. I couldn’t tell by the smell, because the whole place smelled worse than rotting human flesh all the time.

Finally, the doctor told him, “Come on and I’ll patch you up now” and took him to a big table. He didn’t wash up, he just started working on the dude. The guy was wide awake the whole time, no anesthesia, no pain medication, not even a drink of whiskey, nothing. He yelled and screamed the whole time the doctor was patching him up. When the doctor finished sewing him up, he said, “Lets go have a drink at the bar, so you can numb the pain.”

I could feel the Spirit telling me, “Remember the times when you were recuperating from being shot or stabbed? Every time you told yourself, ‘Man, I can’t wait till I die and all this will be over, no more suffering, no more pain, because you believed what your dad said that when you die, that’s it, no more pain, nothing.’

Your heavenly Father knows your heart. He wants you to tell everyone where they will end up if they’re disobedient to His word. The pain and suffering never ends. It’s not over in Hell. You’re seeing it here. You’ll get shot and stabbed here. You’ll get broken bones. They get patched up and then they go through it again and again and again. There’s no death here. There’s nothing good here. Evil doesn’t discriminate. You saw there’s doctors, cops, lawyers, priests, judges, and teachers here. Here, everyone is evil, and they all suffer constantly.”

The spirit next to me told me to walk around and take a good look. So I did. Men were raping other men all over the place. If a new guy tried to fight, other guys came and helped rape him. They had to accept it: It was no use trying to fight. It was happening all around me. The ones who had been there longer didn’t bother to fight. The more somebody fought, the more men came to rape him. They weren’t raping each other for fun; they were purposely humiliating each other just to degrade the other men. It wasn’t fun. It wasn’t even lust. It was pure hatred for each other. God designed sex to be fun, a way for a man and a woman to express their love for each other, but there was no love there, just anger and hurt and hatred.

Everywhere I looked, people were fighting, getting stabbed and shot, their bones broken, but nobody was dying. There were doctors and nurses there, and they were patching up the victims.

The angel spoke to me again, “Do you remember when were recuperating after a bad fight, you would say to yourself I can’t wait till I die and all this will be over? It’s not over. The pain and suffering is constant. There are no friends here, no buddies to come to your aid. There is only pain and hatred. There’s no death here, no release. Here everything that you’ve seen and heard and smelled, this is going to be yours and others like you for all eternity. They have been abandoned by God. There is nothing decent or pleasant here. The misery is constant. It happens over and over and over again.

“You’ve spent your whole life angry at God for taking your grandmother away from you. But that’s not how God works. That is Satan’s handiwork. He is the destroyer. He brings grief and chaos into your world and he makes you believe it was God’s hand that caused your pain. He is the great liar, the deceiver. He hates you and every other human being on Earth. He hates Christians and Jews most because he knows God loves you, that God chose you over him and all the angels.”

Even though I had given up on God, I now realize that God never gave up on me. By all rights He should have destroyed me years ago, sent me straight to Hell to answer for my sins and my contempt for Him. But He didn’t. Instead, He was patient and loving. When He finally decided that I was never going to regret my sins and come to Him without His help, he sent an angel to escort me around in Hell. He showed me where my rebellious life was headed and asked me to tell everyone else about it. He didn’t need me. I’m nothing. But He loved me enough to wait for me to change. He loved me enough to show me where my life was headed. He wanted to save me. He did not want me in Hell, so He let me see my future.

That’s what happened back when I got shot and was in a coma. That’s what made me promise to my heavenly Father that I was going to be an obedient child servant of His and thanked Him for saving me from going to Hell. In my heart, I felt my heavenly Father say that was the only way He could make me understand that He knows my heart. H knows all the good in each of us, but He also knows the bad. I blamed Him for taking my grandma away from me. But it wasn’t Him. That is the way Satan works. He has you all blame me every time something bad happens instead of the one that did it.

Everything that happened to me was for a reason. We’re all evil doers. Some men commit more evil than others. Some men commit worse evil than others. But it is all evil, and God despises all evil, whether its crimes against humanity or simple white lies. He does not create misery in our lives. We do that. We call Him our heavenly Father without realizing that His role in our lives is the same as an earthly man’s role with his children: He smiles at our good deeds, but He corrects us when we need it. He is teaching us to be more and more like Him every day.

He showed me where we are going to end up for their disobedience to Him. People say, If I don’t see it, I don’t believe it. Well, I’ve seen it, and I’ve been instructed to tell the world about it. The Devil hates all mankind, but he especially hates those who try to follow God’s word. Satan knows he will spend eternity locked in Hell, and he wants all of us to be there with him. God is the creator. Satan is the Destroyer. There is no in between. People get one chance to get it right. For some reason, God gave me a second chance. Now that I’ve seen Hell, I don’t want any part of Satan’s plan for my soul.

God is not a liar. He hates a lie, but He does not hate us. He says we are all invited to go to Heaven, every single one of us. We are referred to as His “chosen ones,” but we do the choosing. He invited all of us, every man, woman and child in the world. The vast majority of people have already chosen to ignore God. With Satan’s help, mankind has invented thousands of false religions. Throughout history, we have fashioned idols of fish, birds, and beasts of all kinds. We have worshiped the sun and the moon and men who have been dead for hundreds or even thousands of years. We’ve made every excuse to ignore the one true God of the entire universe. He is patient, but even God’s patience has limits.

I can’t understand why some people are so stupid that they think that it doesn’t matter what they do. They’re going to Heaven, because Jesus paid the price for us. Wrong! Yes, He paid the price, but it’s up to us to not go back into debt. We must be born again. Some of us have chosen to be born again, to trust in God and His son, Jesus. We are the few, those who chose the narrow road, those who will spend eternity with God. As for the others, well, their loved ones need to put a big jar of Vaseline in their coffins: They’re going to need it.

Taste of Heaven

Then the angel took me up some place high. I was in a place where I felt peace. I didn’t feel any pain. It wasn’t hot or cold. It was perfect, and the smell was sweet and beautiful. I can’t even describe it to you. I love the smell of honeysuckle, but this place smelled a hundred times better.

I’m not sure a human being could ever really describe what I saw. It wasn’t actually Heaven. But it was definitely a place where I felt true peace. I could feel the Spirit tell me I wasn’t allowed to see how Heaven really is, because my heavenly Father doesn’t let any kind of evil or anything dirty enter his home.

I didn’t feel any pain. It wasn’t hot or cold. It was perfect. The smell was sweet and beautiful. I love the smell of honeysuckle, but this place smelled a hundred times better. I looked at my hands and feet. It seemed like I was standing on clouds. There was light, real light, brighter than I had ever seen, but, somehow, it didn’t hurt my eyes. I wanted to stay. If it would have done any good, I would have begged to stay, but I knew I couldn’t.

I looked at my hands and feet. It seemed like I was standing on clouds. There was light, real light, lighter than I had ever seen, but it didn’t hurt my eyes. I could feel the Spirit tell me that I wasn’t allowed to see how Heaven really is, because my heavenly Father doesn’t let anyone or anything dirty enter his home.

I wanted to stay. If it would have done any good, I would have begged to stay, but I knew I couldn’t stay. The spirit told me that the life I have here on earth is whatever I make of it. I could lead a good, productive life as a Christian and go to Heaven when I died, or I could continue living for Satan and end up in Hell. It was up to me.

We all have to face judgment after we die. Those who don’t believe and are disobedient to Him and His word go to Hell. Those who believe in Him and live for Him go to Heaven. My choice. That was when I started coming out of the coma. God had given me the message I needed. It was up to me what I did with that message. I could continue on the path I had been living and end up in eternal punishment, or I could accept God’s word and spend eternity in Heaven with Him. People say, “I’ll believe it when I see it,” and they are right. They will believe it when that day comes, but it will be too late then. God took pity on me. He believed in me even when I didn’t believe in Him.

If people don’t believe me now, they will later. The Bible tells us, “Blessed is he who believes and has not seen.” I was one of those people who said, “If I don’t see it, I don’t believe it.” I was worse than stubborn. He should have given up on me years ago, but He didn’t. He knew my heart. Deep down, I knew He existed. I knew I needed Him, but my anger blinded me to the truth: His kindness, His love and His patience. God knows our hearts. He sees our future, and He never gives up on us. We give up on Him. He loves us so much that He had Jesus die on the cross just to save us from our sins. He does

God does shows us the truth and the way. He does everything except take away our free will. We are free to love Him and join with Him, but we are also free to turn our backs on Him and join Satan and the fallen angels who turned their backs on Him and His love. Our choice. We all have to face judgment after we die. Those who don’t believe and are disobedient to Him and His word go to Hell. Those who believe in Him and live for Him go to Heaven. My choice.

The spirit told me that the life I have here on earth is whatever I make of it. I could lead a good, productive life as a Christian and go to Heaven when I died, or I could continue living for Satan and end up in Hell. It was up to me.

That was when I started coming out of the coma. God had given me the message I needed. It was up to me what I did with that message. I could continue on the path I had been living and end up in eternal punishment, or I could accept God’s word and spend eternity in Heaven with Him. People say, “I’ll believe it when I see it,” and they are right. They will believe it when that day comes, but it will be too late then. God took pity on me. He believed in me even when I didn’t believe in Him.

Recuperating after Coma

Then I told everyone I was feeling tired, and that I was going to sleep. I woke up three days later when a Candy Striper woke me up to take me down to the basement and put me in a round whirlpool-like tub for physical therapy. A large crane-like contraption lifted me up and set me in one of the tubs so the girl could rub me down with iodine.

She used big swabs while I was in the whirlpool to clean my shoulder where I had been shot. The swabs looked like giant Q-tips. She told me she was cleaning my wound to keep infection from forming. She was being careful not to hurt me, but I told her not to worry because I couldn’t feel anything anyway. She called me, Mr. J.R.

After they had treated my wound for several days, the doctor stitched my shoulder up and brought me back to I.C.U. Later that day, my wife and mother brought my kids to see me, but the kids were not allowed in the I.C.U. So, I grabbed hold of my I.V. and walked down to the visiting area. I didn’t care what anyone said, I intended to see my children.

My son was only three years old; My daughter was barely two years old. Both of them had been born in 1976, the boy in January and the girl in December. I called them my bicentennial children. The kids were afraid when they first saw me. I must have looked like a Frankenstein monster with all my bandages and stitches dragging my I.V. pole around. I was practically skin and bones; I had lost so much weight. I didn’t look anything like their father. They wouldn’t come to me.

I stayed close to their mom and kept calling my boy. He finally recognized my voice and came to me. I hugged him, and then my little girls followed her brother. I asked the doctor if I could go home later that day. He told me no, because I was still taking morphine injections. They were supposed to give me the injections every four hours, but I was hitting the buzzer long before it was time for my injections.

I begged him. Thanksgiving Day was only two days away, and I wanted to be with my babies. He told me if I could make it with nothing more than Vicodin through the next two days and not ask for morphine, he would let me go home. The Vicodin helped, but not much. I’m sure he thought the pain was far too severe for me to make it without morphine. It didn’t matter, though, I was going home no matter what it took. I never asked for morphine again, not once. He didn’t know how determined I can be.

Pain is a wicked master. If you let it take control, it destroys everything: your pride, your health, even your will to live. I have never let pain control me, and I wasn’t about to let it keep me away from my family. When Thanksgiving came, I was home with my babies. The doctor knew I was in pain, though, so he gave me a prescription for Vicodin. I was supposed to take one pain every four hours.

When I left the hospital, the pain was so bad I took two at once. I told my mother I needed the extra pill because I was moving around so much and all the walking I was doing. Those first two days were horrible. The pain was so bad I was popping Vicodine like candy. Thankfully, the pain subsided some by end of the third day.

It took an entire year, but I finally got the feeling back in the rest of my body. It started with tingling in my arms and hands. Day-by-day it got better and better. After a year, I was finally able to go back to work.

The guys I worked with expected things to go back the way they were before I was injured, but they were wrong. They kept asking me why I changed. I kept trying to tell people that the gangster life was no good and we had to change. I told them God showed me some things about when we die. Where we end up depends on how we live here on Earth, and, if we are disobedient to His Word, it’s going to be bad. Soon enough, I realized I needed to change my friends and find a new job, if I was actually going to change my life. It sounded easy at the time. I had no idea how wrong I was.

I told them people don’t have any idea what Hell is like, but I did. I saw it first hand. God sent me there while I was in my coma. He showed me where I was headed. My friends all told me it was just a dream, that I hadn’t really seen what it’s like in Hell. My own father told me it was all just a dream, that Heaven and Hell didn’t really exist. When we die, that’s it, they told me, no different than any other animal. My dad told me that when we die, life is over. He said I imagined all of it.

I did well at my new job. I was the superintendent. I received a monthly salary, company housing, a company pickup truck, free utilities, two weeks paid vacation and the ability to buy shares in the company. For every share I bought, the company gave me another one free, a two for one deal. Life was good.

But I began shifting back into my old life. Old habits are hard to break. They sneak up on you when you are stressed or upset about something. It seems the worse the habit, the easier it was to give into it. Then my father retired from the company where he worked and bought a bar and restaurant combination. That’s when the Devil really wormed his way back into my life.

Working at the Bar

My dad was making good money at the bar, really good. He told me I needed to quit my job and come work for him. He said I would be my own boss and make a lot more money. The idea and the freedom appealed to me.

I sold my shares in the company I was working for back to them. They gave me $20,000. Dad advised me to invest $15,000 of my money with him in the bar: We would be partners. He also recommended that I buy the house and lot next door to the bar. He said I could put $5,000 down and $500 a month, an amount I could easily afford from my share of the profits. The more he talked, the better I liked the idea.

Dad didn’t really need a partner, but he wanted to help me. So I quit my job and my daughter and I moved into the house next door. Then he showed me the tricks of the trade. He bought beer on sale and sold it at full price. At tax time, he just showed the receipts from the beer distributors but not from the beer he bought on sale at the super market. That was all profit.

He bought the contracts for the women who worked in the bar. They were all illegals. After a coyote smuggled them in from Mexico, he paid off their contracts. After that, they had to work for him until they paid back the money they owed. Basically, he owned them until they paid off their debts.

If a girl ran away before her debt was paid, he contacted the coyote and reported the runaway. The coyote found them and brought them back. Usually, they were bruised up and a lot more willing to work off their debts.

Most of the girls were happy to be there. They enjoyed working in the bar and they made extra money from the clients. Usually, it was a win win for everybody: Dad got beautiful young women to work for practically nothing, the customers gave the girls plenty of tips, and the girls got to stay in America. Everybody was happy, until dad got busted for cocaine by some honest cops.

The New Normal

Back to Work

The guys at work expected things to go back the way they were before I was injured, but they were wrong. They kept asking me why I changed. I tried to tell people that the gangster life was no good and we had to change. I told them God showed me how things are when we die. Where we end up depends on how we live here on Earth. If we are disobedient to His Word, it’s going to be bad. They didn’t listen. I was a stranger to them. Soon enough, I realized I needed to change my friends and find a new job, if I was actually going to change my life. It sounded easy at the time. I had no idea how wrong I was.

I told them that people don’t have any idea what Hell is like, but I did. I saw it first hand. God sent me there while I was in a coma. He showed me where I was headed. My friends all told me it was just a dream, that I hadn’t really seen what it’s like in Hell. My own father told me it was all just a dream, that Heaven and Hell didn’t really exist. When we die, that’s it, they told me. My dad told me that when we die, life is over. He said I imagined all of it.

I did well at my new job. I was promoted to superintendent. I received a monthly salary, company housing, a company pickup truck, free utilities, two weeks paid vacation and the ability to buy shares in the company. For every share I bought, the company gave me another one free, a two for one deal.

Life was good, but I began shifting back into my old life. We all have our demons, and old habits are hard to break. They sneak up on you when you are stressed or upset about something. The worse the habit, the easier it was to give into it. Then my father retired from the company where he worked and bought a bar and restaurant combination. That’s when the Devil really wormed his way back into my life.

Bar Causes Trouble at Home

Husbands and wives have problems, not some of couples, all of them. Working at the bar amplified everything. I had money, lots of money, and money solves a lot of problems. But it magnifies others.

Everyone around me was drinking and smoking. Your friend says, “Amigo, let me buy you a beer.” You don’t turn him down. You sit down and you drink a beer, and while you drink your beer, everybody around you is smoking. So you light up a cigarette. Why not? You might as well. You’re already breathing in their smoke. You might as well enjoy one of your own. So, I started drinking and smoking again whenever I worked at the bar. Trouble was, I was helping my dad at the bar every night after work.

My wife hated for me to work at the bar. Smoking and drinking were bad enough, but there were young, beautiful women working at the bar, and she was not comfortable with me being around them. I wasn’t there for the women or the beer and cigarettes. I just wanted to make a decent living and help my dad.

My motives were decent. I just didn’t realize then that good motives do not outweigh a bad atmosphere. I assured her I would never trifle on her, and I meant it. I knew how those women were and how many men they slept with. But she saw a side of me she didn’t like, a side she could not condone.

As I slowly drifted back into my old life, I was walking away from from my wife and children, the life I loved. I thought I could have it all. I wanted the money, the fast living, the respect of my friends and associates, but I also wanted a loving wife and children, a peaceful home where I was the hero: Jeckyll and Hyde, a loving father at home and at my job, but a dangerous hombre with the rest of the world. Jesus was trying to hang onto my soul, but Satan was laughing as he dragged me deeper and deeper into his abyss.

Meanwhile, my wife had her own torments. She turned to drugs for a false sense of peace and happiness: a momentary escape from all the pain and worry. Instead of helping her cope, however, the drugs made everything worse, especially her paranoia. She didn’t believe I was faithful. She knew I could not serve two masters, and she didn’t like the one I was choosing.

So, she took our kids and left me so she could live with her parents, not just once, but several times. This last time, she was gone for eight months. I had custody of my oldest girl, because her real mother was a dope addict. She and I were never married. She and her man were running from the cops, so the court gave custody of my oldest daughter to me. But I could not have the others with me. They belonged to my wife and me, and she had no intention of letting them live with me.

When my wife finally came back, I told her to never leave me again. In the past, I had always let her come home, relieved and happy to have her and the rest of my children back with me. I told her this time, if she ever left again, I would not let her come back.

I already had custody of my oldest daughter, because her mother (We never married.) was living with a dope addict, and the two of them were running from the cops. The police found her a few years later face down in an orange orchard, a drug deal gone bad.

While all this craziness was going on, I met Lucinda. I had not seen my wife and other kids for eight months, and I was lonely. Lonely, yes, smart, no. She was only 16 years old, but I thought she was 18. I didn’t find out her real age until I got stopped for speeding and the cop asked her how old she was.

My oldest daughter lived with my sister and her family for about a year before she asked me if she could live with me. Of course, I let her.

On our way home, I stopped at my dad’s bar to get her and me some food, just hamburgers, fries and a soda. While she was waiting in my truck, a border brother tried to get her to unlock the door for him.

Border Brother

He insisted, but she refused. I had a reputation to uphold and a daughter to protect. His friends knew my dad, and they knew me. He didn’t know she was my daughter, but it was an insult that I couldn’t let go. In the life I was leading, I could not show any weakness, nor could I let an insult to my daughter pass.

When they saw me coming, one of them said to the brother, “You F-ed up, Esse.” They were eating ice cream. His two amigos made sure to let me know that they had nothing to do with it. The border brother tried to apologize, claiming that he did not know she was my daughter. I didn’t want to hurt him, but I could not let the insult pass. Also, I was angry, so I really didn’t care if I did hurt him. It was our code.

He said, “I didn’t know that was your daughter.” Then I slapped the ice cream cone he was eating with my hand and smashed it in his face. The blow knocked him to the floor, and his two buddies jumped back from the table.

I said, “Well, now you know who she is.” We were saying all this in Spanish, because that was all they spoke. He said he was sorry and that it wouldn’t happen again. I told him, “It better not, because next time I will kill you. I kicked him and said, “You understand?”

He cowered on the ground and told me that he understood. My point was made, and nobody ever bothered my daughter again. I walked back to my pickup and his buddies helped him up off the floor. My daughter asked me if I was scared.

I told her “Look, I’ve been stabbed, shot, and beat over the head with a metal pipe. You think your dad is going to be scared of somebody with an ice cream cone in his hand?”

She said, Well I was still afraid for you, because there were three of them, and I don’t want anything to happen to you. I lost my mom. I don’t want to lose my dad, too.”

Cops Raid Bar

I was working late at the bar when some police officers came in with a warrant to search the bar. They had arrested my dad and some other people who were with him and confiscated all the bar money and the cocaine.

They found ten ounces of cocaine and some blank social security cards in his safe. He was in jail, and the Alcohol Beverage Control (ABC) closed the bar. I was his partner, but he did not implicated me in the bust. So they were not there to arrest me. I was free to reopen the bar once I received permission from the ABC. The main condition was that my dad, once he was free from jail, could not even enter the bar again. He was out. If not, the ABC would shut us down for good.

They convicted dad. He went to prison, and I lost the liquor license for the business, which shut down the bar permanently. Suddenly, I was out of work, but, at least, I was not in jail.

Daughter gets a Gun

I took to get a job driving heavy equipment. I needed a paycheck, and I had to get my daughter through school. Things were tough at home. Then my wife brought my son. She said he was out of control, and she couldn’t handle him.

So, now, I had to raise my son and my daughter on my own, and they were either in school or home alone every day. They needed protection and guidance. My solution seemed simple: I took them to the river and taught both of them how to shoot a gun. I told them I wanted to “teach them to protect themselves.”

After I taught them how to use guns, I bought my 14-year-old daughter a .22 magnum to keep in her purse. I didn’t let my son carry a gun. For one thing, he was too young, but he really didn’t need one. But a girl in our neighborhood needed a gun.

I told her if she ever got in a situation where someone was a threat to her to warn him first that she had a gun and knew how to use it before he got too close to her. I said to tell him to stay away. If he kept coming after being warned, she should pull her gun out so he could see it. I told her iff he still kept coming, go ahead and shoot him. I told her to always warn them first, but then to aim between his eyes or at his heart.

I explained, “If you don’t stop him, he’ll get you, rape you, and kill you. Then he will use your gun to do it to another young girl.” I told her not to feel sorry for men like that, because they are evil. I also told her not to ever show her gun to anyone, because I would get in trouble for letting her and her brother have guns. I told them I would not be able to protect them if I was in prison.”

When my daughter was in college, four men tried to chase her down in her car. She was frightened and called me to ask what she should do. I told her, “First thing, when something like that happens, never, I repeat, never panic. You just remember what I told you to do if a situation like that happens. If someone panics, he can’t think straight. You said to warn them first. If they kept coming, pull the gun out and point it at them. If they keep coming, shoot the leader right between the eyes or in the heart.”

She said, “Dad, it’s only a .22 magnum, 2 shot derringer. If there are three or four of them, I only have two shots.”

“Shoot the closest one to you, that one will be the leader. The others just follow him. When you shoot him in the head, the others will run. They don’t want to be the next one you shoot. They’re not going to check to see if you have a two shot derringer or a 9mm. They just want to get away, especially after you just shot the leader. If they keep coming, point your gun at the next closest one. If he doesn’t stop, shoot him. The others will leave.”

Broken Back

The new job was good. I was working hard, but I enjoyed the work. There’s something about operating those massive construction machines. It makes a man feel powerful. When he gets really good at it, he feels like he can do anything. That was great, until it wasn’t.

I had an accident on the machine I was driving and broke my back. I got a good settlement and was able to help my daughter finish school.

By the time my daughter finished school, my money was gone. She got married right after she graduated, though, and my son got married soon afterward. Suddenly, I was all alone, broke and unable to work, so I moved in with my mother until I got back on my feet.

I made peace with my dad after he got out of the penitentiary. He owned a few houses in one town and another house in a different town, the town where my grandpa lived.

My dad told me I had screwed up my life. “Nobody’s going to hire you. They always hire younger people and they do background checks, and you’re always in and out of jail.” He said I should get used to a life of doing low-paying, part time jobs wherever I could find them.

I believed him. I thought my life was over, that I would never amount to anything. It was the lowest I had ever been in my life, but I kept remembering what God had shown me when I was in my coma about Heaven and Hell. I reminded my dad about my vision. I said, “We are all going to Hell if we are disobedient to Him. His spirit took me and showed me what hell was really like. It was grosser than anything I had ever seen or smelled in my life. The heat was unbearable.”

My dad told me to shut up. “I told you before, you were just dreaming. It was all a dream. There’s no Heaven or Hell. When you die you’re just dead. That’s it, the end. When life is over, it’s over.”

Once again, I wondered about what happened to me when I was in a coma. Was it real? Or, was it a dream? I know now that God gives us a choice. We believe in God or we don’t.

But I was at the bottom. We didn’t own the bar anymore. My wife was gone. I couldn’t even get a job. Even if I could find a job, I wasn’t able to work more than an hour or two per day and certainly could not do any physical work. I know now that God lets us hit rock bottom so He can raise us up, so we will know that He did it and not us.

I made a decision then that changed my life forever. I chose to believe. My experience was not a dream. I started reading my Bible and praying. I asked God for help, and I started to do everything that He wanted me to do.

I discovered that God talks to us, all of us, not just me. Some people choose not to listen, but I decided to listen through prayer and obedience. That’s when I discovered how awesome God really is.

He answered my prayers. He let me know He loved me, that I was not a worthless sinner. My life meant something. I meant something. The whole world had turned against me, but God loved me. I can’t describe what a wonderful feeling inside it was to realize that even someone like me could be important to God.

The Bible tells us not to test God, but I didn’t know that. I wanted to prove to my dad that he was wrong about me not being able to get a real good job, because of my age and my criminal record. But God made us a promise. He told us He will make a way for us when their seems to be no way. He makes everything possible, even when it seems impossible. I decided to take Him up on His promise.

Respectful Job

I needed a job, and I wanted a respectable job. I wanted to wear nice suits. I wanted my family to be proud of me. It wasn’t happening, so I prayed and asked God for help. To the surprise of people who knew me, He gave it to me. He put people in my path to help me fix my past. I wanted to show my dad he was wrong when he told me I would never be able to get a decent job, because of my past.

I let my heavenly father guide me in how to fix my record. Through his powerful help I was able to clean up my background records. He opened doors for me, doors that I could have never opened on my own. I got a job as a substance abuse counselor in a state prison. They required me to wear a suit every day. Suddenly, people respected me. That would have never happened without God’s intervention.

Best of all, I was able to help men who had never know anything but pain and life on the street. I got to tell them about God and Jesus. Most of them had no experience dealing with Christians who actually wanted to help them.

One of my case loads was a lifer. He had killed someone when he was 19 years old and had been in prison for 39 years. His parole hearing was coming, and we talked about it. I asked him how he felt about it. He was indifferent. He had given up.

“They always turn me down, so I just go through the motions. I’m a lifer. I really don’t get my hopes up. I was a kid on drugs when I did it.”

The next day I called him into the office and told him I had prayed for him that night and I felt God telling me I should pray for him and lay hands on him that day. He said it was okay, so we prayed together. I laid my hands on him and we prayed together there in my office.

After, we finished praying, I told him, “God wants to show you how powerful He is. But you have to believe what I’m telling you is coming from Him, not me. You are going to get out this time. Your parole is going to be accepted, and when you get out you have to give all the glory and praise to Him for what He has done for you.”

He promised that he would give the credit to God and live a Christian life, but I could see in his face that he didn’t really think it was possible. Later, he came knocking on my office door and I waved him in. When he came in the office, he had a huge smile on his face. He was all excited.

“Hey J.R. They accepted my parole.”

“I’m not surprised,” I told him. “God promised me it was going to happen this time.”

I asked him if they gave him a date, and he said, “No, and right now I don’t care. I just know I’m getting out.”

I told him it would be soon. Once God decides it is time, He does not wait around. The next day he came knocking on the office door and I waved him in agaim. He was all excited. He told me they had given him a release date in two weeks.

We prayed and gave thanks to God for what He did for him. After we finished, I told him I felt God telling me that he was going to get out earlier than he expected. Again I saw doubt in his face. But the very next day he came knocking on my office door once more and told me they gave him the wrong date.

He said, “I’m leaving in two days, not two weeks.”

I had to smile. I said, “See, Jay, I told you. God said you were going to get out sooner than you expected. Now, do you believe how powerful God is, that He can make a way when there seems to be no way, that He makes the impossible become possible. I could see in your face that you had some doubt.”

He said, “Yeah, do you know how many times I went in front of the parole board and kept getting denied? Of course I had doubt. My whole life was filled with doubt. Nobody has any idea what my life has been like.”

Then I told him about my life, about what I’ve been through. “I’m here because of God. When I came in and those prison gates closed behind me, the hair stood up on the back of my neck. Sometimes, it still does. But I know at the end of the day, I’ll be heading out again. God is the truth and the light for a better life, if we believe with our whole heart. We can not be lukewarm. We cannot be indifferent to God. We have to be obedient to His work.”

Prison Life

Prison life is a different world. A counselor can’t talk about God or religion. In there the non-believers have more rights than the believers. You can talk about the Devil and Hell all you want, but not about God or Heaven. If someone had seen an inmate and me praying in the office together and reported it, I would have gotten in trouble and written up for doing that.

When they released Jay, I met him inside and helped him carry out his belongings. I wanted to tell him one more thing. I said, “See Jay, I believe in my whole heart that God is the only way to total happiness. If you ask Him, He will answer your prayers.” I told him stay strong in the Lord’s word. I warned him that the world had changed during his 40 years inside prison. “Don’t trip out on what you see. Just learn and move forward. When God is with you, nothing can hold you back.” We hugged and said our goodbyes, and I went back to the office.

Too many times, the counselors don’t care about the inmates. It’s just a job. The inmates are criminals. They all lie. They all belong where they are. But God does not feel that way. In the Bible, the worst people among the population were the tax collectors. They made their livings by cheating people out of as much money as possible. They loved money, not God and not their fellow countrymen. But Jesus preached to the tax collectors. He sat down to eat with them. He told them about God and about salvation. He said that he came to Earth to save the sinners, that the sinners were the people who needed him most.

An inmate asked me once what gave me the right to teach them about how to live after prison. He wanted to know what made me so special. The other counselors didn’t care about him or any of the other prisoners. “We’re just a paycheck to them. Why do you care, and how do we know you really care. And what makes you think you know what we need to know and how to live our lives?”

I told him “It’s about you learning how to stay out of places like this. I was one of you. I can walk out of these gates whenever I want to, because I know how. I can teach you all how to stay out of a place like this.” I drew a big circle on the blackboard. “Lets say this is a forest and it measures one hundred miles from one end to the other in any direction. How far can you walk into that forest?”

Some of them said a hundred miles. I said, “No, you’re wrong.”

Others said, “A hundred and one miles.”

“Nope, that’s wrong.”

Some of them argued with me. “If the forest measures one hundred miles in any direction, then you can walk into the forest one hundred miles from any direction.” When I told them no, they asked me, “Then tell us how far can you walk into that forest.”

I said, “I can only walk fifty miles into that forest, because that would be the center of the forest. Once I reach the center of the forest, I would be walking the other fifty miles out of the forest.” I showed them the diagram on the blackboard. “You see, once you reach the center, you will spend the other fifty miles walking out of the forest. Do you understand about walking into and walking out of the forest?”

They all laughed and said, Yeah, that’s right.”

“So now do you understand that it’s my job to teach you all how to stay out of a place like this. You need to concentrate on walking out of the forest, not walking further and further in.

Spreading the Word in Prison

One day I asked God how I could spread His word inside the prison without getting fired. I didn’t want to lose my job. In my heart, I felt Him tell me when they ask how I learned to stay out of places like this, that I should tell them I learned to obey my Heavenly Father, instead of saying God. That worked for me. The next day I told them a story about my dad.

One of the prisoners asked me what I did on my vacations. I told him about my dad’s farm in Mexico. When my dad retired, he moved to my grandfather’s land in Mexico. Grandpa owned 40 acres of good farmland with good water. My dad built a beautiful two-story house on the land, and I always went to visit him during my vacations.

I helped him on the ranch. I repaired and painted the house. I fixed the irrigation system so he could send the water to the different sections of land. He planted alfalfa, corn and avocado trees. I loved the place, and I enjoyed the work. It was a nice change from working in the prison.

Later, when I talked about my father, they wanted to know about his farm in Mexico. I laughed and told them my father is in Heaven, but my dad lives in Mexico. From then on, they knew I was really talking about God when I mentioned my father.

Gov. Schwarzenegger Canceled the Program

Then the day came when our supervisor called a meeting in the conference room. They told the staff members that we weren’t working that day. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger had canceled the substance abuse program. We had a week to clear out our offices and close our case loads. One week, that was it. So, I went back to being a custodian at the school.

Despite the fact that I had completely changed my life, the cops still harassed me every chance they got: They stopped me every chance they could. They made up reasons. They claimed my brake lights weren’t working, when I knew they were. They invented ittle things, non-existent problems, any excuse to stop me and harass me. I told them I changed my life. I had found religion and was God’s obedient servant. They told me, “Once a criminal, always a criminal.” My mother told me I needed to move somewhere that no one knew me, start my life over.

Angry at God

After they discontinued the counseling job, I went back to being a school custodian, a job I had before working at the prison. Being a custodian was a full-time job, even when school was out for the summer, and the school provided summer jobs to the poorer students. Each working summer student was assigned to one of the custodians.

My assignee was named Ryan, and he was hungry for knowledge. He loved to learn about my life experiences, the good stuff and the bad. One day, he told me “Man, J.R., I thought the things you’ve experienced only happened in movies, not in real life.”

I told him I had spent my life angry at God, and I had let my anger turn me into someone I was ashamed of. I had become an evil man, because I blamed God for the death of my grandmother.

After I decided to give my life to God, He let me know that is how the Devil works. The Devil used my pain and heartbreak against me: The Devil convinced me that God caused all my problems, and I fell for his deception. Satan wants to rule our lives. He wants to destroy our relationship with God.

The Devil is the great deceiver, and I had fallen for all his lies. I had become really good at being bad. I told Ryan people don’t actually know God. They think they do, but they mistake Satan and his minions for God and his angels, Satan’s handiwork for what they believe is God’s indifference to our pain and suffering. Like most people, I didn’t know God until I started studying the Bible. Once I began to read his book, I realized who God really is. I had seen men blame others for the bad things they had done, and I was doing the same thing to God.

I realize now who Satan is: He is the deceiver, the one who blames others for his evil deeds, the one who lies and creates Hell on Earth in our lives, and then blames God. That was the revelation that changed my life, the revelation that made me understand that Satan had caused my grief and then convinced me that God was the villain.

Satan lied to me, and I believed the lie for most of my life, but not anymore. I realized God was the protector, the salvation, but I also realized that he had given me free will, the freedom to follow Him or turn the other way and follow Satan. It was my decision. Throughout my life I turned my back on God and chose Satan’s path. My reward was sorrow and pain. I was a fool, until I decided to turn my back on Satan and follow God.

It all makes sense to me, now. God was always there, watching me, trying to communicate with me, giving me signs, trying to show me what to do and believe. But I ignored His warnings. I turned my back on God. I fought Him at every turn, and Satan cherished every miserable moment of my life. It humbles me to realize how patient and loving God really is. He should have destroyed me long ago, given me what I deserved. Instead, He waited. He put good people in my path. He let me suffer for my own bad deeds, even when I thought I was on top, even when I thought I was smarter than God. What a fool I was.

I told Ryan I wasn’t an evil man by nature. But I felt justified when I hurt someone, because I only hurt bad people: murderers, rapists, cheats and liars. It felt good to hurt someone who hurt other, innocent people, especially when I was helping people I cared about. I believed I was the top dog, the meanest man in the fight, and I enjoyed the fight. Every time I hurt someone that I believed was an evil person, I felt good about it. Then Satan decided to kill me, but God intervened. I told Ryan about the shootout that put me in a coma and how God used that time to talk to me.

Why so Angry at God

My parents and others used to wonder why I was so mad at this world. I was angry at God, because my grandmother was dead. When I was about five years old, one of my aunts had bacterial meningitis and was admitted into the hospital. By the time the doctors saw her, it was too late. There was nothing they could do for her, and advised us to take her home so she could be with her family for the little time she had left. Meningitis is very contagious, so I still don’t know why they sent her home with us.

My dad, grandma, and I got her in the car to take her home from the hospital. It was about seven o’clock in the morning, and it was really foggy. You could barley see ten feet in front of you.

When we came to a railroad crossroad, there was a car stopped in front of us at the stop sign. The railroad tracks were between us and the car in front of us. My dad had me jump into the front seat and wipe the passenger side window. He couldn’t see because the passenger side window was fogged over. We could see lights coming toward us, but he couldn’t tell if it was a car or a train.

I told him that I didn’t know, and suddenly I was lying on the ground face down. I heard two men talking, but I could barely see them. After that I passed out. When I woke up again we were in the hospital. I had a brace on my right arm and shoulder. My mom said I had a broken collar bone on my right side.

The doctor told my mom that because I landed face down on the railroad track and my arm was over the rail he couldn’t understand why my arm had not been chopped off by the train. Mom said I must have put my arm over the rail after the train passed. The doctor told her that was not possible. I was unconscious, and any movement in my arm would have caused severe pain. He didn’t see how I could have moved my arm over the track after the train passed; He said it wasn’t possible. He said it had to be a miracle from God that I didn’t lose my arm.He didn’t understand why my arm wasn’t chopped off from the train.

The doctor said that they needed her permission to remove my Dad’s right arm, because it was going to be useless. It was so badly damaged it would just hang by his side and get in his way. Mom told the doctor that she couldn’t do that. They had to ask my dad. The doctor told her he could not ask my dad, because he was unconscious. She said she couldn’t make that decision for him, that my dad was the only one who could make that decision. So they didn’t remove my his arm.

My grandma died at the scene. From then on, I was angry at God thinking he killed my grandma. I loved her dearly. She was my savior. She saved me so many spankings. Every time my parents decided to spank me for doing something wrong, I ran to her house. I lived right behind my grandma’s house. She always took me in her arms and protected me.

One night, after I got spanked again, I ran crying to my grandma. and she rocked me in her arms and told me it was okay, that she was going to get on my mom and dad for spanking me for no reason. She always asked me why they had whipped me, and I told her they did not have a reason. Then grandpa got mad, because he wanted to go to bed, but my grandma carried me to her bed and rocked me to sleep. She told my grandpa to wait until I fell asleep, and then she carried me to my house and put me in my own bed.

Once I ran to my grandma because I had hit my brother, and my mom was going to whip me. Mom chased me and I ran and grabbed my grandma by her legs when she was hanging the clothes on the line. She had to hold onto the clothes line to keep from falling. She yelled at my mom to leave me alone. She was afraid I would accidentally knock her down. She swatted Mom on the arm and told her to go home. My mother went home, and I stayed and helped my grandma the rest of the day. My grandma saved me from a lot of spankings. That’s why I was angry at God: He took my grandma away from me.

A few days after I came home from the hospital, I got whipped for doing something wrong and ran to my grandma’s house. I forgot my grandma wasn’t around anymore. I ran in crying, calling for my grandma and saw my aunts and grandpa at the dinner table eating.

They just stared at me. Then I realized my grandma wasn’t there to protect me anymore. I started crying even harder. My grandpa and my aunts felt sorry for me. All of them started hugging me and crying with me.

When my mother showed up, she started crying and hugging me too. Then she picked me up and carried me home. From then on, I hated God. I knew he existed, but I hated Him. The only way I could think of to show Him my disrespect was to do as many bad things as I could. I wasn’t evil. I was angry. The more damage I could do, the more I thought I was getting even with God. He deserved my anger, not my obedience and certainly not my love.

Needed Christian Wife

One day, my niece told me I needed to find a good, Christian woman, someone who would help me be a better man, a better Christian, that life was too hard all by myself. She was tired of seeing me so unhappy and lonely. I remember thinking I wished it was that simple: Meet a good woman and all your troubles go away: Not in this world.

She told me about an online dating platform. I laughed and told her that God would send the right woman to me when the time was right. She said, “Don’t you think God made this app so Christian people could meet. This is a Christian app. Maybe you’ll meet a good, Christian lady there.”

It sounded reasonable. So I did tried it and met a few women the very first month. All of them wanted to know how much money I had, if I owned my own home, and if I could pay for them to fly out to California to meet me. They didn’t sound much like Christians to me.

After a while, I connected with a lady who sent me her phone number. I called her. We stayed in touch for about a month, until we felt like we knew each other. She asked if I would like to fly out to visit her and see where she lived. I told her I could only stay the weekend, because I worked as a school custodian and had to be back on Monday. I told her I didn’t want to spend money for two days in a hotel. She said I could stay in her guest room, so I agreed.

She lived in an area people call the Bible Belt and worked as a nurse. I liked the sound of that: The Bible Belt. I had given my life to God, but I couldn’t escape my past. It sounded to me like He was answering my prayers, so I visited her. She showed me the little country town she lived in. I met her friends and her family. She showed me the hospital where she worked. Then, Sunday night I got on a plane and went back home. After that weekend, we talked on the phone nearly every day. I was convinced.

Then my dad got sick. He developed gangrene in his right foot: complications from diabetes. So I flew out to Mexico and brought him back to the states for treatment. The doctors removed his right leg just below the knee. Afterwards, he moved in with my sister.

My girlfriend asked me to fly out to see her when I got my vacation. I told her I would leave everything to God, that we should pray on it. She agreed. No pressure, just an understanding agreement that we should trust God to make things right.

Christian Wife

When my vacation came, I flew back to visit her. I spent a week. It was great. She showed me a lot of historical sites. We toured the whole area. When it came time to leave, she asked me not to go. She loved that I was a caring, loving Christian man, and she loved the time we spent together. She had been searching for a good, loving Christian man like me. I panicked.

I’ve been married twice before. Neither worked out. Both times I walked away thinking marriage was not for me. Both of my exes lied constantly. I believed them, until, eventually, I didn’t believe anything they told me. I couldn’t go through that again.

Both of them hated for me to work on my dad’s house. Both of them filed for divorce when I insisted on helping my dad. She told me this time would be different. She said she could see that I was a devoted Christian, and she wanted me to be head of our house, a Christian man leading a Christian home.

I told her God had warned me to wait at least a year after I met a new woman, time enough to get to know her, before getting married again. It takes a year, not three months, not nine months, a whole year.

God told me, a man or a woman can pretend to be anyone for six months, but nobody can keep up the charade for a full year. After a year, people start showing their true colors. Keep looking until you find the right person, and then wait a full year before committing to marriage, long enough for her to show her true colors, and long enough for her to figure out who you really are. God told me to keep doing that until I found the right one. Then I would not have to go through a divorce again. I didn’t follow God’s advice. I decided she was the right one for me, so I married her after only three months.

After we were married, I started working on her place. I removed old tree stumps. I burned dead, fallen trees. I repaired every problem I could find. It was hard work, but it felt good. I felt like I was accomplishing something good. I even applied for work with the local school system, but then things started going wrong. My old injuries were catching up with me, my back mostly. But I was also suffering problems that resulted from my shotgun injury.

Eventually, I got so bad I couldn’t work. I applied for social security disability. At first, they denied my request, but, eventually, once they realized I was totally unable to hold a job, they approved my request. A year later, my wife was so badly disabled that she could no longer hold down a job. Nursing pays well, but it takes a huge toll on a woman’s health, especially her back. Neither of us receive much money, but our combined incomes are enough for us to survive. Now, life is about day-to-day survival and enjoying each others company.

Everyone needs some kind of emotional outlet just to keep his sanity. My wife and I rescue animals, 13 dogs, three cats, and two horses, so far. We love the animals, but at least one of us always has to be home to feed and care for our animals.

My wife travels, mostly with her family. Her sister invites her to out-of-town concerts and events that sometimes last for a full day or two. Occasionally, her son, who lives in Las Vegas, pays for her to fly out and stay with him for a month or so.

Once a year I flew to visit my family for a week or two. I never left for more than two weeks, because I knew how much work needed to be done to care for all our animals.

I suffer a lot of pain just feeding the animals, but it’s worth the physical pain for the emotional boost I get just by having them around. Sometimes, I can barely walk just from feeding them in the morning, and my wife suffers even more than I do when she tries to do all the chores. It’s a rough life, but it’s all we have, and we are grateful for the joy that God gives us through our animals.

Trouble at Home

After a while, my wife started changing towards me. Instead of sleeping with me, she and her dog slept in a separate room. She had raised him from a pup, so I knew she loved him. He was a bull mastiff, so he was big, big enough I had to sleep in the other room. That upset me.

Finally, I told her I was going to find good homes for the dogs, because we couldn’t go anywhere together and I couldn’t physically feed all our animals. Besides, their feed was costing us money we didn’t have.

All those animals were controlling our lives. Instead of being a husband and wife, we had become physically disabled caregivers for a bunch of animals. She agreed but demanded we keep Little Z (short for Zuse), the mastiff.

I told her that Little Z needed to be the first one to go. She told me that Little Z was staying. If I didn’t like it, I could go. I just looked at her and said, “You would choose a dog over me. That shows how little you love me. I would never choose a dog over you.” That would have been the end for most couples, but I told her, “I told you I was a Christian and I don’t believe in divorce, because my heavenly Father doesn’t believe in divorce.”

I told her, “God knows I would be better off if you did divorce me, so you better thank God He sent you a good Christian man.” I said we needed to perform a little test. I would spend a month visiting my family and let her see what life would be like without me. She could do the chores and feed the animals. If any problems came up, she could handle them without me. Before the month was up, she contacted me. She was broke and needed money to pay the bills. I deposited my money in her account.

Then, I asked God why this was happening to me. I was trying to lead a good life. I asked God why do things like this happen to me? I felt Him answer me. I brought you here because you wanted me to send you some place where nobody knew your evil past, a place where they only know how you are now: a good and loyal servant of Mine.

God told me I was suffering because I disobeyed Him. He brought me here, because I asked Him to bring me somewhere I could escape my past, somewhere that cops would not constantly harass me because of my past, somewhere away from all the bad influences of my former life.

But He didn’t bring me here to get married right away. He told me to wait until we knew each other for a full year. After a year, we would know if we were meant to be together or not. He told me to put my faith in Him, not to make my decisions based on what I wanted. Our hopes and desires will always let us down, if they are not centered on God’s wishes. But I chose man’s way over God’s way, and, as usual, man’s way let me down again.

Made up with Wife

No matter how dismal things look, though, Satan can make everything worse whenever we don’t follow the path God has set out for us. After a month without me there, my wife and I made up. Then she broke her leg and couldn’t do anything for weeks, nothing at all. She couldn’t even get out of bed to use the toilet.

I put a potty chair by her bed, and I had to clean it twice a day. I had to do everything without any help from her. She had become a burden rather than a helpmate. In addition to all the chores, now I had to do the laundry, the cooking, and the cleaning. After all that, she had to have another hip replacement. Life was tough, both physically and emotionally. We felt like we had hit rock bottom; then our horse got cancer, and I had to put her down. That caused us both a lot of grief. We loved that horse. We still had her son, Bago, but then Bago ran into a parked car.

God is just. He forgives us our sins, but expects us to trust in him and do things the way he tells us. When I got married without waiting a full year like He instructed me to do, I told Him I trusted my own judgment more than his guidance. We get in trouble when we think we know better than God. The more we choose our own path, the more we descend into ungodliness.

Our only credit card was maxed out over the limit. We were paying overdraft fees at the bank, because we couldn’t make it to the next payday. I asked my heavenly Father how many more years do I have to pay for my disobedience to Him.

Looking back, I realize that everything happens for a reason. I felt Him telling me Satan and his legions always attack His most loyal servants. The devil attacked Jesus daily. He’s always trying to get in the way of God’s plans.

Life is Good

Life is good now. We still have some our animals. We both draw disability, and we’ve figured out how to live on the money we get. Satan still attacks us, sometimes daily but always weekly. That is part of life for a Christian. God never promised us that life would be easy, that money would flow in like water. He told us that if we persevere, then we could join him in Heaven when our time is over here on earth.

God hates lies. He hates all sin, but He knows our flesh is weak. He knows that we could never make it through life on our own, which is why he sends His angels to guide and protect us, even the sinners among us. We are not part of the world once we become one of His children, so we know the world and all the people who love the world hate us. Ours is the narrow path, a rocky, weed choked trail; Satan’s path is a 12-lane paved highway with all the exit signs buried or hidden.

Most people choose the easy path. They chase after money or sex. Their reward is here and now. They care more about what people they don’t even know think about them rather what God thinks. They don’t understand why we love God or why Jesus gave His life for us. They don’t know, and they don’t care. But, one day, they will care. But by then, it will be too late.

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