Episode I: DUI

The phone is what woke me. I sat up and answered it, the long hours I had worked the day before evident in my voice. “Mmmm…..hullo.” I mumbled into the receiver, “Adam, you NEED to wake up! Dad’s drunk and Mom is going to murder him” shouted my sister into her end. Well, now. Not the best way to start a day, is it?

I should probably start at the beginning. Or as near the beginning as this whole story requires. On December 30^th, 2002 my father got up, had his coffee, grabbed a shower, and got ready for work as he did every day. When he got to work he had a big of the bubble-gut from all the coffee, and had to use the facilities. He went in, sat down, and started shitting blood. Not just a little red in the bowl “no big thing, but I should get to the hospital” thing. No, he fell off the toilet and ruined the bathroom with pretty much half the blood in his body. Someone had heard the racket and promptly called for a paramedic. He was taken, via ambulance, to the hospital and life-flight back to Mercy Medical. Turns out he ruptured his colon, and nearly bled to death.

So due to a ruptured colon, he spent some time in the hospital. 3 weeks to be specific. My mother had planned a trip out to Tucson, and was pissed that he ‘ruined it’. Never mind the fact that her husband of 25 years was nearly dead, she was upset about having to give up the trip away from the snow. But she put on her “Public Face” and took all the sympathy in turn. ‘Woe is me’ and all that shit.

They fixed the colon after about 4 days, but the remaining time we dedicated to getting him though detoxification. It seems that “a little vodka here and there” throughout my childhood was really “about a 5^th a day, for the past 20 some odd years”. And as the medical profession will tell you, the body starts to depend on and even alter its own chemistry to cater to such an intake of what is basically complete poison. After the forth day, he started to dry out like so many fine washables on a line during a spring afternoon.

If you’ve never seen anyone go through delirium tremens. (Colloquially, the DTs, "the horrors", "the shakes" or "rum fits;" literally, "shaking delirium" or "trembling madness" in Latin) its quite an experience. They pretty much, as the name states, go completely batshit crazy and lose their collective shit. Bruce had to be tied to the bed. He thought he was in the Epcot center, in a shuttle pod reminiscent of the craft that brought Superman to our planet. He tried to escape about a dozen or so times. What he saw, or rather thought he saw, was a complete fabrication of his booze starved mind. And to make matters worse, due to the high amount he drank he was nearly impossible to sedate. It turns out if you spent years drunk with your mind only functioning at 60%, you can fight the haze of morphine pretty well. And still have the energy to call your son a “cock fucking bastard” when he refuses to get you a cigarette or a pocket knife to saw through the restraints to go fight Mickey fucking Mouse.

Where am I going with all this? Oh, you’ll see soon enough. Back story is important to completely flesh out this series of events. So Bruce gets out of the hospital after about a month, clean and sober, and is required as part of his release to attend AA meetings. He goes, and pulls his life together and all is well. For awhile.

Its August of 2003, The Oregon has been abandoned due to mutiny and I am back living with the old folks. I’m working a shitty night job to pay the bills accrued from the mutiny and have my 2 weeks in so I can go work the kitchens at a friend’s parent’s restaurant. Since it was a night job, I started the new job while still working out the old one. Sleep is for suckers anyhow. One Saturday I work a 9 hour shift at Bachelli’s (the restaurant) and an 8 hour shift at the shitty night job (Sheetz). I get home early Sunday morning exhausted, shower, shave and pass the fuck out. Dreamland is wonderful, as I have earned it. All 4 or so hours of it.

I hear yelling in my sleep, and write it off as dreamlike nonsense from my sleep deprived mind. Then the phone rings. It is my sister. The situation she describes is somewhat out of the ordinary, but not all the surprising to me. Not much really shocks me, to be perfectly honest. Unexpected, yes. Not at all that much of a surprise though.

Crazy Liz had gotten up early to go to church, as she did every Sunday morning. Bruce, pagan like me, had stayed home to sleep in and mow the yard and do whatever it is he did in the garage for hours at a time after the inner boozehound had been laid off. He decided, in his infinite wisdom, that the 2 hours my unstable mother spent at church was enough time to go to the gas station down the road, buy a plastic bottle of hobo-grade spirits, have only ONE drink, and mow the yard. Leaving Crazy Liz none the wiser. There was a flaw in his little plan. He was completely sauced. After 9 months of sobriety, he had lost his ability to turn alcohol into riboflavin and vitamins. It was just alcohol at that point. And it was still noon on a Sunday.

He had parked his van in our twisty S-shaped driveway (see photo),

and had to back it out so Liz could park in the garage when she got home from churching up. And there was a 3 foot deep ditch right across from the driveway, on our side street. Some of you know where this is going, just by the setup. Keep reading; it gets better. Anyhow, Bruce hops behind the wheel of his rundown work van he'd been putting new Bondo on, or whatever, and promptly backs into the ditch at 88 miles per hour. (See exhibit A)

Like he had an appointment with the Old West or something. He stumbles out from behind the wheel, looks at the situation and solves the problem. He then gets behind the wheel of his travel van, and backs it around my car, and company truck in the street. Backs it right into the ditch, 15 feet from the first van. (see exhibits B and C).

Instead of calling AAA and getting his fantastic parking job to the second power removed by sober professionals, he decides he can rock the first van out of the ditch, pull van 2 out with van 1, and still be on the lawn mower by the time my crazy mother Liz got home. I’m sure the ‘Mission: Impossible!’ theme was playing in his head; like the A-team one would me mine while all this is happening. He gets behind the wheel and tries like hell for about 10 minutes before promptly falling asleep in the hot sun, behind the wheel, from all the alcohol-fueled funny car business advertised on late night television.

Liz pulls up, looks at 2 vans parallel to each other in the ditch, and runs inside to call the realtor. “I’m going to fucking KILL Bruce, so you’re going to need to sell this house!” she shouts into the phone. Shouts at the speed of crazy. The realtor calls my sister in Cleveland and tells her how my mother has lost her goddamned mind, and something needs to be done before a 165^th trimester abortion takes place in my side yard. The sister calls me, and wakes me with this fun bit of news, hoping ill be able to do something about it. I throw on a bathrobe and some Chuck Taylor’s, grab an icy cold coke and my cigarettes out of my mini-fridge, and step out to investigate.

I walk out into the bright sun to complete chaos incarnate. Car batteries thrown, the garage trashed. An empty vodka bottle perched neatly on the seat of the riding mower like a small child waiting for a ride with Daddy. My insane mother talking to a cop in the driveway. One of Bruce’s friends rattling off cop names trying to keep Bruce out of jail. My fathers vans like twin Autobot's synchronized swimming in the ditch across the street. And the icing on the cake? The old man himself, Bruce, failing a field sobriety test and being placed in the back of a cop car. The part where they say “stand on one foot”? Yeah, he fell over. Into the ditch. And rolled around in the mud and muck trying to get up. “Hmmmm…..this is not the way I had my day planned.” I said as I took a drag of my cigarette and ground it into the pavement near some random shit from the garage.

I wandered over the carnage with the nearest police officer to inspect the damage. My eyes took in the contents of the street in under a second. Two vans. 45 degree angle. Log chain on the ground. Jumper cables. Spare battery. Brake fluid pooled on the pavement. “I got it! He backed this one into the ditch trying to get it out of the driveway. The second one he ditched in the, well, ditch trying to pull the first one out with the chain! He drained the battery trying to rock it out alternating from drive to reverse! Simple case, dear Constable. I don’t think you lads really needed to call me in on this one!” I said to the man with a charming flip of my bathrobe belt as I finished my Coke. He stared at me blankly and blinked. “Sir, your father is blowing well above the legal limit. We’re going to have to take him in and book him.” “Oh. Ok then. You boys be back early, he’s had kind of a rough day, you know.” I said to the man as I patted his shoulder and walked back towards the house leaving a baffled public servant in my wake.

The police left with Bruce in the back of the cruiser, and I went inside to call AAA. “Can you make this not dangerous?” my mother asks as she hands me a gun. I look from the gun to her and back, several times. “Were you….were you going to SHOOT him?!?” I asked with shock. The vans? Not a shock. Attempted murder? Yeah. That fits the bill nicely. “Yeah, I think the safety is on or something.” She answers me with not a bit of regret. “OK, I’m just going to….make this….safe.” I say as I take the gun from her, and remove the cartridge. Full of 38’s. One in the chamber. Safety half way on. ‘Holy fucking SHIT!’ I think to myself. ‘She was going to shoot him for falling off the wagon. After church. No going back to sleep now, I guess.’

I cal my sister and explain the situation, in detail. She and the brother in law hurry down. We decide to order a pizza and figure out a game plan as we go pick it up. Anything to get away from the crazy lady with the gun for a little while. “Oh, lets to Applebee’s!” my mother says. “Um…yeah….that sounds great!” We answer after sharing a look that speaks volumes about her sanity.

An hour later, after fishing the vans out of the ditch with the AAA freaks, I’m eye humping the menu at Applebee’s like a chunky girl on prom night. “I need a fucking beer” I say as I decide on my order. Liz is talking like nothing is wrong. Like Bruce is doing the yard work he had planned for the day and not in jail for DUI. After nine months of sobriety. Like no attempt was made on his life. On a Sunday, of all days. We finish out meal and return home, batshit crazy lady in tow. Bruce gets out later that night, but I am already over at the girlfriends’ house, sleeping on her couch after explaining the story, avoiding the aftermath and cleanup of a complete fucking shit storm.

TO BE CONTINUED….

Thanks for reading, but that’s it for now, kids

Dr. R.