UFOs & IOUs

Sunday August 17th, 2008 - Milwaukee, WI/Kenosha, WI

Up early again and off to Milwaukee to take a lap at the Gonzaga Hall sports card show. It’s only once a month and I like to escape for a few hours looking at old cards and seeing a few old friends. There’s also an auction and once in a while I’ll find some great deals.

I found a few things today that I got really cheap and that made it worth the trip. This is a very slow month so I decided not to set up and I’m glad I didn’t. I bet it would’ve been a death ride like last month when I did set up. This way I could visit and leave any time.

My cousin Brett called and since I was in town we decided to go get some lunch. He’s a hard worker and is always busy these days and I haven’t seen him in a while so it was fun to hang out and vent a little. He’s sick of idiots just like I am and many of them are in our own family. We’ve both had problems dealing with our immediate families and it shows.

Neither one of us are married and we are both very independent. Some people may call it pigheaded but that’s how we are. My uncle is Brett’s father and he has been struggling with cancer for a few years but they still don’t talk. Brett said the damage is done and that trying to revive any kind of relationship now would be useless and I completely agree.

His sister doesn’t and that’s been a source of tension. I’m not thrilled with my uncle for pulling a stunt with my grandfather’s will and getting me to sign away my part of it which would have been a nice chunk of cash I could have really used right now. When I learned he did that it was a shocker at first and then it really hurt. It still does but what can I do?

What can Brett do either? We’re both trying to just get past it and salvage a good life to look back on and know we didn’t resort to the devious tactics our fathers did. Neither one of those two ever amounted to anything and we’ve had them both beat for years but that’s not the point. The point is we both could have used a father and neither one of us had one.

Brett’s doing well and continues to be kind whenever he can. I try to do the same thing. We both agreed that since we never got it from our fathers it’s no reason we have to be as mean spirited as they were to others even if we don’t have kids of our own. Neither of us felt we were ready to spawn because we both had our own dents to pound out of our cans.

It really felt good to vent a little and just let this stuff heal. Nobody else cares about any of it and we both know that. One thing that did trouble me a little was that Brett thought a chunk of money was left by my old man from an insurance policy when he died and that’s why my siblings aren’t talking to me. He said he looked it up in public records and saw it.

I went home and immediately looked it up myself and sure enough there it was. I heard from my half brother Bruce there was no money at all other than a small policy and it was going to be used to pay for the funeral. After that supposedly there was nothing left and it would have been a hassle to keep having me sign documents so I volunteered to drop out of the running to make it easier for the others to just wrap it all up and end all of the pain.

I know in my heart my intentions were good and if they were able to get $100,000 from the old man that doesn’t bother me at all. They earned it. He was a nasty dark hearted soul who thrived on being a bully and lording over people. I wouldn’t take any amount of cash on Earth to have to get trapped under that iron fisted rule and I didn’t. I guess I was lucky.

I did get the residual affect though and even though I was mainly raised by his parents it still hurts to think of all the times I would have to be put in a situation of having to endure his anger and wrath when I tried to be assimilated into the family all through childhood.

There’s no reason any child should have had to go through any of the insanity he put all of us through to some degree or another and I want to move past it and heal if that is at all a possibility. Hooking up with my brothers and sister would be a very good way to start.

I have really tried my best to make this whole situation right. I wrote letters and I meant every word of what I wrote asking for a clean slate and forgiveness and a chance to talk in person and begin that process but none of them will answer me one word. That really rots and even if they did get a wad out of the old bastard I just wish they would let me know.

They can have the money. I’m used to living like an insect and even though I’m having a bit of a rough time financially right now it would mean a lot more to me to just have the chance to see them face to face and start all over again. I don’t think that’s out of line but I guess it is because they won’t even acknowledge my existence and that just isn’t right.

This whole thing was bothering me a lot as I arrived at WLIP to do another Mothership Connection show. We had some technical problems the first 20 minutes because of a new old phone system that was in place while the other one got fixed for unknown reasons. To make it worse our regular engineer didn’t show up and we were stranded all by ourselves.

My partner Scott Markus is very sharp and between the two of us we didn’t know what to do so I called another engineer Dan Hanni and he came from a party he was at and was a huge help. He ran the controls and got everything back in order so we could do a show.

Our first guest was a woman who does past life regressions and she was really good. It seemed like she was on especially for me and whether there are past lives or not she said there was and that many times we’re here to learn many lessons and that’s why things are so painful sometimes. The more pain the more is learned so I think I must be a professor.

During the second hour we had royalty on the show. Sam Maranto is a guy who just had a UFO Symposium in the Chicago area tonight and he was a guest along with two of THE biggest names in the business - Ted Phillips and Stanton Friedman. I was totally in awe.

Those guys are always on Coast to Coast AM and they were just as interesting and nice as they are on the big show. We had a fun interview with all of them and everyone agreed to come back on with us in the future. We’re building this show and if we can get anyone of note to hear it I won’t need any money from the old man anyway. I‘ll have my own.