Headlong Through Life

By Dick C.

This is the tragic real life story of the author, Dick C. It begins at approximately 4 years of age. The book ends at 45 years of age when Dick C. reaches utter despair and walks himself into a treatment center.

Read the entire Trilogy;
Headlong Through Life, Book 1 of a Trilogy
Return To Sanity, Book 2 of a Trilogy
The Shark Tank, Book 3 of a Trilogy

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Aug 13, 2003
• ISBN: 9781410788108

Dick C.

Dick C. is a business executive that has been actively involved in the recovery movement.  In this pursuit he has served at many levels.  At one point he was elected to serve as a delegate from his home state.  Currently he has enjoyed 18 years of continuous recovery.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

The Beginning

My name is Dick C. I am the youngest sibling in the family. I have a brother five years my senior. Through the Grace of God and my daily Twelve Step Program I have not found it necessary to take a drink since February 9, 1985. For that I am truly grateful.

My journey has allowed me to discover how the disease of alcoholism has run rampant throughout both sides of my family tree. As I began to understand these facts, I slowly began to discover how I arrived where I did. It is important in this process to fully understand that nobody made a conscious decision to become an alcoholic.

If you are to understand where I wound up, you must know where I began. For me this has been a process of discovery rather than an event. Each discovery is accompanied with some measure of pain. I had to learn to disconnect from the shame that much of this brought to the surface. It has been a slow methodical process that has required my daily effort.

My father’s family came from Union County Tennessee. In 1898 they migrated in a wagon to the Southwest corner of Missouri. They acquired a Quarter Section of land in the Federal Land Grant Program. The farm as it was called was typical of the area and mostly rocks with a little dirt.

These ancestors were very simple uneducated folks who were simply trying to exist and have better lives. Typical of families in that time they were caught up in the social and economic happenings of that era.

Daily life was difficult for them and all others in the area. Just to survive was an ordeal and many did not. The life expectancy was around thirty-five. Families were generally large in numbers. Survival assets would include a milk cow or two, workhorses or mules, a few hogs, chickens and perhaps a Model T truck. Mechanized equipment would be limited to horse drawn wagons, sickle bars, hay rakes, and plows. The ability to make money was limited to what you could sell.

The ability to sell was determined by your access to larger cities that would buy what you had. Generally this would be eggs, milk, fruit, meats, garden produce, and hay. None of these things would generate daily income. Almost all were seasonal.

Then came prohibition and it all changed. If you knew how and were willing to take the risk, there was an immediate new revenue source right outside the back door. The Still for the manufacture of moonshine. You have to give serious thought to this.

As you are watching such programs as the Untouchables and the History Channel you see them destroying thousands of gallons of alcohol.

You have probably never asked yourself, Where did all this alcohol come from? There were only two sources.

It either had to be imported or manufactured. Now if you imported it, which was smuggling and required water access. This was required to bring the alcohol in by ships. If you were manufacturing it, that simply required, knowledge, some copper, and the agriculture ingredients. These things would include corn and sugar primarily with good quantities of water. It must be understood that a lion’s share of the illegal alcohol that was made during prohibition was done in the rural agriculture areas.

To fully understand this you must understand the simple economics.

In Southwest Missouri they came by twice a week and collected your milk cans and eggs. Once a month they sent you a check. If things had gone well you could get as much as twelve dollars a month. When you had nine family members and an operating farm to feed, there was always a shortfall of money.

Now came a new agriculture driven product. Moonshine!!! Here is how this changed things.

Almost overnight. With a small Still and a few helpers, the children, they could make six one-gallon jars of Shine every two weeks. You could drive it to Joplin and collect five dollars per gallon. This was thirty dollars every two weeks or sixty dollars per month.

They were not doing that well mining gold in California.

And all they had to buy was the sugar. Everything else was grown right there on the farm.

Unfortunately there were some collateral risks and damage. The number one risk was the Revenue Agents. The number two risk was that since most of the family was assisting in this manufacturing effort, the risk of alcoholism running rampant within the family was very high. In those days if you were living on the farm and were over the age of eight years old, you helped your family and quite likely had drank the Shine. The Revenue Agents did catch a lot of folks and put them away. But in reality they only caught a handful in comparison to those that were actually making the Shine. Ingenuity was the keyword to success.

The locals quickly learned that there were two ways the Revenuers could find your Still. They could smell it or someone could tell on you.

Since the rural community was very close mouthed most of the detection was by the Revenuers. They would like to get up high in the hills and look down into the valleys. They could then see the smoke from the fires and in many cases smell it. That was the detection method. If you knew that then you knew not to put your Still in the valleys. I am told that the family Still was in the Hay Stack very close to the house.

But let’s return to the manufacturing of the Shine. All of the family participated in this endeavor. adults, children, male and female.

That is how things were on the farm. Everyone worked to survive, live, eat, and exist.

Now a big part of the manufacturing process is tasting the product throughout the manufacturing process. It is not like baking a cake, there is no timer that rings. It is pretty much a judgment call made by tasting. So you had children and adults with unlimited access to 100 plus proof moonshine almost round the clock. As we now know, alcoholism and the pre-disposition is genetic. All that is required to trigger it is the availability of alcohol. I can scientifically attest to these facts by the conduct of my ancestors at the Still. Some of the children became alcoholics and some did not. Yet all of them were doing the same things. Working and drinking the Shine.

Pretty much as it is today. Some people drink and say, What’s the big deal? Alcoholics drink and their entire world goes upside down. Some of the Hay Stack workers went on to have normal productive lives. Others went on to have lives of Utter Despair Yet they were all doing the same things drinking the same shine.

My father was one of the Hay Stack kids. His father was the owner and operator. My father explained to me that his job was to skim the top of the tank. Apparently you get some kind of fines floating on the surface.

He related to me that you could drink that and it was some of the prime Shine. He was twelve years old at this time. He was among the oldest of the children. Except for brief periods of sobriety driven mostly by external circumstance, my father lived a typical alcoholic life. Many years later his Hay Stack experience would rob him of the thing that he worked for all of his life.

When my father was nearly fifty-five years of age he was notified that he had received a Sub-Cabinet appointment to serve in the Richard Nixon White House. To celebrate this event his friends and neighbors had a going away party for him and my mother. It was held on a Friday night. He drank a full measure of scotch, (got good and drunk).

The next morning while standing and talking to me in his driveway he suffered what the Doctors said was an alcohol-induced stroke. He never worked another day and he never went to Washington. Cunning, Powerful and Baffling.

After doing some research on the matter I can tell you for sure that the entire family is riddled with alcoholism. Just like the rest of the world and its families, some got it and some did not. I spoke with one of my elderly aunts who was a Hay Stack kid after I had sobered up. She related to me that she only worked around the Still when she was forced to. Her words to me were, I had tasted it and I liked it too much. She was eight years old at that time.

I was able to talk to many of the Hay Stack kids after I sobered up. The story was all the same. Because I was able to talk to them, they had obviously changed their lives. I was not able to talk to many of them, as they were deceased. About half made it to adulthood and half did not.

My Grandfather owned the farm. He had served during World War I. It was during this time that he made acquaintances that would change his life. After the war through one of his acquaintances he was able to get a real job in St. Louis working for the Terminal Railroad. This caused him to move to St. Louis. This is where he met my Grandmother. My Grandmother’s Mother was a bedridden alcoholic.

This was related to me by my father who as a child would go to the bar and fetch buckets of beer for her.

So here we have the classic two adults, my mother and father, genetically pre-disposed to alcoholism, marrying and raising children of their own. Sadly I must relate to you it gets worse not better from here.

My Grandfather is married and working in St. Louis and owns a farm in Southwest Missouri. He drives a Green Model T with yellow wheels, wears a straw hat, lives in a brick bungalow, and is pretty much the man of the times, on the outside at least. At this point he has two children. My father and his sister. She is the oldest. It starts downhill from here.

My Grandfather impregnates his sister-in-law, my Grandmothers sister. A boy is born out of this relationship. Eventually a short time later, my Grandmother dies. When I ask from what the older folks simply said a broken heart. This leaves my father with his older sister. I am told they were inseparable. Within a few years his sister dies. I can tell you that my father never ever discussed his sister or her death. Now it was my father and his half brother as the remaining children.

On one of my Grandfathers trips back to Southwest Missouri he marries a woman that is his third cousin. You can certainly speculate on where this started. He returns to St. Louis with his new wife. She has a son with her.

She is not there to very long when she has my Grandfather kick my father and his half brother out of the house.

It was an unconscionable act. You can only say how could something like this happen. But it did.

My father and his half brother went to live with their alcoholic Grandmother briefly. They were probably no older than ten years old. However in short order they returned to the farm to live. They became involved in the Hay Stack activities again. For the half brother, Marvin, this would set the stage for a life of agony and ultimate doom.

In the next few years my father would shuffle between the farm and St. Louis.

He finally stayed in St. Louis with his mother’s uncle who was in the radio sales and repair business in University City. He began working with his Uncle in his shop. When he was twelve years old he built his first radio. He was really proud of it. He related to me that he gave it to his father as a gift. His father sold the radio and kept the money. Radios were a pretty rare item at this time. From school, somehow my father became a member of a group known as the St. Louis Whiz Kids. But like all alcoholics things turned bad for him.

He quit High School in his sophomore year. This was not uncommon in those days. He began working at various jobs in the St. Louis area.

He developed St. Louis friends and for the most part let go of the farm and that past emotionally.

Marvin his half brother remained on the farm. He and and a couple of the cousins were now into full-blown alcoholism. By this time prohibition had ended and there was little to do on the farm. Also,

World War II was approaching. The Hay Stack kids had begun to scatter with their lives.

The Mothers Family

My mother came from a large family of nine. My mother was the second oldest child and the oldest daughter. There were a total of seven children. The entire family was native South Carolinians.

I never met my Grandfather but knew my Grandmother very well.

The story as it was related to me was that my Grandfather was a successful businessman in Columbia South Carolina. The business I was told he was in was a large Meat Packing Operation. He was also a full-blown alcoholic and an abusive one at that. It was common for him to come home drunk and then begin beating the sons for whatever. Sometime during the depression or as a result of his alcoholism, or both, the business went broke.

I cannot really relate anything more than what I was told. My mother always told me that they were a family of means up until that point. She often talked about having a Maid.

My mother was a stunningly beautiful woman.

She had natural red hair was a very shapely woman. I am sure that she was sought after by many a suitor. But there was a strange mystery about her. She hated men. I did not understand that for years and years. I think I do now.

Being from the South the entire family was steeped in social manners. That was passed on to me. It was not a choice. There were also a lot of conflicts. My mother was also steeped in severe prejudice, as was the entire family. It was however a very strange prejudice.

They were accustomed to being around African Americans and had a strong sense of fairness on their behalf. However, without question, the family considered African Americans as less than equal.

I have never been able to grasp the mentality of where they were on this issue. I can tell you that if you wanted a fight with my mother, all you had to do is start talking about Abraham Lincoln as being a great man.

When my mother was eighteen years old the entire family moved from Columbia South Carolina to St. Louis Missouri. This was pretty much in the middle of the depression. It seems that there was no work in Columbia South Carolina. Somebody had contacted my mothers’ family and somehow convinced them that there was an abundance of jobs in the St. Louis area.

Without further investigation they packed up and came to St. Louis. Everyone came except the oldest Son. He remained in Columbia South Carolina.

When they arrived in