Sidewalk in the Sky: Old Time Religion Meets Camelot

By Vada Jain

Seneca Rocks is easily visible and accessible along West Virginia Route 28 near US Route 33 in the Monongahela National Forest located in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia. The rock is approximately 250 feet thick and 900 feet above stream level, composed of fine grains of sand that were laid down over 400 million years ago at the edge of the ancient Iapetus Ocean.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Feb 16, 2012
• ISBN: 9781468543254

Vada Jain

Vada was my grandmother’s name who died after picking a pail of blackberries back in 1931 when she was twenty-two years old. Those blackberries kept my two-year old mother alive until she was found two days later inside their cabin on Crites Mountain. My grandfather was killed in a coal mining accident, so I knew neither of them except through the words of Vada’s brother, my great uncle who had Indian heritage and raised my mother. When I was a child my mother and dad and I sometimes traveled to Baltimore where I was born and where his sisters lived, via Route 33 that took us past the Seneca Rocks, a truly remarkable and awe-inspiring site. My story is about growing up in West Virginia with my paternal grandparents, uncles and aunts and cousins, of those who survived the great depression into the days of Camelot. My first vision of Jesus was when I was twelve, and then the second was when I was forty-five, and the reason why I’m telling this story and why I’ve chosen to use my grandmother’s name as a pen name for this book. My mother was the only one who never questioned the validity of my visions. Her name was Mona, the most beautiful woman God ever created.

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© 2012 by Vada Jain. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 06/28/2016

ISBN: 978-1-4685-4327-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4685-4326-1 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4685-4325-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012900694

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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When I was graduated looking for work Dad said to me, As soon as they find out your background no one will be interested in you.

I didn’t know what Dad meant. What background? What interest? Was he talking about me having a baby? His sister, my Aunt Edna, said my cousin Sarah and I shouldn’t mention having babies on job interviews. I could see her point, but I didn’t agree with her, and my experience was that most of the men who had interviewed me for jobs complimented my being responsible rather than being judgmental.

My son and I moved to NYC when he was starting the first grade, and I worked for a brokerage firm on Wall Street when I was twenty-four years old in 1973.

I typed reports on investments and strategies that my Director boss dictated. A Chinese chef came in to cook the Directors’ lunch every day, but not ours. It smelled real good, and sometimes one of the Directors would announce there were left-overs if anyone would like to eat lunch there, but I never went into the dining area. I just typed all day, and that was about it.

The professional consensus of the Directors was to invest in television pay per view in lieu of commercials. I was picturing TVs with a scanner for payment incorporated into the televisions or a slot-TV. Virtual airline training was a big bet, also, and metallurgical coal, a no-brainer. Who doesn’t like clean coal?

The Jewish employees were off all holidays including secular. There were four male directors and one female director in the firm. One of the men was French, and the lady was from Boston. My director was from New York City, and he was Jewish.

One day my director asked me to make a phone call to France. I dialed the numbers and asked for the fellow in English with whom he wanted to speak. I said to the director that his call was waiting.

Parle vu France? I heard him say, and I hung up and began typing again.

After he hung up from talking he came over to my desk.

Don’t you speak French? he asked somewhat incredulously as though he thought everyone spoke French.

No, I answered. I didn’t say that on my application, I said.

Oh, he said and scratched his head. Where did you get your Appalachian accent? he asked.

West Virginia, I answered.

I guess he hadn’t bothered to read my application. Maybe I didn’t exactly fit in there, but I could take dictation, type, and answer the phone. Once he dictated a thank you letter to someone who’d gifted him a bottle of wine, and he used the word euphoria and asked if I knew that word.

Yes, I’m familiar, I said. More than you know.

I suppose he thought he could help with my vocabulary. Also, he had me make copies of a book in Hebrew he said his father had written which didn’t pertain to work, but he said it was very important and made no secret of it with the other directors, and no one made any comment about my tying up the copier machine all day.

The receptionist, an Irish girl named Nia, invited me to lunch one day at a nearby restaurant where her fiancé was the chef. She was a young lady about my age with short golden brown hair and green eyes and had a nice personality. She said her fiancé was French. When lunchtime came we walked a short distance from the office building to an upscale restaurant where we were seated.

Momentarily her fiancé came out to our table, and she introduced us. He was nice-looking with pale blue eyes and dressed in starchy white chef regalia with sandy blond hair that stuck out around his hat. We spoke to one another then he took our orders, the sauerbraten with red cabbage and mashed potatoes. Nia talked about how she and her fiancé were in a social circle that included the author Clifford Irving and a couple lesbians with whom she’d become quite fond.

How do you know they’re lesbians? I asked.

They’re extremely affectionate. It is obvious, she said.

I enjoyed listening to her speak with the Irish accent.

I thought Clifford Irving was dead, I said. You mean he’s still alive?

Yes, of course, and he’s perfect in our social circle, she said.

That was all lies about Howard Hughes, though, wasn’t it? I asked.

I’m sure Clifford has met Howard Hughes, she said, but I don’t know the details. He doesn’t speak about it.

He made him sound really crazy, didn’t he? No wonder he was pissed off.

I suppose. Anyway, you should come to my bachelorette party.

I will if I’m still around, I said. But I don’t think I will be. I think Brett is hiding something from me.

What do you think he’s hiding from you? she asked.

I don’t know. He’s hiding something.

I didn’t know anyone in NYC and rarely spoke with anyone about anything other than the NYC cop I’d met while in the US Coast Guard Reserve the previous year. He was a NYC policeman and a widower. His name was Brett Lopez, and we were at boot camp together in Newport News, Virginia.

3.

My military rank was an E7, and his was an E3. I assumed I was given credit for clerical experience, but I wondered why his police experience hadn’t figured more prominently. He was several years older than me, too. At camp, though, another girl from Georgia and I had the best marksmanship with handguns and machine guns.

I was a little embarrassed for Brett being a cop but yet didn’t place in the shooting competition. He said the reality was that he didn’t need to shoot a gun, and the most danger he had ever been in was when he was asked to do a bomb check on a suitcase in Central Park, but it turned out to be some homeless person’s dirty underwear.

He was a pilot, too, and had a significant scar on his forehead he’d received during a crash landing. He said he was Spanish, and his uncle was living in Spain and held a high government position there.

We didn’t have much in common, but we began talking after our yeoman classes and decided to go to Jamestown together for the weekend. We ate at nice restaurants and walked around in Jamestown looking at all the historical landmarks and then drove on to Williamsburg for a sightseeing tour there.

One evening after we got back from dinner he started telling me about himself. With tears in his eyes he told me his wife had died of cancer and left him with two little girls, and he and the girls were living with his mother. He said she watched the children while he was working, and they’d become accustomed to her taking care of them. He said the girls were only three and four years old when his wife died, and he hadn’t met anyone interesting since then. I told him my mother’s mother died when she was only two, and she was raised by her uncle and aunt.

Lopez was attractive with curly black hair and brown eyes, around 5'10" with a good physical appearance. He said he was thirty, but I thought he looked older due to the salt in his black hair and would’ve guessed him to be at least thirty-five or forty. Unlike many women who would’ve been very curious and looked at his ID, I didn’t. I really didn’t care about his age.

After I returned to WV he called me and wanted to visit WV, and I said ok. He flew in on Valentines Day and spent the weekend. I introduced him to my son and parents and brothers and a few of my friends. There wasn’t anything about him that was unlikeable, but he wasn’t much of a talker. I was quiet myself so I preferred someone who talked more and could pick up my slack, but we made our appearances, and everyone seemed to like him. He and I got along very well, and I thought it may be my chance to have a normal life. After many phone calls he offered to rent Jeffrey and me an apartment so we could move to NYC. It wasn’t a marriage proposal, and there was no ring. He did give me a nice watch, though. It was an oyster shell face that glittered with pink and blue highlights like an Opal with a silver-link bracelet.

He asked me how I felt about marriage but seemed nervous talking about it. I said I thought we should take time to get to know one another, and I didn’t want to jump into anything. I told him my son’s father was a much older man, and he ended up marrying an older woman. Even though we’d been friends since I was twelve, it still didn’t work out.