The Road to Rochelle

By Harry X. Winfield

Through the urging of a long-time best friend and fraternity brother, whose advice could not be ignored, a retired mechanical engineer endured eleven months of diligently focusing on task.

By April of 2013, the elderly engineer had completed his projectthe submission of his memoirs to an author. As a happy husband of thirty-five years and soon-to-be grandfather, the choice of a writer of the elder engineers novel had been a beautiful young female professor. Even with two novels published, she was a nervous risk. Her father was a long-time acquaintance of the retired engineer and also a sitting circuit judge.

Motivation for the retired engineers writing had been provided within a list of goals promised to himself decades earlier.

Although having been occasionally prompted throughout his lifetime, the elderly engineers final motivation to tell the world of his past was provided by the rediscovery of one of the five woman he had ever truly loved.

The details of the engineers memoirs required inclusion and complications within the intimacies of the engineers complex premarital-sex life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Sep 27, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524642297

Harry X. Winfield

Harry X. Winfield is a retired mechanical engineer, born in April of 1947. On March 2, 1952, Harry’s older brother was involved in a traumatic ski accident. Following his brother’s lengthy coma, the four-year-old younger brother’s memorable rearing years were in tandem with a brain-injured older brother with an unreachable full recuperation. His early years were as a normal child returning home from school to an educated mother with the added aspect of an ambulatory brain-injured older brother. Unhindered with first baseball glove and three years as Little League lead-off hitter, his first major life accomplishment was reaching the rank of Eagle Scout. Henceforth, he attempted to live as normal a life as possible with achievement motivations to be above the norm. Over his lifetime, he chronologically paralleled the classifications of high school class president, sportsmanship recipient, championship water-ski club founder, uncle, college fraternity president, design engineer, bogey golfer, husband, divorcee, remarried husband, father, solar energy engineer, energy auditor, hardware-store clerk, engineering manager, booster club president, booster of the year, writer, and (most importantly) grandfather. Harry earned his mechanical engineering bachelor of science degree in 1970. He wrote his life goals list on August 4, 1976, and finally began to reveal his perplexing lifetime secret in the year 2000. The consequences of his 2011 disclosure to an impactful female influenced his life beyond what he had imagined. Besides his release of emotion, Harry has profound interests in energy, the United States Senate, and nearly all types of railroads.

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© 2016 Harry X. Winfield. 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     09/28/2016

ISBN: 978-1-5246-4230-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-4231-0 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-4229-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016916114

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CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

CHAPTER 1

THIRTY-THREE YEARS OF MARRIAGE

F or over three decades, Lizzie had comforted him. Eddie recollected a particular Saturday in early 1978. On that afternoon, Eddie was a month shy of thirty-one, his lovely wife-to-be was a very ripe twenty-six. Each had their own home. They had been incredibly fortunate. Eddie’s four-bedroom ranch was beyond the back stone wall of his parents’ oversized stucco but had lower preference than Lizzie’s request. Eddie’s house had been acquired a year earlier but was showing its twenty years. The massive stone fireplace in the twenty-four-by-twenty-four-foot sunken family room hadn’t convinced the lovely Elizabeth to reverse her call. She had a fireplace too. She preferred the kitchen in her recently built home, the choice had automatically put Eddie’s place on the market. The groom-to-be was moving to Lizzie’s new home following their eleven-day Hawaiian honeymoon.

Around noon on that Saturday in early 1978, Eddie was admiring Lizzie, half-lying on the big bed in his bedroom. He and Lizzie were both clothed, discussing the next few weeks of their lives. The moment reflected the origin of the marriage—Eddie’s second and Lizzie’s first. The formal wedding ceremony would take place a week later. Eddie was fully admiring Lizzie’s physical beauty and calm demeanor. She was the fulfillment of the top item on Eddie’s 1976 List of Goals. They had not spent a night together, but they had been as one. More importantly, their paths had crossed at opportune moments for both. After Lizzie had earned her interior decorating degree from Northwestern, she trekked out to Providence to live for a year. By 1975, Lizzie found herself wanting far more to be within proximity of her Swedish-rooted family and the Blue Heron Lake life near a very pleasant peninsula. Lizzie Johannson was a complete dream come true.

On the other hand, Eddie was on the rebound from an extreme low. He had emerged with a list of goals. His desire to return to the land of crystal-clear water at latitude forty-six equaled Lizzie’s. The dream had come true. Eddie had forgone the giant promises of money from the Firestone vice president and sacrificed his career in the automobile manufacturing industry while also seeking to rid himself of the horrors following a first marriage. Returning to the wilds, Eddie Hughes had plunked himself back in his homeland a decade after heading across three states to earn a mechanical engineering degree at an out-of-state school in the Big Ten.

The top item on Eddie’s List of Goals had been paramount: a good woman for me to love, to love me, and to cook good meals for us. The goal was an attractive, enjoyable, educated woman. Elizabeth was a grand slam.

He had written that first goal in 1976, so the tinge of chauvinism was unintended. His ability in the kitchen extended only as far as his enthusiasm. Eddie took proper pride in personal primping but preferred tidy surroundings. He desired cleanliness and neatness but had always lacked the motivation to prepare food for himself. Doing the dishes and emptying the wastebaskets were his specialty. Cleaning up the mess was his priority. The household training Eddie had received from his mother as a child had been about making beds and folding clothes. Vacuuming, wiping dishes, and emptying the dishwasher also fell into his helping categories. Well into 2015, Eddie had never baked a pie or a cake. His interest in food preparation went no further than forming a hamburger patty. He preferred mowing the lawn or shoveling snow from the driveway.

She wasn’t snooping, just performing the initial stages of packing Eddie’s clothes. The young marrieds were flying to Hawaii two days after the wedding. Eddie had no problem with Lizzie looking into his dresser drawers. He was sure he had shown her where all his clothes were, Jockey shorts and all.

Eddie had asked the lovely Elizabeth what she was doing, but he thought, she knows so little about me. Having spent his first five years out of college traveling across the country as a Firestone Tire development engineer in the early seventies, he informed Lizzie pleasantly of his experience and ability to pack clothes for himself. Lizzie switched tasks, and by the end of the day, she had Eddie trying on the new clothes purchased for him that afternoon. Lizzie and her mother dropped the better part of a grand into Eddie’s wardrobe that day. In less than six hours, Lizzie had converted Eddie’s garb from geek to stud. No time was wasted. Before 1980, Lizzie became the mother of the first of their three sons.

Eddie Hughes had introduced himself to his lovely wife Elizabeth within seven months of writing his List of Goals on August 4, 1976, and had asked Lizzie to marry him before Christmas of ’77. Thirty-five years later in the glory years of early retirement, Eddie had exploded into a dramatically thorough review of his entire life, beginning the most difficult and final concept from the List of Goals.

For more than thirty-three years, there had been no waves—not even a ripple. In 2000, when Eddie had opened up the ugliest era of his past to Elizabeth, she had maintained her rock-solid stability. Eddie loved Lizzie, Elizabeth, Auntie Lizzie, the lovely Elizabeth, and Mom, she answered to all five. The lovely Elizabeth had been the most important person in his life since the Saturday in late 1977 when opposition jerseys had the words Beat Iowa above the numbers. Within ten seconds of introducing himself to Lizzie, Eddie had blurted out, I know your brother, and I’m divorced. A year later, in early March 1978, Lizzie and Eddie winged on a North Central DC-9 from Blue Heron Lake’s Edison Airport toward United’s Royal Hawaiian out of O’Hare.

On Christmas morning in 2011, Eddie had walked in front of the decorated tree to proclaim his mysterious future plight. Just before his three adult sons opened their Christmas gifts, Eddie announced his plans. The three millennials were left clueless. He was not specific but announced to his three male offspring, I hope I make no shame.

In the fall of 2012, Eddie’s mother had been dead for seven years, Lizzie’s father had passed the previous September. Eddie’s life had completely dissolved. By his own decision, he broke most ties with his side of the family.

By April 2013, Eddie’s written accomplishments had totally altered his viewpoint on life. Entering the initial steps of old age, Eddie had rid himself of hidden shame by revealing the secret within his past. Eddie’s blitz writing to GV had been a dynamic flush of emotional expression.

Eddie, Lizzie, and the entire baby-boomer generation had ascended to the senior echelons of Lizzie’s greater Swedish family. Eddie’s brother and both of Auntie Lizzie’s brothers had become grandparents. Lizzie’s regular Monday evening family meals with her elderly father were already distant memories. It had been over three years since Eddie had revealed the scourge of his past to two of his philosophically matched fraternity brothers when they had met to ski in Aspen. Eddie had shared almost a year with a new right hip and was ready to rejoin his regular golf foursome at Blue Heron Lake’s exclusive Eagle Point Country Club.

May 2013 saw the Dow advance to 15,000. Eddie and Lizzie had done all right, they were secure and lived within their means. Lizzie’s father had been nothing less than generous. As Lizzie and Eddie had grown and aged through the years, they had maintained their comfortable status within the Blue Heron Lake community. Wise investments by Eddie’s father provided tremendous security for the happy couple. As added security, Eddie and Lizzie experienced many of the moments of their lives under the sheltered umbrella of an innovative business incorporated by Lizzie’s father and two brothers in 1970.

Offspring of Swedish immigrants to the Blue Heron Lake community a century earlier, Lizzie had pleasantly morphed from charming princess to senior duchess by early 2013 within the strong bond of the Johannson family.

Eddie had outlined a life path for himself back in 1976. In 2011, he finally negotiated the final and most significant item on the list. But Eddie’s emotional world outlook had been altered completely. On April 22, 2011, there came the moment in Eddie’s initial new-contact conversation with GV that burst Eddie’s dam. Eddie had not recovered from the moment. What he had been unable to do back in 1976, Eddie had finally managed to scribe in detail. By April 2013, Eddie had completed his pre-Lizzy sexual autobiography, word for word, detail for detail. WTF?

Revealing the secret of his youth to GV had been an emotional burden of monumental consequence. Back in 1957, young Eddie’s mother had instructed him in the proper principles of life. Paragon of virtue behavior had been the dominating control factor over his life. As an eleven-year-old prepubescent boy, the fine points of his mother’s unwritten rules directly conflicted with his reporting of wrongdoing. Programmed phrases within his mother’s dialect, such as We don’t talk about those things, had prevailed over the alternative of having to show his parents or older brothers the evidence of wrongdoing. But Eddie’s fallout from his accomplishment would not cease. Only five females had emotionally toggled Eddie’s heart during his six decades—GV was indeed within the quintet. The completion of his List of Goals had brought from within Eddie a loving lifetime connection to GV. The writing of his memoirs had presented emotional strain equivalent to reaching his very personal Eagle Scout plateau.

Reviewing the actual ramifications of Eddie’s youthful rise to the rank of Eagle Scout in the late 1950s had been disgusting. Eddie’s twenty-first century documentation had taken him through the years of foul memories lodged in his mind. Realization had settled in. Eddie had failed to perceive how he would deal with himself after he had spilled the beans. In order to write of his past, he had refreshed both the good and the bad. The memories had reestablished their presence up front, past thoughts had been reluctant to depart. In episodes of emotional breakdown, Eddie had begun losing his composure during public social situations at the slightest provocation. The days of listening for GV’s laugh and watching for her gait at O’Hare were long gone—forty years gone. The present-day GV had dominated his thoughts since 2011. In order for Eddie to fulfill the only unwritten within his List of Goals, he had scrutinized his every moment with that twenty-one-year-old gem, a woman who had impacted Eddie’s life in two months of love to the equivalent of what had taken the lovely Elizabeth thirty-five years.

Eddie perused the original List of Goals again, the actual three-by-five card was now taped to a yellow legal page. Filed neatly and securely in the red three-ring binder, the List of Goals represented Eddie’s life. Of all the sheets of paper Eddie had ever written on, this little sheet was the sperm cell that had triggered the remainder of his life. His scribbled code was not genetic but the plan for his life. The list of goals had triggered life affecting events for Eddie within twenty-four hours of its writing on the evening of August 4, 1976.

Back in the spring of 1968, Georgia Vector had been the absolute first to raise Eddie from the depths of his youth. The unmentionable item within the 1976 List of Goals was unwritten, but the intention was clear: Tell GV, then the world, why I had initially resisted. Within the first few days of 2011, Eddie’s recollection clicked. He had mingled within the Internet to successfully attempt to contact GV after forty years. All other items on the 1976 List of Goals, as written, had been in regards to Eddie’s future, the unwritten revelation to GV was the only item regarding his youthful past. Eddie shivered on January 3, 2011, when he learned for certain his assumption of her demise had been erroneous. A high school classmate had confirmed GV was alive and well. The first three months of 2011 had been a long, patient wait for any reply from GV herself. Eddie had continued the persistent e-mail requests to GV’s high school classmate. GV later took credit for the delay, claiming she thought Eddie had wanted to have a contemporary affair.

GV’s initial responsive e-mail to Eddie brought big-time tremors to Eddie’s entire body. Immediate enthusiastic e-mails back and forth between the two soon brought each of them respectably up-to-date. In regard to each other’s current living situations, the setting could not have been more perfect. The conditions in which they both found themselves were remarkable. GV was fine. GV was still a love of Eddie’s. He did not know why or how, but the lingering emotions remained. The good fortune of mingling with GV was tattooed on his memory. Eddie didn’t really know what to do, other than continue telling the truth. Nothing had been lost with his lovely Elizabeth, but Eddie had gained more reason for enthusiastic living. His love for GV and the possibility of seeing her again someday were motivating. From within his analytical mind, the similarities between the two of them were far too numerous to be normal. In Eddie’s opinion, the two participants in what GV later referred to as a college fling were a statistical anomaly, outside the bell curve.

Eddie entered a state of elevated anxiety. What was he after? GV asked herself that same question. Communication with GV immediately changed Eddie’s life in many ways. Nearly all outside entertainment in his life ceased. Eddie focused high amounts of energy into keyboarding. His exchanges with GV were lengthy and completely informative, establishing the background from which Eddie would soon throw all of his ugly mud directly at her. By the end of the 2011 Lenten spring, Eddie had fully prepped GV for the bomb he would drop on Good Friday. Within a quick responsive e-mail, GV shook Eddie up again when she took it to the next level. GV wrote, Shall I call you? GV had speculated Eddie was coming out to her. Such was not the case.

When Eddie punched the speaker button on his landline phone in the den that Good Friday, GV was nervous, possibly to the level of Eddie’s chills. Stumbling through their reintroduction, she mixed up her maiden name with her married name. Memory began to overtake Eddie’s emotions as an overflow of enzymes zipped through his body. The recollections of those few years when their lives had crossed paths intertwined within that awkward moment of the pure recalled love Eddie had retained for GV. Unmentioned, but obvious, GV had no desire that her husband of thirty-five years to be advised of their communication. Eddie felt slightly insulted and compromised. Not his intent to create spousal disharmony, Eddie played along, as though he were also out of bounds, but the mystery of GV immediately heightened. A precipitant corollary to Eddie’s thirty-five-year intent within the List of Goals was evidenced by GV’s clandestine signals. She was certainly hiding something.

Eddie had waited thirty-five years for the opportunity. He wasted no time. Just after the reintroduction love-rush, he brought himself to the focal point. Eddie broke down completely. While disclosing to GV the dilemma of his childhood, Eddie suddenly began crying as though he were a child. The emotional devastation became an advanced state of trauma as severe as when he had wept over his father’s body. Eddie’s tears flowed off and on to the end of that first verbal reconnection with GV. He had entered a new phase of his life. From that Good Friday in 2011, at age sixty-four, respectable, upper-middle class Eddie Hughes found himself in situations of overwhelming sadness, weeping more frequently than daily. Eddie’s thoughts of the woman he hadn’t seen in over forty years brought him to want to see her. He didn’t want to sleep with her but wanted to be in her presence. He wanted to look in her eye again, to hear her voice and laughter. Eddie wanted to see her walk away from him and look back. He wanted to rediscover GV’s flaws. Eddie wanted to know all about her. He wanted to be in the same room with her. When Eddie had last seen GV in 1971, she had returned to Glendale, Wisconsin without plans in her future for Eddie. Five years and one failed marriage later, Eddie had written his List of Goals. GV was the only specific name implied on that blueprint for his life plan.

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What had happened to Eddie? There was nobody else he should talk to than his lovely Elizabeth. He didn’t want to become overshadowed in secrecy, so he promptly asked Lizzie for advice. Within another emotional breakdown, Eddie directly expressed his love for Lizzie and, with her in his arms, told Lizzie straightforwardly he still loved GV! Eddie asked his lovely wife Lizzie to take him to GV. Lizzie’s reply, We’ll work on it.

Neither Lizzie nor Eddie understood his emotional breakdowns or foresaw the future. Lovely Elizabeth kept the water calm with her complete but confusing acceptance of what was happening. Even though Eddie was just a mechanical engineer, Lizzie encouraged him to continue documenting his past. Eddie returned to the process of keyboarding his personal sexual history. For advice and assistance in publishing his story, Eddie sought out and included a small handful of close friends beyond Lizzie and GV. The small Internet group were labeled his inner circle: educated, trusted, and knowledgeable one and all. Eddie considered their advice, but he was on a roll. He declined prompts to seek professional help. Eddie dedicated his life to seeing GV again someday, for at least an afternoon of conversation. Just as Eddie had followed the path provided for him toward his Eagle Scout rank, he had achieved that goal. Eddie sought out mechanical engineering and stayed solidly with the course at The University of Iowa. During his most wavering moment in college, the 1968 motivational impact from GV had corrected his entire life. Again in 2011, GV’s voice, texts, and e-mails had provided Eddie the energy to complete his task to tell the world.

Eddie had done nothing behind her back. GV had been made well aware of Eddie’s intentions to write his memoir and include her. Eddie had been straightforward, truthful, and thorough with his description of the woman who had meant as much to him as his lovely Elizabeth.

CHAPTER 2

THE GV SITUATION

H aving been reenergized within his 1976 List of Goals through association with GV in 2011, Eddie vigorously plunged back into his writing. Inclusive of the emotional breakdown, contact with GV was initially and undoubtedly one of the greatest rushes of Eddie’s life. His renewed personal enthusiasm toward a goal was beyond anything he had experienced in decades. The encouragement provided by GV was vital, but her subsequent backing-off disappointed him excruciatingly. GV’s decision became apparent following their iPhone discussions of family, lifestyle, and their relationship during the college era when they had known each other. Eddie became devastated by the news of GV’s further decision to have nothing to do with his memoir writings. Eddie felt as though he wasn’t good enough for her and considered asking. In their first reconnecting call on Good Friday of 2011, he had disclosed his true past within the emotional breakdown of his apology. He repeated the most unfortunate and inappropriate comment of his life, a question whispered in the dark to GV back in 1968. GV implied the year 1968 in her calming words: I’m sure there was love there, Eddie. As the iPhone vibes settled, other conversation and comments from GV within the elegance of their upper-middle-class lifestyle were yielded. GV shocked Eddie by offering a description of herself as having been a kept woman for most of her adult life, her supplement to an employment question Eddie wished he had not asked. The mystery surrounding this wonderful woman jumped a notch.

In 2011, GV had refused from day one to offer herself via FaceTime or Skype for video communication with Eddie. Approximately a month following GV’s initial Good Friday call in which Eddie divulged his life secret, GV arranged for a day when she was free to talk again with Eddie. They spoke on their iPhones during that second call and covered a lot of ground in over two hours. The specifics of Eddie’s memory from 1968 and the topic of discussion overwhelmed her during that second verbal exchange, enough to cause GV to digress from encouraging Eddie any further. Her resistance to associating with Eddie began. Eddie had dug himself into a big hole.

We were just kids! she yelped in her sexagenarian voice, unchanged from the college junior she had been in 1968. Eddie hadn’t expected GV’s surge to the F-word when she told him she had been fucked up too! GV’s feelings of guilt for two-timing her pin-mate were legitimate but not nearly of the same dimension as the trap in which Eddie’s life had been psychologically suspended. Eddie had spent over forty years wondering about the outcome if circumstances had been different in 1968. As he wrote the List of Goals in 1976, his question to himself was about the fact he had not known how to make love to GV in 1968. His 1976 realization was his understanding of how vital GV’s impact had been on him.

Eddie had attempted to hide his dilemma from GV in 1968, but she was onto his condition, or so she thought. During those collegiate times, GV had deliberately teased Eddie while she had easily plunged him into love with her. GV had acted arrogantly, as if she had positively known Eddie’s sexual rank back in 1968. She lacked the complete story, the secret Eddie kept for forty years. In public, they had both shared equal grace and dignity in the presence of their peers on campus. In private, GV had very tenderly and gently led the way. What seemed to be the standard college romance was not.

In 2011, GV began her e-mail responses by referring to Eddie as a dear friend whom she’d had a huge crush on in her college days. Eddie had been thrilled beyond imagining by the initial reincarnation of GV in January 2011. The emotionally overloaded opening communication with GV after forty years had knocked Eddie squarely into WTF land. In Eddie’s opinion, GV’s description of their 1968 relationship was not as vivid. There were moments when GV had made Eddie feel as though he had been not much more than a complexion blemish in her life. The mystique surrounding the life of GV continued.

As their collegiate junior-year relationship had blossomed in the spring of ‘68, GV had partially resolved Eddie’s entrenched resistance to real pleasure. Throughout Eddie’s life he’d questioned whether GV had been serious or was just fooling around. Bottom line: GV was an overflowing, vivacious co-ed. Since 1976 when he’d written his List of Goals, however, Eddie had proclaimed the full merit of GV’s 1968 gift and acts, which had activated Eddie’s interpretations of right and wrong. Eddie’s failure with GV was due to the improper manner in which he had originally been introduced to adulthood. Indeed, GV’s suspected trainee and pin-mate was allegedly being cheated upon, her big-shot high school honey was within the upper echelon of another big national fraternity at the distant University of Missouri. Eddie’s plural high school and Blue Heron Lake honeys were also remote, Katherine Alexander at Michigan State University and Catherine Vandemier at Valparaiso. Eddie had been writing love letters regularly to both girls throughout college and to Catherine since mid-high school, as she was a summer resident of Blue Heron Lake. Eddie and Catherine were never sexual. Eddie had been emotionally attached to Katherine for nearly a decade while remaining totally nonsexual within his fear of contact. GV’s attraction to Eddie, however, was strong enough to allow her to take complete knowledgeable advantage of Eddie’s naiveté and fear of female contact. With proper loving intention, GV had unknowingly assisted Eddie through many of his built-up manifestations. In the spring of 1968, both Eddie and GV turned twenty-one. GV was Eddie’s package of dreams, but Eddie was encumbered with a decade of discomforting emotional baggage.

Because their life paths had crossed at a few critical transition points in 1968, Eddie was convinced GV had made possible his eventual successful journey through a long, happy marriage with Lizzie. But Eddie’s problem in the present day was far beyond a college romance. He had been self-compelled to force his entire story onto GV. Eddie desperately wanted GV to know the significance of her impact on him. Eddie had decided he would go no further in life without letting GV know how he had always felt about her. Eddie meant no harm, but as a result of his decision and