My God My Father: My Personal Odyssey

By Floyd Funk

From his early childhood, author Floyd Funk was a dreamer and a romantic, wanting the most excitement and fulfillment he could get out of life. In My God/My Father, he shares forty years of his life story. His memoir recounts his pastoral and bittersweet small-town, Midwestern upbringing culminating in the shocking revelation of his parental abduction at the age of eleven. From that point his life is irrevocably altered and we follow him on his trial-and-error road of re-unification, both with his family and with his own identity.

Funk shares how his saving grace was his faith in God, the one who helped him conquer his demons and break through the chains that held him down for years. This is Floyds testament to the unyielding presence of God through many years of broken relationships, false starts, and painful self-realization.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Feb 20, 2015
• ISBN: 9781491758069

Floyd Funk

Floyd Funk was raised by a single mother in the sixties and spent the better part of his second thirty years in Hollywood, California, chasing his dream of Hollywood stardom. Funk is currently working as a motivational speaker in his home state of Indiana.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Riches to Rags

I WAS BORN IN 1956 when cars got ten miles to a gallon of leaded gasoline and nobody cared that they spewed smoke. Some teenagers even put spark plugs at the end of exhaust pipes to make their lead sleds breathe fire, like shiny dragons, as they took off like rockets from the stoplights at night.

In the fifties and early sixties my folks were considered wealthy by the people in my town because they had nice things. My mom dressed her family in the best clothes and we appeared to have it all. What we had was great credit and a small company that made dental equipment.

Both my parents drove Cadillacs and my three oldest sisters got new Chevrolet Corvairs when they graduated from high school. My family’s company also had a small airplane until one evening the company pilot, my dad’s best friend, crashed on a foggy night. He was killed instantly, something my dad never got over. I don’t know if I remember it or if the story was told to me so many times it seemed like I saw everything. My dad stood at the stove stirring the homemade chili, fighting off the first tears I had ever seen him shed.

Our home was bigger than most houses in our town back then. Our yard was huge; we had over four acres. I never had to leave it to play in the mud, rocks, weeds or trees, so I was a happy kid living on our version of Primrose Lane.

Every Sunday we went to my father’s parent’s church. That was where I learned about how God and Jesus love all the little children of the world. We were taught that, no matter what, they love all people no matter where they came from or what color society said they were. At the front of the church there was this large, round stained glass window with Jesus kneeling and looking toward heaven to God. That picture was etched into my brain and is what I see every time I am lost and alone. I see that he is above me looking down and watching my every move, good or bad.

I was number seven out of eight children. My youngest sister came along in 1960 and my dad was on his way out. I hardly noticed because he was rarely at home when I was a very young boy. Years later he told me he left because he could not handle all the children he and my mom had to care for. That was a blow to my self-esteem because I was number seven and at the end of the line of the children he fathered. At that moment in time I was nineteen years old, so by then there were many times when my self-image was lowered by something someone said or did in my life. Time had already taken me down to the bottom so I did not have much farther to go.

Mom was the opposite of my dad. She used to tell me I could do anything I put my mind to. Lucky for me my dad was outnumbered by my God, Jesus and mom.

I’m not quite sure when my parents’ marriage or our lives started falling apart or when Dad stopped sleeping in the same bed as Mom. Actually, I can’t remember that he ever slept with her. I don’t know where we kids came from. I had hoped I was from the milkman or from outer space. I was born at home and my birth was not registered so I never had a birth certificate. To me that was great! I dreamed that I was left on the doorstep by a spaceman who would later return like Superman’s parents.

It wasn’t long before my dad stopped coming home at all. He and Mom were going to get a divorce, whatever that was. My oldest brother was around twelve and he wanted to go with my father and his new woman. She had two children, a girl close to my brother’s age and a son that was just a couple years older than I. The woman was my oldest sister’s girlfriend. When she came to work for my dad he was awestruck by her blond hair, blues eyes and her young figure.. It seemed to me like he thought here is my one and possibly only chance to relive my youth by restarting my life with this Barbie doll.

For a while they lived in the country in a house trailer. It was cramped to say the least. Even at that age I could not understand why a man would leave a great place and loving family for a fourteen by sixty foot house trailer. Not too long after that he stopped coming around at all and we were told that they had all moved to California. After that we did not hear from them for a few years.

My mom was left with four children at home. She had no real work experience and two mortgages. I never remember her complaining or speaking badly about my dad and what he had done to us. What a strong woman she was. Her obvious love for her children kept her going. My father’s leaving us devastated me but every time he cut my climbing rope mom and God would throw me a lifeline and that gave me enough hope and energy to proceed into the future.

I started to retreat inside of my shell. It was invisible to everyone else and my mom hardly noticed because she had too many other things to worry about. I was now in second grade and my grades were beyond bad—they were all incompletes. They also wrote on my report card that I misbehaved in class constantly. So they kept me back to punish me for being a class clown. I retreated farther into my shell. Soon after that I was having nightmares, waking up screaming my lungs out and wetting my bed.

I would play sick so I could lie in my bed and listen to the AM radio, hearing songs by the Beatles and Herman’s Hermits while I stared at the ceiling dreaming for hours, day after day until I felt like going back to school.

I was so far inside my shell at that time that if someone touched me I’d jump out of my skin. In the sixties most people in our small town did not get divorced so as a result many children in my circle were told not to play or be friends with me. I always knew somehow, somewhere there was this Jesus and God that cared about me and would not desert me no matter how big of an oddball I was. I would talk to God at night as if he were in the room. I never thought I had to make reservations to be with him. I just had to say Lord it’s me and I’m scared lonely and I need you. He would somehow comfort me and I would drift off to sleep knowing at least I had him.

Things were pretty much the same for the next few years. We would receive the occasional letter from my oldest brother in California telling us how great it was out there. Every time he wrote it was from a different place. To me it was like my father was looking for something and he could not figure out what that was or where to look.

My mom started working at a local hardware store and she was paid ninety-five cents per hour to support her and four children at home. Lucky for us we had her brother and father who helped us from time to time and kept us from being homeless and starving to death.

She never got help from the government. She said that was for people who really needed it. We had our phone, lights and the gas shut off a few times but according to my mom we were not needy.

I swore to her when I was a very small child that she would never have to leave her home because I would grow up and take care of her. That promise never left my heart or lips. She was the greatest person I would ever know and my rock. So I vowed I would repay her for being such a loving mom and taking care of us kids first.

She always did something cool for our birthdays and Christmas. Looking back I can’t see how she did it, but she was magical and I just knew she would pull a rabbit out of her purse. It was tough on her even though she kept her pain hidden. I remember her coming home with her fingers splitting from lifting and mixing paint cans.

I was turning into a loner; my brothers and sisters and I did not spend much time together. I was out prowling the town looking for some kind of trouble to get into. I never had a hard time finding it. I was a pretty good thief, too: candy and soda mostly, not to eat and drink but just for a thrill. There was a small gas station at the end of our road and I stole so much pop from that old man he had to know.

Somehow the police were never in my life. I was blessed that way. I broke into houses with a couple of my friends but they would tell someone and get all of us into trouble. I did learn to go out on my own after an older neighbor girl was threatening to turn me in when my friend told her about our stash of stuff. So then we did what I thought any kids would do: we broke into an empty home and smashed all the soda bottles and turned on the water where the washing machine would go, to wash the evidence down the drain. I thought if there was no evidence there was no crime.

I took on a paper route in my neighborhood and found earning money of my own was cooler and much better than soda pop and candy. Now I could buy cool things like my own snacks and some toys that caught my eye.

Some days in the summer I would stop by the neighbor girl’s house. She was a really cute girl with big brown eyes and long brown hair and they had a pool. So when I found out that I could easily make people laugh, I would do whatever it took to get them to crack up, even jump into the pool with my paper bag full of papers. It wasn’t so funny when my mom got a call that night from my customers wanting to know where their daily rag was or why it was soaking wet.

My lifestyle continued until the fifth grade. Then something happened that would change my life forever.

Chapter 2

California Dream-in….

MY NEXT OLDEST BROTHER WAS about three years my senior so I kind of had to listen to him or I would get a knuckle sandwich. I was a skinny kid so when he would pick on me I would say Just remember I’m going to grow up someday and be bigger than you and you’re gonna be sorry.

That did work sometimes because I was a true salesman; some people would say that kid could sell ice to Eskimos. I used that same charm to get though my first few years at school. Even though I rarely turned in my homework, the teachers always knew I would be alright in life. Maybe they thought How could this little con man starve to death? I thought their goal was to make sure children had enough savvy or education to make a living and not be a bum on the street or on government support. We were taught reading, writing and arithmetic, just the basics to get a job and support a family. I was the only person who thought I was a loser because I had no self-love or self-respect; therefore I would take any dare. I had no fear of dying because on the inside I was already dead.

My sister Jo Anne was the second oldest. She was there with my mother when I was born. At that time she was twelve and quickly became my favorite sis. We had so much fun when she would come visit us and drive us around in her big green Buick we called Bill.

According to the Chinese calendar we were both born the year of the monkey and so was mom; we were all three kind of light-hearted and funny, like a monkey I guess.

One day Josie, that’s what I called Jo Anne, came to see my brother and me and asked if we wanted to see our father. I was really happy too because it had been a few years and I had been to a fatherless boy’s camp. I knew he was out there somewhere and now I was going to get to see him.

We lived right beside the railroad tracks and we were told to meet Josie on the coming Thursday on the other side of the tracks. We were told to be sure and not tell anyone what we were going to do. We kept our word and met her there at eight in the morning, just as school was supposed to be starting.

I didn’t know why at the time, but she took us to buy some new clothes and then we drove to the Chicago airport and to my amazement she put us on a plane. I was in total shock because I did not have a clue where I was going. I just liked the whole adventure. I never thought about what our mom was going through back home. She thought we were in school and she was working so that never crossed our minds. I was in a dream state so it was not even registering to me that I was being kidnapped.

When our plane landed in San Francisco it was still daylight and I got to see the Golden Gate Bridge. Wow! What a great day. I was like a kid in a candy store. The ladies on the plane were so pretty and nice and they fed us. That was the most special I had ever felt in my whole life.

My dad, his new wife along with her two kids, a teenaged boy and girl, and my oldest brother were there waiting at the airport to pick us up. They told us how great California was and how much they loved living there. I soon began to love the place where they lived but their house was small and I missed my mom.

Within a few days I said it sure was nice to see them again, but I wanted to go home. That was when they told me I was not going home. When I asked about my mom and all my friends they were not moved. They didn’t seem to care about my feelings of being homesick and missing my old life.

That was the moment I realized everything was going to be different. I was no longer going to be my own boss. My stepmother was the big boss and she seemed to me to be an unhappy, controlling witch. As for my big strong dad, well he was a big fat wimp who never dared cross her. When it