The Colors of My Rainbow

By Timothy Patrick Butler

The book is in three parts first is an autiobiographical essay. The second part is a screenplay based on true events and partly fictionalized. The third part of the book is several of the authors poems.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 17, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669812791

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Copyright © 2022 by Timothy Patrick Butler.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

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Rev. date: 02/17/2022

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Contents

PART 1

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

PART 2 Screenplay

PART 3 Poems

There are many heroes in life to admire like the disabled who fight courageous battles or Paul Newman or Andy Warhol. Finally, to my angel Dr. Jane M. Mathisen, whose care and compassion rescued me from the deepest depths of hell. This book is dedicated to them.

PART 1

CHAPTER 1

As we all know, life can be beautiful, or it can be a nightmare. I have had my share of nightmares since I suffer from paranoid schizophrenia. I have also seen many of my dreams come true and witnessed great beauty in the world. This part is about the beauty that I have seen and experienced.

I am just going to start picking memories in no specific order. I’ll start with my home in a suburb of Philadelphia. My street was once the prettiest in all of Delaware County. On both sides, maple trees lined the curb, and a beautiful green canopy of green leaves hung over the street. Once when I was young and in love, I would play the sweetest music and daydream, looking out my window into a vision of emerald green. I would play stickball with my cousin in the middle of the street. In our backyard, my nieces and nephews would play keep away from our little shih tzu dog, Koko, who was so happy to run away with the ball. At the end of the street was the community pool. On the basketball courts, there we had a lot of fun. In the pool, there was a time I was in great shape. I was discreet about it, but I liked being watched or watching the women myself. I always loved swimming whether it was a pool or bodysurfing in the ocean. I parasailed over the Pacific Ocean in Maui and snorkeled there and in Jamaica. In Jamaica, I climbed Dunn’s River Falls and rafted down a river there. Our summers were spent in Wildwood, New Jersey. At Sportland Pool, if you could be picked to do a trick on the trampoline, you get free tickets to the diving show they put on at night. They also had a bear you could wrestle. Our favorite place to eat was Sam’s Pizza. And if you passed by fudge kitchen on the boardwalk, they always had free samples of fudge for you. My grandmother’s house was on Fourteenth Street in Wildwood. I loved the sounds of the boardwalk you could hear from the upstairs bedroom and the smell of the salty ocean air coming through the house. The house was so loving and comfortable, open to our large Irish family and friends.

We would go fishing on my grandfather’s yacht, which was called the Leprechaun. The boat was a thirty-eight-foot Rybovich, which my brother was trying to restore to its former glory. We would fish for marlin and tuna as well as flounder and bluefish. I thought yellowfin tuna was the coolest-looking fish. Years later, my father got his own boat. One day while fishing in the Baltimore Canyon, there was a boat about sixty-five yards away from our boat. They were reeling in a small fish while on the troll. Suddenly, a thousand-pound blue marlin came out of the water, trying to pounce on the fish the guy was reeling in. The fish was all lit up in amazing colors, and sheer size of the fish was awesome. My dad called that boat on the radio, saying, Captain, that fish put on a hell of show. While sixty miles off in the canyons, you would see all kinds of life from huge sea turtles to huge sunfish or porpoising dolphins and whales. I once saw thousands and thousands of schooling tuna at the surface. There were so many tuna. My grandfather who was half blind said he even saw them. You would see the little flying fish hovering and flying a few feet above the water, going thirty yards or more in the air. You would see the fins of the sharks breaking the surface, cruising. The Gulf Stream was present when you were out that far and the water was not like inshore water but rather it was a beautiful cobalt-blue color. Once while on our way out, the water was so clear you could see the bottom at five fathom bank, which is thirty feet down. At the end of the day, the captain would say, Wind them up. We going run for home. You would listen to the radio chatter between captains on how well they did. It was pretty pleasant to be on the bridge of the boat running for the inlet with a southeast wind and a following sea. You would run up your tuna or marlin flags on the outrigger, and the humming of the synchronized engines would pulsate your whole spirit. It would take several hours of running to come in from the continental shelf, and after a while, you could pick up the Ferris wheel or a big condo on the shore on the horizon. Sometimes you hit a refreshing squall on the way in. Now it was late afternoon. The air temperature was nice. The sun was starting its descent. You would see the other big yachts running for shore. A feeling of satisfaction would come over you when you cleared the inlet jetties at Cape May. Your boat would idle slowly through the harbor. You opened another cold one and see the parade of boats making their way to their docks. You peek at the eighty-pound bluefin that was in the cooler when you went for another beer. The seagulls would fly behind your stern, looking for a handout. You would dock the boat, clean the boat, and take the fish to the cleaning station at the end of the pier. It was the kind of day you lived for a true summer fantasy. Now time to drive home. You stopped at Burger King, then