How YHWH God can use Anyone to do Anything. HIS Word says He uses the Foolish things of the world to Confound the Wise! He prepares His Foolish Vessels before they even know He will use them.

1. It was around 1999 when God spoke into my heart with His still, small voice that He wanted me to get some index cards and write on each card one miracle that He had done for me.  I was  amazed at how many cards I actually needed!  Was the huge volume of miracles because He is  so good and faithful, or was it because I am such  a screw-up that I need a lot more miracles than the average person just to stay alive?  I think it is a combination of a very good God and a very incompetent Maureen.  His Word says that when I am weak, He is strong.  It also says that He uses the foolish (that would be me!) to confound the wise.  First Corinthians I v 27: But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty.

2.  Around 2001, I knew He wanted me to start to ‘flesh out’ the info on the index cards.  I then wrote a page or two about the various things He had done for me.  I just did it a little bit at a time so it wasn’t such an overwhelming task.  (Imagine, being overwhelmed by too many miracles!)  It is actually a very encouraging, happy task remembering and reliving the fun, funny, and sometimes scary things He has taken me through.  The bottom line is:  HE IS ALWAYS FAITHFUL!!!   And in the very near future, possibly sooner than we think, we may all need to know that He is so great that He can keep us safe and well even in the most adverse and seemingly impossible circumstances.  NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR HIM!

3. In January of 2004, I felt like He was telling me to put all of these papers into book form.  When?  In my spare time? I have no spare time!!!  (One thing I have learned about God is He seldom tells you to do something that you want to do or have the time or ability to do.  He will, however, tell you to do things that are so out of your realm of experience or expertise that it is a very memorable experience when He is working through you. It is the ultimate in "on the job training".  You will see what I mean as you read this book.  I also think He uses people like me so He will get all the credit!  Everyone who knows me realizes I could never have accomplished anything of value  or substance on my own.  In my life, I am "just along for the ride".  He definitely uses the foolish things to confound the wise.

4.   As I am finally putting this into book form, by using an actual web site as a place to type all my notes and possibly do this as an e-book, I have found the perfect vehicle to cut and paste off of my Note Pad on my computer.  How convenient!  And this web site is one of the few things I will never lose! And, to absolutely show me it was His idea for me to write such a bizarre book which includes so many bits of info and so many different streams of thought that it would be just about impossible to find a good name, the title just popped into my mind.  And I know it was God who popped it in there!  AMUSING GRACE!  God is so much fun and so funny and He is so smart and loving and protective of His servants. And this title totally explains my life story.

5.  God is using a woman who has had two closed head injuries (whatever that means) and who has to totally depend on Him to lead and guide me through some very dangerous territory with some very vicious beasts [and I am talking about the CORRUPT courts and judges and the sheriff in Bedford County Virginia, and the beyond corrupt and  evil US District Court...and I write that with ALL DUE  RESPECT,] and many years ago He led me through the process of cleaning up the education (read that  INDOCTRINATION)  system in Charleston, South Carolina. I think He is using me to show how He really can do anything with anyone!  As long as you are willing, He is more than able!  
                                              
 6.  When God ( originally written as YHWH and probably pronounced Yahvay) first told me to write this book, I was telling my husband, Bill, that maybe He just wanted me to write this book for our family.  We know from scripture that things will just keep getting worse in this world, and maybe we will just need this, as a family, to remember how He has always met all of our needs according to His riches in glory through YESHUA aka Christ Jesus.  Now that would have been easy.  I wouldn’t even have to type that.  However, the next morning when I woke up, I knew I was supposed to read out of a different bible than I usually use.  I picked up an old Catholic bible and the page I stuck my finger in had Daniel chapter 3.  My eyes were drawn to verse 99.  (There is no Daniel chapter 3 verse 99 in most bibles.  This was the Douay version from 1949)  It read: “The most high God hath wrought signs and wonders towards me.  It hath seemed good therefore to me to publish His signs, because they are great; and his wonders because they are mighty; and His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and His power to all generations.”  I am truly happy to do what He tells me to do.  I just wish I could find the right keys on this keyboard a little bit faster. It’s obvious that He wants me to write this book.  So here I sit typing this, and at some point, there you will sit reading this.  As you read this, please know that I am not the least bit special that He should or would do anything for me that He wouldn’t do for you.  God’s word says in Acts 10:34  "Peter opened his mouth, and said, Of a truth I perceive that God (YHWH) is no respecter of persons."  So, since we know that He is not a respecter of persons, you can know that if you ask Him to help you, He will.  If you ask Him to use you, He will.  Just be ready to trust and obey.  It can be a lot of  work, (but remember, we have been bought with a price and we are not our own)   and sometimes downright exhausting, but oh, is it ever rewarding and exciting…. when it is not too challenging and tiring!  When He starts using you, keep a notebook! You will need it if He tells you to write a book. (IF HE HAS YOU READING THIS BOOK, I CAN PRETTY MUCH GUARANTEE YOU THAT HE IS PLANNING ON USING YOU, WHETHER YOU WANT TO BE USED OR NOT.  UNFORTUNATELY FOR YOU, IF YOU ARE READING THIS TO SEE WHAT HE IS DOING SO YOU CAN HURT HIS PEOPLE, HE WILL USE WHATEVER MEANS IS NECESSARY TO STOP YOU FROM HURTING HIS PROPERTY.   HIS SERVANTS ARE BOUGHT AND PAID FOR BY THE KING OF KINGS.  FORTUNATELY YOU CAN SWITCH SIDES AND WORK FOR THE ALMIGHTY GOD OF THE UNIVERSE.  JUST ASK HIM TO SHOW YOU WHAT HE WANTS YOU TO DO.  IF WE CONFESS OUR SINS HE IS FAITHFUL AND JUST TO FORGIVE US.  If I put a scripture in this book and do not tell you where to find it, just go to www.biblegateway.com to look it up quickly and easily.          
                                                                                                                                                        

Chapter One  *********   IN THE BEGINNING       *******                                                         

1.  Hi!  Welcome to my WEIRD WORLD!  It's a great place to visit but I don't think you would want to live here. Everything I am putting into this book is THE TRUTH, THE WHOLE TRUTH AND NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH, NOT MEANT TO DECEIVE OR MISLEAD IN ANY WAY.  My name is Maureen. I was raised a Catholic with very little knowledge of God’s Word and no desire to read that long, boring book.  As a Catholic I was taught that if I read the Bible, it would only confuse me.  I was taught that Catholics go to heaven and everyone else goes to hell. (And, of course, Catholics do get a special advantage of being able to burn their sins off in Purgatory. It is a special place where if you die with venial...that means little...sins attached to you, you can go to a fiery furnace where you can stay for however many years it takes to burn off  the sins so you can go to see Jesus (Yeshua) and your other family members in heaven. And only Catholics go to heaven. If another Catholic you loved died, you could pay for a Mass to be said for them and that would take years off amount of time they would have to stay in purgatory's fires. Of course, you had to pay Holy Mother Church money to get indulgences. Think of it as a "get out of jail free" card.  (except it does cost money, but to get a loved one out of the fires of a non-existent purgatory, if you loved the one who just died, surely you can spend some cold hard cash to help that poor soul in purgatory to get to get out of the hot vaporous fire!)   

2.  In the town where I grew up, Youngstown, Ohio, being Catholic had many major advantages.  You see, Youngstown was a Mafia town.  It even had the dubious distinction of being known as Murder Town USA when I was younger.  Mafia people could go out and commit a mortal (which means very, very bad!) sin, such as blowing someone up in their car with a bomb...or missing Mass on Sunday (yeah, both of these things could send you to hell.  Go figure! And if you have done either of these things, you may as well eat meat on Friday, which could also be a ticket to hell because you are on your way to hell anyway.)  But, if they (meaning anyone who  killed someone or ate meat on Friday) could get to a thing the Catholics called 'confession' before something else they called 'Mass' they could go to 'communion' so that  any other Catholic there at Mass would know that they love God.  And the penance to get rid of your sins was something like saying 3 'Our Fathers'  (that would be the Lord's prayer), 3 'Holy Mary's' where you pray a rote verse to the human mother of Jesus, and 3 'Glory Be's'.  I feel downright silly writing this, because I believed this for 32 years of my life!  And I had no idea there were so many pedophiles (or any pedophiles) in the Catholic Church...or anything as sick as a pedophile anywhere at all! Yuck!  (And only in the last 10 years did I find out that some people become pedophiles because they had been sexually abused themselves as a child.  Interspersed in this book will be many things I have learned along the way, some pleasant and helpful, and some that are very unpleasant and painful, but almost always there will be a remedy which God has shown me for the pain, and it is usually a spiritual remedy which is freely given since it was already paid for on Calvary.)  

3. WHAT A RACKET!  The things we were taught as Catholics were so bizarre!  How could it be a mortal (meaning deadly) sin to eat meat on a Friday and then all of a sudden the pope declares that you will no longer go to hell if you do that?  And for the dear Catholics reading this, I do not say this to condemn you or make you feel foolish.  I believed this for practically half of my life!  I did not even begin to question this obvious nonsense until I was 32, and even then I didn't get out of that cult until I was 37.  I remember as a little girl telling my playmate, Debby Farkas, that she was going to hell.  I liked her, and I had to warn her that she needed to become a Catholic.  I was in a lot of trouble for that, but I was only trying to help.  I was young enough (about 7) and dumb enough to believe the lies, and I was not (until I was 32) open to any teaching from anyone who was not Catholic.  Why believe someone who is going to hell?                    

4. A very condensed version of my early life may be helpful in understanding my mind set once God’s (YHWH's) miracles started to happen.  I think it is awesome how   in Romans 8:28 He tells us that "we know that all things work together for good to them that love God (YHWH), to them who are the called according to His purpose."    He uses things that can seem to be bad to get us to the spiritual and geographical places where He wants us to be for His best use of our lives.  And, after all, (I Corinthians 7:23)  "Ye are bought with a price; be not ye the servants of men."  For some reason, Jesus (Yeshua) bought us so we are not our own. For some reason I do not understand, He gave his life to pay a debt we could not pay.  He paid with his life!  And because Abraham was willing to sacrifice his son Isaac, that created a covenant between YHWH and Abraham.  In an act of incredible reciprocity YHWH then gave His Son for us.  But we will not get into that in detail in this book.  You may want to get Grant Jeffrey's book THE SIGNATURE OF GOD for that information.

5. I was born in 1950 to very conventional and quiet parents, Mary and Leo.  I have an older sister, Marian (fake name), and a younger brother, Chad (fake name).  I also had another younger brother, Mark (fake name), but he died in 2003 from liver failure which was caused by alcoholism.

6.  I went to Catholic schools for 12 years where I was totally indoctrinated.  The only memorable things about my school years were my 8th grade when it was announced that JFK was shot.  The little boy behind me, Charles, started to laugh and I beat him up.  I was tiny but it is amazing how strong a small person can get when infuriated!  I really think I hurt that big boy.  And now, in 2009, with God's help and the strength one attains from righteous anger, I do believe I will be doing some legal and FINANCIAL DAMAGE TO SOME EVEN BIGGER BOYS!  God's (YHWH's) WORD does say that "No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD, and their righteousness is of me, saith the LORD."  And, just the other day I was given a course I was not able to afford because of some bizarre things that have happened to my family which you will see closer to the end of this book.  I knew I needed to get this course because it will show me how to end the situation I find myself in right now.  And My Daddy God (YHWH) asked some sweet people to give this to me! I did not ask them for it and it is a very expensive program for someone who has been made homeless by Banker Bastards (and when we lost our home and land we lost our normal way of earning a living) which would have taken me over a month to be able to purchase. If you are in a legal jam you can go to www.thepowermall.com and ask for the Jurisinformatics course. (Please get it from www.thepowermall.com)  I think it is about $300., but  is worth about $3,000,000.  God has so many good and smart and generous people working for Him!  Another course you can get there is Jurisdictionary which will teach you how to be your own lawyer and file papers and pleadings.  But I just got off topic!   Getting off topic is a recurring nuisance with me because of  head injuries which you can experience as I write this book.   Back to 1964...    

7. The only other thing that sticks out was in my first year of high school, 1965, at Cardinal Mooney, in Sociology class.  Eva, who I met in high school, and who will be a recurring name in this book because she has been a recurring person in many events in my life, was in that Sociology class with me. The teacher was Mr. G..  All he seemed to do was talk about the female anatomy, legs being his specialty.  As a female student, it was extremely boring.  I knew my parents were spending a lot of money  to send their four kids to Catholic schools so I resented it.  When I reached my limit, I raised my hand and asked Mr. G. ( politely) if he ever did anything to prepare for class other than look at women’s legs.  He was furious!  He left the room briefly, then returned and told me to go to the principal’s office.  As I was going to Father Flynn’s office, a very angry nun, the dean of women, with a fierce look on her face, came stomping toward me.  I did not want to mess with Sister Floyd. She was a very harsh disciplinarian.  When she got within a few feet of me, she just burst into uncontrollable laughter. She told me she couldn’t pull off the angry nun act.  Then she told me it was about time someone said that to Mr. G. and she was glad I had done it.  That was actually the only time I ever saw her smile!
                                                                                                                                                           
8. The only one who was angry with me was the principal, Fr. Flynn.  My punishment was to sit in the office during Sociology class the rest of the school year and read  my book by myself.  Some punishment!  I was in an air conditioned office while the kids in my class were sweating in the miserably hot classroom!  Sure was better than being in that old man's class where all you could learn about was women's legs.  Many teachers, including one of my favorite teachers, Mr.Ruffing, came up to me and thanked me and congratulated me for what I had done.  Only Flynn was mad, and looking back, in light of what has come out recently about pedophilia in the press, I wonder if  Mr. G. and Flynn may have ….oh never mind... let's not go there.  That experience really taught me to speak up when I saw that something was wrong.  Surprisingly, my mom and dad were not upset with me either!  My only question is.... WHY DID IT TAKE A 15 YEAR OLD KID TO POINT OUT THE OBVIOUS?  EVERYBODY SEEMED TO KNOW HE WAS A DIRTY OLD MAN YET HE KEPT HIS JOB! (Maybe he went to Confession every Saturday so it was all OK.)

9. I HAD A VERY SERIOUS CRUSH  on a boy who was a year older than me and who went to both Saint Dominic's grade school and Cardinal Mooney High School with me, but he hardly ever spoke to me, except at Bingo at Saint Dominic's where we both worked.  Every Thursday night I would work at St. Dominic's School selling Bingo cards, and that boy named Bill worked there also, checking the Bingo card when someone won.  He would make lots of money in tips from the person who just won. I never let anyone know I wanted him to be my boyfriend, because he was in the "in crowd" and I was not, so it would never work out!  In fact, to be sure he never knew I liked him I would always punch him in the stomach when I would see him at his locker.  Good cover, huh?  (Yeah, you're right, I am weird! Remember Bill as he will make an unexpected and uninvited appearance 10 years later in 1974 in this literary fiasco )

10.  One of the first conversations I ever had with him was about predestination.  He thought we were predestined, and I thought he was nuts.  Now I have to say he was right because I read it in the bible.  Romans chapter 8, verse 29 and 30: "Whom the Lord foreknew, He did predestinate."  Bill never ever asked me out on a date and I would say that it was his loss, because I really can be a lot of fun to be with, especially if you have a warped sense of humor.  Many years later I would have ample opportunity to get even with him for never dating me in high school.  I must admit that even though he never asked me out on a date I still think about him often.  ( I  am married, but my husband understands how important a childhood crush can be, so it’s OK with him that I still think about that High School crush.  Even silly little things that happen can turn our lives in directions which can eventually lead to unimaginable destinations.)  

11. When graduating from High School, we were told that we’d look back at high school someday and realize these were the best years of our lives.  I felt suicidal when I heard that!  If that was the best, how could it get any worse?   High School was awful!              

12. After high school, I went to work at the Union National Bank in Youngstown, Ohio, in the bookkeeping department.  Eva and I got an apartment on the top floor of an old house in a safe neighborhood, and Eva worked at one of the branches of Union National.  The best part of working at the bank was going to the Bankers Banquet.  On the way to the very fancy dinner, we picked up Peggy, who also worked at Union National Bank in the book keeping department where I worked. She still lived with her parents.  A really cute dog, small and skinny and hungry, had been dumped out of a car right in front of Peggy's house.  Peggy couldn't keep this cute little dog who we named after Larry, the guy she was dating and then later married. Eva and I decided we would take Larry home to live with us, but females at a bank made next to nothing, so we were not sure how we would afford food for him.  But, if you have a good head on your shoulders, you can always figure out things like providing for your new, skinny, hungry dog!

13.  At the banquet the food actually was good enough for a dog!  We knew we couldn't afford dog food for our brand new dog, so what should we do?  Conveniently we had been served steak so  we ate some and saved some for Larry. Then we did something that only girls could get away with!  Peggy and Eva and I all pretended we were drunk and went around to different tables and asked the guys if we could have their left over steak. We had enough steak for our new dog to last a couple of months!  Larry was the darling of our neighborhood, and while Eva and I were at work, the neighborhood kids would come over and take him out of our always unlocked apartment to play with him.  Something incredibly bizarre happened with Larry one time.  Eva was walking to her Mom's house which was about a mile from where we lived and she had Larry on a leash because they were walking down Midlothian Blvd, a relatively busy 4 lane road.  As they were walking past a cemetery on that road, Larry, a small, maybe 30 pound dog, pulled Eva into the cemetery and took her right to her Grandmother's grave.  Eva didn't even know that her Mom's mother was buried there.  And how the heck would Larry know about that?  And how could a dog have read the grave stone?  This was spooky!  I had seen a picture of Eva's grandma, and she looked so stern, but Eva said she was a nice lady.

14.  Below is what Eva just emailed me regarding her memory of that very strange night:
"I took Larry for a walk in the Summer of 1970.  We were walking up Midlothian Blvd. when I noticed a beautiful lake across the street.  It was surrounded by large trees and it looked so picturesque.  Larry and I crossed the street.  I learned that it was Lake Park Cemetery.  We went up the hill and walked under this enormous old tree so   we could take in the view of the lake. I looked down and the first grave site I saw said Eva Buchner.  I said to myself, "that is my Grandmother's name, could this be her grave?"  I looked at the grave next to her and it said    Walter Buchner, which is my uncle's name.  I thought this must be my family.  So when I returned to our house at Pine Hollow I called my Mom and she confirmed that my Grandmother was buried there.  I told Chuck [Chuck was her boyfriend back then, now he is her husband] about the experience while talking to him on the phone and he said that my Grandmother had called me to her grave to tell me someone close to me was about to die. I asked him how he knew that, was it an old wives tale or something and he said no.....he just knew.   
 
15.  That night we were getting ready for bed and Larry [our dog] seemed to be following someone around our apartment.  No one was there but he looked like he was sniffing and following an invisible person.  We went to bed.  I was sleeping in the living room on the "real bed".  It was your turn to sleep on the cot in the bedroom.  We were falling asleep and all of a sudden Larry started howling.  He was sitting in front of the kitchen window, howling like a wolf.  It sent chills up and down my neck and arms.  The window curtains in the kitchen and in the living room were blowing straight out.  I was getting too frightened to sleep so I went in where you were sleeping and asked you if I could sleep on the floor in there.  You said sure and you went right off to sleep.  I lay on the floor too frightened to sleep.  All of a sudden you sat up in the bed and announced:  "Eva, your Grandmother is here."  I started yelling and then you woke up and you could not believe you said that.  The next day my Uncle Rags died.  He was born on May 10th, just like my Mom and Grandmother."  This is the end of Eva's recollections of that night. I'm glad I didn't know this back then. It sounds scary!]

16.  That night I woke up but I remembered none of this the next day and I do not remember it now either.  But Eva said I told her that her grandma was there in the apartment with us. Some things are better left unremembered.
   
17.  While I was working at the Union National Bank in the Bookkeeping Department (Eva was a teller at a branch of the same bank) I had to buy a new used car.  The car salesman was not someone I liked, but he kept asking me out and I just kept saying no.  Then I found out he was married. Weeks later, I was upstairs in our bookkeeping department that had a series of windows looking over the parking area and I saw the sleazy car salesman pull in and park in his convertible with his wife (I assumed) sitting next to him.  I didn't like that a married man had been asking me out, so when I saw he was pinned in by 2 other cars,  I asked Peggy to go down with me for just a minute.  I walked up to his side of the car and took my long fingernails and scratched the side of his face.  He started to back up and Peggy barely avoided being hit by his car.  I wonder how he explained that to his wife. There was another time that a married man asked me out and I didn't go out with him either even though I did not know he was married because he also seemed like a not very nice guy.  I found out later he was also married.  Soon after I found out that he was married, I saw him in the appliance section at Sears talking to a salesman.  I very immaturely went up and kicked him in his shins. (I am older and wiser now so I would never still do that... well...maybe I would)  The salesman was furious with me and I told him that this guy had been asking me out and I just found out he was married.  Funny thing was, the salesman got very angry at Romeo too, because Romeo was married to the salesman's sister.   Who knows, maybe God was using me way back then to be his avenger against men who would ignore their marriage vows. Good practice for going against those who ignore their sacred oath to the  Constitution, which we will get to towards the end of this book.
                                                                                                                                                                       
18.  Working in the bookkeeping department was fun, but it was a dead end job so I took the bait of going to college when the bank made an offer to reimburse the tuition of any employee with the highest grade point average who went to college at Youngstown State University.  I enrolled only because I knew I would get my money back because school was very easy for me.  My boss at the bank, John F., also enrolled.  I had a 4 point GPA., and that is the highest you can get.   John F. had less than a 3 point. GPA.  The bank reimbursed John, but not me.  Within a year, John was caught embezzling.  The bank lost the money they gave John and also the money John stole. (I can only hope he learned how to embezzle at Youngstown State University...which is a strong possibility since Youngstown was a Mafia town, and criminals need to learn how to do their jobs too.)  

19.  Since I had a higher GPA than John yet I was not reimbursed for my tuition while he was, I thought maybe we needed a union at the bank.  I went to Al Shipka, who was head of the AFL/CIO in Youngstown.  My dad warned me not to trust him, but I didn’t listen.  Dad was right, Shipka was a slimeball. I think it is OK to talk bad about the dead if they really were bad.  (Something funny I heard on WTMA talk radio in Charleston many years ago....spoken by a caller in reference to Ron Brown having died in a plane crash, was "If you are an S.O.B. while you are alive, then you are nothing but a dead S.O.B. when you are dead.")  So, Al Shipka is no longer a slimeball.  He is however, a dead S.O.B.

20.  The Union National Bank was a big, fancy, old bank with a balcony across the second floor from which you could look down into the main part of the bank.  I would often take our dog Larry to work with me. The first time I did this was when I was driving to work and saw him running after my car.  I did not have time to take him back home, so I put him into the car and took him with me.  I had to take him in to work with me, and nobody said a word about it!  Larry was so cute and the girls in the proof department and the ones I worked with in Bookkeeping all loved Larry...so why not take him to work? (There was nothing in the employee manual anywhere that said you cannot bring your dog to work.  If it was not permissible, surely it would have mentioned pets in the book!) At a later date I was standing at the desk of one of the Vice Presidents of the bank, Mr. Hoyer, with my back to the balcony.  He looked up at me and then covered his eyes with his hand and rubbed them and then looked back up at the balcony.  He looked at me with a very concerned look on his face and told me he would have sworn he just saw a dog walk across the balcony.  I put on my most serious face and told him that I didn't think he should tell that to anyone else and maybe he should be sure to get a good night’s sleep.  We did try a little bit harder to keep Larry in our bookkeeping department then.

21.  I think there was so much embezzling going on that none of the big shots had time to notice a dog.  Not only was John F. embezzling, so was our big boss Richard.  And just recently I found out that the banks regularly steal from their customers.  It's called "Fractional Reserve Banking" and these crooks in their fancy 3 piece suits do not really loan us any money!  They get our signature on a promissory note and then use that as collateral to print money out of nothing!  And then they have the nerve to charge us interest on the money they created from our signatures!  But we will get into that at the end of this book. It is not even unusual for things to be stolen out of a safety deposit box.  Come on, now... where do you think the term "bank robber" came from?

22.  One of the most upsetting and frightening things I had ever experienced happened after I was walking up the long and somewhat steep bridge to get to the parking  garage where I always left my car.  A friend of my cousin Danny was a guard who I knew because he worked for a company that delivered money to the bank in an armored car.  He offered me a ride to get my car.  I took what I thought was a kind offer of a ride up that steep incline on the bridge in his new red car.  When we got into the multilevel parking garage, instead of taking me to my car, he pulled in right beside another new car and he pulled in so tight to it that I did not think I would even be able to open the door on my side of his car.  He turned off his car and pulled out his gun and put it on his lap.  Then he pulled out his penis.  I had never been so scared in my entire life!    My mind goes blank at this point and the memory still makes my heart race and my stomach turn.  I had no idea how strong my skinny little 100 pound body could be, but I opened the door of his new car into the door of the nice car next to us and did so with such force that I was able to get out.  That experience when I was about 19 ( I don’t even know if I told Eva about that)  would come back to my memory about 40 years later and have a serious impact on how I handled another upsetting incident.  What a miserable memory!  I never told my cousin Danny about this because he had threatened me with throwing me over a cliff when I was younger and I did believe he might do that. I never saw that guard again in the bank so maybe he quit because he was afraid of being fired or arrested.

23  Soon after that unpleasant incident had occurred, Al Shipka, (the ex-slimeball who is now a dead S.O.B.) who ran the union, who my dad had warned me not to trust, told Earl Brauniger, the bank president, that I was trying to start a union.  Brauniger fired me and told me I would never get another job in Youngstown.  If he had  fired me for opening up a whole lot of different savings accounts under phony names to get free stainless steel flatware,  that would have been OK.  (I didn't stop doing that until I opened one with the name "Hawk Tooey."  Then my boss thought I had gone a little too far and told me to stop.  Peggy was the one who suggested that awful name! But the boss who told me I had to stop getting free silverware was taking free money!  How fair is that?)  But, as just mentioned, my boss Richard was embezzling just like John F. was doing!  What a funny place to work!  And now, 40 years later, I find out that banks are constantly stealing from their customers!  God's Word says "Give, and it will be given unto you."  It looks like the reverse is true too.  "Steal and it shall be stolen from you".  In a court case you will see when you get to 2007, the [dishonest] Judge had to dismiss my case with prejudice (more on that toward the end of this book) so I would not get questions I was asking in the discovery phase of my case answered, BECAUSE IT HAS TO BE KEPT SECRET THAT THIS COUNTRY IS IN BANKRUPTCY AND HAS BEEN FOR OVER 70 YEARS!  DO NOT TELL ANYBODY THAT, PLEASE!!!  IT HAS TO BE KEPT A SECRET!  (I sure hope I can trust you!) I STILL KNOW PEOPLE IN yOUNGSTOWN SO IF YOU TELL THE SECRET I MAY FIND SOMEONE TO BREAKA YOUSE FACE!

24.  Congressman Jim Trafficant (who was also from Mooney High School) made the mistake of talking about the Bankruptcy of this country on the floor of Congress.  He was then put in prison on trumped up charges for many years.  Look, not everyone knows that the lousy banks create new money out of your signature when you apply for a loan!  The MONEY CHANGERS DO NOT LOAN YOU MONEY!  You will see in this book why our gentle Savior was so ANGRY ABOUT THE MONEY CHANGERS THAT HE FASHIONED A WHIP AND DROVE THOSE DUPLICITOUS EVIL CREATURES OUT OF THE TEMPLE!  Present day BANKERS are the equivalent of the MONEY CHANGERS of the Bible.  When you deal with a bank, you can pretty much assume that the whole transaction is based on fraud!  They create new money out of your application for the loan!  And then they charge you interest on what they supposedly loaned to you!   But that is not part of 1950 to 1974, so I am going to get back on topic and TRY to stay there!  That little piece of info on bank chicanery will come closer to the end of this book.   Stay tuned for coming attractions!

25.  I was fired from Union National Bank and the bank president told me I would never get a job in Youngstown again. So, even though I hated cigarette smoke and alcohol, I went to a Mafia bar, The Lime Lighter, to get a job as a waitress.  No bank dares to tell the Mafia guys who they can or can’t hire.  Mafia guys don’t need to borrow from a bank…they can steal whatever they want!  My boss at the Lime Lighter was Nick Warino. (real name because he is now dead.)  He was such a genuinely nice guy!  He would bring in popular bands, and if a group who was playing would say something I found offensive, he would warn them not to do it again.  It was funny when I asked him to make one specific big name singer stop being vulgar, and the guy then asked Nick who complained.  Nick told him it was one of his waitresses, and this guy got so upset!  Nick then explained to the singer with the big filthy mouth and the tiny filthy brain that it’s a lot easier to hire a good band that it is to find a good waitress.

26.  Nick was so considerate that when one of his friends threw up in his office, he would not tell someone else to clean that mess up.  Nick took care of it himself.  Nick would also have the cops run the license plates on any guy who asked me out.  Usually I would not go out with a guy who drank, but one guy was special.  He had been on a football team my little brother Chad loved, the Miami Dolphins.  His plate did not come up when Nick's cop friend ran it, so Nick said he was probably an undercover FBI guy. I had already told this guy we could go on a picnic in the park as long as my little brother Chad could come along, and he had agreed, so my brother was all excited about it.  This guy followed me home to my parents’ house and came in for a little while. We were sitting in the living room talking, and all of a sudden, he decided he wanted more than conversation.  I told him to leave me alone and he didn't.  I was scared because I knew if I screamed and my dad came down, this huge guy could really hurt my dad.  So without thinking, I took the heel of my hand and pushed up on the bottom of his nose.  I had heard that could stop an attack.  WOW! That was so quick and easy, but I don't think it was easy on him.  I never saw (or wanted to see) him again.  The way he walked out of my house he reminded me of Herman Munster, stiff arms and legs and looking quite disoriented.  He did not come back for the picnic, so Chad didn't get to meet the guy from the Dolphins.  I never saw him again either.

27.  Nick took me to a downtown bar one night after the Lime Lighter was closed  (He was not my boy friend, just my friend, and he knew I didn't drink so I was a very cheap companion to take to a bar)  We went to a place owned by Louie D.   Louie was gross and despicable. (and that is the nicest thing I can say about him!)  At the time  I didn’t know it, but he was a Mafia Boss.  Nick and I were sitting at the bar and Louie D. was behind the bar.  Louie started telling Nick he could greatly increase his revenues if he had the waitresses wear low cut tops and very short skirts and put the coins for the juke box (that was sure a long time ago, huh?) on the bottom shelf.  Then if a guy wanted four quarters for a dollar so he could play the juke box, the poor girl would have to bend over in her indecent clothes to get him the quarters off of the bottom shelf.  My mouth is bigger than my brain, so I absolutely lost it with Louie D. and loudly told him some very unkind things which I was thinking about his miniscule brain and his ludicrously out of proportion anatomy.  Nick took me by the arm and walked me out of there, and then he told me I had better leave town fast, because nobody talks to Louie like that and lives.  I guess my big mistake was “disrespecting” that slob in front of other old mafia fools.  These ancient immature selfish children can’t let anyone do that.  I could tell Nick was desperate for me to move away, and since I liked him so much, I did.  But I didn't leave real fast, because even then I somehow knew that God would always take care of me.  Louie will also make another cameo unexpected appearance a few years into the future in this Literary Fiasco.

 
Chapter 2   *******  STAYING ALIVE  ***********

1.  So, where do you go when you are running (or driving) from the Mafia?  Well, Eva had recently married a guy in the Navy, Chuck, who was out at sea for a few months, so I went down to Charleston, South Carolina to stay with Eva, (who was and is the best friend anyone could ever have,) until Chuck came back.  (to this day, I don’t know if my mom and dad knew why I was going to see Eva in such a hurry.  I don't think I ever told them about Louie.) Once I was in Charleston, I started to wonder why anyone in their right mind would live in Youngstown, Ohio for most of the year and just go to a nice place like the ocean for their vacation.  Why not live at  the beach and go some place gross and disgusting like Youngstown  (I write this with no apologies to the people in Youngstown…look around you and see if you don’t agree!)  for your 2 weeks vacation?  I found a job at a place in Charleston called Dino’s.  I worked for and with some of the nicest people in the universe.  Mike Tolomea and Joe Horst were the owners.  Bob Elder was the manager.  My first night on the job, I saw my first Palmetto Bug.  (That is a huge roach on steroids!)  I dropped my  tray in the crowded dining room, pointed at the huge bug and screamed.  They were not amused (neither was I!) but they didn’t fire me and I didn't quit.  

2.  Soon after I started to work at Dino’s I was stopped for speeding ...going 55 in a 50 mph zone ...on I 26 by a state cop whose last name was Kennerly.  (His name has not been changed to protect the guilty!  Eva is still my friend and she could testify to this if anyone in South Carolina knows this despicable creature.)  I was stopped after I got off of work so it was probably about midnight. Kennerly wouldn't take a check (he said I had to pay it immediately in cash and I was too young and dumb to realize that this was probably not normal) and he wanted $25. if I recall correctly- (now this was in 1971, when $25. would probably equate to about $125. in today's money.)  I didn’t have that kind of cash on me, so he made me leave my car on the side of the road, I 26, and he drove me to Eva’s house where I could borrow $25 from her.  On the drive to Eva’s house he seemed like such a nice guy.  I was dumb enough to think all cops were good.  He told me what he really would like to do instead of being a cop was be a veterinarian and take care of animals.  What a nice man. Any guy who wants to be a vet is OK in my book! 

3.  It took about 20 minutes to get to Eva’s  house, and he waited in his car while I went in to borrow the money.  He then was going to drive me back to my car which we left on the side of the road on Interstate 26.  However, when we got on Interstate 26, he went west instead of east.  He explained this to me by saying he had to go pick up blood for the Medical University from the other side of the state.  Then, Mr. Wanna-be-a-vet started driving very fast.  He was even speeding through rest stops, but never stopped at one, and started asking me if I had ever been to an orgy.  I was scared.  Fortunately, he had a pair of brass knuckles on his floor. [another red flag!]  I put them on but I am not real big or strong, so I didn’t know if they would really help.  
                                                                                                                                                            
4.  I should have been back to Eva’s within 40 minutes of  leaving her house.  By now, it was way more than 2 hours. Someone kept contacting Kennerly while we were supposedly going to pick up blood.  We never met anyone to pick anything up and at some point he turned around and went East on 26.  I later found out that Eva had kept calling the S.C. State Police to see what happened to her friend.

5.  I really think I would have been raped and murdered if it wasn’t for Eva’s persistent calls. After that, I was stopped for anything or nothing by the state cops, never ticketed, but definitely harassed.  Once when I went to Ohio to visit my family, I mentioned to my parents what was going on with the cops down in South Carolina.  Dad called someone at the Ohio Highway Patrol who told Dad they would call the S. Carolina cops and tell them to stop it.  I was never bothered by these freaks again. [An interesting side note,…about five years ago I was thinking about Kennerly and it dawned on me he may still be terrorizing women.  I called the State Police in South Carolina (from my safe place in Virginia) to see if he was accused of other improper behavior.  I WAS TOLD THAT HE HAD RECENTLY RETIRED AT A VERY HIGH POSITION.  Have you ever heard of the Cream of the Crop?  For him, I would change that to the Cream of the Crap. Yeah, the cream always rises to the top!  Look at our government and court system. You decide if an O or an A should go between the  CR and the P.]
 
6.  I worked in the back room at Dino’s for about 2 years.  They had really good folk singers there.  Most customers were from the Navy Base, the Medical University, the College of Charleston and the Citadel.  I seriously thought that the Citadel was a place for retarded young men.  I was so nice to them until someone informed me that it was the equivalent of West Point…and these very retarded guys had no excuse for their behavior!  At that point I was not just the "Back Room Waitress", I was the "Back Room Bouncer".  It was amazing how quickly the 'Citadel Retarded Children' grew up when forced to clean up their own messes and behave like adults. At one point while I was there, an older woman came in with a gun and I was asked to get it from her.  I declined, because I would not want to be as mean to an old woman as I was to the Citadel guys.
                                                                                                                                                          
7.  One of the patrons, Monty, was a very nice alcoholic who drank way too many wine coolers.  He was a divorced dad, and the bosses at Dino’s didn’t seem to mind at all that once I became concerned about his drinking, every time (after his first wine cooler of the night) Monty ordered another wine cooler, I would just take him a free cup of coffee instead.  (Mike and Joe knew I was doing this and they did not care.) Monty was just coming for the camaraderie, and he could have that without the stinking alcohol.  Monty actually quit drinking and told me that he did it because of the fact that when all he could have was one wine cooler a night, he then  realized that was more than enough and he quit drinking altogether. What nice bosses I had.  Mike Tolomea and Joe Horst and Bob Elder cared more about the customers than about the gross receipts. That is so unusual and refreshing!

8.  One of the regulars, a navy guy, asked me after work if I could give him and his buddies a ride back to the base, because their car wouldn’t start. I happened to have an extra car at work (long, scary, convoluted story so we won’t go into it)  and instead I just told them to take my extra car that was in the parking lot.  I didn’t even know their names and they never tipped, but they were real nice guys.  I kind of wondered if they would ever bring it back because it was weeks before I saw them again.  When they brought it back they had gotten me new tires and, since the brakes failed while they had it, they had replaced the brakes also.  What was so nice about that is that before I loaned my car to them, I had a dream that was very real that my brakes failed up in North Charleston on Park Circle close to the Navy base.  It was scary to not be able to stop when I put my foot on the brake in the dream.  But I seldom went to Park Circle in North Charleston.  The brakes failed (while the Navy guys were driving my car) in North Charleston on Park Circle close to the Navy Base.  God can really use dreams to tell us what is coming, and that was the first prophetic dream he had ever given me. One thing I know from experience now is that if a dream is very vivid and real and I can remember it as if I had experienced it in real life, it is probably from God, either to warn us of what is coming or to tell us to pray against what we dreamed.  These same guys who got me new tires and brakes had saved up tips they would have given me every night they were in Dino's on their 3 month shore leave.  They gave me the saved up tips all at once right before they shipped out again. What a nice surprise! 

9.  There was another Navy guy who came in there a lot, Steve, and I remember him telling me that he was on the USS Liberty, a big navy ship that was bombed by Israel, and I could tell he so wanted to tell me a secret, but he never did.  Now I find out that the Liberty Attack was ordered with the approval of Lyndon Johnson.  (Just like almost always, we did an attack on ourselves so we could justify attacking someone else, just like our leaders did on September 11, 2001.)  The Liberty attack was what I now know is a False Flag Terror operation where our own country attacks our own people under the flag of another country so we then have an excuse to attack that innocent country which was blamed for the attack.  For proof, (and do not get angry with me!  I am the Watchman on the Wall, not the terrorist!  It is my job for the King to warn what is coming so you cannot be deceived.)  go look at the following site and examine the expert witness testimony of insiders who are putting their lifetime careers in jeopardy to get the truth out to save this country.  Go check out  http://patriotsquestion911.com and have some aspirin and a glass of water close by!  IF YOU WANT TO HELP TAKE OUR COUNTRY BACK, CLICK ON THIS LINK!  WE NEED RON PAUL!   www.ronpaul2012.com

10.  A very close call I had at Dino’s was when a Satanist came in.  Now to say I was dumb would be an understatement.  (But remember, I was smart enough to run away from the Mafia) This guy was new in Charleston and he had very few friends there.  He seemed like such a nice guy, and he asked me if I would like to go to a meeting and learn a little about Satanism.  Not wanting to hurt his feelings, I said yes. The next day, soon before the meeting, my copy of Newsweek came.  The cover article was about Satanism.  Seems like Satanists look for young ladies who lived far from their families and who were virgins.  Something about them being good sacrifices for their god Satan, who even YHWH says is the god of this world.  At that point, I didn’t care about hurting his feelings.  Human sacrifice, no matter who the victim was, is not a fun date.  And hurting his feelings was no longer an issue.  If I had known how to, I would have hurt a lot more than his feelings.

11.  One experience I had at Dino's was at first upsetting and then hilarious.  A doctor from MUSC came in with his wife and another couple. First he said something very perverse and then he grabbed me.  I took my long fingernails and scratched his face as an impulse to his inappropriate touch. And yes, I did draw blood.  He told me Mike Tolomea was a friend of his and he was going to have me fired.  I immediately went and told Mike what had happened.  Then this doctor went in to Mike's office, not knowing I had already spoken to him.  I actually heard Mike (even though his office door was closed) yelling at this doctor angrily telling him that: " If you call me your friend ever again, I will sue you for slander!"  I borrowed that quote from Mike about 20 years later when I called Roy Munroe's radio show on WTMA.  When Robert Ford, an idiot legislator, heard my voice, he blurted out...."oh, my good friend Maureen!"  And out of my mouth came "Robert, if you call me that ever again I will sue you for slander!"  Roy thought that was hilarious! Ford was one legislator who should not even have been allowed to make license plates let alone our laws.  Now in 2010 he is running for governor of South Carolina!  Remember the cream of the CRAP does rise to the top.

12.  Compared to now, life was uneventful for the next 2 years.  I had first rented a house in Mount Pleasant when I moved out of Eva's house before Chuck got back from sea. I lived with 2 girls who would have various different guys staying overnight all the time. I kind of wondered if they were prostitutes. The girls' names were Sharon and Shannon.  I just kept myself locked in my room there because there were so many strange guys who came and went.  What was so funny was that Shannon, who had a very respectable job at Piggly Wiggly, told me I really shouldn't work at Dino's because it was a bar and respectable girls do not work at bars. ( I guess it never  occurred to her that having various assorted guys spending the night was not too respectable either.)  I  left as soon as I could find another inexpensive place to live, and fortunately that place was on Isle of Palms.  I rented a house close to the beach (3204 Cameron Boulevard.) and it was so awesome to look out my window every morning and see a palm tree.  Going for a walk on the beach every day was something I never took for granted.
 
13.  Ed Renwick, who was in the Navy and stationed on a sub, also lived on the island. He asked me if I could take care of his dog, Putt Putt, while he was off somewhere in a submarine.  I realized Putt Putt was pregnant while I was keeping her, so I wrote Ed a letter as if I was Putt Putt and apologized to my dad, Ed Renwick, for being so promiscuous.  I signed the letter Putt Putt.  Ed was only about 25 years old so he couldn't possibly have had a daughter who could get pregnant.  Even though he was on patrol, the Navy chaplain got that letter to him thinking that Ed had a daughter who was about to have a baby.  I couldn’t believe someone had read that letter before Ed got it.  Be careful what you mail to military people.  You never know who may read something as personal as a little girl dog writing to her Navy Daddy that she has gone out and gotten pregnant.  

14. Putt Putt had her puppies while I was still babysitting her, and since I took her for a walk on the beach every morning, I continued that after the puppies were born.   The first morning that I took the little puppies with us, Putt Putt led the puppies off into the sand dunes, and didn’t bring them back.  I couldn’t find the puppies and eventually I had to give up and just take Putt Putt home with me.  I had to go to work and I was so upset because even though I had prayed for God to help me find them,  I didn’t yet know about His power and His faithfulness.  To get to my house from the beach, you would have to go through the sand dunes, then cross one semi busy street and go past 4 houses.  These were little puppies maybe 4 or 6 weeks old!  They could never find their way back to my house!  They were all inside dogs, and I had to leave Putt Putt inside when I went to work, because Ed really loved his little dog and he was trusting me to take care of her.  I was beyond ecstatic when I got back from work that night and there, at my front door, were all of Putt Putt’s puppies!  How did God do it?  Putt Putt and her puppies were so happy to see each other again!  And those were really hungry puppies since they hadn’t nursed for 16 hours. (about 25 years later God did a similar miracle for me, but this time with 1 day old baby goats, but you won’t read that until we get to 2001.) Ed took his dog and her puppies when his submarine came back so I was without another living critter to share my domicile... but not for long.                                                              

15.  Very late one night coming home after work from Dino's, crossing the 2 mile long Cooper River Bridge, a guy in the car in front of me was shooting a gun out the passenger window.  I got the license number and slowed down so I would be nowhere near the crazy man, and when I got off the bridge I went to the Mount Pleasant Police department.  The cop on duty ran the plates and he already knew where I lived, so he let me know that I should forget this ever happened.  The car was registered to a man who lived very close to where I was living on the Isle of Palms, which was practically a ghost town island in the fall and winter.  Someone had brought an abandoned dog into the station that day, and he suggested I take the dog and name him Killer so when I would be out with him he may seem a bit dangerous to whoever heard his name.  Not long after I got Killer and I realized that I hadn't been evicted for having a dog, I found a pretty little brown dog running loose in downtown Charleston on the highway as I was leaving work late one night. She was obviously starving and skinny, so I brought her home too.  I named her Missy.  Killer and Missy fell in love and got married and had babies, but then the mother dog died not too long after the puppies were born.  She died while I was at work at the Trawler, and the little neighborhood boys, Stevie and Matt Blackwood, (Remember Stevie Blackwood as he will be making another appearance in this literary fiasco in about 9 years in ‘Book World’) and also the little boy who lived next door to me whose name was also Matt, called me at work to let me know she had died.  She had not been sick that I knew of, so it was probably a complication from giving birth.  These sweet young boys buried her before I even got back home from work.  They had put a cross over her grave and they were always picking wild flowers to put on her grave.  They would also come over and help me bottle feed the puppies and would even come in to feed them when I had to be at work.  Even the trash men on the island would stop by to help me with the puppies and most of the puppies, when they were about 6 weeks old, became family members to the trash guys.  That was such a nice island. I did keep one of the puppies and named her after her mom, so I still had a Killer and a Missy.  And since the dear deceased Missy had birthed her puppies on my bed, I did have an old white sheet with blood stains on that I didn't want to throw out because Missy #1 had her puppies on that sheet.  When I got married, I used that sheet, minus the blood stains, to line my wedding dress.  Am I smart, or am I insane?

16.  A little before Missy had died,  I quit working at Dino's to make more money.  I went to work at The Trawler Restaurant in Mount Pleasant. Prices were high so tips were good.  My main problem there was if someone ordered a live Maine lobster, I had to make sure they would feel so guilty about burning a live critter to death that they would change their order to something already dead.  (I never did have to deliver any of those poor things to the executioner, and never got caught doing it.)   PLEASE DO NOT EVER ORDER A LIVE LOBSTER!  WHAT AN INHUMANE WAY TO KILL A LIVING CREATURE! IF YOU ORDER ONE AGAIN, I PROMISE YOU WILL FEEL SO GUILTY ABOUT THE PAIN YOU HAVE PUT THAT INNOCENT CREATURE THRU JUST SO YOU COULD ENJOY THE TASTE OF THAT POOR CRITTER THAT YOU WILL CHOKE ON IT OR IT WILL MAKE YOU VERY VERY SICK AFTER YOU HAVE EATEN IT.  DON'T RISK IT!
                                                                                                                                                         
17.  While I was working at the Trawler, I met one of the sweetest people I have ever met.  Her name was Charlene DeVillier, but now she is Charlene Daniels.  She was so precious and kind that I asked God to please have Charlene fall in love with and marry Steve and have Steve fall in love with and marry Charlene.  I meant Steve Michel, who was an MUSC student who would come into Dino's often.  I made the mistake of not being specific enough.  I couldn't use last names in that prayer because I couldn’t remember Charlene's last name.  Anyway, Steve Daniel married Charlene, and he is a really nice guy, and Steve Michel married a different Charlene who I think may not have been very nice because they got divorced.  If you live in Charleston, Charlene had the neatest little children’s store "Hollipops" in Mount Pleasant, and if you need a special present for a special child, that is the best place to go!  Tell her every time I think of her I just have to smile because so many pleasant memories pop into my mind...and I am smiling as I think of her as I type this...
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

Chapter Three      ** CAREFUL CONSIDERATION FOR MAJOR DECISIONS (OR NOT) **

1.  In May of 1974, my Mom, always encouraging, told me over the phone that she thought I was going to die an old maid and my animals would eat my dead body.   Gross, huh? (She was concerned because I turned 24 that day and that sure is old!)  She hardly ever called me, and she called before 5:00 when long distance rates used to go down, so she must have really been upset about me being an old maid.  (I absolutely HATE the term OLD MAID because it sounds so derogatory.  Think about it ... the Old Maid is actually a very confident, capable woman who does not need a man to give her self worth or to support her or take care of her.  If it were not for the pathetic reason of always trying to make my mother love me, I probably never would have gotten married.)  

I figured maybe I ought to get married.  (I was always trying, but to no avail, to please my mom.)  Only problem was, I didn’t have a special boyfriend.  So, who was I going to marry?  I figured I would just have to ask God.  (Now this did work for me, but I DO NOT RECOMMEND IT TO ANYONE ELSE!!!)   I told God I needed Him to tell me who I was supposed to marry.  At that time I didn’t know He would speak to me from His Word, the Bible.  (I didn't even know that the Bible was His Word.) I also didn’t know how He used circumstances to communicate with us.  And at this early point in my life, I had yet to realize the importance of sea shells in communicating with God. (Stop being so judgmental! You have no idea what I am talking about, and you won’t know about the sea shells until you have done further reading in this book.)  My choice of communication vehicle at that time was a quarter.  (He meets us where we are.)  I was going to pick a name and flip a coin.  If I got 10 heads in a row, that would be my husband’s first name.  First, I tried the name Steve because there was a guy named Steve who really liked me a lot... and he was very nice and also very handsome.  That was a NO.  ( I felt bad about that.) Next I tried the common name 'Bill'.  I got 10 heads in a row on that one.  So, it must be Bill. (You try to get 10 in a row of whatever you get the first flip.  If God doesn’t intervene, the chances are next to zero of that happening)   OK, so I am going to marry Bill, but I don’t have a boyfriend named Bill.  So what do I do now?  Well, there was that Bill Bryant that I had a crush on in high school but he never paid any attention to me.  He was popular and I wasn’t.  One night he kissed me in a bar, about 3 years before his name came up as the first name of my husband-to-be.  When I last saw Bill, he told me he would call me the next day, but he never did.  And that was about 3 years before the fateful flip of the coin. But he was the best looking Bill I knew, and I was really shallow, so I figured I would go for him.  Funny thing was that the first conversation I ever remembered having with Bill Bryant was at St. Dominic’s school where we both worked at Bingo  (those Catholics! Gambling and drinking and telling us not to read the bible because it would just confuse us!   Ya gotta love em!)  Our conversation was about the absurd subject of  PREDESTINATION!  Bill Bryant said there was and I said no there couldn’t be, but now I am practically positive he was right.  

2.  There was also another Bill I knew, Bill K*****  who was always asking me out when I worked at Dino's.  He seemed very arrogant and pretentious so I never went  out with him.  His arrogance was so amazing that he thought I must be insane to not want to date him.  So, since he was a state official, he told me that he could get me free tuition at the College of Charleston for being emotionally unstable.  He got me an appointment with a shrink and in my short interview with this arrogant Medical Deity who I assumed was a friend of Bill K*****, I just looked sad at times I thought would be appropriate and acted the part of a basket case.  I had taken a few psych classes  at YSU so I knew how to play the game.  (I quit taking psychology classes when I found out they used to determine your sanity by the number of bumps on your head.  It was called phrenology.  How incredibly stupid!)   Anyway, I got free tuition for being insane (even though Union National Bank did not give me free tuition as they had promised when I had the highest Grade Point Average of any of the other bank employees) but let's keep that a secret about free tuition for emotional instability, OK?  I only lasted a few semesters at that free tuition at College of Charleston thing.  The professors were almost as stupid as the students, many of whom could hardly read!  (Actually, not being able to read is not a sign of stupidity.  It is actually a sign of teachers who do not use phonics anymore to teach kids and that was not funny!)   I didn't even want to spend my time there, even if it cost me nothing.  I quit the free college because my time was more valuable than that pitiful education.  (If you have young kids, or even older kids who can’t read, find out if they know how to sound out words or if they have only been taught the insane “sight reading” method.  Get Hooked on Phonics for them and let the kid know that he is not stupid, it is just the method he was taught to read with and the teachers who are using that insane innovative method that are stupid.)

3.  OK, let's get back on track.... so I need to marry a Bill.  There is Bill Bryant who never liked me, but he was very good looking.  And there was Bill K***** who was an arrogant jerk,  and I thought I would just as soon die an old maid and have my dogs eat my dead body as to be married to a guy I would not even want to date.  (I found out he was married when he was asking me out, but I didn't know that until years later.)  The only other Bill who I thought might be a candidate was a photographer in Michigan, and Michigan is too cold.  So, I guess Bill Bryant is who I will marry whether he wants to be my husband or not.

4.  It was very early in May so I found out his address (He had moved from Youngstown to Columbus Ohio to go to Ohio State) and I sent him a Mother’s Day Card.   Now this was not very nice, and I never called anyone a Mother F’er, (this was before Jesus (Yeshua) was living in my heart) but that was what I was inferring, and he knew it.   I saw him one time a few years before this in a place called the U CLUB and he kissed me because he was drunk, and then he came over to my parents’ house and kissed me some more, and when he left he said he would call me the next day.  And since that was over 1,000 days ago I really didn't expect to hear back from him when I sent him a Mother’s Day card, but I gave it a try.  After all, my mom was afraid I would die an old maid and my dogs would eat my dead body!  (I promise, nobody could make this stuff up!  This is absolutely true!  It is disgusting and repulsive, but true.)  [He knew I was referring to the bad kind of mother...]
                                                                                                                                                       
5.  Within a couple of weeks, without writing or calling first, Bill Bryant came down to see me.  He just knocked on my door and surprised me as I was leaving for work at the Trawler.  I later found out that from the letter I wrote him, he thought I was being kept in an institution for crazy people on an island, and he came down to bust me out of the insane asylum.  I guess I must have mentioned I was going to the College of Charleston for free because of being mentally unstable.  (Maybe I am crazy!  But aren’t you crazy too? You are reading this book, aren’t you?)  It was the end of May of 1974 that he 'dropped in on me'.   I think he stayed for about a week.  I do not remember him ever actually asking me to marry him. His lame proposal was, within a few days of him coming down to visit, as we were walking back from the beach, he stopped me from going into the road when a car was coming.  He told me he saved my life, so he said because of that I owed him my life.  I knew that that was a proposal.  Not very romantic, would you agree?  (He swears he actually asked me to marry him, but I really think I would have remembered that, don't you?)  Well, it actually gets worse.  We did not want a big, expensive, ostentatious church wedding. ( I was only getting married so I wouldn’t die an old maid and be eaten by my dogs!)  We were just going to go into  a church on Sullivan's Island and make our vows to each other.  It would be a Catholic Church, because the Catholic Church is the ONE TRUE CHURCH!!)  We were taught that the priest doesn't marry you, you marry each other.  So we’d cut out the middle man priest.
                                                                                                                                                         
6. Our parents went ballistic!  They really thought that we had to have a big church wedding, so we told them to do whatever they wanted and we would show up for the ceremony, which is what they did and what we did.  I made my own wedding dress from fabric I found at Dixie Salvage, where you could get anything from toilets to flooring to fabric really cheap.  It was lace ($3. for the entire 3 yards) and I lined it with that sheet that had gotten all messed up when my dog Missy, who died soon after having the puppies, gave birth on my bed ( I had the good sense not to use the blood stained part in my dress).  It was really quite a pretty dress, and what else could I use that old sheet for?  Bill wanted to buy me an expensive engagement ring, but I told him I could promise him that if we got a cheap ring at Edwards Dime Store, everyone who looked at it would say “OH HOW BEAUTIFUL!"  And they did.  (I bet people thought we married so fast because I was pregnant, but our first  baby didn't come along for eight years.  They never knew that I had to hurry up and get married before I died and my dogs ate my dead body.)

7.  Since we had made the decision to get married in May when Bill came down to bust me out of the insane asylum which he thought I was being held in, we kind of knew we should get married soon before either of us chickened out of the getting married thing. Since our parents insisted on the boring, expensive, traditional wedding, we had to pick a date.  Friday the 13th was coming up in September and there were probably a lot of Churches and Halls that were not being used on that day, so we picked Friday, September 13th of 1974 to get married.  Laugh if you want, but we’ve been married 36 years now.  If you use us as a pattern for a good, long marriage, you really should do as we did.  Decide with a flip of a coin (make sure it’s a quarter) what the first name of your spouse is to be.  See if there is anyone with that name who will be dumb enough to marry someone they hardly know.  Don’t go out on a date first. Get a really cheap, fake engagement ring. Get married on a Friday the 13th.  And, make sure that the Mafia guy who put a contract on you because he wanted you dead comes to your wedding.  

8. Oh yeah, Louie D, the guy who was going to pay to have me killed for embarrassing him in front of the other idiots in the Mafia, was invited to the wedding.  He was a friend of Bill’s father.  Bill’s dad was a politician and in a Mafia town politicians were friends with Mafia people.  Louie was gracious enough to not kill me even after he knew where to find me. Of course it is possible he had forgotten about ordering a hit on me because his brain was totally pickled from all the booze he had consumed, or maybe he had ordered so many hits that he could hardly keep track of all of the victims, or maybe his hired hit man lied to Louie and told him I was dead since I had moved away from Murder Town USA.  One more thing, for a long marriage, only take advice from God.  Different things work for different people.  

9.  But, back to the chronological order thing ...  and chrono 'logic' is the only place in this book or my life where ‘logic’ will be found.  We need to time travel back a few months to do this.  You better get used to time travel because we may be doing this a lot since so many single events later connected to other single events and we end up with a whole long line of what looks like random events which all come together in a very interesting picture of  YHWH God's intervention and providence and mercy and His extremely awesome (yet sometimes stranger than strange) sense of humor.

10. We weren't going to get married until September which was 3 months away, so Bill went back to his job at Columbus Mutual in Columbus Ohio, and I went back to my job at the Trawler Sea Food Restaurant..  While I was working at the Trawler, there were a lot of wild cats who hung out there because they could get a lot of fish there.  One of the little cats, a grey one, would come close to me, but it was obviously not tame. I somehow captured her and took her home.  I could not understand why she was always growling at me.  When she ran out the door one day I just figured she hated me and I felt bad I had taken her away from where she was used to being. I  had never had a cat before, so I didn't know that when a cat purrs, it sounds like a dog growling.  The only reason I am putting this into this book is so if there is  anyone reading this who is as dumb as I was, when a cat purrs it sounds similar to a dog growling. In about 3 years she would be my cat again, because we would move back to that neighborhood, but not quite yet.  By the time we moved back, I had two other cats so then I knew what a cat purring was all about so she and I got to be friends again and she moved into the house in that neighborhood that we had bought.  I would marry and move to Ohio for a couple of years and then finally be back in  the same neighborhood where she was the last time I saw her. Then, after she was my cat again, she would be my cat for about 12 more years.   But, back to the Trawler.

11.  For this part, names will not be changed to protect the guilty.  I am going on the assumption that if it is the truth, it isn’t slander. Remember this was back in 1974.  I, and all the other waitresses at the TRAWLER, were white females.  The bus girls were all black females.  Every night someone would come around and collect 10% of whatever the tips were that the waitress made.  This money was then (supposedly) given to the bus girls. I was kind of curious about how much the bus girls made because they really had to work hard, so I asked one of them how much tip money she usually received.  She was a very lovely, genteel, sophisticated young lady. She told me she couldn’t tell me because she didn’t participate.  This was a huge restaurant, and 10% of the tips would be a considerable sum of money.  And there weren’t a whole lot of bus girls who the tip money would be divided between.  Then this young lady told me WHY she didn’t participate.  This was so disgusting!  Every so often (I don’t remember if it was once a week or once a month) the owner, Ronnie Bowles, took the tips and threw them on the floor for the black bus girls to fight over.  It infuriates me just remembering it!  Besides being disgusted, I did wonder if Ronnie was skimming part of the tips, (I read a lot of Nancy Drew Detective books as a kid) so I asked  the bus girls who did participate in Ronnie's sick game to count how much the total was the next time Ronnie had his sick fun at their expense.  The amount they collected from that slovenly hunk of trash was nowhere near what 10% of the tips would have been.  OK, so Ronnie is not only a racist pig (my apologies to the pigs of this world) but he also appeared to be a thief!   Since he owns the place where I’m working, how do I expose him?

12.  Oh... that would be easy!  There was a bulletin board all workers had to look at whenever they went into the kitchen, to let us know if they were out of anything.    That would be handy now, wouldn't it?

13.  First I went to my old friends at Dino’s to tell them what was going on at the Trawler.  I asked them if I could have my old job back when I got fired.  They said yes, even knowing I would be leaving South Carolina to move to Ohio to get married in a few months. Next, I went to Arthur Jenkins who was the Kitchen Manager/Chef/Guy-that-ran-the-whole-joint at the Trawler.  He was a black guy, and his daughter, Herline, was one of the bus girls who was being humiliated and stolen from by Racist Rat Ronnie.  I actually saw tears coming from Arthur’s eyes when I told him this and my heart broke for him.  Arthur didn't seem angry, just extremely sad, even defeated, by what was being done to his daughter and the other bus girls. .. but he needed his job to feed his family. 

14. Before I could put my plan into action to stop the thievery from the bus girls, my in-laws to be came to town and into the Trawler to check me out.  Like Bill, they didn’t call first to say they were coming.  My house was a mess, and I knew they would be planning on staying with me since I had a 2 bedroom home and lived alone.  WHAT SHOULD I DO!??   After they ate dinner, I suggested they go across to a little diner while I finished my shift, which would take about 2 hours. Charlene, sweet, sweet Charlene DeVillier, offered to come to my house and help me clean before I went back to get Bill's parents.  We just put everything into the second bedroom, took  out the light bulbs, and changed the sheets on my bed so Bill's parents could sleep there. Then I went to pick up his parents at Alex's Restaurant and they went to bed at my house, and I stayed up all night cleaning the room I was supposed to be sleeping in, so they would not know what an awful house keeper I was. Only a real friend will help you clean your house at 1:00 in the morning after a very hard nights work. I think Charlene now owns Hollipops, a fantastic children's store in Mount Pleasant...where you can purchase a present for a child that will be remembered and cherished for a very long time.  The gift's Charlene had in her shop were incredibly unique!  

15. Once Bill's parents went back to Ohio, I put my plan to humiliate Ronnie who had been humiliating the bus girls for I-don't-know-how-long, into action. I knew Arthur could not help me because he needed his job to support his family, but he could just "not notice" the sign I put on the bulletin board. I didn’t really need his help.  I told him my plan and I knew I would be fired.  Only a few people knew what I was going to do. The sign I posted on the bulletin board read, and I remember because this was my most favorite literary work:  FATSO HAS BEEN TAKING MONEY FROM THE WAITRESSES TO GIVE TO THE BUS GIRLS.  FATSO IS THROWING THE MONEY ON THE FLOOR SO THE BUS GIRLS WILL HAVE TO FIGHT OVER IT. LAST TIME HE DID THIS,THEY TOTALED UP WHAT HE GAVE THEM.  HE IS ONLY GIVING THEM A SMALL PORTION OF WHAT HE TAKES FROM THE WAITRESSES TO GIVE TO THE BUS GIRLS. IS HE USING THE MONEY TO PAY FOR HIS TOUPEES?   Maureen C    (I  just had to sign it!).                                                                                                                                                                                                              
16.  I know this was cruel, and humiliating to Ronnie.  It was meant to be.  I wanted him to feel as mocked and disrespected as the bus girls did.   About 30 minutes after I put this notice up Arthur came into the dining room where I was working and gently and sweetly fired me, with a big smile on his face, and he told me 'THANK YOU!” (Ronnie should have sent me a " Thanks, I needed that" card, but he didn't.) 

17.  Things were really looking up!  This was even more fun than being fired by the president of Union National Bank for attempting to start a union!  It was much nicer than having to leave Youngstown because a contract had been put out on me.  And I already knew that my mom would be able to quit worrying about me dying an OLD MAID and being eaten by my dogs. Life was good!  And I already knew I was welcome to come back and work for my old friends at Dino's.  And I would be getting married in a couple of months to a guy I hardly knew, who had never dated me.  I WAS SO STUPID!  Was God using me to prove He can use Anyone for Anything?   (Isn't an OLD MAID just a woman who will not settle for anything less than the best in a husband?  OLD MAIDS are quite intelligent and competent!)  That disparaging title was probably coined by a man that no woman wanted because he was selfish and stupid.    


Chapter 4    ******.HAPHAZARD WEDDING / HAPHAZARD LIFE *****

1.  It only took about an hour or 2 to make my wedding dress with lace I bought at Dixie Salvage for $3, and I lined the dress with the sheet that got blood stains from  when my dog Missy had puppies on the bed.  (I honestly did not use the blood stained section though.)  I did however forget at that time to make a veil because this was  not important to me.  I was only getting married to please my mother.   About a week before the scheduled formal stuffy wedding ceremony thing, Bill came down to help me get my stuff to move up to Ohio, not that I had anything of any value and I have no idea why I would have taken anything other than the little puppy Missy and her daddy Killer.  It was so important to catch my 2 little mice and put them outside so the next renters wouldn't kill them with a mouse trap. We put a small square waste basket in the tub and put vegetable oil on the sides so when they went for the cheese, they would not be able to get back out.  It worked really well and we were able to catch them and put them outside before we left, .except, those rodents were smarter than both Bill and I together.  We took them, still in the wastebasket, and laid it over on the side in the front yard so they could get out onto the lawn. Those little ingrates had gotten the cheese from the night before and then got out of the waste basket and  went right back into my house through the front door we had stupidly left open before we could even get back up from the squatting position we were in to get them out of the waste basket.  Now that was the epitome of rude, don't you think?

2. I hardly remember the wedding.  There were a lot of people there but I hardly knew anyone there except for my family.  I didn't invite anyone because I didn't want anyone to feel they had to buy us a present.  That morning I remembered brides wear veils. I had 7 hours until the wedding.  I thought my mom (still trying to please her! ) would be upset if she knew I had forgotten a veil, so I went down to the basement at my parents house to look on dad's workbench to see if I could figure out how to make one.  (That must have been a God thing, because I really would not want to nail a veil to my head.) I saw some soldering iron on dad's work bench, and figured that may be handy.  It is like round cord that you plug into your computer but it is metal which is very pliable until heat is applied to it. I went and bought some veil netting  and made a veil.  It only had to last a couple of hours so it didn't need to be done well.  It  took 10 minutes to make, but it did look like a real wedding dress veil, and it went well with the wedding dress I had made from the old sheet Missy had messed up by having her puppies on my bed and the lace I had bought at Dixie Salvage, and the wedding ring we got at Edward’s Dime Store. I do not know if I wrote this yet, and I do not want to go back to read what I already wrote, but in case I didn't mention this, Louie D. was there at our wedding because Bill's parents didn't know he had hired someone to kill me, and Louie was a friend of Bill’s dad.  (It is hardly something I would have brought up in polite conversation with my new prospective in-laws.)  As soon as the wedding ceremony was over and we got to the place where the food was, I took off the veil and scrunched it up and put it into a man named Barney McCutcheon's pocket, because I really did not know how long it would last.  My aunt was upset that I did that because she is just so conventional, and she is the photographer of my mom's family so she was taking wedding pictures…and she thought to be a bride you had to have a veil. (Did you know there is a correlation between how expensive a wedding is and how long the marriage lasts?  The cheap weddings usually mean the marriage will last longer, maybe because someone who does a cheap wedding really is not a perfectionist, and nobody has ever had a perfect spouse. (except my husband, of course!  Don’t get confused.  Bill HAS THE PERFECT SPOUSE, but he is NOT the perfect spouse.)
                                           
3.  We stayed in a cheap motel after the wedding that night, not buying into the honeymoon thing, and in the morning we went to our parents homes and picked up our newly combined family of Missy, a little puppy, and her daddy Killer, who were my dogs, and Poco, who was Bill's cat...and from there we drove to New Albany Ohio where Bill had found us an old farmhouse to live in.  Unfortunately, the landlords who lived next to us a little ways down the road were nuts.  I think dangerously nuts. My heart is even beating fast as I am typing this because of the old suppressed memories that are coming up.  I hadn't thought of them for years, and as I remember them    I feel sheer terror!  This isn't amusing, so we will skim over it.
                                                                                           
 4. They are probably dead now and that is a really good thing!  Mr. and Mrs. H****   and their son David made us really think tenants should run a check on the  landlords, because the landlords have keys to the place where the tenants will be living.  Insane landlords are more of a danger than insane tenants. These were definitely insane landlords. Bill worked the night shift at Columbus Mutual in Columbus Ohio.  I worked out of the house retouching negatives for photographers.  After Bill would go to work, I would often get phone calls where there was just a heavy breather on the phone.  It seemed pretty obvious that it was someone who lived close by, because I never got a call while Bill was at home. There were very few people who lived close by because we were out in the country in New Albany.  I was thinking it was a young boy who lived almost across the street.  I do not remember how we did it, but I think we must have gotten a second line so I could call my mom when I got one of those scary calls and then she would call different numbers of people who I thought may be the caller.  This was way before caller ID.  I actually got a job in a night club right across the street from where Bill worked at Columbus Mutual so that I wouldn't have to be home alone at night. We finally narrowed it down to the landlord's son.  But let's just not think about it!  It really was too scary. My dog Killer got out of the yard while Bill was at work one night and he was hit by a car on Morse Road and killed.  I was so afraid of the landlord's son that I didn't even go out of the house to get Killer's body out of the road.  The man who hit him told me he was sure he was already dead. I am so glad dogs go to heaven!  He was one of my favorites.  (Actually, they were all my favorites.)  I will tell you how I am SURE they go to heaven when we get to 1986. (In book world it is 1974)

5.  On a happier note, while living there in the outskirts of Columbus with Missy, (the puppy of the dear deceased Missy #1) and Bill's cat Poco, there was a really cute little kitten who found us. We named her Allie.  She was covered with car oil, and it was so hard to get her clean, but she was so cute. Poco didn't like little Allie at all, but once she figured out that Allie was going to be a member of the family, she caught Allie and held her down and licked her off so she was very clean and free of oil.  She stayed with us til she died15 years later.  One thing I learned from Poco was that the saying “Go piss up a stump” may have had its origin with a cat.  Poco caught a cute little chipmunk and I watched as she caught it.  Before she could kill and eat it, I got it from her and let it go.  When I did, she literally pissed up a stump.

6. One of the strangest looking puppies we ever saw showed up in our garage while we were living in New Albany.  He was a German Shepherd with short legs.  He looked absolutely ridiculous but he was so sweet. We called him Fi.  He was with us for about 4 or 5 months before we got dog number 3.  Dog number 3 was Andy, who belonged to a neighbor of a friend of my husband.  Emma told us how sick this dog always was.  He had to stay outside all the time, and the snow was so deep and it was so cold and he was so sick.  I finally got tired of Emma telling us about this poor little dog and I dog-napped him.  We took him home for a few days and then we knew we needed to take him to a vet.  Emma was right, he was close to death, but he did recover and he lived another 12 years after we stole/rescued him. His new name was Andy. Why would anybody have a dog and keep it out on a leash outside and never let it in?  If you do that to your dog, I hope when it is time for you to go to heaven, God keeps you on a leash outside too.  And I hope it is snowing and you are freezing!  Don’t get a pet if you are not going to love it and take care of it and treat it like you would want to be treated.  Animals have feelings too.  Do unto others as you would have others do unto you does not just refer to people, does it?  If it did, the Author of the Word would have written “Do unto other people as you would have them do unto you”.  Cruelty and callousness toward animals is often a sign of a really sick and selfish mind and spirit.

7.  Something that was so sad was that while Andy was away at the vet hospital, Fi, the big puppy we had found in our garage, was always trying to hide from us in closets and cabinets. He was acting hostile, and we had no idea why.  And he was acting like he was afraid of us. After we brought Andy back home from the vets, Fi quit being hostile and afraid.  It seems that Fi may have been taken away and dumped and he may have thought we had done the same thing to Andy.  Missy, Andy, Fi, Poco and  Allie were all so good to and for each other, and they got along so well together...And later they’d be joined by the cat who was always growling at me that ran away after I brought her home from the Trawler.

8. Another beyond bizarre coincidental thing happened in Ohio.  I had gone to downtown Columbus to buy something at a big store called Lazarus.  While I was in that store, I lost a $20. bill.  Back then that was like losing $100.00 now.  When Bill came home that day he was so happy about having found $20. at Lazarus.  Even back  then, God had angels looking over us.

9. We lived in Columbus Ohio until September of 1976, 2 years after we got married.  We didn’t like each other much back then, but a Catholic is not supposed to get a divorce. (Unless, of course, they have big bucks to pay for an annulment, which means the marriage never happened and also means the “Holy Mother Church” gets more cash in their coffers.)  Instead we both prayed that God would kill one of us.  We really didn’t care which one.  But, again, it was Eva to the rescue!  (First she saved me from the Mafia guy who later came to our wedding, next she saved me when Patrolman Kennerly had me in his cop car and now her advice was going to save me from a crummy marriage.  

10.  Eva asked me if I would promise her something.  Without thinking, I said yes.  Then she told me what the promise was.  DON’T SAY ANYTHING TO BILL THAT  I WOULDN’T SAY TO HER.  DON’T DO ANYTHING TO BILL THAT I WOULDN’T DO TO HER…AND BE CONSISTENT FOR 21 DAYS, AND DON’T TELL HIM WHAT I AM DOING.  Within 21 days, Bill and I actually liked each other.  If you are stuck in a bad marriage, try it.  What do you have to lose? (Other than possibly 21 days?)  It was really excellent advice from Eva. The only thing she was ever wrong about was staying in the Catholic Church…

 
Chapter 5     *******  BACK TO THE BEACH ********

1.  In the fall of 1976 we decided to move back to the ocean because we had to get away from our scary landlords who were also our scary neighbors.  Since we had to move, we may as well move to the beach again.  An old friend had lived in a winter rental on Sullivan’s Island that was across from front beach and I knew how quiet it  was there so we rented it for the 9 months that the owners didn’t want to use it.  Bill drove the U Haul truck we rented which was towing our VW convertible behind.  I drove the VW van behind him.  We didn’t even get out of Columbus before the old van broke. By this time we had 3 dogs, Missy, Andy and Fi, and 2 cats, Poco and Allie.  They were all in the van with me. We got to the VW dealership and they looked at the van right away.  (They had just opened for that day.) They told us it would be a long and, as I recall, costly repair.  We had no place to go, so we brought Missy, Andy, Fi, Allie and Poco into their waiting room.  Now, we had very well behaved dogs and cats, but they were still dogs and cats.  These people were so anxious to get our pets out of there that they did what they had told us would be a long, expensive repair VERY FAST, and it wasn’t too expensive, either. (I think it took less than an hour!)   

2. Getting back to the ocean was such a great thing.  The dogs loved the ocean and would just chase sea gulls till they could hardly keep going. One of the first days we were there in the rental beach house, short pudgy little Andy didn't come back with the 2 bigger dogs so I went down to the ocean to find him.  Sweet little Andy was stuck on a sand bar and needed his mom, aka me, to carry him back to the beach. He had probably never been by deep water before.   It was a fun, but uneventful nine months.  In fact, looking back, that was the calm before the storm which would encompass almost all the rest of our entire life!  We knew we had to be out by May of 1977, and before we had even looked for a place to move to, Bill Walters, the realtor who rented this place to us,  asked us if we would like to buy a small house on Isle of Palms, which was just 1 block from the ocean and a two minute walk from where I had lived before we got married.  We told him we didn’t have a down payment or any credit history.  Without us asking him or us even seeing the little house, Mr. Walters loaned us (no interest, no paperwork) the $2,000 down payment on the $18,000 house and we just took over the 3 mortgages that the seller had on the place.  We then borrowed the money from my parents to pay Bill Walters back right away.  The agent, P** D., who had listed this little house had “pocketed the listing” which means he tried to sell it himself and didn’t list it.  P.D. got caught so he had to sell it immediately, or he would be in deep trouble, even possibly losing his real estate license.  If  it wasn’t for that, we would probably never have purchased our first house or any subsequent real estate.  We literally fell into the best deal imaginable and I am only now realizing that as I am typing this.

3.  When we were moving out of the rental house in May of 1977, and into the little one we had purchased, we noticed that one of our cats had eaten the tail off of a fish the owners had hanging as a trophy on the wall right above the couch.  I wonder if the owners ever noticed. Ooops! (Why would they want a dead fish anyway?)

4. We did very few things to make our new house at 8 31st Street on Isle of Palms nicer than it had been when we first got it. In fact, we actually made it uglier by gluing dark cork board on the living room walls.  (What were we thinking?  We really were not on drugs!)  The cat that I thought had hated me (because I thought she was growling at me when she was actually purring) was still on the same street as I lived on before we got married. My old rental house was only 6 houses away from the house we just purchased. Mama cat then moved in with me and the new members of my family.  All of them got along without any problems.  Within about a year, I saw a FOR SALE sign on a house I had always wanted when I lived on the Island before we got married. It was twice as big as our recently purchased house and not the least bit pretty, but it had a gorgeous, huge piece of driftwood in the front yard.  I always loved that piece of driftwood.  (Actually, it was a dead tree, but it had been dead long enough to look like driftwood). This house was just 2 houses away from where I had lived before Bill and I got married.  I already knew what to expect from the neighbors who all seemed very friendly but not nosy....except for one who is now dead, so I can say that.  Maria Moore and David Parlman were the realtors who co-listed this property.  The house was dead ugly, but oh, the dead tree was so beautiful!  We put a contract on that house contingent upon the sale of our little house that we had just bought for $18,000. Maria offered to sell our tiny little house for us, but I told her we would be selling it ourselves.  She asked what we would ask for it, and I told her $33,000.   She was NOT amused.  In fact, as I recall, she told me I was insane if I thought I would get that much for such a little house that we had only two months ago purchased for $18,000.  But Maria didn't know the secret Bill and I had just learned!

5. We then told her that we had just found out that the stuff written in the bible is actually true!  And since it is true, we knew that we could ask for anything in Jesus’ name, and He would do it for us!  (We’ve grown up some spiritually, there's a little more to it than that, but He was meeting us where we were and teaching us things we would later need to know.)   She said she knew we would NEVER sell it for that much, because the realtor who had lived behind us, Ed Ring, had just sold his house, (which was in much better shape than ours although other than the condition they were in they were identical) for $22,000.  (this was in 1976 dollars)   We did not know Ed Ring, but had seen him trying to kick at our dogs through the fence so we didn’t want to know him.  Then she told us that even if we found someone stupid enough to buy our house for that much money, no bank would ever loan that amount on our little house.

6.  I thanked her for that piece of information, and told her we would just have to ask God in the name of Jesus to send us someone with the cash.  That was on a Thursday or Friday.  I called and put an ad in the newspaper for Saturday and Sunday.  Mr. and Mrs. Ward from Hanahan came to look at the house that weekend and wanted to buy it.  They were the only ones who responded to that tiny little $8.00 ad, but one response was all we needed.  (I did knock the price down to $32,000 so I wouldn’t have to finish painting.)  On Monday the Wards took the money out of their safety deposit box.  The house was sold!  We didn't even need to get a lawyer for the closing because the Wards took care of all of those details.  We had told God we would give the money we saved on the real estate commission to Dad’s cousin, Fr. Charles, who ran a mission in Mexico.  We gave Father Charles $2,000, fully expecting a 10 fold return on the money we gave him.  

7.  Many years later we would find out that after the sale of our little house, there was a huge increase in property values on Isle of Palms. We heard from a woman we would not meet for 10 more years, Pat Stone,  that the real estate agents did start praying for sales then.  After that experience, we always knew we could sell real estate very easily.  We had an inside track. But sometimes it was God's will NOT to sell property quickly, as happened to us in 1996.  We started out asking $160,000 for our home on the island (the ugly one we had purchased from Maria Moore for $42,000 in 1976) and it didn't sell, and it didn't sell, and it still didn't sell!  That was because God wasn't finished using us in the Charleston area.  We just kept raising the price about $10,000 every other month until it finally did sell.  We finally sold it in September of 1996  for $240,000.  When you listen to God, you just have to throw "common sense" out the window, because His sense is anything but common.

8. We had 30 days to vacate our house after Mr. Ward brought us the check for $32,000.  There was no attorney involved.  We gave Maria the down payment on 6 33rd  Street and I do not remember much else about that transaction other than we DID NOT USE AN ATTORNEY.  Why do you need a “mouth piece” when you have your own mouth?  We did not use our own attorney buying or selling 8 31st or buying and selling 6 33rd.  Towards the end of this book you may not want to ever use an attorney again either.  There is something very sinister and nefarious about that occupation ... and you will see why "Woe unto ye lawyers" is in the Word.

9. We sent Father Charles the $2,000 we told God we would send to him as soon as the house sold. We also repaid my parents the money they had loaned us to repay Bill Walters for loaning us the down payment.  We had 30 days to get out of the place Wards bought from us and we were to be moving into the ugly house with the beautiful piece of driftwood in the front yard.  Since we had given a missionary the $2,000 real estate commission, we knew we could expect $20,000 more.  I have no idea why or how we came up with these figures, but we totally believed it and asked God for it in the name of Jesus.

10. We got an unexpected windfall of $20,000 within a relatively short period of time of giving that missionary $2,000., but it took a really bad car accident to get it. Within a couple of weeks of getting the money from the Ward's, but before we had moved from that little house and into the ugly house with the beautiful piece of driftwood, I was driving home from work at Poogan’s Porch in downtown Charleston where I was working as a waitress when I was hit head on by a Navy guy, David Chapman. This happened on April 8th of 1978.  Chapman was drunk and smoking pot according to what I heard from people who were there at the scene, but looking at the accident report signed by Sgt. William Jernigan he was not charged with either of those things.  He destroyed my little VW convertible and hurt me very badly.  I wouldn’t let the ambulance take me to the hospital, so they called Bill who told me that when he saw our car, if he didn't already know I was still alive, he would have thought I must be dead.  I was driving our only decent vehicle. Bill had to come in our old VW Van to get me, and when he saw me he knew he had to get me to the hospital.  The van kept stalling and the drive to the hospital, which should be a 30 minute drive, probably took over an hour.   (That would be a problem for cops if someone has had a head injury and cannot think, but does not know that their thinking is impaired... do they have to do what the thinking impaired injured party tells them?  That head injury affected me for about 30 years, and I am sure of that because whenever I was in a stressful situation, without me wanting to say it, the word "refrigerator" would come out of my mouth at the most inappropriate times ... most probably because my top priority was to make sure the fantastic scraps I had brought home from Poogan's Porch for our 6 pets did not go to waste.) 

11. The drunk driver creamed me in front of Sunrise Presbyterian Church. (30 years later, on September 28 of 2005, a different drunk driver, David Leroy Seaman also hit me in front of a church. One guy was in the Navy, which makes him a sea man, the other guy was named Seaman.  Both times I was hit right in front of a church after going way off the road to avoid the oncoming drunk.  What are the chances?  Two accidents in 27 years, both guys that got me were drinking and neither one of those 2 Bozos ever had to go to court or prison.   Later for that one, too, since that didn't happen until 2005...and I really am trying to keep this in chronological order.  Oh yeah, in both of the accidents besides other obvious injuries, I had brain injuries. (Could God have been trying to knock some sense into me?)   While I was in the hospital, my friend/boss from Poogan’s Porch came to see me.  Since I knew nothing about anything, Tom Bass got me one of the best lawyers in Charleston.  His name was Bo Morrison, and if Bo really was one of the best, I shudder to think of what one of the worst would be like.  (Since Tom was about 60 years old then, and that was 30 years ago, I am assuming he no longer owns Poogan's Porch, so I will share with you a really good secret I learned while I was working there.  Edwards Frozen Pies!!!   A customer was furious because I could not get him the recipe for the Key Lime pie he had just eaten and he said he would just get in touch with Gourmet Magazine and get the recipe from them.  I wonder if he ever found out it was just a store bought pie?  Their Chocolate Pie is even better than the Key Lime Pie, and they have scriptures imprinted on the foil pie pans!  Sweets for your mouth and for your spirit!  WOW! What an excuse to buy a really good pie! Great taste and great scriptures!  Unfortunately they are not too healthy, so only buy them for an occasional treat, OK?

12.  Once I got out of the hospital, we began to move into our new ugly house at 6 33rd Street with the beautiful piece of driftwood which was the only reason I wanted to purchase the big ugly house. We didn't have much so we just used a hand truck to move everything, even our refrigerator, just two short blocks to our new house.  There was a house on front beach just a short walk from where we were moving to that was having a yard sale.  I was quite surprised that Bill didn’t mind me going there, or that he would ever let me go to a yard sale alone. Among other injuries, I had a head injury from the drunk driver who was never charged but I did not know that and possibly Bill did not know that either. Since that head injury I get tempted beyond my capacity to resist at yard sales. I was gone a little too long, and then when I got back, I found out why he let me go alone.  My loving husband, when I was out of his way, got his trusty chain saw, put a ladder against the beautiful piece of driftwood, and massacred it!!!  He totally ruined and removed the only reason I so wanted that ugly house.  My only consolation was that part of the dead tree/driftwood fell on Bill's complicit ladder and destroyed his partner in crime.

13.  After we had moved in, Maria Moore, the real estate lady who sold the house to us, came by to give us a house warming present... a very pretty sea shell lamp. While she was there, Bo Morrison called and when I asked him a question he got very angry at me because I had asked him the same question over and over. (Hey, that comes with the territory when you have a head injury.) Maria, who heard his loud angry voice even though the phone was up to my ear and not hers, told me that the old Maureen wouldn’t take that kind of treatment from anyone.  So right there and then, before I had time to forget (Head injuries and drunk drivers are such a nuisance!) what Maria said, I called Bo back and fired his sorry butt.  He told me I would never find another lawyer in Charleston.  

14.  My mechanic, Danny, at Volkswagen Hospital told me about a really good lawyer his wife used when she was hurt in a car crash.  Danny suggested I call Gedney Howe.  Gedney was awesome and he and Bo had a very adversarial relationship, so he gladly took my case. Bo had already told me that all he would be able to get for us was $7,000, and there were huge hospital bills and a practically new VW Convertible which were destroyed by the drunk driver which would have to be paid out of that paltry sum.  And we knew God had clearly spoken into our hearts that He was going to give us $20,000.

15.  Gedney eventually gave us $20,000 (and we had never told him how much we wanted) but it was 2 or 3 years after the drunk driver hurt me.  Gedney paid off all the doctor and hospital bills and then after he took his cut, he gave us what we already knew we would eventually be getting. (I later used Gedney's name as if I knew him when problems would come up.  Bad guys became pussy cats whenever Gedney's name was mentioned.)  We never got a bill from the hospital or the back doctor or the head doctor.  I hardly had any interaction with Gedney at all except for one deposition.   He was sending me to Dr. Snyder, the head doctor, even though I didn't think I had a head injury.  I thought he just made me see this crazy shrink because you could maybe get more money for a head injury than just a back injury. (20 years later I would find out I really did have a head injury when still another drunk driver got me and gave me another one.)  Snyder would hypnotize me and I would play along and pretend so he wouldn’t feel inadequate.  (Later, knowing how these guys hypnotize was going to be crucial for one of the jobs God had me in training for, which I did not know I would be called to do until 1990.  It had to do with a Program in the Public Schools where little kids were being hypnotized.)  

16.  Dr. Snyder really had a problem with me because I refused to let him suck on his cigarette /pacifier when I was in his office.  He was making a lot of money from what would be the proceeds of my insurance settlement.  I sure didn’t want to breathe in his nasty, stinky cigarette smoke which often made me sick.  To make up for denying him his stinky pacifier, I always complimented him on the beautiful fresh flowers he always had on his desk, because we all know how insecure shrinks are, and rightfully so!   However, the last time I went in to see him, he had something new in his office decor.  Believe it or not he had a dead fish stuck to a piece of wood hanging on the wall behind his couch.  I told him that was disgusting…because it was …and he stood up from behind his big fancy desk and pointed at me and told me to “Get out!  You are a crazy woman! Get out!!!”  I couldn’t help but laugh, and I said, “But Doctor Snyder, you’re supposed to help crazy people!!!”  It really was funny! Too bad Snyder didn't see the humor in the situation!  (I think he was possibly the crazy one. Many shrinks are insane. They become psychiatrists to find out what their own problem is... and I am not trying to be funny because that is NOT funny at all.)

17. I really thought Gedney would think that was funny, but he didn’t.  He is an excellent lawyer, so I guess it’s OK that his sense of humor wasn’t the best.  It really was one of the funniest things I had ever seen up to that point in my life.  (Things got a lot funnier when I was older though.)  It was so good not to have to go to a crazy, insecure shrink who needed to suck on a pacifier anymore!  It took what seemed to me to be a long time to get the settlement and I hardly ever spoke to Gedney and one day we got a check from Gedney for $20,000.  That was exactly what we knew God was going to give us because we had given God’s real estate commission of $2,000 to my dad’s cousin, Father Charles, the missionary. The settlement didn't actually come until after a very bizarre thing would happen on the beach which will be good for a few  paragraphs of this totally bizarre book of our really ridiculous life.   

18.  Before the bizarre beach happening, another careless driver on Hiway 17 by the Ashley River Bridge hit me.  I think this one hit me in 1979 after we had just given $400. to a woman who was in real financial trouble.  God's Word says that he who gives to the poor lends to the Lord, and the Lord will be no man's debtor.  That one was really funny!  I told the Nationwide rep, Von D, not to talk to the owners of the Colony House where I was working, because anyone who gets a back injury is not welcome to work in a restaurant where you have to do heavy lifting. Well, because she didn't do what I told her to do, I was fired from the Colony House, but not before 2 really special things happened.  One had to do with an FBI guy who by (…Oh, wow, while I am putting all my notes into chronological  order I am so amazed at how much has happened to us every year for I don't know how many years!  With all of the different strands that run through our lives, I do not know if the chronological thing is even possible!) Before I tell you about the FBI guy, I need to tell you how and why we knew him.  And all of this happened in between being hit by the drunk driver in 1978 and a Bizarre Beach incident in 1982.  

19.  It was with the profit we made from selling 8 31st St. in 1977 for $32,000 that we had enough money to put down payments on two different rental properties and also to pay my parents back the $2,000 they loaned us to repay Bill Walters who had loaned us the down payment for 8 31st Street.  Just forget about the Beach Incident for now.  I had totally forgotten about the 2 rental properties which were in and of themselves mini-miracles.  Was God crazy letting 2 idiots like Bill and I have so much excitement when some other people have to play bingo for thrills?  I have literally had people complain to me that I hog too much of God's time.  Maybe they are right.  If in fact we were taking up too much of His time, I would think it is because in His word He states that He uses the foolish things of the world to confound the wise so that no flesh can glory in His sight.  There have been so many major events in our lives, that without being able to access records (which were lost in 2008.....more on that later, because this is being typed in 2009....You can go to www.bedfordcorruption.com  if you want to find out  now, but it would be better for you to wait. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves OK? )

20.  Back to the Colony House and the FBI guy whose name was so appropriate for an FBI guy back then!  His name was Lowell B. Strong. (An appropriate name for an FBI agent now might be Ima Corrupt Crooke.)  I met Lowell after we had a problem with the Ku Klux Klan. I'm not kidding!  One of the rental properties we put a down payment on from the sale of our first house was at 1950  Everette  Street on John's Island.  It was a brick home with a huge corner lot in what appeared to be a nice area.  Frank Levy and his wife (who were black, and that is important to know for this part) had tried to purchase the house but couldn't, so we were going to buy it and then rent it out to them.  They came by to check on something at the house while we were not there, and the guy from across the street came over to see what they were doing there.  His name was Bill Farrel but we will refer to him as BF.  After the Levy family had been at the house we had been fixing up for them to rent from us, we got a call in the middle of the night. The man asked for Bill and I told him my husband was asleep and he told me to wake him up.  I hung up on him.  This happened repeatedly until he blurted out that he was The Grand Dragon of the Johns Island Ku Klux Klan and I had better get Bill on the phone immediately.  

21.  This time I hung up and left the phone off the hook. I really did think it was a crank call...surely there wasn't still a KKK?  And a Grand Dragon?  If someone had called during the day I may have thought that was even somewhat sickly humorous.  The next day we went to do some more work at 1950 Everette St., the Johns Island house, and when we got there, the front picture window had been shot out.  Uh oh!  We called the sheriff’s office and a Detective Tanner came out.  He was a white guy so we didn't know if he could be trusted.  At this point we didn't trust anyone on that island who was white!  (except for each other.)  Turned out Tanner was OK...and he was someone God would use in a few years after this to help recover appliances that would later be stolen from our rental house.

22.  Frank Levy told us that BF had come over when he and Janie were looking at our house the day before, so BF was our main suspect.  We called the FBI and Lowell B Strong was the FBI Agent we met with.  A short while after that, we came back to our house on Johns Island and saw that our KKK neighbor had tried to give us a house warming present!  What a sweet gesture!  We had put all the glass from the shot out big window into a big cardboard box, and then we had put other trash on top of all the glass. To give us a house warming present, BF, the KKK Grand Dragon had tried to burn our house down by lighting off the trash in the big cardboard box on the hardwood floor in the living room!  Fortunately we had so much glass in the box that the fire did not get down to the floor. The only damage was a small burn mark on the floor.   We actually called BF and told him if he was afraid property values would go down because someone who wasn't the same anemic, pasty color as he was moved into the neighborhood, he could think of what would happen to property values if we painted our pretty red brick house pink with purple polka dots.  The FBI guy also called BF and warned him not to come on our property again.  Between the two threats, BF backed off, but later in this writing you will see the plan God had for vengeance.  We never could have pulled this off, but God fixed it so we would get BFs house for $30,000 and sell it within 90 days of purchasing it with no out of pocket money for $60,000.  Working for the King can be fun and profitable.  Frank and Janie and their kids moved in and had no problem or contact from BF.  So, back to the Colony House.  I was waiting on this table of four and when this man gave me his credit card, and I saw the name LOWELL B STRONG, I blurted out "Oh, you're the great FBI guy!"  He had such a pained look on his face when I said that. I think he was trying to be undercover.  OOPS!

23.  Another very memorable moment at the Colony House involved a Doctor from MUSC.  I was waiting on a table of four doctors when I got a call from my mom who hardly ever called me.  Ordinarily you would not be able to get a call while working but because it was about something very important, the boss called me to take the call.  My dad had made it out of surgery with no problem after a procedure that could have been very dangerous.  There was only one doctor in this country who could do this procedure and his name was Benjamin Winter from California.  (By now he would be over 100 years old, so don't try to find him.) I actually spilled coffee on this one very irritated doctor I had been waiting on, and I told him I was sorry and then told him why I was so excited.  When I mentioned that my dad had just had a bilateral carotid bypass surgery and came out of the surgery fine, he got really excited too.  He had been trying unsuccessfully to find a doctor who knew how to do that, and had about given up.  It is amazing how many "coincidences" happen when you work for the King.  What even made this more of a coincidence was that my mom hardly ever called me, (except for the time that she told me I was going to die an old maid and my dogs would eat my dead body.)  I always had to call her so it must have been very important to God to get this doctor that information.  If you know anyone with severe emphysema, look into that procedure. (You may get info on it from MUSC in Charleston, since that was where the doctor was working when I spilled the coffee on him.)  An 80 year old woman from Youngstown who could hardly breathe could actually cut her own grass after she had this procedure done. And Dr. Winter would make his patients run down the hall of the hospital the same day he did this procedure to show them that they could do it now! It is so nice to find a doctor who is useful to society and not just another drug pusher.  Oh, check out www.drugawareness.org when you have time. (Better yet, look at it now.  It is too important to wait.) It could save the lives of some of your friends. So many drugs actually cause people to go crazy!  You will see on that site that SSRI drugs like Prozac and Paxil cause more problems than they fix, such as murder, suicide, rage ....even the chimp that attacked the woman just a few days ago, ...as I write this it is March 11 of 2009....  was put on those horrid drugs by a veterinarian.  There is talk of punishing the owner of the chimp, which had to be shot and killed, for the horrible things that happened to her friend because of the drugs that poor animal was put on by the veterinarian.  PLEASE GO LOOK AT THAT SITE BEFORE YOU FORGET.  I WILL WAIT RIGHT HERE FOR YOU.....THE LIFE YOU SAFE MAY BE YOUR OWN.  Dr. Ann Blake Tracy also has written a book, Prozac, Panacea or Pandora.  The editing is awful in the edition I read, but the info is excellent.  IF YOU ARE ON ONE OF THOSE DRUGS, DO NOT GO OFF THEM COLD TURKEY!  THAT IS ONE OF THE MOST DANGEROUS THINGS YOU COULD DO!  You may want to get a file and just very gradually decrease the poisons you are putting into your body by just filing off a little bit of each pill until your body has adjusted to the slow decrease. If you do stop these dangerous drugs suddenly, you may even kill your own children.  It is like these drugs are a doorway for demons.

24.  At about the same time as we purchased the home across the street from the Ku Klux Klan Guy, we also used a small portion of the profits from the $11,000 we had from the sale of our first little house to get 94 Morris Street, a four unit building in downtown Charleston.  It was very close to the Medical University of South Carolina and in what our realtor, Al R. of the Rudisell Company  (pronounced Rude As Hell) called a gentrification area. We did not really want to get this property, but all signs were that God did want us to buy it.  This was most probably in 1980.

25.  Let me explain to you one instance of hearing and obeying His voice. Early in the 1980s  before my Dad died, Bill and I purchased 94 Morris Street.
 It was in a rundown section of the city of Charleston, close to the Medical University of South Carolina and close to the College of Charleston.  It was
 filthy and disgusting and huge, about 4,000 square feet of roaches, garbage, dirt, trash and other lovely stuff.  It was an apartment building with four
units in a high crime area which had a monthly gross income of about $200.  Only 2 of the 4 units were rented for obvious reasons.  I think it was a no
money down deal but I really do not remember.  Al R. then told us about another property he had found.  It was on Trumbo Street, where the rich folk lived.  It was close to the College of Charleston and to the Battery and only a duplex, but all of the really nasty tear out work had been done.  All that was left to do was to put up new sheet rock, paint the walls and redo the floors.  We asked God if we could get the Trumbo Street property instead, and he said  a very emphatic NO!  I personally wondered if God maybe didn’t understand real estate values.

26.  We very sadly purchased 94 Morris Street for $45,000.  Not long after that, Bill was driving by our “dream apartments that God told us not to buy” on
Trumbo Street and he saw that the building we so wanted to buy was being dismantled brick by brick. If we had not listened to what our Wonderful Counselor told us to do, our Dream Apartments would have become one of our Worst Nightmare Apartments!  All of the mortar had turned to sand, and if there was any way to save the building, the Hysterical Society (or was that Historical?  Same thing, I guess.) would never have let that old building be dismantled.  I wonder if our realtor was trying to do us harm by suggesting we purchase that property because he really led us wrong on one other very expensive mistake that we only made because of Al Ray's advice.  I will expand on that in about 10 paragraphs.

27.  I should have known that God can tell a good real estate deal from a bad one better than we can. (And many years later we were able to become
acquainted with and eventually lead one of my now favorite people, Shelly, to Yeshua, aka Jesus.  We met Shelly when she rented one of those
apartments from us.  We also met Mark Lifches, a Jewish kid who had a gambling problem, who rented our largest unit with 2 other Citadel kids.  
He got to meet his Messiah because we bought that property. (More on that in a little bit when we win a car)  Oh yeah, it was very profitable too.
 We sold that property first for about $120,000 to Andy Slanker, who raised all the rents by about double, and then quit paying on the first mortgage.  
We got it back by catching up on the arrears on one of the two mortgages, and we had an enormous increase in rental income.  Then we sold it for the
final time in 1996 to a psychiatrist for  $240,000.  (Maybe that psychiatrist should have had her head examined?) That was a miracle sale....more on
that in the 1996 section.  Anyway, the fact that my best friend, YHWH God, can see into the future is really helpful.

28. A little added bit of happy info to go along with this paragraph is that when we owned this 4plex, after we first prayed about God stopping whoever
had been habitually breaking in, we started to pray for "a bubble of protection over each of us and over all of our property, finances, investments ...and
on and on....and covered that bubble of protection with the blood of Yeshua, aka Jesus, because Satan cannot penetrate the blood. After we started to do
that WE NEVER HAD A REPEAT  BREAK-IN FOR THE MANY YEARS WE OWNED THOSE APARTMENTS, but, THE NIGHT THAT WE HAD JUST CLOSED ON THE SALE OF THE 4PLEX to the psychiatrist, AND IT HAD A NEW OWNER,  IT WAS BROKEN INTO!  God really does answer prayers!  There is definitely power in the Blood of Jesus of Nazareth and in the spoken word! The power of life and death is in the tongue!  Watch what you say!   
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  29. As I look back, knowing that YHWH God knows the future, I can clearly see why He had us acquire 94 Morris Street.   The neighbors on Morris Street were so nice but more important was the connections we would make with different people there would be crucial for what we would be doing in the future!  (I so believe that for at least some of us our lives our predestined, just like Bill said to me in a very infrequent conversation when we were quite young and still in school.)  For instance, Mr. Scott lived across the street and whenever I would be up on a ladder painting the ceiling in the upstairs front apartment, he could see me since there were no blinds on the front windows which faced his home across the street,  he would come across the street when he saw me painting the ceilings to tell me not to do that!  He said that the baby I was carrying would have the cord wrapped around its neck when it was born.  I thought that was a superstition so I ignored it.  Later on, when I had my first baby, he had the cord wrapped around his neck two times.  I wished I had listened to Mr. Scott.  John, aka Mahershallalhashbaz, was actually born dead because I didn't listen to Oscar Scott, but God made him alive again and he is just fine now.  ( I wonder if the cord being wrapped around John's neck when he was born was due to the fact that the power of life and death is in the tongue?  START LISTENING TO WHAT YOU SAY!  HAVE YOU EVER TOLD YOUR CHILD HE WAS GOING TO FALL DOWN AND BREAK HIS NECK?  This is not amusing! Doesn't the Word say that the Power of life and death is in the tongue?  You may need to remember, if you say something stupid and dangerous to also say that "I rebuke those words in the name of Jesus of Nazareth." Or better yet use the name of Yeshua because that was the Hebrew name given to our Savior when he was born.  The letter J was not around yet.  (Would you do me a favor and go look at the web site www.christianityunmasqued.com ?   Then would you do me another favor and go and order that book from www.thepowermall.com ?)

30.  Another great thing from owning those apartments was that Mr. Chisolm who lived next to those apartments, had been the chairman on a Grand Jury in Charleston during the time we owned those apartments (from 1982 until 1996)  and his input would make a huge difference in my life with a very special assignment YHWH  had for me to do later in life.  Life really is a tapestry ... sometimes a big one and sometimes quite small and beautiful, but always interwoven in very intricate ways.  Mr. Chisolm's impact, while he hardly knew me, was crucial for what I was to do in both the near and distant future, and also for what I think will be soon to come (in real world in 2012) assignments from my Father in heaven. It is very probable that things I learned because of buying 94 Morris Street will also have a huge impact on the lives of evil officials in the government and complicit corrupt lawyers who lie cheat and steal as a matter of every day life and business as usual.

31.  We would, while we owned those apartments, have the opportunity to lead some of our tenants into a relationship with Yeshua, (who we called Jesus before we read the above mentioned book Christianity Unmasked.)  Much information would be acquired from our tenants that would also be necessary for doing something major that I was called to do on this earth.   One thing we learned from owning that property was the power of masks!  I am serious.  One of our tenants was the widow of a man who had been an ambassador to Haiti.  She was a very beautiful woman but she always seemed to have fear in her eyes and it even showed in the way she carried herself.  A short explanation is that we found out that spirits can attach to objects and with the words of our mouths (The Power of Life and Death is in the Tongue) and with authority in the natural realm (which we had because we owned the apartments) we went into her apartment to do some not so necessary repairs, and while we were in there, we laid our hands on those scary looking masks and spoke to the spirits that were attached to it and told them to get out of our property and away from our tenant Marilyn, and never come back.  The next time we saw Marilyn she looked like a different woman.  She was obviously happy and confident and she was even more beautiful without the fear on her face.
Our object lesson with the Haitian masks would be essential for what we would do at a later time in the Charleston School System... when and where masks
were being used to invoke the Spirits of the dead ancestors of the students,  as in witchcraft and sorcery.

32.  We would take our little boy with us when we went to work on the apartments and put him in front of a big mirror in his "Johnny Jump Up" so he would blissfully jump up and down and talk to the baby in the mirror!   He was such an easy baby to take care of, because he really did seem to take care of himself. When he would be thinking about doing something dangerous beginning when he was about 18 months old, he would loudly scold himself and say "Uh Oh,  Uh Oh!  NO NO NO NO JOHN LEO!"    God gave me the best kids in the universe, and it was not because of my parenting skills!  It was because of my first born's parenting skills!  First he taught himself, and then he seemed to have an incredible amount of influence on the development of  our little girls that were born 5 and 7 years after John was born.  One of the funniest things I ever saw was John and the neighbor boy, both about 2 years old, the first time they met.  They walked up to each other and just felt each others hair.  John seemed to be fascinated that Desmond's hair would bounce right back out after John felt it and pushed it closer to Desmond's scalp.  Desmond seemed to be amazed that John had straight hair that didn't boing.  This was an innercity neighborhood and I think we were the only pale-faces for blocks around when we purchased it.

 33.  Sammy lived on the other side of Mr. Chisolm who is the guy who will be my way to get to the Grand Jury about 5 years later in book world.   He was very young but he and John got along so well that he would come and babysit and play with John while we were working on the Apartments.  Once while he was watching John for me, I was painting the exterior front of the 4plex, and I had a 40 foot aluminum ladder that I was maneuvering sideways to get it about 3 feet away from where it had been.  There were utility lines that were much lower than the extended ladder and they were only about 8 feet from the ladder.  If the ladder fell into the wires I would not even like to think of what would happen.  As I moved the ladder, the unthinkable happened, but before it went into the wires a huge black guy who I had never seen before or since came to my rescue and reached over my head and rescued me from my stupidity.  God has so many people in so many places doing His will and helping other people who work for Him.

34.  The same man who was the realtor who sold us this 4-plex and then tried to sell us the property on Trumbo Street (that God told us not to buy and then we found out the mortar had turned to sand so it had to be dismantled brick by brick) and he told us he knew a man who would be able to finish up the downstairs back apartment for just $20,000 so we could rent it out for enough money to pay the loan back very quickly with the increased amount of rent we would be receiving.  Al had a connection to Tony Daniel, a banker loan officer for Liberty Something-or-other Bank and he got me in touch with Tony Daniel and Tony loaned the money to us, but as I remember it we never got the money to give to Len so I guess Len got the check directly from the bank.   When we applied for the loan Tony Daniel told us he would only disperse the money just one third at a time and check to make sure that 1/3 of the work was done before he gave him the next amount... and the bottom line was Len would not get the last third until the work was completely finished.  Len somehow got all of the money and he had only done a small portion of the work.   We did get a lawyer and his name was Bart Daniel.  Daniel was a very common name in Charleston and it never even occurred to me that he was Tony's cousin, and Bart sure did not tell us that.  He said there was nothing we could do about it and we just needed to pay the loan back.  He was in the Christian Coalition so I thought he could be trusted,  I am not that stupid anymore.

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