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WELCOME TO MY STORY-PAGE 59

A second kid, a second store {sub shop, minimart}. Then came apartment houses, fancy cars, a big new home, a coffee house and a lot of partys and over extension and then bankruptcy. I was left with 200 dollars and an old car. I headed north and moved in with my folks and hit the road. Less than a year passed and I had a new college bookstore. In another year a much larger store doing a volume over a million dollars a year.

INSIDE NEW BOOKSTORE
It was then that my whole world collapsed as my wife became mentally ill and was hospitalized with schizophrenia. I was beside myself as I had five children now and had to continue running a business after many tries I found a competent nanny for the children but the heavy expenses and draining mental fatigue was beginning to catch up with me and then my financier gave me a notice and called in a 200,000 doallar note. Siezed the store and auctioned off all the inventory. That was in June but by the following Sept. I was back in business wheeling and dealing but this was in the 60's and drug use was becoming big. To satisfy there drug use my store was robbed 31 times in one year. I figured I would be killed or would kill someone else so I threw in the towell and found a small delapated cottage in New Hampshire. The price was 2,800 dollars. I had 500 dollars and my dad signed a note for the rest.I could no longer afford private mental hospital accommadations and had to put my wife in a state institution that hurt me very much. It was great being out in the country working on my little cottage. I had wood heat an out house and no running water but it seemed like heaven. Then I was called to Boston to testify against a kid that had robbed my store when I learned that my cottage had burned to the ground. It was the middle of the winter but I managed with Janets help to build a little 8 foot by 10 foot shack out of 12 glass doors. I covered the whole thing with plastic and layed in bed and watched the snow get higher and higher up the windows and gradually start diminishing as the spring came. I was alone and enjoyed the solitude. Weekends were exciting times as I would make the hundred mile trip to Boston to pick up Janet and my five kids then the 100 mile trip back to New Hampshire. The quarters were real tight but I had made a small loft where all the kids could sleep packed in like sardines. By spring I had the old cottage debris all cleaned up and was able to build a little larger dwelling double the size of the first one.

CONSTRUCTION AT NEW STRUCTURE

Summers were fun but tough for I had all five kids with me and only 10 dollars a week to provide for them. Needless to say we did a lot of fishing, gardening and berry picking and to this day I don't like summer squash because I had it cooked in abundance all kinds of ways. By the end of the second summer I was getting real lonely and that was when I made my first sculpture called Christian Barnyard. It was a life size work roughed out with a chain saw and I built it by taking measurements of myself.

MY FIRST SCULPTURE
Then I had a stroke of good luck as they were tearing down and old historic inn downtown. I had 22 ten ton truck loads of debris hauled to my land and over a few years picked out the good wood, bricks, and even nails and made a decent place to live.I was able to dig a 25 foot deep well. I started in June and ended in late Sept. But as I was digging the water table was dropping and the well went dry in Nov. Now my fist kid came to live with me and I was excited but nervous because the living at best was rough. Then one day Jimmy was cutting a fishing line with a hatchet and cut part of his finger off. My old car wouldn't start but my neighbor brought us to the hospital and a skin graft was sewed on and we went home. Enter welfare. I was told then that being a single parent I was eligible for medical assistance and commodity food and later after all five kids came 179 dollars a month. I felt a great burden was lifted from my shoulders and living was much easier and I was able to continue work on the house making five bed rooms so each kid had their own room. Around this time the kids nanny had inherited a small amount of money from her father and came to help with the kids. She was a close friend of Janets. Janet was still in college and would take the bus from Boston to Franklin and back on Sunday night. I became fascinated by my work with wood and continued to work on many sculptures and was able to sell some at gallery shows in Boston. I was able to get some work doing odd jobs and we were surviving. Then something major happened.
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