Fornits

Fornits Home for Wayward Web Fora
An open discussion about the troubled parent industry

First of all, I don't speak German.  This is a first one for me.  Here I was typing away, and Chongo got bored and started attacking my toes, so I put him on his cage.  I got a few more sentences in and then he gets mad and starts screaming, so I went offline, to go quiet him down and then I got sidetracked by that cool show with Jim Belushi.  By the time I actually finished the story and posted it, somehow 5 or so many people had responded just to the title alone!
All I can say is, sorry for the confusion. :nworthy:  :nworthy:

_________________
In the line of fire, you know what to say
They gave us no choices, just one shade of grey
Back at that hellhole, behind Tyrone Mall
We walked in darkness, kept hitting the walls
I took the time to feel for the door
I had been treated, but what the hell for?

[ This Message was edited by: 85 Day Jerk on 2003-04-08 20:01 ]

In the Pinellas County area in the late seventies, many 'inmates' came from families where the parent was directly or indirectly employed by the Defense/Aerospace industry.  I would give my left arm to know the name of the person responsible for informing these workers of the "danger signs" and luring them to check out the program.
Now I am not discounting that there was a drug problem back then, but they were just attacking the symptom and not the cause.  The average Joe in Pinellas County had not had a meaningful raise in over ten years, while rampant inflation was eating into whatever was left.  The only workers that had it made in the shade were the aforementioned ones.  They were priveleged, their jobs were secure, they saw little of their families, and god forbid, they did not talk too freely about what they do at work.  This loyalty to the big daddy government guaranteed an aura of anonymity that may have made the Straight Inc. Program look like it was tailor made just for them.  This is my theory.  Anyone from that era want to go in on this with me then maybe I'll be a little more inclined to help out with your projects.  One thing comes to mind.  Prior to my coming into Straight, there was alot of construction going on at General Electric in Largo and we all know the name Mel Sembler as having a hand in redevelopment.   Just something to think about is all.  After some thought I have decided to name a few names of clients who's parents worked Defense/Aerospace and the place that their parents worked.

Tom and Steve Andrews............Honeywell
Mike, Bob, and Scott Patterson...General Electric
Chuck Haig..............General Electric
Lance and Lewis Cantrell........Paradyne
Ted Eckhardt..................E-Systems
Mark Errett..................Rand Corporation
Mike Kubica..................E-Systems
Mike Sailor...............Rockwell


There are more, these are just the ones I am sure of from them either being friends or oldcomers.


Actually, after some thought I decided to edit this post.  I now remember that one girl's dad was a U.S. Postal Worker and another girl had a father than ran a UPS route that serviced quite a few defense plants in the Tampa Bay area.  I guess the parents of kids already in the program spread the news to other parents like a bad cold or something, but I am sure it was all a part of Sembler's game plan.......Oh wait, there is a guy from UPS knocking on my door.  Be right back

Whew!  I just got done reading all the stuff posted under the title Unanswered Mail.  Either someone made a slip, or they were defending me in one of the posts.  Pretty trippy stuff no matter how you slice it.

As stated before, in the Yahoo Straight Alumni Site, I have had some bumper stickers printed up and distribute them around downtown St. Pete.  I have been very subdued about it and let the stickers speak for themselves.  They are catchy as hell and I am pleased to announce that they are starting to turn up on the roadways.  I made them for one express purpose......to put the word on the street.  Just like old Cab Calloway did with those kids in the Blues Brothers, middle school kids with spiked hair are plastering these stickers at school, on stop signs and on their notebooks and hopefully are logging on to Wes Fager's website to learn more.  I want my Bay Area public to be made aware of what happened to us all and how it all started here in my own hometown back in 1976.  If sucessful, enough people will be aware of Sembler and his goons long before he is able to start the cycle all over again with a new generation of innocent youths.  This is how I am fighting back for now.
I have had my own share of ups and downs this past year and have lost communication with an old friend due to the childish manipulations and meddling of Crispy Chris, Captain Blowtoad, and Miss Moan-Row.
     Anyone wishing to recieve 2 free stickers need only send a self addressed stamped envelope to the following address..........................
R. Patterson
354 13 Avenue Northeast
St. Petersburg, FL 33701

Please do not send any DNA samples or Global Satallite Positions  although a small donation may yield more than 2 bumper stickers.  I have already mailed 50 of the first batch to Bill Earnshaw and he can vouch for the quality, and authenticity and all that crap.  Don Smith also recieved 25 stickers the same week.  These new ones are done up on quality vinyl coated stock with special fade resistant ink and all I can say is that they are for you guys and they won't do anybody much good sitting on my coffee table, so get out to the post office and send your S.A.S.E.
as soon as you can!

_________________
In the line of fire, you know what to say
They gave us no choices, just one shade of grey
Back at that hellhole, behind Tyrone Mall
We walked in darkness, kept hitting the walls
I took the time to feel for the door
I had been treated, but what the hell for?

[ This Message was edited by: 85 Day Jerk on 2003-02-16 17:34 ]

The Christmas where I turned 16 is memorable for me because I was still known as Bob Newman in school and in Straight, most people did not get the connection between my father, Charles Patterson, my stepbrother Mike Patterson, and the fact that I was the only natural born son of Charlie Patterson, only my name was Bob Newman due to to legal games that my mom had engaged in several years prior to Straight.  I loved every minute of the confusion that it used to cause the staff, when they tried to make heads or tails of my family situation.  

     I will never forget that Christmas, for it was the one and only time that my parents really really tried to do the right thing and make everything perfect for us guys.  As presents, I recieved for my birthday (Dec 13th) the whole Earth-Sea Trilogy by Ursula K. LeGuin.  I also got a way-cool Levi's wallet that I kept until 1985 and gave to a homeless day laborer named Stray Ray on Christmas of that year.  I also got the coolest book that I had ever read up until that point.........The Shining, by Stephen King.

But all in all, the coolest present I got was a purple Duncan YoYo that I still own to this day.

I pulled it out of storage when I worked to the YMCA before and afterschool daycare and made it a point to tell the kids that the damn thing was over 20 years old and then do all kinds of tricks with it and emphasise the importance of taking care of things that mean something to you.  That Yo Yo will still be here long after I have gone, the damn thing is indestructible, and I never for the life of me knew why I had held on to it all those years through all the crap that I had been through, but in the weeks to come, I saw how I had made an impact on those kids, and how they started taking better care of the stuff we provided, because if I could keep a YO YO looking good and able to do better tricks than even the fancy "cheater" yo yo's with the custom ball bearing shafts and counter weights, maybe older was better, ya know?

_________________
In the line of fire, you know what to say
They gave us no choices, just one shade of grey
Back at that hellhole, behind Tyrone Mall
We walked in darkness, kept hitting the walls
I took the time to feel for the door
I had been treated, but what the hell for?

[ This Message was edited by: 85 Day Jerk on 2002-12-18 19:54 ]

Might as well write about the past to get through the emptiness of the present............



The fall of 1978 was a pretty cool time to be a teenager, even for one in a drug program that was gaining national attention.  A new band had come out called Cheap Trick and so far, none of the staff at the building had anything bad to say about them.  I had only been back in school for about a month now.  My dad had insisted that I join the R.O.T.C. program offered there and I had my doubts on why, but after a few weeks, I realised that he knew exactly what he was doing when he made sure that I was placed in the class.

The "rotzi's' had to wear uniforms and stuck out like a turd in a punchbowl in high school, yet stuck up for each other and were a force to reckon with in the hallways.  By my being a part of an Army Prep Training Unit, I would not have to worry too much about people wanting to mess with me for being in Straight.  This really helped to ease me into the social structure of high school.  I was a new kid at a new school, and the member of a secret cult as well.  The teacher in my printing class was very lenient, and it was not long before we had radios playing all through the shop.  This was the first time in my program that I had access to the 'druggie' world and all its mysteries since my initial incarceration back in the summer.  The music scene was really changing, and Disco was actually making strides as a mainstream form of entertainment.  Southern Rock was having a stake driven through it's heart as bands were breaking up or dying in plane crashes.  I was learning alot and was still known as Bob Newman.  That is the name I entered the program as, but all that was about to change.  Behind my back, my dad was getting ready to take steps necessary to give me back my birthname of Bob Patterson, only the kind folks at Straight were going to pull some strings of their own.

         From out of the blue, they decide to send my brothers and two newcomers to stay at my Mom's house in Largo with me.  This was total bullshit on Straight's part, as I had never once, had any communication alone with my mom since being placed in the program.  They were afraid that my mom would try to pull me and they were right there, because they treated her like shit from the get-go.  To help sweeten the deal, they gave us a newcomer that was going to split no matter what, and they new full well that my mothers home was not split proof.

      To make a long story short, Gordon split through an unsecure window while I did my homework in the kitchen with both of  my step-brothers in the same room with him, and I was made to look bad.  They tried to place the blame on me, but I held my ground and stated the fact that none of the newcomers should have been there in the first place, that I did not have one minute alone with my Mom, and when I did she started talking about pulling me and we argued about it.  This was all carefully orchastrated by Staff and it worked like a charm.  My father got my mother to sign away custody to him, and I was left regarding her as "weak" and I gave up my entire identity to become a part of "Patterson Horizons"  which is what my host home came to be known as.  My grandfather paid for the court proceedings which came to the tune of $166 dollars

and there is a picture of me and my grands hugging with me holding out 8 twenty dollar bills.

     I can honestly say, that aside from the 7step ceremony, it was the happiest moment of ever being in the damn program.  We had a thanksgiving dinner in the afternoon that was actually a permission and I believe my first one, and things were very tense and awkward, until we went out and shot pool with my grand dad in the garage.  He asked me about school, and I told him that I needed to come up with a printing project for Print Shop.  We came up with an idea for some business cards for him and I wound up getting an A for the design.  I also got his phone number and called him later to let him know the cards were done.  I did not know it, but I could have been started over for this.  All phone numbers were to be approved by staff.  Me and my grandfather formed a secret alliance that carried on throughout my program.  He disliked my stepbrothers and stepmother as much as I did, and he provided a welcome outlet to vent my anger at times.  Had it not been for the relationship with my grandfather, I may well have snapped and set the house on fire or something along those lines.

...............pass the turkey, there please!



_________________
In the line of fire, you know what to say
They gave us no choices, just one shade of grey
Back at that hellhole, behind Tyrone Mall
We walked in darkness, kept hitting the walls
I took the time to feel for the door
I had been treated, but what the hell for?

[ This Message was edited by: 85 Day Jerk on 2002-11-28 21:07 ]

Had a strange dream last night that made me remember something I should have never forgot

in the first place.  At my 5th foster home (I

went through six oldcomers) it was a Unisex Home.  I guess that is the best thing to call a home that had both male and females living there.  They did not have very many of these, because of the problems inherent to having two sets of teens with raging hormones all living under one roof.  These homes had to be approved by executive staff.

This particular home had Ben Carpenter as a host, and me and another guy as his newcomers

and he also had a girl cousin and that is where it gets all weird.  I cannot remember her face, her name, or anything, only that Melinda Putnam was her foster sister and used to put a mudpack on her face every night

and  I would do imitations of the Wicked Witch and piss her off quite a bit.  They also broght back into the home a small package of dynamite named Tina Augusto who had split tried to split from this home on a previous occasion (read ; The Day the Monkees Came to Straight) and I guess staff put her back there to further break her spirit.  She had a cute impish quality about her, but once I got to know her, I realized that she had a heart like black ice.  You could'nt see it coming until it was too late.

The big question is this:  why can't I remember Ben's cousin?  The answer, she must have been very attractive and like-able.  I

only remembered girls well from the program if I could trust them, and they viewed things the way I did ie; that we just wanted the hell out of there and to get on with our lives like I did.  They also had to hate grandstanders that confront simply for the attention it gave them and lastly, they had to be goddamn intelligent, so that narrowed the field quite a bit right there.  I remembered butt-ugly girls because they were no threat to me at all.  You could stare at an ugly chick through an entire open meeting with drool trickling down your chin and no one would say anything, but glance over at a girl that is bending down for something, and catch a little cleaveage and it was time to be dragged out to the railroad tracks, and hogtied for when the next freight train comes through!!  This Nazi like presense made me block attractive or plain girls out of my mind completely and thoroughly.  There are girls who went through that hellhole program from beginning to end, and I have not one clue as to who they were.  If any women out there can relate to this malaise, I really want to hear your side of things on this matter.  Thanks for listening..........

_________________
In the line of fire, you know what to say
They gave us no choices, just one shade of grey
Back at that hellhole, behind Tyrone Mall
We walked in darkness, kept hitting the walls
I took the time to feel for the door
I had been treated, but what the hell for?

[ This Message was edited by: 85 Day Jerk on 2002-10-20 11:46 ]

I was put in Straight for my "attitude" when

what it really was, was that I was beginning

to exhibit early signs of mental illness.  I

do not think that I am alone either.  Back in 1978, the original Straight had a staff psychologist named Jim Hartz and he either had his head up his ass, or knew damn well that intake kids were bonkers and deliberately decieved the parents for $$$$$$.

There is a self test that can be done over the internet.  It has been a couple of years since I seen it, but I will try to dig it up for anyone interested.  I have come across a

few former inmates over the years, and most of them have some stress related disorder that has affected their life.  The thing to remember is that Straight did not 'create' this situation.  It had been there all along, and they just simply capitalized on it and deprived us of proper treatment and medication much like the Church of Scientology did to poor Lisa McPhearson.  Bi-

Polar disorder sucks.  During the highs, I say inappropriate things and get in trouble at the job, and during the lows I am a walking zombie.  I will try and find the site with the questionaire and post it for anyone that may wonder if they might be have the warning characteristics.

_________________
In the line of fire, you know what to say
They gave us no choices, just one shade of grey
Back at that hellhole, behind Tyrone Mall
We walked in darkness, kept hitting the walls
I took the time to feel for the door
I had been treated, but what the hell for?

[ This Message was edited by: 85 Day Jerk on 2002-10-03 19:38 ]