Then you add the transition of two families learning to live with one another; it was a real trial for a while.
Kim’s oldest is Anna, and her son’s name is Phil. Both of them hated country life, so as soon as they graduated from high school and turned 18, they both moved back to Olathe, Kansas.
Even though Kim and I met about a year after her divorce, her ex, Dick, did everything he could to sabotage my relationship with both Anna and Phil, which meant I never really had a chance to become too close to them. Every time we made headway, whenever they would return from a visit with their father, they always came back very resentful as I think they always thought that Kim and her father would someday get back together. When they didn’t, Anna turned very resentful and ended up blaming me somehow for Kim and Dick’s divorce. Over the years, our relationship has never improved.
In the early years, it’s amazing that we stayed together, but just about the time the kids were old enough to move out and Dick was no longer in the picture, peace came over our relationship. Most of the time it’s a match made in heaven. We still bump head’s occasionally as all couples do, but it doesn’t matter. As far as we’re concerned, we have as close as you can get to a perfect marriage.
Michael is my youngest. He seems to have embraced the same career choices that I did. After graduating from High School, he joined the Army for four years, and he was deployed to Iraq for one of those years. He had planned to make it a career, but after President Prescott was elected, he started slashing the military budget, which meant the troops quit receiving much-needed equipment. He kept our troops in hostile territories but tied their hands so much with his version of the rules of engagement; the troops were like sitting ducks. When Prescott was elected to a second term, Mike knew it was time for a change.
When he got out, he used his educational benefits to get his degree in law enforcement and went to work in Gladstone, Missouri, a suburb of Kansas City. He joined their tactical team and became their number one tactical shooter.
My oldest son Paul went bad on me; or maybe, in reality, I failed him. Since I had custody of the boys, I knew I had to try and make as much money as I could and ended up working about twelve hours a day. Unfortunately, that meant the boys were basically on their own until I got home. That was a mistake, especially when it came to Paul.
Seeing the direction he was heading, I tried talking Paul into joining the Army. He wasn’t keen on that, but he did agree to join the Kansas National Guard. When I talked to his commander, he told me that when they were out in the field, Paul was one of the best soldiers he had. But it was a whole different deal when they were back at the armory. Paul eventually got chaptered out for drug use.
Since we were bumping heads so much, he decided to move to Oklahoma to live with his mother, but his drug use only increased.
Later, his mother ended up dying of lung cancer. When this happened, he snapped. He hit the drugs even harder, if that’s possible and then tried robbing a pharmacy. When he ran from the police, he ended up rolling his car several times.
The police officers were amazed that besides some cuts and bruises, he had only a broken shoulder. They told him later that for some reason someone upstairs had to be watching over him because he should’ve been killed in the accident.
I didn’t find out about it until after the fact. I had always told the boys that if they got into trouble by mistake, or for using force to defend themselves or someone else, I would fight for them with every asset I had. But, if they ever did something like what Paul did, that they were on their own. Some people may consider that cruel but I was trying to teach the boys that they were responsible for the decisions they made.
Out of shame, Paul took it to the extreme and didn’t even let us know that he had been arrested. He ended up using a fairly new Public Defender, and by the end of the trial, it was ordered by the judge that he had to serve twelve actual years.
Once he faced the reality of prison life, a change seemed to come over him. In prison, many become even more violent as you’re surrounded by drugs and gang activity. For most people, they must join a gang for protection. Paul didn’t go that route though.
Instead, he turned to God, and little things started to happen. First, he was left alone. Sure, he got challenged a time or two, but he told them where he stood and he did it with courage. A small miracle happened, and they left him alone and even respected him.
When you’re in prison, you have plenty of time to think, and he did some serious soul-searching. Besides realizing that his actions and choices took several years of his freedom, he also realized the pain that he caused to his family.
Then another miracle seemed to happen. Within three years, he was transferred to a minimum-security prison; basically, an honor farm.
When they’re not working the job that was assigned to them, they could go outside of the fence and play softball or run on the track they have. Even the canteen where they buy snacks, hygiene items, etc., is outside the fence. It would have been very easy for him to run off and escape, but he realized how lucky he had it for someone in prison and was grateful.
Now, I need to talk about Carmen and Mia. It’s hard to describe our relationship with them.
Mia Baroni is a 29-year-old actress that we met in Las Vegas 4 years earlier. She’s about five feet five inches tall and about 120 pounds. She has long auburn hair that reaches down to the bottom of her shoulder blades, and her feature that stands out the most is her beautiful large green eyes that just dazzle when she smiles.
Most of her acting has been small parts on a few prime-time series, some commercials, and some bigger roles in a few, what some people call, “B” movies. She also had a role in the very successful movie, Going After Mr. Howard.
Her biggest break was when she became a co-star on the comedy series, Together. The series was funny but had a lousy time slot of 8:30 p.m. on Saturday night, on NBC. The network didn’t promote the show much, and even though it had decent ratings for a show on Saturday night, NBC canceled the series after the first season.
Because of the popularity of Mia’s character though, she recently started being offered some decent movie roles.
It’s funny how her character, Donna, was such a wild child and pretty shallow-minded. But in real life, she’s very intelligent and moderately conservative for someone her age that lives in Hollywood.
In Hollywood though, she had to keep any conservative ideals a secret. Most young actors that lean towards being conservative have to be closet conservatives because if it gets out that you’re even just a little conservative, you won’t get any decent parts. You know how the Hollywood elitists make all conservatives look and sound like extreme-right nut jobs.
It used to be if you kept your mouth shut and didn’t talk politics, you’d be alright. But nowadays, if you don’t preach the left-wing propaganda line, they start eyeballing you just like they used to back in the McCarthy era when they thought someone had communist ties.
We met her while we were playing craps and one of the players was having the role of a lifetime. He held the dice for at least an hour, and we ended up making about $1700.00. Mia was playing right next to us. Just like you do when you play at a fun table, we got to know her a little.
When the player finally crapped out, the dice turned cold as ice. Kim and I finally announced that we were going to play slots and Mia decided to join us.
Even though we were quite a bit older than her, we just clicked and had a blast together. We couldn’t figure out why she wanted to hang out with us, but we became friends and spent most of the trip hanging out together.
She and Kim became very tight, which was great for me because when Kim wanted to go shopping, Mia went with her and I got to stay at the casino.
We didn’t learn that she was an actress until the next time we saw her as she usually kept that to herself when she would first meet someone as some people just turn stupid when they meet any celebrity. We witnessed that for ourselves
during one of her visits. We drove up to Kansas City to go out for dinner. Someone recognized her, and it just turned crazy. Even people that didn’t know who she was started bugging her for pictures and autographs. Mia handled it well and treated the fans great, but after a while, it got really old to me. I can’t imagine what more recognizable celebrities go through. After that we took precautions.
Some people just worship celebrities; we don’t. We’ve met a few major celebrities through Mia but to be honest, after meeting a couple, it was no big deal. It was fun at first, but the excitement didn’t last long. Now if we could have gotten to know someone like John Wayne or Jimmy Stewart back in the day, that would have been something special, but today's celebrities are just a different breed. They’re either so stuck on themselves, or they just act so phony. Not everyone we met was like that, but many were.
Since Vegas, she’s flown out to the farm several times. Partly, just to get away from the “Hollywood Scene,” and the politics, and truly be herself.
We even visited her in California a few times over the last four years, even though, each time, my dislike for California grew stronger.
We’ve become so close that we even gave her a key to the house and told her she’s always welcome here and that she’s free to come out to the farm even if we’re out of town.
Carmen Melrose is Mia’s best friend and a 32-year-old hair model. You can see her on many hairstyle sites on the internet, a few publications, and she’s in a couple of the hairstyle books at Kim’s hairdresser.
When she graduated from college, she was offered the chance to be a swimsuit model, mainly for inclusive vacation resort advertisements, and like most eager college graduates would, she jumped at the opportunity. She was very successful at it and became very popular, but after her two-year contract came to an end, she realized she wasn’t really happy. The truth is, her parents were never really thrilled with the idea of her displaying her body, and she was never the kind that wanted to be idolized like so many models and celebrities do. Plus, after a while, flying to all those glamorous locations quit being so glamorous.
Her agent did his best to talk her out of it but as soon as he realized that she had made up her mind, he knew the debate was over. That’s when he got her a new contract as a hair model, which she’s been doing ever since.
The best way to describe her is 5 feet 8 inches tall, with short golden blonde hair, and hazel eyes. She still has a model’s body, which always seems to be tanned, and she is gorgeous. There are very few Hollywood celebrities that have Carmen’s natural looks. Even Kim agrees with that assessment.
Part of what makes her look so attractive though is her attitude and personality. She never thinks of herself first and she is a very giving and caring person. I’ve never seen her acting self-centered and she despises people who are self-absorbed and considers themselves the center of the universe.
After Mia visited here several times, and since Carmen’s family lives in Kansas City, she decided to join Mia for the weekend on the farm.
Carmen loved the freedom, the atmosphere, riding the horses and especially loves watching the deer and wild turkey out in our back field. She has been coming out on a regular basis ever since.
She’s a wildlife and animal lover and watching them never gets old to her. Every visit, weather permitting, she always wants to walk the fields and especially the area we planted with wildlife food plots as she always gets a thrill when we jump a deer or a flock of turkey.
The horses love her because she loves to groom them. They get spoiled rotten when she’s here. We ended up giving Carmen a key as well, with the same open invitation.
Usually they come out together, but lately, they even come to visit separately at times.
Even with the age differences, the four of us are like best friends and we all hang out together.
For instance, Mia and Kim have a special bond, but Mia and I talk to each other about everything. Often, she would call me to get my advice on work, a business deal and even once to get my opinion whether I thought a guy was playing her or not. She and Kim have their private girl talk, and usually, I’m excluded from that. But they don’t realize that doesn’t break my heart. Much of their girl talk isn’t the most exciting thing to me. Most guys will understand what I’m talking about. You know, those conversations where we put on a show and just act like we’re interested.
At the same time, Carmen and I are very close. Now, in my opinion, the bond Carmen and I formed probably started when two punks in their early twenties were almost to the point of molesting her during an outing to a local casino in Kansas City. They were all over her and had her pinned against the wall.
When I saw it, I lost it. I ran up to them, and it turned physical very quickly. I ended up humiliating both of them, and once security reviewed the security cameras, they hauled them away. We didn’t press charges, so I’m sure they were just escorted off the property.
To be honest, I was lucky. These boys had obviously been drinking a lot, and my adrenaline was flowing enough that I think my body went back in time before my injury took a turn for the worse.
All Carmen cares about though, is that I rescued her. I think because of that, I became her “Knight in Shining Armor.”
In one way, both Carmen and Mia are like the daughters that I always dreamed of having; but they are also like best friends that you can go out with, let your hair down, and kid around with about anything.
No need to say that Mia and Carmen are a part of our lives.
Chapter Two
I heard the alarm clock going off. You couldn’t help from hearing it as I bought this alarm clock when I was in the Army and it sounded like a red alert on the Enterprise from the television series “Star Trek.”
As Kim came strolling into the room, the new segment of the news was just coming on. The lead story was how the State Department announced that by executive order, the President cut off all military sales to Israel.
I yelled “What?” making Kim jump. “I can’t believe what this son of a bitch continues to do.”
Kim being used to these reactions but wasn’t listening to the news asked, “What are you talking about?”
“The damn president! He’s done it again. Do you realize what a slap in the face this is to Israel? Israel is one of our closest allies. With the treaty with Iran that he just made, his refusal to acknowledge radical Islamic terrorism, and NOW THIS! I’m telling you, with everything going on, I think this is biblical prophecy coming true.”
Kim could see this wasn’t one of my normal rants about the news. I showed true concern.
I’ve always had a love for biblical prophecy. I was raised in a church that taught a lot about it, unlike so many churches today. People nowadays just want to hear that no matter what they truly believe or however they choose to live, they will all be saved. So, that’s what a lot of modern-day ministers preach.
I put a lot of hours into studying it on my own. It always fascinated me how the prophecy chapters say exactly what is going to happen to America, and most people don’t realize it.
But it’s so hard to watch our country do the things that are going to cause those prophecies to come true.
I sat there quietly listening to the other news stories until it was time for Kim to turn it to the local news for a traffic report. When she changed the station, a local reporter was broadcasting from what looked like a riot area.
“Last night in the downtown area of Kansas City, during a demonstration being held by Socialists United, a news reporter was trying to interview some of the demonstrators. As you can see from our footage, several of the demonstrators started yelling at the reporter that they didn’t want him there. As the reporter’s camera kept shooting, a bottle was thrown by one of the demonstrators, which hit the reporter in the face. A fight broke out when some spectators watching the demonstration tried to help the reporter. When the police moved in to intervene, some of the demonstrators started throwing Molotov cocktail
s. Since then, the demonstration has turned into a full-fledged riot.”
We sat there stunned. We were used to seeing this type of stuff in other major cities like Baltimore, Chicago, and San Francisco but there hadn’t been riots in Kansas City since the 1960’s. Recently there had been the riots in Ferguson, Missouri; but that was over by St. Louis. Even though Kansas City had their gang shootings and violent crimes that most inner cities have, large demonstrations and riots didn’t happen. People in the Midwest are completely different than many in the northeast and the west coast. Overall, most people had learned how to get along.
“Now we go to Scott Harold, live at the scene,” the news anchor reported. “Thank you, John. As you can see, the riots have spread throughout the downtown area. Cars have been overturned, buildings are burning, and there are reports that many of the demonstrators are arriving from other areas. I talked to several protesters who stated that they aren’t a part of these riots and that most of the violence is being committed by others that were bused in from other cities like Chicago. It seems to be obvious that a lot of this violence was planned ahead of time. Even the fact of someone having Molotov Cocktails ready before the violence even broke out, is evidence that this was planned.”
I broke the silence between us by firmly stating, “You’re not going to work today!”
“That’s ridiculous. Remember, my job is in Kansas, and I don’t drive anywhere near the downtown Kansas City area.”
“You still drive on the south side of the City.”
“You know as well as I do that I-435 isn’t even close to the downtown area. I’ll be fine. If things get worse, call me, and I’ll come home.”
So, I thought I would try a different strategy.
“Don’t forget, Mia and Carmen are flying out. I’m not sure when they’re going to get here as they aren’t flying commercially. Mia is flying them out in her plane, and Carmen’s sister is with them. They plan to drop her off at the downtown airport in Kansas City. With all this happening in the downtown area, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
Apocalypse Coming Page 2