Sandusky Burning, page 6
I opened the compartment at the front-right side of the camper and found a box of synthetic fire-starting material, taking out a brick of the crumbly brown substance and breaking it in half. I found a lighter, and within a few seconds, the fire began to take off.
I grabbed my drink and pulled a chair closer to the pit. The weather was still fair, in the low sixties, the perfect temperature for an evening fire. I guessed it would drop into the low fifties overnight.
A giant motorhome with Illinois plates cruised by. That vehicle cost about half as much as my house in Medina. Campgrounds were the ultimate in socioeconomic integration. There were huge, lavish motorhomes that cost more than a hundred thousand dollars. These were parked a few rows down from people camping in thirty-dollar tents. Regardless of where they camped, everyone mixed together in the common areas like the pools, basketball courts, horseshoe pits, and playground. For the most part, everyone got along.
The view from my camper on the north side of the campground varied, depending on the volume of campers at the time. Directly in front of our seasonal lot was a row of campsites that were full hookups, the cement pads set out at angles so the RVs could be towed efficiently into the lot and then connected to water, electricity, plumbing, and cable. Each site featured a tree, a patch of grass, a patio, a paver stone fire pit, and a picnic table.
These types of sites comprised the next five or six rows. An equal number of rows east of that were sites without utilities, for either popup campers or tents. This section of the campground was delineated from the other by a yellow cinderblock shower house, identical to the one a site over from my RV.
There was an elevated dirt trail along the northern part of the campground that ran east-west through a narrow range of woods. It began near the fishing hole, ran east about a quarter mile along the shore, then ran south along the basketball courts, ending beside the east shower house. It was adjacent to a swampy bog with a greenish film covering almost all of it, littered with lily pads, cattails, and dead trees. To the north of that was Lake Erie.
About fifteen yards off the coast was the train bridge. It was over a half-mile long, running parallel to Columbus Road and then hooking north to go out above the water, reconnecting with land at the west side of the campground by the fishing pond. The tracks were elevated enough to allow small boats to pass beneath.
The urban legend associated with the costly iron bridge was that it resulted from a pissing contest between the previous landowner and the railroad company. The landowner fought and won an eminent domain battle with the city, which forbade them from bisecting his land with the train tracks. They responded by building a train bridge over the water and across his lake access, reconnecting to the railroad’s land near the spot that would later become the fishing pond, greatly diminishing his land value. He was unable to develop the land into a marina as he intended and sold the land at a loss.
The northeast shore beyond the trail curved north, ran east for a few yards, and then straight south, forming a small peninsula. This area east of the north-south trail leg contained a paintball course, an archery range, and a grassy field for playing games and staging outdoor concerts. Worn wooden picnic tables were scattered throughout the field.
The area south of the trail tended to flood, so there was a sump pump expelling the excess water through a PVC pipe running beneath the trail and dumping into the boggy area. Halfway down the trail was a weathered wooden gazebo that the trail ran beneath.
There was a geographic segregation of the different socioeconomic camper statuses. The west side was the “haves” and the east was the “have-lesses.”
Even though my family had been camping at Sandusky Shores for a full season and we were permanent seasonal campers, we remained outsiders. There was a barrier to acceptance we unintentionally built ourselves, based upon the way we conducted ourselves when we camped.
We didn’t stay up all night drinking. We would have a few drinks while sitting out by the campfire at night, but pulling an all-nighter with our kids running around screaming into the early hours of the morning never appealed to us. I recognize that statement as thinly veiled virtue signaling, but that didn’t negate the truth of it.
We accounted for our kids at all times. We didn’t allow them to disappear in an environment filled with migratory strangers from around the country for hours at a time.
The people over at lot 18 had a four-year-old and a six-year-old who were generally on their own. We would see them at different places around the campground without parental supervision. Someone could take them and be hours away before anyone noticed they were missing.
Also, we were clearly white-collar people. My wife and I worked in offices and from home; we didn’t do manual labor for a living. We both possessed advanced degrees, so the “getting to know you” conversations tended to reveal the gulf between us.
No particular difference between us and the seasonal campground culture was insurmountable. But the sum of all the minor differences contributed to the totality of us being significantly different.
I’m sure we could have made friends if we tried, but we didn’t. We lined up family events all day that took us away from the campground. We were there because of the campground’s vicinity to Gravity Junction. The camper served more as a hotel room to shower and sleep and less as a hangout spot.
There was a part of me that yearned to fit in, because it was a place where my family would have fit in back in my childhood. My parents were extroverted, socially oriented people, who always made friends easily. When we vacationed, we would effortlessly mix with other groups and have fun hanging out together. Neither Marcy nor I had that skill set.
There was also nostalgia for the minor degree of lawlessness that was pervasive in the pre-digital era. At Sandusky Shores, kids didn’t always wear helmets. Sometimes a truck would pass by with a half-dozen kids in the truck bed, traveling to the pool. A thirteen-year-old would zip by behind the wheel of a golf cart. Packs of kids ran around without shoes on.
It was my childhood in the 1970s and 1980s. It was drastically different than the ultra-cautious, overthinking, virtue-signaling, hand sanitizer–saturated, enfold-your-child-in-bubble-wrap environment where our kids were being raised. So, while I didn’t let my kids participate in it (beyond occasionally allowing them to cycle helmet free), I enjoyed watching it happening around me at the campground.
I heard the train horn and felt the beginnings of the rumbling that would eventually be so loud, it would be difficult to hold a conversation. This was almost a dealbreaker the first time we heard it.
The kids and I got used to the trains pretty quickly, and they didn’t disturb our sleep after a few days. Marcy was another story. She never got used to it and complained about the trains incessantly.
I sat back in the chair and took another long drink of my margarita as a blast from the train horn filled the air. As I reached the bottom of the cup, I could taste the added tequila that settled there. I could feel its boozy tendrils slithering through my mind and welcomed the numbness and detachment.
I poured myself another margarita. I tossed another log onto the fire. The train had passed and was rolling off into the distance, the lights a soft glow as it disappeared.
I wished I could say I missed Marcy. If anyone asked if I missed her, I would certainly lie and say I did. But I didn’t. For the first time in years, I could breathe. I could exist without the constant anxiety she imposed upon me.
We concocted a story about me temporarily relocating because of a critical work project requiring my full attention. Marcy’s parents knew the truth, and everyone else most likely suspected I moved out because of marital issues. Luckily, no one had called us out on it yet.
I was only buying short-term peace by relocating there. If the current living situation continued, the marriage would come to an end. Marcy had proven herself to be an excellent manipulator and game player, and I was sure that I would end up losing on multiple levels when the relationship officially fell apart.
At best, I would be awarded partial custody of the kids at a rate substantially less than 50 percent. I would take a big financial hit. Visitation and custody arrangements would be constant battles, and as the male in the relationship, I expected to lose most of them.
Marcy and I had been in a relationship for six years and married for four years before our first child Jason’s birth. During that time, we had a solid relationship. I don’t know if it would be considered a model relationship, but I felt we were pretty happy. We possessed similar values. We got along. We had fun together.
When Jason arrived, he was diagnosed with having a primary immunodeficiency disorder. There were issues with his B and T cell counts. It was a very stressful, scary time, having a baby who spent his first month in a plastic box in the neonatal intensive care unit. This stressful period of our lives triggered a personality change in Marcy that she never recovered from.
She became radically overprotective and extremely germophobic. I was on board with this and willing to do whatever was necessary to protect Jason. We brought him home, and he fought off one infection after another.
The months went by, and miraculously his body began creating more white blood cells and attacking bacteria and viruses more effectively. He became indistinguishable from a “normal” baby after the first year.
Sure, there were minor side effects of his condition, and we were very overprotective of him. Overall, he was a normal kid. But in Marcy’s mind, he was still at risk and required an excessive amount of precaution in everything he did.
I figured her personality switch would wear off because it was exhausting for her as well. But it never did wear off. She was driven by anxiety and obsession with Jason. I never felt it was to the extent where it was harming him, but I could see that a Munchausen by proxy type of mindset wouldn’t be a stretch if she slipped a few degrees mentally.
We decided to have another kid. I thought the pragmatism of raising our first child and the continued healthiness of Jason would alleviate her anxiety, but it actually worsened.
Katie was born with a severe nut allergy. If she ingested almost any type of nut, she would go into anaphylactic shock. The risks associated with Jason’s immune system paled in comparison. Marcy’s overbearing ways worsened.
The reality of the danger of Katie’s allergies was not enough for Marcy; she would spend hours scouring the internet for allergy articles and forwarding the horror stories to me. Children dead or in comas from peanut exposure. Allergy bullying by kids who intentionally exposed an allergic classmate to peanut butter.
By having Katie, we essentially doubled down on the anxiety. Marcy was on a full anxiety jihad at all times. I worked extremely hard to accommodate it, but everything I did was wrong. Furthermore, everything I did for myself was considered selfish. Fitness was self-indulgence. I had to push my exercise to either early in the morning or late at night. There was zero support.
Everything I enjoyed before having kids slowly faded from my life. I quit attending sporting events. Then I quit watching sports on TV. I lost friends. I communicated less with my parents.
I truly related to life in prison. Minus the conjugal visits. I lived to eat and go to sleep. I got my “hour in the yard” at the gym a few times a week. The rest of my life was a continuous grind of work and chores. I looked forward to the day ending the moment I awoke.
After years of this, my soul was being crushed. It all came to a head with an epic argument and my relocation to the campground. I was scheduled to work remotely the following day, and I packed everything I needed and left for Sandusky. It was the equivalent of sleeping on a buddy’s couch. I didn’t have a buddy with a vacant couch, but I had an RV.
It wasn’t a permanent solution. Could I really spend an entire summer there? What happened when the place closed for the season?
Data 1
11:15 p.m.
There was no better time than the present. Minutes after hanging up with Chuck, I dressed and put together a game plan. I was practically salivating at the thought of spending time at Trailer Alpha.
I dressed in a pair of black cargo shorts, a yellow campground polo, a black-and-yellow campground baseball cap, black socks, and a black belt.
Staring at my reflection in the mirror, I frowned at what I saw. Generic glasses with ugly black frames and ridiculously thick lenses. I needed a haircut, which was evident even with the hat on. Strands of greasy black hair hung out on the sides and at the back.
Some idiot in undergrad called me a poor man’s Michael Moore, and I hated that comparison, essentially because it was fairly accurate. I had a chin or two less than Moore, but I was also a lot younger. In due time, I’m sure we would be indistinguishable, and that was unfortunate. But not so unfortunate that I was motivated to take measures to avoid that fate.
Physical fitness was an elusive condition I had never achieved. I never even made a reasonable attempt at it, other than the humiliation of being forced to participate in physical education at school. The painful memories of being teased in gym class made me wince and appreciate the distances of time and geography from my gloomy upbringing in Anaheim, California.
Sandusky was Podunk and bland compared to California cities, but it provided a wonderful degree of anonymity to me. No one knew me or my past, and for that, I was grateful. I was just some dumpy little nobody that no one paid any attention to.
Moving out to the Midwest to live in Sandusky with my grandma was a dreadful prospect at first. My brief glory in Silicon Valley had shown me how amazing life could be as a founding partner of a rising software company. One minute I was in a basement with a few friends creating software, and the next I was part of an initial public offering that made me a great deal of money.
My amazing tech skills helped launch some great software products. Somewhere along the startup journey, the other nerds began calling me “Data,” after the android in the Star Trek series. I took it as a compliment, although it could have been a dig at my lack of emotions. I brought the nickname with me to Sandusky, since I always hated my real name, Henry.
Just as I was wrapping my head around my new economic status with the tech startup, it crumbled. The majority partner cut corners, did some deceptive advertising, and misled the Securities and Exchange Commission. Meanwhile, I had stolen patented software information and hacked several of our competitors to steal trade secrets. We got caught. We lost our company. We lost our money. We went to prison.
Mine was a short sentence at a minimum-security facility in Mendota, California. I was granted an early release for good behavior and sentenced to house arrest. My lawyer negotiated to have my house arrest served at my grandma’s in Ohio because I had nowhere to go in California, since my parents had disowned me.
Relocating across the country to a trailer park in the frozen Midwest sounded awful. And it was at first. But nowhere near as awful as prison.
So, I went from living in my parents’ basement to an upscale downtown studio apartment to prison to a 1970s-era trailer in the Midwest over the course of four years. It was still difficult to wrap my head around it all.
The trailer itself was in decent shape, about one thousand square feet, two bedrooms, and one bathroom. It was situated on a tiny parcel of land, with neighboring trailers so close you could hear their toilets flush and smell what they were cooking for dinner. Grandma tried to keep it tidy, but it needed a refresh. I wished I possessed home-renovation skills, but I didn’t.
Luckily, I never acquired the expensive tastes that many of my fellow IPO-enriched techies had during my short stay at the top of the tech world, and I found the simplicity of this lifestyle agreed with me. I heard stories about how Grandma was an overbearing and nosy person when Mother was young, but she had slowed down as she aged and now slept so much that her trailer was almost a bachelor pad for me, albeit a bachelor pad without any female company other than Grandma.
My house arrest ended, and I was put on probation. While I was no longer confined to the trailer legally, I had nowhere else to go. I would remain there until I figured out the next step.
Grandma had a car, a little blue 1980s-model Buick Skylark. The paint had faded, and it had some rust here and there, but it still ran, and I was able to use it every once in a while to run errands. Otherwise, everywhere I needed to go was within walking or biking distance. At least in the summer.
I had arrived in late October and spent the winter and the icy early spring indoors with Grandma. It was fine at first, but by April I was climbing the walls. I was not looking forward to the end of summer when the campground job ended. I would have to find a new job to maintain my sanity.
The lack of technology in Grandma’s trailer was maddening. As ordered by the United States District Court for the Northern District of California and enforced by my local probation officer, my living and working environments were to be 100 percent technology free. Of course, Randy provided me with a fully functioning cell phone that my probation officer didn’t know about.
I was allowed to have a stripped-down cell phone without any data capabilities, and that was it. There wasn’t a PC in Grandma’s trailer, which was causing me to suffocate. There wasn’t even cable or satellite TV, just a few channels received through a rusty antenna mounted on top of the trailer.
I found my sandals by the door and slipped them on. I grabbed my backpack and walked out, locking the door behind me.
It was a clear night out with no moon, very dark. The lack of city lights always made the nights unusually dark, unlike Los Angeles or Anaheim.
I walked behind the trailer to the shed and grabbed my bike, a rusty ten-speed that was probably salvaged by Grandpa while digging through junk on garbage day decades ago. Grandpa thought discarded junk was like buried treasure and was always bringing it home, if only to stack it on top of his other useless junk. Grandma mentioned that nothing he salvaged had ever earned him a red cent. I was trying to recall how long ago he died; it had to be at least twenty years ago. Grandma was still living off his railroad pension.
