[estranged4life]

who really know me and my past, know I love October (MLB Playoffs and the start of Autumn) but at the same time there is foreboding sense of dread during this month. It doesn't help things that I have a memory that intensifies things because what may have happened 20+ years ago seems like only yesterday to me

Example: Thursday October 19,1989: I remember my cousin Wendy flagging my Mom & I down on York Street in Muskogee (I was taking Mom grocery shopping at Price Mart located next to K-Mart on Shawnee) and asking if I wanted to hang out/go cruising with her and her brother Wendell (Born 4 days after I was. Story goes Mom was leaving MRMC with me as Aunt Nora was entering the doors to have Wendell) later that evening after she got off work.

At age 19, I had just started working the graveyard shift at Unarco Commercial Products (Manufacturing shopping carts) and passed on the offer because I was tired and feeling that 'black cloud' over my head. My Mom even remembered my mentioning that something bad was going to happen soon...and it did.

That same night, nearly at the same intersection of York Street/North Street, where we talked hours before (Across from the Okla.Emplyoment Agency and adjacent to Greenhill Cemetery), my 2 cousins along with a co-worker of Wendy (Wendy was the asst. manager of Arby's on Main Street, driving to make the night deposit at the bank) were killed instantly when a teenage drunk driver (Running from the Muskogee PD) plowed through the intersection at over 90MPH, hit the dip in the road, went airborne in his early 70's Camaro and hit Wendy's Hyundai passenger side at windows height and crushed to death all 3 in her car.

The driver of the Camaro (Keith Joyce - Someone I knew of from high school), according to the police report, was still trying to put his crumpled car back in gear as he expired (Broken neck). His passenger was thrown completely through his passenger seat into the back seat of the Camaro. He was left paralyzed from the waist down.

My Aunt Nora (Mom's younger sister) sued the city of Muskogee over the accident as the policeman, chasing the Camaro, was to have been found at fault for the causing the wreck (Don't ask me how he was found at fault - I still blame Joyce) and the city settled for $575,000.

If you add my cousins death, to both Debbie & my Dad's death on Oct.22 and my Mom's cousin Linda Sue on Oct.18 (Who also died on York St., but at the intersection of York & Shawnee - when the Bennett/Lister car salesman she was riding with, at the time he was trying to impress her, attempted to run the red light at this major insection and plowed into another vehicle...Linda Sue died immediately. Linda was on the drive after deciding her "1988 Trans Am she had purchased was too much a risky car and that is may get her killed" and was going to trade it in for a non-powerful muscle-car) one can see why I get panicky during the later part of this month.

On the good side though, is my older brother Geary's (Named after our Dad, Geary Allen Johnson) birthday on the 21st (Geary doesn't celebrate his birthday because of memories of Dad's death).