"For I know the plans I have for you, saith the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." {Jeremiah 29:11}
We never realize fully what impact we'll have on anothers life, but as I have stated before...God has a plan for us all!
We are here on this planet... at this time and at this place... for a specific purpose!
Some would call it, "INTELLIGENT DESIGN."
Some would call it, "INTELLIGENT DESIGN."
It is an awesome thing to finally grasp that we are here on mission...There is A purpose, and a reason to our existence...
...And as I tell my unique story and experience...
...In doing so, maybe, just maybe...we bring someone else to enlightenment and understanding in regards to their own unique grand design or even a small portion of God's purpose for them being...
...Barry is my Uncle... only 6 months my senior...My Mother's youngest brother and the baby of 8 siblings.
It's only natural we remained in each others lives into young adulthood!
We had developed a very close bond from childhood, and there was different times that we would re-connect while trying to find our own way, our own place in this world.
...I remember Barry... his Brother Terry, also my uncle a year and a half my senior, moved to Kalamazoo.
... Barry had been discharged from the Army.
...Terry dropped out of college from the University of Miami, Ohio.
...Terry went there on a basketball scholarship, but bombed out due to his addiction that had spiraled out of control.
...Drug of choice was Cocaine!
...Little did we know how many casualties would result in our family from that horrible Drug!
After bouncing around Kalamazoo off and on for a couple of years, going no where fast...
...Terry left Kazoo, and went back to Ohio!
He had bitten off more than he could chew in my world and in my circles...
It was only because he was my actual family that he didn't get shipped back home to Ohio in a Pine Box...
...He got caught cheating at a poker game with some of the guys I grew up with. A Big No No!
Terry interjected himself into some sticky situations with some of my people in the drug world and brought on a couple of burns that I had to cover for him...
...I finally had to send him down the road before something bad happened to him and he went back to Ohio.
...Barry eventually went back as well, and he kind of bounced around the country trying to find work...
...It was the years of Jimmy Carter as President. An extremely good moral man... Southern Baptist I might add... but turned out to be a horrible President!
He was the first Presidential candidate I ever voted for... Imagine That?
The point is, the entire country was caught up in a horrible economic recession, and you couldn't even buy a job in the midwest...
It was becoming more and more apparent that dealing drugs for a living was a dead end!
...Especially when you were addicted to the product!!!
...Anyways...Getting back to my story!
...Barry had moved to Louisianna to go to work in the oilfields.
As Hudson Family history goes...My Mother's oldest brother, Jerry Hudson had a daughter...Debbie Hudson...
...Debbie was a year or two younger than us, and had Married a fellow named Koch Rigmaiden...
...Koch's Dad was some kind of Big Shot Oil Company Man in Louisianna and Texas, and He owned several income properties in DeRidder La.
...Debbie, Koch, And several friends...
They were also members of Koch's Rock n Roll Band, moved down south together, and found work as rough necks on the oil rigs...
...Barry, and his High School Buddy Doug Tuttle, Left Franklin Ohio, and followed Debbie down south to find their fortune, and pursue the adventure of becoming RoughNecks on the offshore rigs in the Gulf Of Mexico.
...As I stated earlier, My career as a Drug Dealer was becoming more problematic than productive...
...And My career in the legit world was not too promising in the late 70's and early 80's...
... In retrospect, the truth be told...
It appears obvious to me, that Satan had dispatched a number of demons to take me out and destroy me!
...Now skeptics might read this, and laugh it off as the paranoid delusions of a former junkie that got his brains fried on one too many acid trips!...
...And I might be tempted to agree with that assessment If I hadn't been there myself?...
...We've already explored and discussed some of the disfunction of my teenage years...
...We're talking about, from age 14 to my early 20's...
...I barely drew a sober breath, unless I was sick in the hospital, or locked up in the county jail...
...As I was saying, Satan seemed to turn up the heat, hotter than usual after I made that faithful decision to follow Barry And Friend Doug Tuttle to the Oilfields!
...I might also add, God also stepped up His efforts,
and my Guardian Angel clocked a lot of extra overtime in response to what appears to be an all out assault of the enemy to capture my soul once and for all, and for eternity...
...Not only my soul?
...But I suspect, Satan expected to clean up with a huge package deal as part of the bargain.
NOT!!!
...Let me just run down a few of the close calls I encountered that could have prevented me from making that life changing move to Louisianna in March of 1981...
...I won't go into all of the details of these roadblocks at this point in the tellin of my story...
There will come a more appropriate time for those specific details when I write a book based on my memoirs,
Let me just run down a brief outline of events...
...The moment when Steve Coleman turned me on to I V Cocaine use and I began that downward spiral to becoming a mainline junkie...
That particular choice I made at the age of 18, almost killed me!
... Hepatitus C, and the many Overdoses that almost stopped my heart more times than I can count,...
I really don't know how many times I took a ride in an ambulances to the Emergency Rooms because I had shot up way too much dope...
... or how many times I wound up there on my own steam!...
...And then there is the numerous situations I got into because of screwed up drug deals that were engineered to screw the buyers and feed my own habit...
...I almost got shot several times for that, and was placed in a position to have to shoot before I got shot...
...Only by God's grace did I somehow avoid both scenarios!..
...These are only a few circumstances that my drug dealing ways caused me to be faced with death by violence...
...Then there are the numerous brushes with the law that could have caused me to spend years in the penitentiary...
...One scenario that is most vivid in my mind, happened shortly before I left...
...We had bought a much larger house next to the Kalamazoo River on Gull Rd.
As was always my custom when leaving the house in those days,
... I put my loaded snub nose .38 cal. pistol in my coat pocket...
I went to walk our new Doberman pup around the block...
I rolled up a nice fat joint of some Primo, and took the dog for a walk along the edge of the river...
I was stoned from the joint, and we flushed a flock of ducks off the river...
...For some crazy reason, I pulled the pistol out of my pocket... and started popping off shots at those ducks!...
...I don't know why I did it, other than just being high... and doing something stupid,
... which isn't that surprising...After all, stupidity was pretty normal for someone that stayed stoned for most of my waking hours...
...Anyways, you cannot be too surprised?...
...When I tell you... just as I turned the corner off of Patterson onto Riverview Drive...
... about a half hour after I had taken the pop shots at the ducks...
...A police cruiser pulls up in front of me, and the officer steps put of his vehicle...
... with his hand on the butt of his own pistol...
... gave me the command to come and place my hands on the hood and spread my legs...
...You can't imagine???
all the thoughts that ran through my mind at that exact instant???
... I knew, that if that cop pulled that loaded pistol out of my pocket... and got ahold of the joint I was holding between my fingers,
... I was going to be going away to prison for a very long time...
...There was a good chance the gun was probably stolen?
...I had gotten it in trade for some drugs I had sold someone...
...I just recently, finally, got off probation for my third felony conviction!
... 2 of those previous charges were for gun related crimes...
...I could see out of my peripheral vision, there were numerous cruisers approaching from all directions!
... I was about to be completely surrounded!...
... There was only one thing I could do to keep this from turning out very bad for me!
That was to... RUN!!!
...That's exactly what I did!
...I tossed the joint one way, dropped the leash to my pup!
...I Took one step towards the cop car...
...as if...
... I was going to comply to his instructions...
...And then...
... I turned, and bolted down the street...
He was a Fat Cop, so he didnt try and pursue me on foot,
... He jumped back in his cruiser, and I dashed in between some houses, and just for the briefest of moments...
I was out of view of all the cruisers that were flooding into the area to hem me in,
It was then, I saw my opportunity to reach into my jacket pocket, grab that pistol... and fortunately for me,
I didn't have any other officers that I was unaware of pursuing me on foot close enough to mistake that I might be going for that gun to shoot it out with them...
... or I probably would of been shot and never seen... or heard it coming...anyways...
...I noticed a little opening under a porch of one of the houses I was running between and I tossed that .38 as far back into the shadows as I possibly could!
... and without breaking stride, I ran out in front of that house to the waiting gun sights of about 3 different cops that had their weapons drawn with me in their sights...
They were screaming commands for me to get on the ground...
...At that point, there was no where else for me to go, and nothing else for me to do, other than comply, and hope like Hell that none of them seen me toss the piece???
After some real rough treatment and being searched and frisked,...
a half hour of sitting in the back of one of the cruisers demanding that I wanted to contact my attorney Kenneth Laudenschlager ...
...I was refusing to talk or answer any of their ridiculous questions about where was the gun???
...I vehemently denied all charges...
... I had no idea what they were talking about a gun and shots being fired???
...After all I was just taking my dog for a walk!
... when they had so rudely assaulted me and had violated my right to walk my dog down the street in my own neighborhood!
... and it was obvious that I was not the guy they were looking for!
... I knew absolutely nothing about any shots being fired in the area...
...They never found the gun and they had nothing on me, so they had no other choice other than to turn me loose...Which they did!
THANK GOD!
Phew!
I got out of that one by the skin of my teeth, and the grace of God,
Because if not, My life would've turned out very differently!
...I'm afraid I would have assuredly gone to prison for quite some time and who knows how that the rest of my story and the story of many others would have turned out?
...I'll never forget how relieved I was when I walked back through my front door an hour after I left to just take my new puppy for a walk...
... Beth had no clue what I had just gone through 2 blocks from the house?..
...I vividly remember the conversation we had!
... I told her, I had finally made up my mind about us moving to Louisianna...
...We had been discussing that possibility for a short while as we were both well aware of the fact that life could not keep going the way it had been going...
Because the both of us had been strung out for some time now shooting Cocaine!
...Now that the decision had been made, we just needed to work out the details of how to do it...
The one thing that was obvious was the need to raise the funds to make the move,
... so we started identifying the things that we would need to sell... and the when to move would be determined by the amount of time it would take to raise the money.
...Also the next thing I needed to do was to get in touch with Barry ...and get the go ahead from him that I could come down and stay with him long enough to get a job and get on my feet so I could send for Beth and Aimee to come and join me...
...Of course, Barry was more than happy to assure me that he would be more than willing to help me anyway he could to make sure that I would be successful...
...Barry informed me, that His old girlfriend from high school had a younger brother named Doug that had moved down there with him from Ohio, and they had rented a house from Debbie's Father In Law and they had plenty of room for me until I could find a job and get my own place.
... He also assured me that I would have no problem getting a job in the oilfield.
...So that was that, except for the fact That Satan was going to take at least one more stab at attempting to totally destroy me as it seems to me now as I look back that he must have somehow been aware of how that move was going to somehow forever alter my destiny as well as the destiny of many others.
As for me...I was completely clueless of how important that decision to move to Louisianna was about to become and how triumphant and tragic that decision would turn out!
...Stay tuned for the rest of the story!..
Brother Michael
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