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The Phoenix to Florida Fiasco

Another Josiah Holmes Story

By Cooking With CastoPublished 3 years ago 15 min read
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PHEONIX, AZ

I’m 23 yrs old and engaged to a Canadian girl. I’m working as a Video clerk at the booming Jollywood video. This video place is really happening at the time, it is definitely hanging in there with the video store mogul BlockBuster. I bet they open more stores all over the country in the next few years. I was thinking I could make this a career move. Start to manage a few of these stores in an area, I could really dig that. Movies are not going anywhere, so this place will be around forever. However, I still do often think about where I should be at this time in my life. Shit, wasn’t it just three yrs ago that I was wrestling for the National Champion Blair College? I still kept in touch with my old teammates and it looks as though they are killing it again. I recently opened up those rankings just to see where I could have fit in, and sure enough, I see a few names that rang a bell. One was Ebenezer Smooth, he was now ranked #3 as a Sr. Damn, I still can remember cradling him up in practice every day with the Schalles cradle I had learned from the former Olympian at a camp (my Papa Lloyd put on) when I was 16. Another was that Blackberry kid I nearly beat at the Blair Open. He would win 10-9. Shit, I guess he transferred to my old school. He’s once again ranked #1, as he was the National champion the year I wrestled him. Damn, sometimes I just sit and think what could have and should have been. Instead, I’m here in Phoenix to be the manager of Jollywood Video. I guess it is what it is!

◆◆◆ 2weeks later.

Lately, I’ve been working the night shifts, it seems though my fiancé is always working too. I get home at 1 am and she would get home at 2. We never see each other anymore, and really I’m not sure I even care. It would go on like this for 2 more weeks and then she came in one day to break the news. She had met someone new and was moving out. Well, I can’t afford the apartment on my own, so I’m kind of freaking out. Shit, it was her idea to move out here now she’s leaving me too. Well, I better start to make that move to becoming manager, I need the money now. So the next day I walk into work to discuss management opportunities and much to my shock I was told that they were not hiring for the manager position, as the video chain is closing stores all across the country. I couldn’t believe it. Why? What would the world be like without video stores? How would anyone watch movies? I just didn’t understand. I did know one thing I can’t afford to live here at 8.50 an hour for 25hrs a week. So I guess it was time for me to move on. Before I left, I decided to call up my groovy cousin Lebowski who lived in town. We had only hung out a couple of times since I'd been there, so I wanted to see him one last time. I made it to his house and told him the news of me leaving. Lebowski stood there looking at me for a moment. I couldn’t tell if he was just really high or he was thinking of something. He shook his head after a minute went by and then left the room. I was like ok, that was weird, but if you had seen the house weird was the norm. I just sat there on the Baseball Glove couch, and watched some NBA playoffs; the Cavs and the Pistons were on. Man, this guy they call King is something else I can’t believe he’s about to knock out the mighty Pistons, I believe he's only 23? Wow, I bet he wins a bunch of championships with the Cavs. Anyway there I sit and about 10 minutes later, back in walks my cousin. He tells me to pack up because I and he are driving to Mexico. He just booked us a room and we have to leave now. We should arrive there in 3hrs. He and I then hopped in his forest green jeep wrangler and drove down to Mexico. That was a great time, from what I remember? I do know we were pulled over by the Mexican police. They claimed we were driving on a one-way dirt street in the wrong direction. I got kind of irritated by that and was about to say something, but apparently, Lebowski had made these travels before. He tells me to keep quiet and dish out 200 pesos. I thought holy shit I don't have 200 bucks. The Mexican Officer comes back and Bowski says ok I need that 20 bucks now. That was good news because I did have that. So I hand it off and he gives it to the crooked cop. Wow, it worked; we bought ourselves out of jail. As we drove onward, into the Condos his friend lived at we decided to sleep in the car as it was way too late to wake anyone up. When morning arose, we made our way to the condos, this place was amazing. They had a bar inside their place, a hot tub, and a huge pool down on the deck below. This was a party central if I’ve ever seen one. Well, we hung there for the day then went out to the sand bars at night. We only walked to places now though, as the driving scene was a little shady. So Mexican night went on and I got hammered, I have no recollection of anything, all I know is I awoke the next day to 2nd- degree sunburns on my arms and legs at like 4pm in a hammock hanging off the shoreline. I awoke and made my way back to find Lebowski. He was worried about where I was and was very relieved to see me. We never talked again about that night. We slept there that day and took back off for Arizona the next morning. We made it back and said our goodbyes. I hopped in my Cherokee drove to get my last paycheck. There I decided to take off to Florida and see my only sister, who wasn’t in the crazy "cult” that was led by that nutjob Arthur Gary, Lulu. It was a long drive through Texas, making my way to Florida. I stopped at a rest stop and a sign read "beware of rattlesnakes" right before entering the bathroom. Yes, that would be my last stop in Texas. I will pea in a bottle rather than stop and have to read that warning sign again. Snakes and I do not get along. Finally, 25 hours later I rolled into Jacksonville, Florida, to mingle with my delusional sister Lulu, and her golf pro husband John. Well, that only lasted 1 week, as I realized I couldn’t live with these two any longer. I will not even get into why, but I just had to go. So I called up my Grandma Holmes and asked for the number of the two men who at the age of 12 I thought I’d never see again. Uncle Dan and Uncle Slim. Reasons for this were when I was 12 my Dad, Mom, Lulu, and I were on a Florida vacation and we stopped off to see Dad's two brothers who had retired at the ages of 46 and 42 in Florida. It was there that Slim told me and Lulu to never touch the drug Valum (yes I know its spelled wrong but that’s the word he was saying). That was the weirdest meeting of my life, and at that time I thought I would never see them again, but boy was I wrong. As I’m now 23 and my life is getting really fudged up? One thing I did know about them is that they would open their doors to anyone so this is why I dialed their mom's number.

2 ◆◆◆

Lemon City, FL

Arriving in Lemon City I wasn’t sure what to expect. I didn’t really know my two uncles very well, I hadn’t seen them since the "say no to drugs" spiel when I was 12, but they did open the doors for me, so I went along. My uncle Dan still was the same unfortunate handicapped man he’d always been, as he had lost his arms in a factory incident back in the early '90s. Which after he won his 7figure lawsuit shut down my Dad's shop in Hedgewater. Then there was my Uncle Slim who was still telling stories from movies and saying he did those things. If you have ever seen the classic Scarface, then you can imagine stories that my uncle Slim would tell. One-night, Dan got into one of his conspiracy theories. He'd thought my lovely Mother Louise and her 2 daughters who were under the guidance of Arthur Gary, had plotted out my father’s death. I challenged him on that nonsense. I mean ok say what you want about my cult following sisters, and there weirdo leader. But you leave my mom’s name out of it. She loved my father, and never wanted him to go the way he did. We stood to each other, and this handicapped bonehead thought he could fight me. I never would willingly hit a handicapped person, but he was saying things so profound that his mouth needed shut. So I popped one good one and he laid there out cold for a moment. Slim then broke in and shoved me to bed. Well I thought it was over until I was awoke to Dan wearing his fake arm holding a shiny fish carving knife pointing it at my throat. He was standing behind me cursing about how easy it would be to kill me. Wow my dad must have been proud of these two. At that moment I thought I had no idea what I got myself into here and I need to start looking for a way out. The way out was still 1 month away as I was now flat broke. Up until I could leave, I sat there every morning watching the armless Dan pop some methadone and then hallucinate for the rest of the day. It seemed as though he was like a 15-year-old kid trapped in 55-year-old body. Me being one who was heading towards mental illness himself, I could definantely spot what was wrong with Dan. He needed to be on psychotic drugs, not the methadone, Vicodin, and Ativan he was being prescribed. This was only making him Loopy. I mean I'd catch him in his boxer shorts jumping up against the wall trying to catch shadows. Thinking the shadows were real. It was funny at times, but also very sad. Don’t get me wrong, Dan did have a good day now and then. He was very knowledgeable at fixing cars. I could imagine Dan if he had a whole mind and body would most likely be fixing cars in his auto shop. It’s a wonder why he didn’t invest in that with his 7digit lawsuit. Instead, he had bought a hair salon with it. Very confusing to me. He has no hands and never looked like he has had a haircut, his hair was fairly long, I mean of what was left as he was suffering from the Holmes family baldness. So a Hair salon was quite weird, but pretty much in the end it makes sense. Everything about these two had weird written all over it. Still broke and needing money to get the hell out of the asylum, I found myself with an interview at the nearby motel for a night auditing position. Dan was home and seemed well on this day, so before I left I asked if he wanted to ride with men and get out of the house for a bit. To my surprise he said yes. We still were not on the best of terms from the fight we had, but I was trying to reconcile. So we hop in my Cherokee and take off to the hotel. We arrive and I go ahead in while Dan sits in the Jeep. Apparently outside while I’m in my interview there was a woman whose van wouldn’t start. Dan having the car mind he does decides he, with his missing arms, wants to help the woman out. He gets out and approaches her, the woman wary of his figure, vigorously denies, but Dan being Dan, emphatically insisted. This would escalate rather quickly, Dan then called the woman a bunch of explicates, that does not need repeating. The police were then called, and this whole time I’m sitting inside for an interview thinking how easy this job was going to be and wondering when I would be starting. My interview finishes, and I head out to the parking lot of the motel. Only shortly to be followed by my interviewer. The woman with the van was a guest at the motel and the motel office happened to be notified of the altercation by the police that was outside. As I calmly move Dan to my Jeep. Then I approach everyone else and apologize for his behavior. At this moment I could see on the face of the lady whom I was interviewed, that she was now rethinking her opinion on me. Son of a bitch I thought. That damn Dan found a way to screw me out of this job I just know it. So after the officer explains that Dan is no longer allowed on the premises. We get in the car and drive off. But of course, Dan had one last word he needed to shout out the window, it rhymes with the word hunt. Needless to say, I wasn’t expecting a phone call back for that job. Well, now I’m still stuck here in what I’m calling “The Asylum" where dishes had become the next nightmare. I came from a dishwashing background so I know how to wash them, but according to Dan, I was going to give us botulism or something because I didn’t scrub the dishes hard enough. Of course, no one could scrub like the armless wonder, Dan. So, I had to just let the hobbit go over and scrub the dishes, I'd already done, for a good ten minutes. Then he’d describe to me in detail how dishes are done in their house. At this moment I really came close to losing my mind once again. Oh, I could only thank god that Slim comes down, even though being drunk already, he was able to diffuse the situation. Slim starts talking about how they are going to make a big score, and at that moment I was exhilarated to hear anything other than Dan’s bullshit. Slim goes on this spiel about dealing drugs again, like the Scarface that he thought he was. He really is in a bind for money as they had lost all of the $7figures that Dan came into when he had lost his arms swimming with the sharks at the amusement park. That’s the story the two always tried to convince me and the rest of the kids that visited them had happened, but of course, as I stated way before, I really know it was from my dad’s factory in Hedgewater. So Slim thinks he’s going to try and profit big on cocaine? Really, where is he going to get it? Who does he know? I don’t know why these two insist on storytelling. I already know the real way Slim was able to gain social security at a young age. Lloyd, my father, was never one to hold his tongue about his two-bit con artist brothers from Florida. Many times over the years growing up, I had heard about Slims 4months of work at Wal-Mart. I guess Slick Slim had a nice slip and fall incident at work there and had been collecting money from disability all these years. So my instincts were correct, and that big plan fell threw just like every other plan they could concoct. It was at this moment, I realized that these two guys are maybe the biggest scum of the earth, and I don’t know how they were born with the same blood as my hero and my father Lloyd. So now I'm desperately calling for days trying to find someone to get me a plane ticket home, as getting a job didn’t work out too well. Finally, I got ahold of the always trustworthy Uncle Vic. Vic was another one of my dad’s brothers. He was shaped from the same spoon as my father. Very hard worker, a good family man, with a wife and 3 kids. He was able to work himself into VP at his factory. Unlike my father he never let the addictions take control of his life. The two resembled each other very closely. Even my Sr year when Lloyd had to go to Kentucky for work for 3 months, Vic slid right into Lloyds assistant wrestling coaching position, and it was like nothing changed. Vic was a great coach and always took care of the family. Honestly, since being down with the two hooligans, I started to get the feeling that Vic was supporting these two as well. So it only took me asking and he loaned me the money for the flight and said he’d be there to pick me up when I arrived. Yes, I finally was going to be able to get out of the cuckoo’s nest I had been in for way too long. Thank you, Uncle Vic, you saved me, once again. After that I moved back home to Michigan and had I been a better son at the time, my life would have been great. Had I never left Blair, NE? Maybe I’d be a teacher by now. But instead, I’m a homeless man moving back into his parent’s old house at the age of 23. I’ve lost my first love from high school (my Fault I cheated on her), the school, and t

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About the Creator

Cooking With Casto

born in Barrington, Illinois. The youngest of 4 children, graduated from Quincy High School in 2002, where I was a decorated wrestler. A 4x state qualifier, 3x All-State, 2x State finalist, & 1x State champion.

Now 37 and starting over

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