Why I left Canada...
I have been doing a lot of soul searching lately, trying to figure out where I fit into the great scheme of things. Having been a Canadian, one would think that I feel lost here in the States, but that is far from the truth. I am actually finding myself growing to enjoy it down here. When I originally came to Buffalo, it was a dark low point in my life. I had quit the radio station I used to work at, after a co-worker went into a drunken rage and took out his frustrations on me. My girlfriend at the time lived in Buffalo, NY. Her father who lived in South Bend, IN was getting older, and wanted someone to take over the family business. He specifically told her that he was interested in having me take over running the store. He ran an army surplus store, and being an avid urban explorer at the time, I thought that would of been very cool. I made the choice and with only a few days notice to friends and family, I was on my way out the door from the rich Canadian town of Aurora, Ontario, and headed to South Bend, Indiana. I didn't quite know what to expect, but I knew that at this point my life was going to change.
It wasn't all bad at first. I was allowed to stay at a nice cottage just outside town about 20 minutes, and was also given a company van to drive. South Bend however was a bit of a culture shock. I had to roll through some pretty shady neighborhoods to get to some of our warehouses. I had never seen anything like this in Canada. Things were going okay, and I had some plans. While my girlfriends father was old and couldn't understand what the internet was, I had described the idea of a website to him, in great detail. He seemed to like the idea, and thus my first priority was getting a website set up to get some money rolling in.
Money was tight! The main store had a hole in the ceiling on the 2nd floor, and the water would pour down from the roof during a storm, and come trickling down a center support beam in the store below. I suppose luckily, it continued into the basement, where it was sucked away by a sump pump. But the damage it did on its way down was horrific. The old musty smell of an army surplus store was very strong in this store. During the course of a day, only a few customers would come through. Business was slow, and I knew I needed to get a site online. I wasn't being paid, but the deal was they would take care of my housing, transportation and food until things got on track and I was earning my salary. There was some hope on my part that they would officially apply for a temporary work visa for me. But at the time I was kind of illegally working in the country.
I ended up learning more about the finances, and became enraged at how orders were not being handled, and the store was falling apart. However, for some unknown reason, my girlfriends mother, who didn't work for the store at all, was laundering the money away from the store, and stashing it at home. Upwards of $5000 a month, I had heard. Her husband was ware of this, but his old age made him powerless against it. She once even ran him over with the car, when he was trying to prevent her from leaving with his stores money. I instantly began to hate this woman. Not only what she was doing was illegal, but she was also treating her husband like a sack of shit.
I got further enraged, when I had found out that, during his last visit to the hospital, when he was doped up on pain killers and other meds, he had been pressured by her lawyer to sign half the store to her ownership. He did, without being in a clear state of mind. And this is what prevented him handing the store over to me when he wanted to.
I got so enraged by this, that I sped to her house, to confront her. When she wasn't there I headed back to the store, but got a phone call, telling me she had just arrived at the house. I made an abrupt U Turn into traffic, causing cars to swerve. The road wasn't wide enough for a high speed U-Turn in an econoline van, so I just drove over the lawns and tore up grass as I spun my tires to get to her house as fast as I could with no due regard for anyone else on the road. Upon getting there I instantly confronted her, and demanded the money so I could place some orders and get things rolling at the store again. She refused, and was a spoiled bitch.
The next day, after not getting much sleep, I stole the company van, and a few other things, and headed back to Buffalo. That was the poorest time in my life. I had nothing, no one... nodda.
My girlfriend had disowned her mother. And being that she basically had no family back home, and we were both kinda suck in a rut, we decided to get married and just stick it out together. And that is how I got here...