As I went from my 4th year of life and then turned 5 years old, things began to change. I was still far from the age of understanding, but I was starting to pay attention to the world around me. In retrospect, i was able to see how my father would use me to gain information about my mother. On those rare occasions when Dad would pick me up for a visit, most of our encounters were him grilling me about what she was doing. He was especially interested in her circle of friends and how they would interact with each other and with me. I did not realize until many years later that this was based on his faith as a Southern Baptist, and his hatred of the world of Witchcraft. Mom was a Witch, and Dad knew this. He just needed to find some information to use against her with the ultimate goal of taking me away from her.

The only problem with that was that my mother did nothing that was negative to my growth. She had a circle of friends of about 15 people, and they always treated me very well. Dad wanted to find all that she was sacrificing animals, drinking blood, or praying to Pagan gods. But that's not what it was about. Mom was a hippie. And dad knew this. Her friends, even though they were technically a coven, were nothing more then a group of divorcees with children that would psychologically and emotionally support one another. They were good people and dad hated that he could not find any dirt on them. Toward the end of the year, dad became desperate and as you will see in 1971 he took drastic action.

The beginning of the end

The Christmas of 1970 was when things came to a crux. My mother made a serious mistake because she tried to buy my love. In doing so, she directly attacked the ego of my father. And while I would have benefited from the situation if things had stayed status quo, that's not the way it turned out. On Christmas Day, I came out to the tree to a mountain of gifts. Even with the financial status of my mother, she engaged her friends to buy me everything under the sun. I got fighting robots, a miniature train set, and boxes upon boxes of untold gifts. So when my father picked me up the week after Christmas, you can guess what I was talking about. You will get the full story in 1971, but when we returned to our trailer in New Jersey, and all I had was two small boxes, there was shame on his face. He had made his decision and my life changed forever. The weirdest thing is that even back then I did not want stuff. I wanted attention. In retrospect, I wish that I had been more into stuff then attention because I started to get attention, but it was not in a good way. As you read the 1970s, you will understand. I will give you a little bit of foreshadowing because it is going to be difficult to read if you've ever experienced any of this stuff, but in the end i was able to forgive him and Margaret. But it was a very long road.