A Chance And A Change

A Chance and a Change

This is part of my LONG series about Kelsey and Susan of 'Shotgun' and 'Susan's Sunrise'. This one is about Brian and how he came into Susan's life. The stories are very emotional and descriptive. It's also 'Hallmark Channel' sweet. I suggest the order being, Shotgun> Susan's Sunrise> Lake Chantrain> Susan's Renaissance > A Chance and a Change. This story is a time commitment. If you like my story Shotgun, which definitely runs Hallmark Channel sweet, I think you will like this one. If you did not like it, I suggest saving yourself the time.

This is number three of three already written chapters released about a week apart to make sure they post in the correct order.

There are many references to 'Orange' This is Orange County, New York. The place where the show Orange County Choppers took place. The show took place 20+ miles East in Newburgh. This story takes place in Wallkill Twp, NY which surrounds Middletown NY, a town of 30,000 people just over 50 miles straight-line from Midtown Manhattan.

Fred Flintstone was a character from a cartoon series in the 1960s. This was so long ago that they actually had a commercial where this cartoon character was smoking Winston Cigarettes!

My universe, My rules.

Home run derby = US Major League baseball. An event where the players are given easy slow pitches (vs. fast hard-to-hit pitches in a real game) to see how far they can hit the ball.

GPA= US measure of scholastic achievement. 3.5 is much better than average but not nearly enough to get a lot of grades-based scholarships for college.

The genetic condition I mentioned is made up and does not exist.

A Chance and a Change

Part 1

My Story and Blah Blah Blah

Tuesday, January 1, 2019, 1:01 AM.

I'm Brian Barnes and I lay here happily next to Susan, my fiance with her bare body relaxed on mine as she purred and rubbed her cheek on my chest then kissed me on my cheek, "I love you Brian. Forever."

This is after walking a road that destroyed my heart. Destroyed my ego. Destroyed my self-confidence. Destroyed my value as a man...

Destroyed...

Me.

Two hours ago I surprised her with my ring and she tackled me in her enthusiastic answer, YES! Before I could even get the whole question out. She was no less enthusiastic a half hour later alone in her room as we made love. Her also promising a lifetime of loyalty to me is just as much of a turn-on as, 'Fuck me'.

Many say there is no way to recover after being literally crushed by a cheating ex-wife and having your heart ripped out, but I am proof that it CAN happen. My heart and my ego had been destroyed by my ex. There was luck involved in being at the right place at the right time to meet the right woman. How we got together sounds like a crazy internet story.

I'm happy again.

How the fuck did that happen? I spent two years with my stomach in knots, then I met a woman who not only released my pain. She made it clear that only wanted one thing: Me.

I swore I would never get close to another woman. I would never let myself chance feeling that pain again and I closed my heart. Then, my miracle happened and I met a woman who would not leave me alone! She kept coming back at me because she said it was because she saw what was underneath my cold exterior. I challenged her to beat my terrible story and I lost that bet. That is the best bet I ever lost...

Because in losing that bet, I won in ways I never saw coming...

*******

There are a bunch of ways to become a cabinetmaker and carpenter, many if not most of them rather informal. My path was pretty simple, I took woodshop and metal shop for all four years of high school. I was the kid who would stay two hours after school and take the late bus so I could work on my woodshop projects after school. I took two years of Engineering Technology which is the fifty-cent term for computer aided design or CAD.

I did okay in high school with a grade point average of 3.5. My old man says they grade much easier than they did 'in my day'. He also says he rode a dinosaur, like Fred Flintstone to school. I had to look up who Fred Flintstone was the first time he made that joke. I love my parents who accepted the fact that I had zero interest in becoming a teacher or banker and going to college. When I took Wood and Metal Shop my freshman year, I liked Metal Shop, but I found my passion in woodshop. I was almost obsessed with working in wood and it became a hobby as well as a class that I took. That Christmas found me asking for nothing but woodworking tools.

After the freshman year, every year in woodshop, the second semester was our project for our final grade. In my sophomore year in high school, I made a nine-drawer jewelry box. It turned out extremely well though impractically large in size. I won the best project for the year for my second-year shop class and my project was in the Southeast New York Shop Class Show where I won! The impractical size was perfect for the wealthy woman at the show who offered me a thousand dollars for it. Yeah, I know she was just being kind with the price as similar commercially made ones were around three hundred dollars, but it was a very nice box in dark Cherry wood, and I could not say 'yes' fast enough. Obviously, I bought more woodworking tools with the thousand dollars. My big junior project was a mahogany nightstand that I still use today. I only received honorable mention in the shop show that year.

Going into my senior year, I was talking to a neighbor in August of 2001 right before the explosion of the internet and the World Wide Web. He saw a picture on AOL and had to have an 'English Pub' style bar, complete with a canopy top with a stained glass insert. He wasn't expecting much from me, but he paid for the material and it was my big senior year project. It was for his walkout basement. I poured my heart and soul into that bar and not only got an A for my efforts, I won first place again at the Southeastern New York State Shop Class Show. I was written up in two local newspapers, and got atwo-pagee spread in the May 2002 issue of Fine Woodworking magazine. He wasn't expecting much, but I gave him my all and the bar was, well, good enough to win a show and get into Fine Woodworking magazine.

My parents bought twenty copies of the magazine, mailing one each to a dozen friends and relatives. My mother had a professional take the article and make two matted and framed prints of the pages of one of the copies. They hang in the hallway to the bedrooms. I am blessed beyond measure with wonderful and supportive parents.

My high school graduation party was really just a family thing. I had a few friends here and there, but their families had exclusively family graduation parties like mine. I was good with it and I was close to my family. Yes, I got more woodworking tools for my graduation gift and a happy, "I am so proud of you!" from pretty much every member of my family.

My father was not about to let me lay around for my summer after my high school senior year. In fact, he made me apply to a bunch of carpentry and renovation companies a week before I graduated. I got a call three days later and had an interview at six in the evening with Richard Head who owned his own company, Richard Head Renovations. The interview was the following Thursday, the day before I was to graduate high school. It turned out to be the world's easiest job interview.

I drove to the shop which was just a prefab steel warehouse building with one twelve foot drive-in truck door, a dock door with dock leveler, and a man door to the immediate left of it. I rang the bell and a man in his mid-fifties answered the door with a polite smile and a handshake. He took me back to a prefab office in the back left corner and opened up the May 2002 issue of Fine Woodworking.

He looked at me and pointed to the magazine and asked, "Is that you?"

This was a great way to start and I said, "Yes."

He asked, "What was your GPA in high school?"

I said, "3.5"

He asked, "If I pay for a drug test, will you pass?"

I smiled at yet another easy question for a good answer and said, "YEP!"

He looked at me, his eyes boring into my soul then nodded, "You start Monday. Minimum wage, Five dollars, fifteen cents an hour for the first month. If you last 30 days, I'll think about paying you more."

I asked, "When is the drug test?"

He looked at me and said, "Why would I pay for a drug test that you would pass anyway? You are all too eager for it."

I smiled, "Thank you sir... uh... Mr. Head."

He shuddered, "Call me Richard but don't call me Dick. I'm not a Dick Head."

It was hard to not react to that quip until he started laughing, "Relax, I'm not an asshole."

He was right. He was my boss who became my mentor and my friend and I actually liked going to work every Monday. He loved woodworking just like me, and in that, we bonded. He taught me things far beyond what my shop teachers knew. Richard was a woodworking master and he was delighted to teach me everything he knew.

He stuck his hand out, we shook hands and I went straight from high school to a full time job. A day in, I noticed that the wooden lamp on his desk was unusual looking and asked him about it. Richard smiled and asked, "You want to know how to make this?"

I nodded, and said, "Very much."

Richard looked at me and smiled. He saw himself in me, "Willing to stay after to find out?"

I nodded and I was not lying, "Very much."

He smiled and a connection was cemented. I learned more about lathe turnings that day than the five class projects I had done during high school. He had given me a choice cherry wood burl from his personal collection to make my own small lamp base and he even pulled a lamp-making kit from a shelf containing several dozen.

He started off at a pile of burls he had in a bin under his mezzanine apartment, "The best burls..."

He was giving me the advanced secrets of woodworking and he smiled that entire evening as he showed me exactly how to get the best results and how to scour woodpiles and forests to find the choicest pieces of wood.

After working on the lamp, he offered to buy me a steak at Big Leagues Middletown, a sports bar he often stopped at after he was done. We talked about woodworking or rather he talked as if unloading all the secrets of his craft and I listened, occasionally asking about a finer point of something he was explaining.

The next night, we went to an old farmstead with only a foundation and a long abandoned apple orchard in the far western part of Orange County.

I remember the end of that second day, "Andrew, want to know a secret spot for the choicest apple wood?"

I nodded at him as my eyes lit up, "YES!"

He asked me, "Promise to keep this place a secret?"

My eyes lit up again, "Yes!"

He smiled, clearly relishing our woodworking connection, "Well then, son, let me show you a place..."

He smiled and he gave me another of his secrets and the first time he called me 'son'.

The nearest road was a half mile away and that was a dirt track off a dirt track in the furthest Western reaches of Orange County.

That Friday, I went home and proudly put my cherry burl lamp on my bedroom desk.

My father came in and looked at the lamp and said, "That is the nicest lamp I have seen in a very long time."

He was proud of me and my skills and I could tell he truly admired the lamp so I unplugged it and handed it to him, "Happy early Father's Day."

It was the Friday before Father's Day and I had bought him a barbecue set, but I knew this gift was better. Yeah, he choked up a bit when I handed it to him. He took it to work and it sat on his desk until he retired many years later.

The first week, Richard used me to fetch, hold, and buy. He would be doing the actual work, but send me out with the company van to fetch supplies or lunch. I held shit and fetched tools from the van. The second week I was cutting wood for framing. The third week he trusted me on basic trim work and by month's end, everything but the finest finish carpentry and cabinetry. I had already done four years of it in high school and in the basement at home. As I said, woodworking was my passion and I was very good on the first day. With the tutelage of Richard, my skills only grew.

Things were going well and we had enough business to make sure we both took home our pay every Friday and my paychecks were never late. Things weren't perfect, but we worked around problems. I remember coming into work at the beginning of August 2002, hearing Richard swearing as he hung up the phone, "FUUUUUUCK!"

I walked in, "What's wrong?"

He sighed, "Butlerville won't take my hand-drawn construction drawings anymore for a permit. They want a computer drawing. He said everyone in Orange County will no longer accept hand-drawn plans after the first of the year, next year."

I asked, "You mean computer aided drafting?"

He sighed and had a look of consternation, "Yeah, that."

I said, "I know Autocad and you can get Autocad Lite for about seven hundred dollars."

He didn't like shelling out the money, but two days and twelve hundred dollars later, we had a laptop and a copy of Autocad Lite for me to make the drawings. He bumped me to nine bucks an hour and treated me to a steak dinner. Over the years, he bought me a lot of steaks, mostly at sports bars, but I never complained. Richard was good company and good to hang out with. He was divorced and lived alone with his dog, Max, so his evenings were free. He was also a lead-by-example kind of man. He was as likely to push the cleanup broom as I was.

I did side work building furniture and built a number of my English Pub style bars. We worked it out so that I got the money for the bar or furniture, but any installations were done through his company. I found the deal completely fair and a number of times, he helped me and even let me use the warehouse and tools when needed. He had tools that were professional-grade and impractical for a person like me to own like a planer-router and a CNC mill.

I only had one two-week check at minimum wage. The second check was seven dollars and the third was eight dollars an hour. Raises slowed after that, but I was still living at home and by Christmas, was paid at ten dollars an hour and one year in, fourteen dollars an hour.

By the end of the second year, I was at twenty-one dollars an hour and I liked going into work. Not dreading going into work every Monday is a blessing many people have no idea even exists. I enjoyed my job and I was paid decently. After a year and a half, Richard sent me out solo on many projects and I became a true carpenter rather than just a helper. My specialty was cabinetry and I loved the requirement for fine, detailed, and accurate work.

Things were great for me for five years until I got a call from Middletown Police. This was to be one of the worst days of my life. Richard died of a heart attack while doing an estimate in downtown Middletown and I was devastated. My friend and mentor had died. Richard was a second father to me and I had become his replacement son.

Looking back now, I realize that Richard truly had been unloading his woodworking secrets to me so even though he had passed on, his knowledge lived inside of me. Over the later years, I brought on three different young people to work for me including a young woman who was probably the best at furniture making of the three. I had done my duty, and Richard's knowledge had been passed from me into three different young people. Elizabeth Little was my last apprentice in the summer of 2048 and the only one for whom I passed on the secret location of that old apple orchard. It didn't hurt that she was seeing Jack, the son of Kelsey and Andrew and yes, they later married.

As an adult, I've cried or broken down only four times. That call in February of 2007 is etched into my mind and that was one of the times I lost it. The other two involved one of my grandparents dying and the final one was years later. It wasn't sobbing, but those times I broke down. He had a son who he was estranged from and I was the main speaker at his funeral. I spoke of his human side and his business side as the finest master woodworker I had ever seen.

Richard had a lawyer on retainer, I was instructed to finish up his current projects and I would be paid the exact same as I had been before. There was about two and a half months of work backlog so I was set until then. This gave me the breathing room I needed to send out resumes and look for my next job. I had gone on a few interviews and had some light interest for the first few weeks after the backlog had dried up and Richard Head Renovations was shut down.

I was shocked when I received a letter from his lawyer three months after he died and only a couple of weeks after the backlog had dried up. Richard had left me his van, his tools, his shop building, and a hundred fifty thousand dollars in cash. His biological son had tried to fight it, but he disinherited his son for 'Being a loser who has no job, no ambition, and does nothing but get drunk and high.'

Turns out there was more than that including a fight that put Richard into the hospital when his son came to him one day demanding money, presumably for drugs. The story made the newspapers at the time and was one of the arguments Richard's lawyer made when the son fought the will. The remainder of his money went to a no-kill animal shelter. Happy Paws of Orange loved the six hundred forty thousand dollars they received from his estate. That is where he got his dog, Max as a puppy in the summer of 2006.

Two other things happened when he died. One was that I got his dog, Max, as a condition for getting the van, tools, and the business. Not taking the dog meant no business and I liked dogs so it was a double win for me. The second was that Richard Head Renovations was his legacy as his company and he was not passing it on directly. He had paid for his lawyer to incorporate me and Brian Barnes Renovations was born. I got to keep the customer list and the telephone number. I briefly toyed with the idea of calling it Brian Barnes Construction, but the implication of BBC as a joke would likely have played as well as Richard calling his business Dick Head Renovations.

I went to pick up Max from the foster home he had been with since Richard died. Max was in the corner looking broken and sad, but his head did pop up when I came into the room. Anyone who claims dogs are dumb has not had a dog. Supposedly he was part Border Collie, but he looked more Golden Retriever to me. Let's call him a happy wonderful mutt mix. Regardless, Max was very VERY smart.

When I called Max's name, he looked at me then wagged his tail then walked forlornly toward me. He knew me at least and seemed relieved at seeing a familiar face, though clearly he was missing Richard. I kneeled down and explained, "Max. Buddy. Richard is gone and I am now your owner. I will treat you like he did. I promise."

Max knew what I was saying or at least the meaning of it. You call bullshit and I don't care. Max knew. He went to the corner, fetched his blanket, and placed it at my feet, then he fetched his leash, then a third trip, he dropped his squeaky toy at my feet and wagged a bit. I put him on the leash and he walked out the door, waited patiently as I opened the door of the work van, and put his stuff inside. I said, "In!" and pointed. He jumped up into the van and I closed it behind him. Max was now mine.

Richard had a small apartment built onto a mezzanine in his warehouse that consisted of a bedroom, bath, living room, and eat in kitchen and Max loved going back to his old haunt. Interestingly, all of the furniture had been moved out and sold while the probate went through so I moved into his empty mezzanine apartment. The mezzanine was against the back right corner of the warehouse and had windows only on the back and right side to let light in.