62: Something for Nothing

From PRI Public Radio International. From PRI Public. PRI Public Radio Public Radio. Public Radio Radio International.

It was one of his moments to play in your sense of hope. You start to picture it. Easy money story went like this. Hal's granddaughter had this dream where she saw the devil.

He looked it up for her and booked the lottery numbers they got in New Orleans. The book said if you dream, the devil plays the number 171. Then he saw a pill that he rolled onto the floor. On the pill was written a number 771.

And it wasn't anybody believed that he was going to win, you know, but he thought he doesn't play and the number comes up, he feels an idiot. I want 771. Give me 30. Battle straight on it.

Hal buys $31 tickets and then boxes of $2. Place he goes. Hannah Finder Foods and Liquors. Little store on 87th street here in Chicago in a well kept working class black neighborhood.

Sells more lottery tickets than any location in the city. Outplays every day. So do you possible to get something for nothing? Hell yeah.

Yeah, you can get something for nothing once in a while. Very few people, not everybody. How. How much do you think you invest in the lottery?

Oh, I don't know. Anyway, three to 4,000, maybe 5,000 years. $3,000 a year come pretty close. Three or four thousand dozen knows you, that's nothing.

Whatever you hit it, if you hit it. This is the thing about something, nothing schemes. Once you get the tails, once you get involved, it's not something for nothing. You pay.

One way or another, you pay. And you know, we all know that. But even though we all know that, we just want to believe. A delivery guy named Leo stands in line in his delivery uniform.

He spends 40, 50 a week on the lottery. But he tells me he believes the lottery is fixed. Fixed the main bell. When he says they're usually white people, never blacks, he notices.

They tell you where silver came from and sometimes they show people on tv. And like I said, this is the large lottery place in Chicago. If they notice the largest. But if you really don't think you could win, why would you play it on here?

Well, you know, you try anyway. I keep playing. Maybe like every once in a while this might win. Yep.

May not be one of them. This is just how strong our hope runs. Leo obliges the lottery is sticks. So black people cannot win.

And he still plays every day. Welcome to WBC Chicago. This is American life in our glass. Today on our program, the dream of something for nothing.

Act one Hands on a Hard Body. A get rich quick scheme in Texas involving two dozen people, three nights without sleep and a $15,000 hard body truck. Act 2 Guinea Pig 0 A guy who makes his living by selling his body. Actually renting his body.

Medical science, drug studies. Act 3 Dow the dumpster home everyday dad put his 9 to 5 and decided to put food on the family table by diving into grocery store dumpsters for it. And how does something for nothing scheme affected his marriage? Act 4 Somebody who actually does strike it rich and gets something for nothing.

And now it drives him nuts. Stay with us here at the only place you really can get something for nothing. Listening to the radio. Act one Hands on a Hard Body.

Every year, the Nissan dealership in Longview, Texas sponsors this contest. 24 people stand around a $15,000 hard body pickup truck. When they're starting with the blows, each person puts one hand on the truck. They wear white gloves so it's not as a paint job.

And they stand there and stand there until one by one, people get hired and drop away. And finally one person is left standing. That person gets to keep the truck. How tough could this be?

Under the contest rules, you get a five minute break every hour and a 15 minute break every six hours. And to the contestants, at first it sounds like he's winning something for nothing. I think it's gonna be easy. I mean, because it's on the mind.

I have so many friends that are gonna come see me. I mean, my boyfriend's gonna come see me. My dad said he would get up every night at 12 o'. Clock.

I think I last because I look at it as payments. That's what's gonna kill you when you buy a new vehicle. When I think of getting no sleep, that's gonna be painful. But you can get raced later.

So that's the first thing I did to sell the truck. I have so many bills to pay off, have car. I want to start, I want to go back to school and just. I want to get braces.

There's just so many things I want to do. I really do need the truck and I'm determined I'm going to win it. These interviews are part of a movie about this contest. Filmmakers Robin Gord, Chap Wilson and Kevin Morris take us through the contest hour by hour.

And over the course of the documentary, we get to know several contestants pretty well. Especially one guy, Benny Perkins. Benny had actually won the contest a few years back and it returns to try and win again the year they made their film. Benny said the Fact that this is not easy money, though.

It all starts simply enough, okay? On the first day, you know, you're ready, you're up. It's just like a normal work day. And you go through the day being extremely bored.

I mean, you listen to the radio, there's people going around, walking around, coming up, and that takes away from some of the boredom. But you're standing in one spot and you're doing absolutely nothing. And so your mind is looking for input, anything, something. And everybody pretty well yaks around the truck and we get to know each other.

The thing is, this usually lasts for three days and nights. Three days and nights, or even longer. At some point. Your problem is no longer boredom.

What happens is you go slowly insane. I mean, the mind has got to rest. The body can work 24 hours a day, seven days a week, but your mind has got to rest. You have to have sleep.

And when you deprive your brain of rest, then you start going slowly crazy. It's an awesome thing. It really is. And it's something that, you know, if you haven't experienced it, try it sometimes.

Try staying up in one spot. You feel like you get transported from town to town, place to place. You see things that aren't there. You know, for instance, there was one time when I thought I was at a piano bar.

And the back of the truck, the back of the cab was actually in my mind, the back of the piano, and someone was playing it. I couldn't see them. You know, I couldn't raise up high enough to see over to see who was playing. And I remember standing there looking around and saying, okay, I'm in a piano bar and somebody's playing the piano.

Where's my drink? You know, somebody forgot to bring me a drink. And that type of thing goes and comes and goes, comes and goes. And you get extremely sleepy and you just get numb.

My son was there, and he and another young man were throwing a baseball. And as the baseball would arc through the air, I could see traces of it. I could see a thousand baseballs across the front. And I saw that, and I said, wow, you know, I didn't see that.

You know, it was brutal. But I saw it. Now there, the second day, my feet hurt. They got hurt pretty bad.

And I complained about it because I was really having some pain. Well, several hours passed. I mean, I hung in there and my feet went numb. I said, I can't stand here now, you know, and then I got thinking about that, you know, while I was there and kind of running it through my mind, I said, well, I don't think I like none, you know, I don't know what's going on.

And so then I started working my feet around while I was standing and keeping circulation because that's what it was. The blood was pulling in my legs and I got to notice everybody's lasers filling it. I mean, of course they were all standing there in shorts. I had on the tightest pair of blue jeans I could find.

And I wasn't showing off, I just wanted that extra support. I mean, you know, fellow people are support hose. But then everybody be calling cc's out of my truck and be wanting to punch them out, you know, be going with that idea I had on the tightest pair of jeans I could find. I love to compete.

I'm a competitor and I'm also a little bit predatory. And to win something like this during the time that it's happening and afterwards you feel a little to deal with me because, you know, there's times when people, you know, you talking each other's head, you're messing with each other's head and there's a lot of that goes on and it's mind games. It's what it is, head games. Be standing there and say, hey man, I legit feed killing.

And somebody pipe up and say, well, hey, I'm not hurting anybody. Well, you taking cocaine, you know, that's what you want to say, you know, and you know, that's what I said back to him. I said, well, you know, if you're not hurting, then, you know, and you're worse off than we are. Cuz when you go to them, you don't know what's going on.

Let me cheer. But that's the kind of thing that goes on, you know, there was one gentleman that I think there was three or four of us left and a friend of his came up to the chain and asked him what he wanted to eat on the next break and he turned around and says, I don't know. And he literally did not know what he wanted to eat. And I realized this and I said, man, I said, this is bad.

You don't know what you want to eat. I said, I know exactly what I want to eat, what I'm going to eat when we come off on this next break. I said, you're standing here and you don't know. I said, that's really bad.

I said, you're losing. I said, you may as well quit now. I said, I know exactly what I'm going to eat. I Know exactly what I'm doing.

I know exactly what I'm saying right now. And it just blew the guy's mind. He couldn't deal with it. It was more than he could deal with.

And it wasn't very long after that that he dropped off. And then when he dropped off, I turned around to Dan. That was the guy that was with me at the end. Told him.

I said, look, I said, you standing next to the devil, I said, and you're riding a road to hell. I said, I'll stand here till you die. You may as well put in hand. The only way that I can be beaten, as far as I'm concerned, is if there was someone that had just got out of the Marine Corps, that person could possibly beat me, they would have the night safe on.

You know, it's a contest, they say, of stamina, but it's who can maintain their sanity the longest. And that's what it is. That's what it comes from. Because when you go insane, everybody starts feeling it.

The second night, and there were several that dropped off, you know, on up until the sun came up. After the sun come up, it was a long time. The third day, it was a long time. I think there was about eight of us left, five of us left.

The beginning of the third day, it's really ringing. And you keep wondering, well, who's going to go down next? And this is when you start getting the really big rushes. When it gets down to, like, five people and somebody drops off, you dip.

It's like awesome exhilaration. And you feel like you can jump to the moon. I mean, it just. And it comes up on you.

I mean, you feel it all over, and you just get the shakes. I would compare it to killing a deer. The first time. The first time you kill a really big animal, it's an exhilarating thing.

You get so excited and you feel absolutely totally. I mean, you feel it, you know, and at the same time, you feel really sad for this person. And you feel sad for them. You feel sad for their family because they've been up there all this time and they lost, aren't getting nothing.

You know, it's sad. You won't cry, but at the same time, you pumped up. When it gets down to the last two, that's when it gets really tough. Cause he's got most of his friends and family there, most of your friends and family there.

And then you've got fans, people that by this time they picked out who they want to win. And everybody's rooting for somebody, you know, and if you look over here into the fans and family and fans of this other person, you know, they're looking at you like, okay, you need to quit. You know, if you're looking better than this other person, they're really upset with you. And you can see it, and it deals with you.

It really works on you. And you don't like it. You don't like. You know, you say, hey, man, I don't deserve that.

You know, and then you get thinking about, well, hey, you know, all these people up here, and don't they realize that we're suffering, that we're hurting? And, you know, you feel like they're kind of bloodthirsty in a way. I mean, they're there to see the spectacle. And it seems so absurd, very absurd.

At the time, There was a gentleman that was standing to my right, and he really needed to win the truck. I would say he needed to win it more than I did. And I had told him during the process, we had become close friends. And I told him, I said, if it comes down to just you and me, I said, I'll lift my hand up and let you have this truck because you need it.

You need it more than I do. When he started losing it, he raised his hands up and he took his gloves off. You have to wear gloves, cotton gloves. He just threw him over there.

You know, he's sitting there rubbing his hands like this, looking at him, and it was his hand. I grabbed it and I slapped it down the truck, and I said, man, what are you doing? He's lost your mind. What's going on?

You know, you supposed to stand here with me till the end. You better stay with me. You know, he kind of snapped out of it, you know, because he was losing his mind. I mean, he saw something on his hands or felt something that he just didn't like.

And his little wife and family were standing over there, and they saw what I done, and they thanked me. But he went off. And on the next break, we all took off, sat down in our very spots, and when I came back to the truck, he didn't get back up. You experience a great camaraderie with these people because they have been through this.

They've been there. They know what it's like. And it's. You know, it's like the guys that come back from the space program, the right stuff, you know, they've got a camaraderie that they share.

It's a closeness that nobody else can really understand because they have been in space. After I won this truck, my self esteem and my self worth went through the roof. There was times I felt that I couldn't control it. I felt as though at times I was a strength and seek.

And I've had a little trouble dealing with that. I remember sitting in my front stoop, you know, right in front of my door. And I just sit there and look at it. And I'd spend, you know, two, three hours just sitting there looking at it in total disbelief.

You know, that wow, you know, I really did that. I really wanted that truck. I really went through that. I mean, I'll drive it till the wheels fall off and do it back home, drive some more, you know, if I have to clone a new engine anyway, I mean, until it just falls apart, it won't drive no more.

That's when I set it up. And I'm gonna set it up out the farm. I mean, I'm not gonna haul it off to an iron yard somewhere. Cause I'll scratch it.

It doesn't deserve that. Later on I experienced some awesome cases of days of it, you know, when I would go to sleep and dream that I was back on the truck and I couldn't leave, you know. And I would say it was probably three or four months afterwards that my feet and legs were covered, you know. At night after I'd go to bed, my feet would tick.

The film Hands on Hard Body which shows many people, not just Benny, going through this ordeal. There's really something. And the years since the first broadcast this sort of films went out on DVD. The actual contest ended in 2005.

I'm pulled out of Pittsburgh and rolled down the eastern seaboard. I got my diesel wild up and Jesus running like I never before as the speed's on I hit it all right I don't see a cop inside I got my 10 hollow gears on a Dodge overdrive I'm taking little white fields in my eyes or open my. I just passed the chimney on white. I mean I'm messing up a thing inside.

Act 2 Guinea Pig 0. A few years ago, Pop Pounds got his time to friends were making money by volunteering for medical experiments. Any good medical study they could go for 10 days or so with eight or eight or 10 other guinea pigs. They feed you, they rent videos for you.

You can read or write all day. Of course. They give you an experimental drug, take your blood. Typical pay for a good study like this, $200 a day.

$200 a day. Bob Helms Zine about this it's called guinea pig Zero rates. Various medical facilities for best food, staff, attitude, best money, and all sorts of stuff like that. He says there's basically a community of people who do this.

You're not going to get rich. You could do it for a living if your expenses are very low. And you can do it for a living if you have another income. Or some people will actually book them very close together so that they're doing them more often than they're telling the doctors that they're doing them.

It's a little bit disgusting to do it too many times, I think. When. When do you cross the line into disgusting? Disgusting is when you're doing something very painful and getting very little money in return.

Like the spinal tap studies. They have to train people how to do spinal taps. So they're actually paying you $100 to take this spinal tap. It's this trainee.

Drain the fluid out of your spinal cord, and sometimes you walk away. You know, you're half paralyzed. It's leaking and things like this. This is disgusting, and I just don't want to.

I never go near anything like that. The most painful and uncomfortable one I've ever done was actually the behavior of my stomach while a radioactively traced egg sandwich was disintegrating. And they were taking photographs of my stomach from a gamma counter. And I had a tube down my nose into my intestine and a catheter in my arm.

And I had to lay very, very, very still for about eight hours at a time. So that was a very uncomfortable deal. How much did you pay for that? $200 each time, and it was three times.

Compare yourself to other people who hire out their bodies. Well, I sometimes think of it in comparison to, say, an art model, a nude model. Who are models for art classes or artists? In a limited way, it's similar.

You also could be. Could be compared to a sex trade worker, either a prostitute or an erotic dancer. Can we just say, let's go through a hierarchy of the different people who sell their bodies. Well, on top of the heap would be a professional athlete.

Okay. Because. But of course, that takes a very intense concentration. And it's different in a lot of ways.

It's different a million ways. So when you weigh down the scale, okay, so next one down from athlete would be. Would be a very highly paid fashion model. Then down there, down below would probably be.

At the bottom would be probably a prostitute doing very dangerous and extremely unpleasant work for money. Guinea pig would probably be somewhere in the lower half, not in the Middle or the upper half, but you're saying sort of below fashion model, but above prostitute. Above nude dancer. Below nude dancer.

Well, pay wise, it's probably below nude dancer. It's probably well below nude dancer. But as far as the aggravation and the unpleasant interactions with people that one would need to go through is probably above a guinea pig being less stressful and less, less of a weird pain in the ass to do. How would you compare this to, say, a job working for, you know, a minimum wage McDonald's job where essentially you're renting yourself out for a fee?

It's much, much, much better. Explain how fast food restaurant job. You are committed to eight hours every day or whatever number of hours, say eight hours every day, so that every day has got this gigantic hole in it that you can't do anything else. And all that time you're working hard and you're getting very little, very, very little in return.

That's not really enough for a day. A person should get more than that for a day's work. Do you think this job is easy money? Yes.

Ideally, that's all it is. It's easy money. But there's a danger in thinking about it that way too much. Because one should always understand that there is always a risk.

It may be a very, very small risk. It may be a really great risk that you're taking. And I think one of the particular strong risks is in doing psychiatric drugs. I recommend guinea pigs.

You do not do studies with psychoactive drugs. You call people who do that. You have a word for them phrase for them. The phrase is brain sluts.

It's more harsh than most guinea pigs would use. But I think of it's disgusting because they're becoming retarded for money. I'm just very sensitive about the mind and I personally don't lay it out for rent. Is your main experience of doing this just.

It's boring. Is that the main downside of the whole thing? It can get pretty boring sometimes if it's a very long study, you start to feel like a caged animal. It gets very aggravating and you start to feel like you're in a fishnet.

Well. And you are. Yep. You sure are under a microscope.

And you are. Yep. You know, people describe, you know, a really bad job. The thing they say is like, you know, my boss just, you know, he's just on me all the time.

He's just watching me all the time, like I can't get him out of my business. And, you know, that's that's the premise of this job. Yep, that's it. That's it exactly.

And yet somehow you feel. You feel a sense of freedom when you're doing it. Yes, when everything's going well. Since it appears around the story about Howmes has stopped a potion, guinea pig 0, and has left the world of drug testing.

He has to release a collection of stories from his team called Guinea Pig Zero, an anthology of the journal for human research subjects Foreign. Do I feel? Am I dead? Stick electrodes in my eyes?

Do I see? I see nothing. I am blind. Another test on me coming up to people who succeed, they get something for nothing, big time.

And the consequences. That's in a minute when our program continues. This is American LifeMyra Classic, our program. Of course, we choose a theme, bring you a wide variety of different kinds of stories on that theme.

Today's show, Something for Nothing. Stories of people who try to make easy money. And what happens when they try, as everybody knows, usually pay a price. Some price.

We arrived at Act 3 of our program. Now with the dumpster. This is the story of Dirk Jameson's dad, a man who decided to seek something for nothing, mostly for his own pleasure, mostly for his own self interest. But one thing that's interesting about this is that one consequence of him doing it is that he ends up a better dad.

Arguably. Arguably. In fact, the family does argue about it. Dad wasn't always in the trash, but by 1976, life had died in an ugly holding pattern.

Nothing was adding up. He was counting weeks and he used to count days. To dad, my mother was a pining walrus wrapped in polyester who couldn't take a single sentence at face value. If he said two words, she heard five or six and they scalded her guts.

He once gave her a soap on her rope and she gave up an aspirin because she swallowed handfuls at night in order to sleep. But she considered this oversized pill a vicious hint that dad wanted her to go to sleep for good. In a crowded mall, dad let go of a door and nailed her on the forehead. She stunned cheery Christmas shoppers with a high displacation.

Her husband was trying to kill her with doors. The kids made him happy, gorging on hot dogs and pancakes, paid for by his hammer and nailing. But dad didn't make a life, so he made a decision. He'd move his to Manflex and teaches to ski.

Screw all that empty labor and alienation. We would hike and have a serious blast, catch rainbow trout and go sledding and have snowball fights. All he had to do is get fired. Unemployment and food stamps were carried through the winter, so he began campaigning to lose his construction job.

He ignored his pouch of nails. He lounged. He made idle shaft. He was fired.

After being laid off, dad went straight to the supermarket for moving boxes, but instead found an old man grinning from inside the dumpster like a fork halfway eating cold spaghetti from a can. His face was covered with grime and his teeth had rotted down to brown spikes. Dad thought he was the happiest person he'd seen in years. He wanted to share a score with dad.

Some nice chicken, broccoli, mangoes, a mystery novel and a bag of hard candy. Most of which was going to a six year old girlfriend waiting in a nearby trailer park. Very important to share. He offered dad the chicken plenty go around and just thrown out that morning all wrapped up tight in plastic.

No Worsenedale bread and Lord knows the price is right. Dad got the hell out of there. But he spent the entire afternoon thinking about it. Even took a half ass shot at discussing it with Mom.

That old guy. He looked more relaxed and content hip deep in dregs. The day I could remember ever feeling trashing made money obsolete. No reason to pay for food.

It waits out back the same as on the shelf. Mom was mortified. It was ludicrous. To the envious of a homeless person, freedom meant choices, not old guy had none.

But dad had plenty and she'd be making something his life. Instead of thinking low class thoughts, dad went back first thing in the morning. He watched an apron kid carry out a gallon jar of pickled eggs at a football and the passenger intoout was crystal clear. Nothing about the eggs had changed.

But in 30 seconds the jar had been transformed from top notch product into utter swill. Dad went over just for a look and found a split open 50 pound bag of dry dog food. Perfect initiation. He could test the water without seeing anything in his mouth.

He could climb in for a loyal family dog and save $5 of food cost every week. A few minutes in the dumpster equal five snackers. That was about $100 an hour. He climbed in and spotted the jar.

Expiration date One day passed. Lids snuggle. He opened it, the dumpster suddenly feeling like half foxhole, half gold mine and hesitated only long enough to smell the top egg. Then wolfed it down.

Delicious. He sped home and fed the dog and tried to pass out the eggs. But mom was glaring at the menacing felt tip X marked on the jar lid. That better not be what I think it is, she said.

So help me God. Dad opened his mouth to deny it, but froze. Okay, fine, he said, deciding to try to be himself even if his wife didn't want him to. It's trash.

Mom stomped into the bedroom and dad followed. He said he finally understood what he'd been doing with his life. He'd been working for furniture and new shoes and magazine subscriptions, making petty habits a priority and handing authority to some Persona who he thought he should be instead of who he was. But those eggs were undeniable.

More trash meant less work. Less work meant more time and finally, more life. Think of it. They could do whatever the hell they wanted.

No work, just skiing, sledding, snowballs, food stamps. No, mom despised food stamps. People snickered in line and checkers were condescending. Her father had raised 10 children and never once resorted to crummy welfare or scavenging.

She was missing a point, so dad spoke slowly. I don't want to waste any more days at all. Mom smothered herself with a pillow and blurted, I won't do it. In three weeks we leave for Mammoth Knock in California.

Dad had heard that Mammoth had the most square footage of terrifying slope in the country. Pine SAP smelled like vanilla. For $250 a month we lived four miles below some 30 ski lifts and a space age gondor that raced in nosebleed altitudes and stopped at a cafeteria halfway down the run where everyone collapsed and refueled on corned beef and cabbage and steins of beer. Our house was an A frame crowded by wild Christmas trees, and on the very day we moved in a fish hatry truck back down our driveway to stop the backyard creek to work.

Trout. Talk about a good omen. Dad said. There was no time to look at fishing rods.

We just blitzed in and started groping and dad cheered from the bank. My first fish ever was 12 inches long and that was cold bare hands. I raised it over my head and we were all screaming. First husband and wife shop together.

Mom headed for the electric doors clutching his dreaded food stamps, and dad called out the adventures and back, babe, you've used this as a wholehearted invitation, but even now there's a taunting edge to his voice that he doesn't acknowledge. The amount of food being cast out in Mammoth was astounding. The economy was tourist driven and fancy skiers preferred high class eats, so the instant a piece of fruit showed age it was ditched. Dad scored racks of papayas so ripe they were oozing and split.

If the corner of a cereal box got crunched, managers considered the cereal inside irrelevant. If a manager needed shelf space for granola bars and trail mix, he abandoned a slow seller and the dad lugged home crates of onion flavored potato chips, unfreshed bagels, a dozen cottage cheeses. Finding enough to feed a family of five was a breeze. But afterward, when we wanted to compare halls, mom looked at him with the stain and kept her bag away from his, afraid of contamination.

Setting her prediction of his death by poisoning in two weeks, she warned us about the bins. Dad was immune to the filth because selfishness and spiritual corruption had made him thick skin, but we were angelic and frail and might suffocate in the stink or worse, slip and bash our heads, then literally drowned in 2 inches of immoral muck. She said trash was a horrible thing, but it was difficult for us to believe dad was having big fun. And one thing children seem to understand, fun is not horrible.

Mom declared the refrigerator off limits. Dad found an old fridge and stashed his booty in the garage. Mom banned trashing her favorite stores, so dad sneaked out at night and hid convenience to start under our pillows. Mom found lit clean pudding cartons and forbade us to eat that.

Dad picked us up from school and we hit candy stores and pastry shops on the sly. Jackpot became a code word when my sister found a jumbo pack of Twinkies designed to be carried in like a backpack. She ran at top speed with a tube of decorative clay paper, flailing her arms and sprinting a huge circle back into Twinkies. The red paper unravelled behind her like a parade streamer.

We made ourselves sick cramming all the Twinkies on the drive home, then laid around the house and groaned. Mom put two and two together, then staged a protest. She wouldn't speak again until her children got garbage free. She wouldn't do a single chore for a week.

We saw her only twice a day, straight to her room after work and stomping out to the car in the morning. Dad prepared all trash meals. A sourdough culture thrived in a Mason jar above the stove. Dad mixed it in his second hand flour, making humongous stacks of pancakes referred to as Gooners, smothered with coconut syrup from behind the health food store.

Who wants Gooners? He would shout. Me. Me.

Me. Mom packed her bags. She gathered at the door to explain that Dan was a heartless son of a bitch who she couldn't stand for another Second. But she would come visit us on the weekends and we could stay with her.

Whatever you want, she said. It's up to you. We begged her to stay. We got on our knees and gradually convinced her that life would be pointless and crappy without her.

And as she unpacked, I sobbed with relief. But when she packed again in four days, we barely glanced up from the television. And from then on, she had to convince herself to stick around. I end up calling one to ask her about those years.

She's a little perturbed about my questions. Why do I take such an interest in dad when he's always been such a selfish jerk? She was the one. She was there for us.

She paid the bills and kept the heat on. She crawled under the house and unfrozed the pipes from. Dad wanted his damn winter vacations to Baja. She worked really hard for Christmas and new clothes for school.

Dad wanted to do whatever the hell he wanted. They always got the credit for thanks to great Father. And now I'm writing a book about him. Why?

What did he do to deserve all this attention? She says, he has less freedom than any man I've ever known. He can't go where he wants because he can't spend anything to get what he wants. He has to go worst class because he's not free enough to part with a dollar.

She's on the verge of crying. Now the contenders are long enough to recount some bitter family folklore. Husband eats heart of watermelon now with me, she says, I would cut a piece off and everyone would have a piece. Burt's way was to cut down the middle and eat the heart out, because that's the part he wanted.

I said, but Burt's the best part, and you should only take your share of the best part. But he said, no, I take what I want. She warned him, do it again, you'll be sorry. He did it again.

So she grabbed the gutted mill and went after him. I threw it and hit him right on the head on the apartment steps. As with most things, I didn't put my foot down soon enough. I just kept thinking he was going to evolve.

These weirdnesses in him were going to change. But it got worse instead of better. From the person I married to the person I divorced 20 years later. I couldn't recognize anything in that man.

Later, I asked dad about the watermelon. I wanted to experience that same thing. I did. He said, you got this really great part.

I wanted to experience the heart of life, I guess, or the heart of the watermelon. You give yourself that gift. You give yourself a gift of what happens and that's what makes life worthwhile. What'd she say?

I asked. When I ate the heart, she was upset. She ran after me and she threw it at me. I ran down the stairs, she threw it after me.

But I got another watermelon and I said, now I want you to eat the heart. She wouldn't do it. I said, this is for you. You eat the heart.

I cut out and gave it to her. She couldn't eat it. She said, I can't. I can't eat the heart.

She didn't think she deserved it. So what did you do then? I ask. I don't know.

He breaks into a big laugh. I may have eaten a heart. Years ago, dad was handing out mini jugs of orange juice when my sister spotted a boy from grade school steering from his bicycle to far into the lot. Her expression made dad think she cut her finger or smashed a toe.

She ducked behind a dumpster and hissed, I know him. Eventually confessing to mom that she had a crush on the boy. When he ridiculed her at recess, she sucker punched him in the throat and was suspended from fifth grade. For three days.

She refused to leave her room, so mom carried in favorite dinners on a big platter. Dad wanted to talk her through it but took the wrong approach, suggesting she sees shame as a concept and not just a feeling. It was a replacement emotion, like anger, he said. We used it when we couldn't distinguish exactly how he felt.

Dad drilled her with somatics but was simply attaching a stigma to her reaction by implying their feelings weren't real. So he finally shut up. He tried to empathize. Instead, he squatted in dumpsters and pictured the person he least liked to see him there.

An old girlfriend, the president, John Wayne. He tried to humiliate himself but couldn't. So he sat down again with my sister and tried to be on her side this time. If her heart hurt, hey, that's all that mattered.

She should go for it, he said, feel ashamed, as she wanted. Shame held significance for her, obviously. So the only way to figure it out was to, as he said, take it to the limit. She said, I don't want any more trash, Dad.

I remind dad of how when we were young we would spend an entire day playing with this. But he would never spend time making money. If we wanted something, well, he said, the things that money could buy are not great value to me. Love is giving time and attention.

That's A real gift. Money's not a gift. They just give you things and they're okay, but they're not of primary importance. Money's okay.

It's another adventure. So you go on the money adventure. How far can you go? You get a yacht, whatever people do with a lot of money.

But then what do you do? Are you really happy? You still gotta do something with life. There's a certain searching.

Everybody's curious and looking. You see people looking everywhere. What are they looking for? I think it's right in front of them.

Right there. The thing itself. What is it? I ask.

He laughs. Hell if I know. Dickenson's story Dumps first appeared in the LA Weekly. He has made a film about that subject and he's a book about his childhood.

Cup Perishable A memoir. But the baby need shoes and I'm busting the cotton is down to a quarter a pound and busted got cow and a hand A big stack of bills that get bigger each day the county with all my belongings away. Act four, another success story. Well, Hollywood is our national capital of something for nothing.

And our dream is something for nothing. But if anybody's ever seen any of those movies about Hollywood, you know, Bart and Pink stars, Born Dead Locust. Anybody you've seen knows that the classic story of something for nothing is about the price that you pay once you make your easy money, once you make your big kill. So with that in my new interpreter today with variation on the theme from River Center Tingle in Los Angeles.

Do I believe in the magic of Disney? Yes, I do. One day my friend Roger cox was a 40 something underemployed actor, director, pet sitter. The next he blossomed into a veritable industry mini mogul sporting capped teeth, brand new as Susie Trooper.

Even health insurance sound miraculous. Cinderella esque, late 80s. It is. And it could only happen in Glendale had the Walt Disney Corporation.

The story begins in a little ramshackle bungalow sols air conditioning in Pasadena. The year is 1985. Our hero has just stepped off a plane from New York penalous with only a duffel bag. Louisiana.

Is a place where appearances mean a lot. And let us just say that in fall 1985 Roger does not look like a person who will soon be playing tennis and encino. He is 41 going on 70. A battered five foot three, a root beard dwarf is his self description, a chainsmoker, a lousy dresser and has bad knees.

Equity web of theater can be a cruel mistress and after 35 she can inflict a certain darkness of Spirit. She takes all your money and after a while won't even you anymore. As my friend mel says, because 35 is an age when even the most die hard bohemian begins to wish for life's little luxuries, one's own futon to sleep on, liability, car insurance, dental care. Roger has none of these things.

So add to the appearance of somewhat negative life outlook. But this is all soon to change. How is almost Hans Christian Andersen esque. Fast forward to 1987.

Roger is tapped to direct an original play in a not untypical 77 seat LA run that is six weeks of rehearsal culminating in one weekend of performance. Meanwhile, someone loses $6,000. There are no reviews and frantic efforts to videotape it at some tiny college in Pomona with hostile student cameramen come to nothing. The final insult.

Monday morning. Roger the director is forced to drive all the props and furniture back himself. Picture it. There our hero sits on a blazing Monday morning.

And how cruel those LA Monday mornings are. At a stoplight western in Santa Monica in his uninsured 79 Honda Civic. But then something makes Roger look to his left and there gesturing at him madly, is a well groomed woman in a cream colored Audi. Roger.

She calls out. He rolls down his window. John is in town. He wants you to call him.

A phone number is hurled into the shuddering Honda followed by the screech of Audi tires. One week later. Boom. Roger is hired by Disney.

And why not? Disney's amusement park division is expanding, expanding, expanding. They're building up Disney World in Orlando like crazy. Next is Euro Disney.

Then there's Japan. They need creative thinkers. Roger is suddenly drawing $60,000 a year, perhaps four times what he's seen in those 40 odd years. Job description Imagineer Roger thinks up rides for amusement parks.

I would tell other bohos, semi employed, 30 somethings active in their various part time songwriting, freelance recording Engineer, jewelry design, $8 an hour Word processing, unpublished novelists, studio based trombone, pot selling industries. Wow. Such creative touch. Respond, their eyes glazing over.

And at the end of the evening Roger would unfailingly pick up the check. His triangle dry. It's on the mouse. Roger came to have a dapper new look too.

Once on the Disney lot, where you meet a better class of people. Anyway, he had almost immediately met a fine new woman named Donna who made it her mission to get the Tweeds catalogue and buy Roger everything out of it. Soon Roger is resplendent in safari khakis and beige linens and crisp white shirts. He trades in the cynic For a trooper.

The hair is permed, teeth are cat new, glasses are purchased. Roger begins to look positively sleek in his equity waiver days. He used to call industry scouts with great derision the IJS, which stood for Important Jewish Suits. Now he is one.

He quits smoking. He pays off some 20 odd years of debt. Roger begins to hire his poorer artistic friends for Walt Disney imagineering gigs. He is Solomon, dispensing coins for the peasants.

Voice overs flow from him. A music score for a 3 minute in house film. $100 checks for 2 hours of concept consulting. Roger is absolutely in his element.

Never was a job so suited to a person. Calls wore in from him Monday morning. Asia. He exclaims in stentorian tones.

What do you find fascinating about Asia? Go. Apparently this week's task is to get rides based on the continents. But why stop there?

Next week his assignment is the universe. Go. But then the tide turns. Was it an angry look from Michael Eisner?

One bloated Visa bill too many? A bad dream about a mouse? OG in byte of Inwit is Roger's three word explanation. And when a Disney person begins quoting Joyce, that is the point where you know you will soon be paying for your own drinks.

Roger begins staying in over the weekend reading Nietzsche bol books about the Grand Queen all theatre. Ask him how Asia and his close friend Jeffrey Katzenberg are doing and one gets only a curt response. I'm tired of writing for robots. In the next breath, Roger goes into a wild tirade.

Excitedly, he outlines his new project. To perform Crap's last tape in the theater. Theater toilet. Pants down around his ankles for three people.

He is smoking again. You know. He's finally gone over the edge when he tells you he is thinking of designing a new amusement park concept called Crap Land. Here, terrible crap happens to people and uniformed Craplanders cheerfully abuse them.

Fortunately for Roger, the world economy turns and soon the amusement park industry is to go into a little bit of a bust. In short, in summer 1992, the unthinkable happens. Disney lays off some 400 of its 500 Imagineers, even though, oddly, the construction of new buildings and wings continues apace. The nightmare is over.

Roger is free again. He is at peace. After all, he's had five great years thanks to his corporate fairy godmother. His debts are paid off.

He's got a terrific wardrobe. He has money in the bank. He's got contacts both in his address book and in his eyes. He can collect unemployment now, do nothing but dream for a year, for a guy who came here with nothing.

That's pretty good. Sandra Singh Low. You must book Mother on fire tonight. This month her friend Roger died last year.

Sarah Vowell, Jack Hit and Marty Rockland. Adrian Mathewitz runs our website. Professional stepman, DJ Goats Music update, John Connors. Special thanks, David, Alex Torani and Jim Nelson.

This American Life Distributed about public International Sport of this American Life is provided by the Saab 93 Turbo with an E estimated 29 miles per gallon on the highway. Efficiency and performance. Learn more about the sub 93 [email protected] and back. Focus FEATURES Presenting Burn After Reading, the new spy comedy directed by Joel Nathan Cohen, starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt in theater September 12th WBEZ 99 for our show by our boss Train.

My idea is walking up to us in the hallway, standing next to us and saying, you standing next to the devil and you're riding a boat. Pale. All right, class, back next week. I said, I'll stay here till you die.

You may as well quit. Next. Pri public radio international.