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After being convicted for his gambling activities, I am sure that Russ could not commit any crimes for a period of time because he was probably a guest of the Michigan Department of Corrections. At some point, he paid for his crimes and was released.

However, Russ’s hiatus from criminal conduct was short-lived. It began with a domestic dispute involving his girlfriend. The police arrived, and the incident took multiple and confrontational twists. The arrest made the front page of the Saginaw News, where Russ claims he was beaten by police while handcuffed. In turn, the police claimed he resisted arrest, assaulted the officers, and spat in their faces with saliva ladened with blood. Additionally, he cold-cocked a police officer once his handcuffs were removed.

By the time Russ was in his late teens and early 20s, he was an accomplished petty criminal. As he drifted through the early stages of adulthood, he accumulated 13 convictions for criminal activity. He was known for his table pool hustling in local bars and for finding ways to make a quick buck. His crimes were relatively minor, but like most criminals or drug addicts, he had an early impactful introduction to anti-social activities that tended to escalate over time. Akin to an unrepentant drug addict, criminals eventually reach a point in their lives when they die because of their endeavors or end up in jail. At an early point in his life, Russ had been seduced by gambling, hustling, petty criminal activity, and womanizing. There were no guardrails on his activities.

For unknown reasons, the future nuptials for Russ and Carol, announced in the Saginaw News as a 1963 spring wedding, did not occur. Russ had gotten into minor legal issues, but nothing that would have delayed a planned wedding. Both Russ and Carol were young. Russ was only 18 years old, and Carol was probably a year younger. Their youth and Russ’s volatility could have led to an unanticipated breakup, or the delay could have been caused by the immaturity of two young lovers. I am sure that the idea of being married at a very young age was romanticized between the two of them, but the reality probably became daunting.

The saga of my stepbrother, Russ, is long and complicated. In many ways, I do not know where to begin, nor where to end. There is so much to discuss that my blog posts about him will need to be broken into shorter segments to fairly capture his life’s mishaps and many sojourns.

As mentioned previously, I idolized Russ, and when we first met, I looked up to him as a big brother. He was funny, witty, and edgy. He made me laugh with stories not only about his adventures but also his misadventures. But the more time I spent with him and worked with him at my stepfather’s amusement business, I began to notice risky cracks in his personality that concerned me.

Recently, I was asked several questions: “How do I remember so much from my childhood? How do I know when everything happened?”

I quickly walked through the kitchen after acknowledging Sharon’s nod and then entered the living room. For a fleeting moment, I remembered how tidy and clean my grandmother’s kitchen was compared with how messy my mother’s kitchen was. As I entered the living room, my mother was nestled in her favorite chair, smoking a cigarette and looking out the window.  She slowly turned towards me as if deep in thought. There was no hug or affirmation that I was there, just a quick declarative statement, “Johnny, I need to talk with you.”

The walk from my grandparents’ house to my mother’s took only a few minutes, but I realized that, with all my walks between the two houses, some were more agonizing than others. Because of my mother’s tone on the telephone, I was apprehensive about this visit.  When I reached my mother’s house, I opened the rickety back door, stepped into the stoop, and walked up a few steps to the entryway door that led to the kitchen.

Months earlier, I had finished 9th grade at the county high school, Douglas MacArthur, and was ready to begin 10th grade in the fall. I was excited to reconnect with my high school friends and to get my driver’s license, since I would be turning 16 during the school year. To maintain residency at Douglas MacArthur, I had to continue living with my grandparents and list their address as my own.