A Hijacked Destiny…..
By Frederick J. Blahnik
Author’s note: The seminal events depicted within this upcoming chapter, in concert with much of the supporting documentation, are all true and based exclusively upon actual historical happenings. However, many of the details, imagined thoughts, and scene-enhancing descriptions also found herein are not predicated solely on fact and were largely created and contrived by the author to support the manuscript or to add flesh to an otherwise flimsy literary skeleton. That said, the stories are presented in as accurate a manner as the author could possibly recollect, envision, imagine, or at some point in his life was told by reliable sources–oftentimes a combination of all four scenarios hybridized together as one.
The other chapters of this book are all based strictly upon historical fact, keen observation, and the author’s unbiased memories.
Part 1—-Into the Time Machine…..
As Fran sat alone in his car—occasionally jotting down thoughts on a solitary piece of paper—the ubiquitous time machine wrested away control of his psyche and spirited him back to a much earlier time and a much earlier place..…
………the rest of his Blahnik family was gathered up in the house—all fourteen of them, when you included Mom and Dad—waiting impatiently for him. But hell, he was just a kid himself—barely a freshman in high school—and yet the whole group waited anxiously until he was ready. It was Christmas Eve, 1963. Fran was down in the barn milking the herd of Holstein dairy cows by himself.
No one else in the family bothered to offer help, nor should they either. Milking cows was his sole responsibility; he understood and accepted the reality of the situation, despite the fact he wasn’t large or physically imposing and had just turned fourteen years of age the previous August.
Thus he hurried along—all alone in the cavernous barn—mightily willing the Holstein-Friesian animals to release their milk quicker so as not to make his family wait any longer than necessary. While the remainder of his brothers and sisters sat up in the house telling jokes, drinking beer, and sharing holiday fellowship–Just enjoying Christmas Eve, for God’s sake; what else would you expect them to be doing on a festive holiday evening?–Fran plugged away tirelessly down in the barn. After all, he didn’t wanna keep the rest of his gigantic family waiting longer than they had to. That would have been unbearably rude and inconsiderate of him…….
Lazy……???
LAZY?!?!?!
Are you fuckin’ kidding me???
Are you fuckin’ serious???
Fran clenched his teeth as his face contorted in fury.
Hell, no, his siblings were NOT lazy!!!!!
He was growing sick and goddamned tired of people intimating that. They–his brothers and sisters and he–were all in the same boat together, for Christ’s sake!
Why was that so fuckin’ difficult for everyone to understand?!?!
His Blahnik siblings were all hard workers and ambitious too, just like him; there wasn’t a slacker amongst the whole group. But they had their own work assignments, their own chores, their own designated responsibilities to attend to…….and he had milking the herd of cows as his. Simple as that. No rocket science or profundities involved in this thinking process. Milking a herd of cows all by himself was a helluva big responsibility for a gawky adolescent boy–no argument there, okay?–yet Fran willingly accepted the burden and knew it was a cross he must bear in deference to the “big picture” his dirt-poor family faced.
Fran involuntarily grimaced as he contemplated the past, the present……and especially the future. Hell, obviously every member of his Blahnik clan would forever rue the day their dad had succumbed to the ravages of spinal-bulbar polio back in the fall of 1950 and was thereafter physically incapacitated, but there wasn’t a goddamned thing you could do to alter that fact now!
No, when all was said and done and after all the armchair apologists in their hometown of Spring Valley had finished loudly voicing their concerns, expressed dismay regarding the “overworked” Blahnik children, directed undisguised contempt toward parents who would allow and enable such a deplorable situation, and therein cleared their collective consciences of some misplaced form of guilt…..there remained a farm to operate, regular bills to be paid, a large hungry brood to support, and a crippled father who was unable to help out with any physical labor other than occasionally operating an antiquated F-20 tractor during the non-winter months.
Therefore, those Blahnik family members who remained healthy had to dig down deep best they could, pick up the extra slack, and make do with the circumstances they faced. Nothing too tricky or nuanced about this “predicament”, really, that hard work and a little willpower laced with a large helping of stubbornness couldn’t solve.
And so that’s what they—the elephantine family of Louis and Mary Blahnik—had been doing the past thirteen years, and that’s what they would continue to do into the foreseeable future too. Work your ass off until your fingers bled profusely and you were too tired to stand upright anymore……and then get up absurdly early the next morning and go outside to do more of the same. It sure as hell wasn’t an easy, cushy life for a teen-aged boy, yet it was the only life youthful Fran Blahnik could ever remember.
Fran stared down the wide middle gutter of the nineteenth century barn–brimming with stinky cowshit and overflowing with yellowish piss that reeked so strongly of ammonia it temporarily arrested a person’s breathing apparatus and made one’s eyes water unchecked—a shallow, sunken trench flanked on both sides by long rows of grimy black-and-white dairy cows flicking their piss-drenched tails back and forth. No, he better hurry along now, finish up quick, and hustle up to the house so the business of opening presents could commence soon.
Now that would be awfully fun, Fran surmised…….
The young man grinned at the thought of what surprising gifts he might expect to receive from his siblings, and then what presents “Santa Claus” might think to leave him the next morning under the Blahnik yuletide tree tucked into one corner of their disgustedly unkempt living room (“Mom” Blahnik suffered from Compulsive Hoarding Disorder, but that’s a story for another day). A frown suddenly darted across Fran’s acne-pocked face as he continued to follow the path of logic.
Yes, Santa would leave him some nice presents overnight, no doubt, but those presents would have to wait a few hours to be opened……
Because early the next morning—while his parents and each of his siblings could at least entertain the option of sleeping in luxuriously late to celebrate Christmas morning and the birth of our most holy and blessed Jesus Christ–That surely didn’t mean they would, of course–just that they could if they truly wanted to!…….he would have to trudge back down to this stinky fuckin’ barn again, where those damned, eternally bellowing Holsteins would be waiting for yet another hour-plus-long milking.
Just as he would the morning after that……and the next……and then the next one after that also……
In only a week’s time a new year would arrive to greet him–1964–yet just what would he actually be celebrating?
Surely no break from the tedious, physical, twice-a-day chore of milking cows, nor any respite from the sundry other tasks that forever awaited completion on their primitive Blahnik dairy farm in order for those all-important milk checks to continue rolling in from the nearby Racine Creamery.
And then with startling abruptness, Fran’s face steeled and he determinedly set his square jaw just like one of those stony countenances you see on postcards of Mount Rushmore.
Damned, he was starting to feel sorry for himself again!!!
Poor little Franny Blahnik!!! The poor little overworked baby!!! A sniveling little asshole being singled out for unjust punishment!!!
Wah! Waahhh!! WAAAHHHH!!!
The whole world was ganged up against him and only him, and he just couldn’t seem to catch one single fuckin’ break in life, could he?!?!
The sinewy youngster down in the primeval barn all by himself well after dark felt humiliated that he had caved in to self-pity, and next he instinctively glanced around the dingy, cobweb-lined building to see if anyone was watching him.
No, no, you paranoid fool, of course there isn’t anybody down here with you at this hour.….and on Christmas Eve, too, of all nights!!
Fran shook his head dejectedly.
Don’t be such a goddamned crybaby, Fran!!! he berated himself. Just do the goddamned work that’s expected of you without any more complaining!!! Grow up already, Kid!!!! ACT LIKE A MAN, FOR GOD’S SAKE!!!!! YES, THAT’S RIGHT, A MAN……NOT LIKE SOME FUCKIN’ BIG, OVERSIZED BABY WHO CRIES AND WHINES OVER EVERYTHING AND PROBABLY SHOULD HAVE A PACIFIER JAMMED INTO HIS MOUTH JUST TO SHUT HIM UP!!!!!!!
Fran momentarily stooped down beneath a skittish cow to rinse her four teats prior to suspending a milking machine from her back–and promptly got swatted in the face with a piss-soaked tail by the cow standing immediately behind him.
The young man thereupon gushered an inhuman, blood-curdling curse and instantly wheeled around as his face donned a fearsome, homicidal expression. He instantly seized the tail of the offending bovine and doubled it over into an absurd arc until he could feel the small bones within it on the verge of surrendering to the maniacal pressure he brought to bear. Then reason thankfully found our youthful protagonist in the very nick of time, and Fran released the tortured extremity mere millimeters shy of a sickening, stomach-turning CRUUUUUNCHHHH.
Fran pursuantly breathed a huge sigh of relief, gulped down a healthy dose of anger-cleansing air, and somewhat embarrassingly turned his attention back to the docile brute standing before him.
That cartoonishly hulking cow towered over a kneeling Fran by two feet at least as it nervously shifted its weight back and forth from rear hoof to rear hoof—back and forth, back and forth, to and fro, to and fro, little different than an autistic child rocking away nonsensically in front of a droning television–still caught up in the noisy tumult from moments before, staring back with terror-stricken eyes at this puny, two-legged creature yanking away at its four teats while occasionally feigning a kick with its powerful, twelve-hundred-pound-supporting hind legs.
Fran Blahnik was not yet fifteen years old as he cowered visibly beneath the petrified beast……
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