Chapter One: The Story Begins…
I’ve created this site to tell our story…its kind of a cross between The Notebook, Titanic, and Apocalypse now…but in the end, good always triumphs over evil. Just look at the Civil War, WW2, and THIS story with which you are about to be regaled….
CHAPTER ONE
I was ten years old when I saw her. Long strawberry blonde hair and a plaid flannel poncho. She was on her swing set in front of her parent's house. It was fall, and the leaves were just beginning to turn color, it was a typical autumn day in White Heath, Illinois. My father had just started to date the woman, Mary, that would soon become my stepmother. Mary's kids-the the shy, older, pot-smoking, Ozzy Osbourne listening Gary, and younger, outgoing equestrienne Jennifer- still lived in the house 'pre' Mary and Robert divorce. I'm still not sure how Randy met (manipulated may be a better word) Mary, however there we were, at a new house in White Heath right outside Monticello. Jennifer was the blonde girls' babysitter. The moment I saw the blonde girl next to Mary's house, I was thunderstruck. I thought I was going to throw up. Of course, Jennifer saw me staring -my heart was racing, I was sweating, I could feel my stomach twisting into knots as though I were standing on the edge of a cliff. Emotionally, I suppose I was.
"STACY! Come meet my friend Lincoln!" yelled Jennifer.
Stacy…….a name that would become of major significance throughout the rest of my life. Stacy sauntered over, and we all went to the barn behind Mary's house. We liked to climb on the hay bales, shoot my BB gun, and my brother Philip's bow and arrow-Xmas presents from Randy the previous year. The barn was a perfect place for us to play. The bales of hay became villainous entities that Jennifer, Philip, Stacy, and I would vanquish on a daily basis. Stacy was eight years old, the same age as Philip. Of course, at that age, a two year age difference is enormous, so Stacy would gravitate towards Philip as a playmate, as he was closer in age, or, to Jennifer with whom she was already friends.
Although we would always catch each other looking at one another.
My father, Randall Gary Scheiding, had a way-you call it predatory manipulation-of becoming exactly what a lonely person -or even group- needed to fill an emotional void. As an example: It was enthralling watching him chameleon himself to church parishioners becoming the star congregant -demanding to be baptized as John did Jesus, but taking it one step further demanding baptism in the middle of December out in a freezing borrow pit to show his level of commitment to not just the church, but the individual congregants. Of course, that would come to an end as soon as he would start asking for money….
I don't know how Randy met Mary, but she was the only serious relationship I was aware of in his life after my mother divorced him. In the lottery of divorce in the 1970s, neither of my parents wanted to be saddled with the responsibilities of two pre-school children. My mother was an ineffective 19-year-old Chicago suburbanite on the campus of Eastern Illinois living in Lawson Hall that fell for the wily grad student radio DJ (WEIC), mellifluously speaking to her in the fall of 1969 through the warm glow of her radio. She didn't have a roommate and was painfully shy, so the radio became her only friend. She and Randy became pregnant, so they married. That lasted 2 entire years. They're- both of them- entirely too selfish and narcissistic to raise children.
Anyway, more on that later: Back to the goods!
