MY STORY TO TELL

BRANCHING OUT

Well, it was official, I was on my way to New Jersey to live away from home for the first time. I was moving with a girl I truly barely knew, but knew enough to know I loved her and I loved being with her. I think it took us two days with one stop in Virginia to get to New Jersey. I honestly had no idea what to expect. I didn’t know what to expect in relation to her family, her faith or that area of the country.

Once we arrived, I learned very quickly that her family life and mine were very different. Her parents struggled and were always hung up on money. I wasn’t sure if the stereotypes about Jews were showing themselves to be true or what, I just had never witnessed adults struggling. It was something that I later in life appreciated living through. Life is tough, there are struggles around every corner and it was good for me to learn that at that age. It would help me down the road in life.

I found a job in Madison, New Jersey at an outdoor store. I was into backpacking and camping and that job was great for me. I actually loved retail because I was a people person and I could sale ice to an Eskimo. Stephanie got a job in a jewelry store, we were just working our way, trying to save money, but really just living life. We would travel to NYC often; I grew to love the Big Apple. I loved the city life, the hustle and bustle and the money that was being made everywhere around me.

Things were going well, but we weren’t really progressing in life. We weren’t in college, we had dead end jobs and we just weren’t moving forward in life. With that in mind we decided to move back to Birmingham. Stephanie moved with me and moved into my older sister’s old room. We went back to school with may parents paying the way. I was bored with school; I was ready to get out and make money. I honestly do not remember how long we were back in Birmingham, but it was not long before my father came to me and talked to me about a job offer in Bowling Green, Ky. My cousin was a geologist of the largest, independent oil and gas developer in the United States in the Kentucky. My father and my uncle begged my cousin to get me an interview with the owner for a sales position. My cousin was reluctant for many reasons, but he did get me an interview. Keep in mind, I was now 19 years old. I went to Nashville, TN and met the owner at a restaurant and he interviewed me. I will never forget him; Cadillac Jack was his nickname. He was big into oil and gas and he owned many racing horses. He looked at me and straight up told me that I would have a better chance of going to hell and talking the devil into letting me out than I would of being successful in the oil and gas business. He said that the only reason he was giving me a chance was because of my cousin and his reputation of being one of the finest geologists in the region. I was hired! I was to move to Bowling Green, Ky and start work within two weeks.

You couldn’t imagine my elation. I was off to be an Account Executive at the age of 19 at the largest independent oil and gas developer in the United States. I was so stoked. Issue I had was, I had no money. I went to my father, I informed him I was offered the job. Keep in mind, it was him who pushed this for me. He said he would help me and he gave me $300. I was like what the fuck? $300? I am moving, I have no furniture, no place to live, it would be two weeks before I received my first pay check, but he said I would figure it out. I did.

I go up there to find a place, luckily Bowling Green was home to Western Kentucky University so it was a college town and there was cheap housing. I found a place to live, a one-bedroom, old ass apartment over a delipidated garage for cheap. I had brought Stephanie up with me to help me find a place, thing was, my mother flipped her shit when she learned Stephanie went with me. My mother was always emotionally unstable, just who she was. I was used to it, but I don’t think Stephanie had ever seen that side of her. So when Stephanie arrived back in Birmingham, I was still in Kentucky, my wonderful mother had all of Stephanie’s items boxed up and told her she was not welcome back into her home. Stephanie was in tears; she didn’t know what to do. She was driving my car at the time, so she was stranded. I was so fucking pissed. I called a friend of mine and he came and picked Stephanie up and drove her back to Kentucky where she moved in with me.

Together we had gone to a rent a center to rent some furniture and together we were thrust into adulthood. I don’t have to say that I quit talking to my mother all together during that time. It was very hard on my father for sure. I was driven though. I could not, better yet, I would not be focused on things I could not control. I had a job to do and I had so many people to prove wrong. Nothing in life has ever driven me more than to prove others wrong. I am not sure why I am like that, but I am. I worked night and day. I was the first one there in the mornings and the last one to leave. Stephanie and I had only one car and no money, so it was extremely difficult for her to be placed in that situation. She had hoped to stay at my parents and continue to go to school, but my mother ruined that. We struggled and we made do. It was during this time of having no cable and no money that I fell in love with Star Trek, it was the only show ever on the one channel we got with rabbit ears.

It didn’t take me long though; within 3 months I was leading the sales board for the month. I was a 19-year-old kid who didn’t know that I was too young to succeed. I just knew I had to outwork everyone else and I knew I had a talent for sales, so I just did me. My third month there I made over $10,000. That was honestly probably the worse thing for me. Money came easy. It was at that point I went and bought a new car. I was getting a Toyota Camry, a business mans car. I was going to be sophisticated and make a life for myself.

Things were going well for me, but Stephanie was slowly dying there. She decided to move back to New Jersey and we decided we would take a break from one another. I was moving on with my life and she hadn’t found herself and she needed to. For the next several months, I lived the life of a single man. It was the first time in my life I was truly out on my own.

It was during this time that I ventured out and requested my adoption paperwork from the State of Alabama. I always struggled with my relationship with my mother a long with the fact that I was so different from everyone in my family. I knew my cousins on my father’s brothers’ side never truly viewed me as a Vinsant. There were comments made by my mother at times, from the cousins themselves that always hit a nerve with me. I truly struggled with my identity and wanted to know who I was and where I came from.

After a process of traveling to North Alabama and meeting a woman who worked for the state, I was given a sheet of paper that basically told me some back ground info on who I was. I was not given the names of my biological family at the time. The lady had to reach out to my birth mother and see if she wanted to be contacted by me. Keep in mind, during this time, the internet was just coming out and it was nothing like it is today. I could not just sit down and Google someone and find them. I didn’t even have a cell phone at this time. I waited to hear back and then I got the call. My biological mom wanted to hear from me. I think it took me a day or so, before I actually made the call. I witnessed my older sister do this and she actually connected with her biological mother. I will never forget the hurt it caused my parents. Especially my mother, by older sister seemed to replace all of her pictures with pictures of her biological mother. I know that had to have killed my mother. It pissed me off something fierce. Before I called my biological mother, I had a conversation with my parents. I told them of my decision and that I was not doing it out of malice or spite and that they would always be my parents. They supported me, even though I knew it scared them. I found out about my biological older brother and younger sister. I learned that one of my biological aunts had raised my older brother and my mother raised my younger sister. So it always struck a nerve with me that the family raised two of the 3 children, yet I was sent off for adoption. I spoke to my younger sister; I believe she was apprehensive about me as I was her. We spoke many times and I spoke to my biological mother many times and I believe I spoke to my older biological brother one time. I remember him telling me about the Navy or the military and I knew he had no love for our biological mother. I have never spoken to him again.

As previously discussed, once my biological mom told me why she gave me up, I cut off all ties with them. I blocked them out. I honestly forgot their names and everything about them for many, many years.

As time progressed and I was enjoying my time as a single man, I realized I was missing the one thing that made everything complete for me, Stephanie. We never lost communication and we both missed each other. So with me having gained experience working in a very tough field and being successful, I scheduled several interviews in New York City. I was determined to get back to New Jersey so I could be with Stephanie.

I will never forget, I had scheduled numerous job interviews in the Big Apple dealing with investments, working on Wall Street. I was destined to be rich! After interviewing with numerous companies, I was offered several jobs. I accepted a job at a prestigious stock brokerage firm, honestly because they had the nicest offices. I moved to New Jersey, and I went to work. I worked at that firm two days. I realized right then; I was not going to be working in a boiler room atmosphere that we have all scene in the movies. People talking down to me, screaming at me to be on the phones, telling me to stand on my desk, dial mother fucker dial. Nope, not me. I had done my time in my mind as being the grunt and I was above that and I was. I left and I never came back. I went straight to 42nd and 5th where I had interviewed before and was offered a job working directly with the Vice President of Investment Banking. I was doing the exact type of work I had done before in Kentucky, just not with oil and gas investments. We funded companies on a private basis, then we worked with the underwriting syndicate to take that company public. I was doing great. I was working weekends, nights, what ever it took to prove my place.

I don’t have to tell you the amount of self-gratification I received from walking out of my office every day and just looking around and knowing I was succeeding in New York City. I was now 21 years old, from Alabama and making in the largest city in the United States. I competed against people from Ivey League schools and smoked their ass. Life was good.

It was at this time, that I had proposed to Stephanie and we were engaged. We had set a date of November 18, 1995 to get married in Parsippany, New Jersey. I was excited. It was a small wedding. My family was there, well my Mother, Father and Lindsay. My older sister did not attend. I will never forget; we had our rehearsal dinner at the Rainbow Room in New York City. This was the first time for my mother to be the City. It was my father’s second time. See my father never stopped loving me, he never judged me for moving away. He understood that I had to follow my heart.

Funny story I have to tell. My father came to visit me on my birthday. He stayed at a local hotel and was able to see where I worked, met Stephanie’s family, saw where we were living at the time. Stephanie and I took him to New York City and showed him all over. Took him to the World Trade Towers, took him all over New York. He really enjoyed himself. Now of course, you know my father was going to ask me about church. See I called my father every single day of my life. I rarely missed a day when I didn’t call my father. We were very close and my father always tried to ensure that I was still going to church. You and I both know I always told him I was. When he came to visit, he was so excited to visit the church I had been attending. Well, I did the only thing I could do, I found a phone book, looked up Church of Christ and low and behold I found one close by. I actually drove there the night before so I knew exactly where it was. When I drove my father there the next morning, we pulled up, running a few minutes late, I didn’t think anything other than I am going to pull this off and make my father so happy! Well, I parked the car, we then get out and proceed to walk inside and damn. That is when it hit me. I just walked us both into a black church. Of course, everyone there was so nice and welcoming, but that look my father gave me when we walked in and he realized we were the only two white people there, OMG, I will never forget it. Later in life, we laughed and laughed about that. It was quite funny to be honest with you. Lesson, don’t lie to your parents. They always know or will find out the truth. I still crack up to this day thinking of that. That was my type of luck.

Allow me to venture off course for just a minute to give another example of that type of luck that seemed to always follow me around. In a not so funny, but still funny story, I have to share another great example of how my father always had my back. As stated before, we were very involved in the church. I was always at church. During my senior year in high school, I was at church and I can’t remember if it was a Sunday evening or Sunday morning, doesn’t matter. During the church service, my stomach hit me like a ton of bricks. I can only assume it was from the drinking I had done the night before. Anyway, I was always self-conscious of taking shits in public places when I was younger. As I walked out of service, that was going on at the time, I thought to myself, I am going to go downstairs to the fellowship hall and utilize the men’s room down there. Instead of using the one in the hall where people were coming in and out of. I could take a shit in peace. As described, I went down and I took my shit in peace. I then walked back up stairs and one of the elders or deacons in the church stopped me and questioned me like I had broken some law. He then asked me what I was doing down there I knew this gentleman, as he was once a teacher of mine at the church. I then laughed and joked, “what do you do think I was doing, making 900 calls?”. I just joked it off, went back to the service and never thought another thing about it. We a week or so later, I get called in to the preacher’s private office, he then informed to tell me that there had been phone sex calls made on the churches phone, you know the 900 number calls. He informed me that he was told I had admitted to making such calls. I was flabbergasted. I then proceeded to tell him about me taking a shit in peace and that I was totally kidding about making such calls and that I had never made any calls like that. I hadn’t. That was the truth. He then proceeded to tell me when the calls were made, lucky for me, the calls were made on a Sunday night that I had actually skipped church and went to a haunted house with my friend. He then proceeded to call said friend on the speaker phone and verified my story that we indeed were at the haunted house and not even at church that night. He hung up the phone and I will never forget what he said, “I believe you didn’t make those calls, but if I ever find out you shit on me, I will shit on even worse”. I could not believe the preacher man said that to me. I immediately went straight to my father after church, I told him about everything that had happened, including me taking a shit down stairs and making the joke. My father was a deacon at the church and he was so pissed. He confronted the man who had told the preacher I said I was making 900 calls and asked why he didn’t come to him first. He then had a word with the preacher. My father always had my back. But this is just another example of the type of luck I have. Only I could joke about something just to have it come true and to look like I was the guilty one. One thing in life I could always count on, I would always be accused of doing shit I was never actually doing. The shit I did, I never got accused of that! Funny, I guess.

Anyway, back to my marriage. We were married in a small wedding. I will never forget the talk my father had with me just prior to my wedding. He told me was not too late to change my mind. He must have noticed I was pale as a ghost and scared shitless of what I was about to do. I assured him I was good to go and not making a mistake. To this day, I still don’t believe I made a mistake.

Unfortunately for my new bride, I was in the middle of the closing of a big financing for a company and we could not take a honeymoon. I was right back to work. Work continued and I was really enjoying what I was doing and I really, really enjoyed working in New York City. We moved to a house in New Jersey and I commuted daily and I never looked back. The issue was, I was never home. I worked all day and night, 6 or 7 days a week. I would work late so I could deal with clients across the pond. Stephanie was having none of it. She wanted to move back to Alabama. See she was raised there and I was too, so together we decided to move back to Alabama once I closed out this financing and was paid for my work.