In January-June 1997 i worked at Epson Portland Incorporated assembling printers. I remembered one night on the line we did 521 printers in a 25 people team, an Epson world record. I remember the name of the supervisor, a Mexican guy. Her wife was a QA auditor and many times she was spending minutes next to me trying to figure out how i do it without making one mistake. I was at the station 4 i guess and i put 9 parts on the printer, including gears and 4 screws with an electric screwdriver. In June one day i became sick. I went home and started not to be able to sleep, eat or drink. At night i was driving my car around on the streets. I went several times to different ER rooms. After about a week or so i went to the Beaverton Police, told them some of the story. They called an ambulance that took me first to the Tuality Medical Center in Hilsboro, then to Emanuel in down town Portland and they called a cab and sent me to Pacific Gateway Hospital in Sellwood, the one who lost its license and closed after Police shot an out of control Mexican inside. It was a mental facility that treated both mental and drug related conditions. I never used drugs in my entire life. Here is my picture after being released from there
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In front of what used to be Pacific Gateway Hospital,
Sellwood, OR, July 1997
(Prozac Head, can still click me!) |
One of the symptoms was chocking. I only wish i knew back then where that was coming from. It was a simple nose congestion due to some allergies and was preventing me from sleeping. The other symptom was severe stomach pain. It lasted from 96 to 06. No doctor ever explained to me why but now i suspect i might be related to spine alignment because it went away after going to the chiropractor. But the pain was real and was alleviated by antacids or acid blockers that i took for many years constantly increasing the dosage.
Many weird things happened in the hospital maybe one day i will tell the stories. But let's concentrate now on something else. A couple of weeks after coming from the hospital one day i was walking on Hall Blvd and talking to my wife and thinking about going to a Romanian church. But then i changed my mind, crossed the street and went into BNC (Beaverton Church of the Nazarene). A church in the shape of an UFO.
I was well received in there. Like they were expecting me. They prayed for me laying hands on each other's shoulder. I met pastor Dennis Swift and others.
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| Beaverton Church of the Nazarene |
The next day a guy shows up at our door. He asked us, me and my wife if we wanted to go for a ride in a boat. I looked over his shoulder and there was a big boat in the parking lot hooked to an old green Ford SUV. He insisted a lot and then i said yes. In the car they were his three daughters. I remember only the name of the younger one, Trinity.
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Shawn Robert Parker with "his girls", near Cannon Beach, OR,
summer 1997 |
He took us on the Willamette river that day. Accompanied by my usual stomach pain and thirsty all the time, i didn't drink anything in the morning and Shawn only had a few cans of soda i couldn't drink because of my stomach pain. Still on Prozac. I think we started in St.John area and went all the way to Willamette Falls and back. We stopped on a channel near an island. I think we ended the day back at the Nazarene church.
I had this 83 Fairmont sitting in the parking lot for almost a year. He came one day with a 20 dollar bill and asked mE to sell it to him. The manager at the apartment already told me several times to get rid of that car so i sold it to him.
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| My ex 83 Ford Fairmont, at Sussex Village Apts, Beaverton, Oregon, 1997 |
In April 98 i was working at Quadramed. I was teaching my wife how to drive. She took the computer test and had a permit. I think i spent hundreds of hours on the right seat on Nimbus St. in Beaverton teaching her. I remember at first she was terrified by the cars that were coming on the other side of the road from the opposite direction. But in spring 98 she was driving OK and she drove all the way from Portland to Tillamook, some 70 miles. Then from Tillamook to the beach near Tillamook bay there is a narrow winding road and i kinda pushed her because i was impatient to get there but she was tired and driving under speed limit and in a sharp left curve she went with the right wheels on the gravel near the road. I think we were in legal speed limit. Quickly and gently i grabed the wheel with my left hand and corrected in time. But she reacted too after, and over corrected. Unbelievable, we went to the... left, inside the curve, we missed the bay, the huge truck parked on the right on the gravel, the incoming car from the opposite direction, made an 180 degree turn and rolled in slow motion in a ditch full of ... mud, that was soft. It is very hard to describe in words the trajectory of the car.
It took me about a minute to figure out which way was up, untigthen her seat belt and roll the driver's door down cause mine was in mud and with the broken window while she was kicking me in the head with her legs. Finally she made it outside and i followed. The only thing that happened to us was me having some scratches on my right arm from the broken passenger window.
The guy with the truck parked outside the curve, kinda illegal i think, on the right, that was kinda like waiting for us in there, with the cell in his hand. Minutes later five cop cars showed but no ambulance. But we didn't need one either. One of the cops cited my wife for careless driving with 180 dollars. Then they called a towing truck and they put our car back on the wheels and i started the engine and it was working.
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Then guess what? Shawn Parker with the girls unexpectedly showed up in a green van with windows also old i haven't seen before or after coming from the beach. He insisted we went with him back to Portland, but i was too attached to that 89 Escort GT to leave it there with the towing guys and i drove with no problems all the way to Portland. (I was also paranoid about that being a recognition of my part we've been somewhat hurt in the accident which we weren't. 04/26/2014).
Did i mentioned the prayers at BNC that morning for each of our country? Dennis repeatedly asked and we both went to the altar, me accompanied by Ron Boger and my wife by his wife. Than we had lunch at Old Country Buffet in Beaverton and i also saw a bunch of people from the church in there. Then we decided to go to the Ocean. Those days we didn't need much to take that decision because we were still young and full of energy.
This post needs to be extended. I will dig into my records to put in more data and pictures.
