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"Rich Man, Poor Soul" is a sci-fi/paranormal tale that appears in Jay Dubya's Kindle, Nook and Smashwords e-book First Person Stories, which also will be published in hardcover/paperback formats in 2016.
“Rich Man, Poor Soul”
Sunday July 27th to Wednesday July 29th of 2014 my wife and I accompanied our grandson Dan and his eleven-year-old cousin Nick on a brief vacation excursion down to Ocean City, Maryland. The overall trip is rather scenic: Hammonton, New Jersey to the Garden State Parkway via the congested Atlantic City Expressway, and then motoring thirty-eight miles south to the Cape May-Lewes Ferry.
The hour and twenty minute ride across tranquil Delaware Bay to Lewes was quite refreshing. And a short time-span later that nautical transit was followed by a pleasurable forty-five minute drive past Rehoboth Beach, Delaware and then short jaunts through Dewey Beach, picturesque Delaware Seashore Park, Bethany Beach, South Bethany and next Fenwick Island and amazingly, soon I was driving rather carefree into fabulous Ocean City, Maryland, a ten mile commercial stretch comprised of fantastic restaurants, modern shopping centers, condominiums, bars, motels, hotels and abundant popular amusement areas.
The summer trip’s destination was a rather sentimental and nostalgic one for me, for from 1967 to 1981, I had co-owned the Dealers Choice Amusement Arcade under the Atlantic Hotel on the Ocean City Boardwalk. Joanne and I were excited to see what new businesses had been established in the general vicinity of our old summer haunts. We had booked reservations for connecting rooms on the fifth floor of the Quality Inn, 16th Street and the Boardwalk, twenty-one blocks north of my former place of commerce.
The first two days were spent with the four of us casually strolling along the crowded boardwalk, eating Thrashers French fries, consuming Dough Roller Pizza and also munching-on Candy Kitchen chocolates and Fishers Caramel Popcorn. Some random window shopping and buying seashore souvenirs were patiently accomplished in order to take home and distribute the purchased items to receptive family members. Of course, Dan and Nick enjoyed finding their way out of Trimpers Mirror Maze and taking a four minute wooden carriage journey through the tourist-favorite Haunted House.
“Another arcade had occupied our former poker game store under the Atlantic,” I reminded Joanne. “But now there’s a retail sweatshirt and tee-shirt shop in the same location called ‘Em Are Ducks”
“Why such a silly name?” my wife asked.
“Because that’s the way local hunters talk down here on the Delmarva Peninsula,” I clarified. "Instead of the mallard shooters pronouncing ‘Them Are Ducks’ in a totally grammatically incorrect manner they proudly say in local slang: ‘Em Are Ducks’!"
After eating a hardy breakfast at the downstairs Quality Inn restaurant on our final day, the New Jersey group checked-out of the hotel at ten-thirty a.m., and honoring an impulsive whim, I decided to visit nearby Berlin, Maryland before heading north to exhaust the remainder of the afternoon in nearby Rehoboth Beach. On the main road leading into the town, my keen eyes spotted Ned’s Nook, an oddball retail establishment that featured a wide variety of assorted junk, weird antiques and strange novelties dating back to the non-glorious Civil War era. Remembering that I would occasionally visit Ned’s Nook to escape the hustle and bustle of the O.C. Boardwalk in the 1970s, I slowly pulled my silver Nissan Maxima into the almost-empty gray-stone parking lot.
“This place looks like an indoor junkyard,” complained Dan from the back seat. “It has stuff that people back in Hammonton put-out for garbage collection. We could get most of this lousy junk for free at the Hammonton dump!”
“Let’s go back to the boardwalk,” Nick stubbornly insisted. “I wanna’ go through the Haunted House and the Mirror Maze again! In fact, I think that this creepy place is much scarier than the Haunted House could ever be!”
“I used to come here when I had the store in Ocean City, just to get away from all of the loud noise and honky-tonk activity,” I diplomatically explained. “Guys, I promise we’ll be out of here in a half an hour. Then we’ll drive up to Rehoboth Beach where I also had co-owned a beach and tee-shirt shop in the 1970s and early 80s. You two rascals can spend the entire afternoon eating hamburgers at Five Guys and playing arcade games at my expense. What do you two kids have to say about that?”
“It’s a deal!” automatically agreed Dan. “I wanna’ win a nice prize to take home. I hope they have some neat handcuffs like the ones that Nick won yesterday at Marty’s Playland!”
“It’s worth being bored at this dump!” Nick concluded and concurred. “Don’t buy any rotten hamburgers in there’ Uncle John! They’ll probably be over a hundred years old! You might get food poisoning and have to have your stomach pumped!”
Inside the dark and dreary tin-roof building I first cautiously admired an old RCA Radio cabinet, next a 1950s Muntz TV model followed by a rusty Kelvinator refrigerator, and then my wandering eyes scrutinized a large Flying-A Pegasus insignia along with several out-of-date greasy Esso and Sinclair gas station signs. While nonchalantly perusing the vast array of obsolete junk on display at Ned’s Nook, my attention was instinctively drawn to a heavily dusty bookshelf where certain ancient-looking volumes were vertically exhibited. I reached-up my right hand and soon gingerly latched-onto an archaic-looking, tattered-but-impressive copy of 17th Century English poet John Milton’s classic work Paradise Lost and being highly bemused, I curiously read the faded print that was fairly evident upon the back cover.
"This epic poem contains over ten thousand lines of verse written in medias res with the essential story background being revealed later. The text entails an angelic war being fought over absolute control of Heaven, Adam and Eve’s fateful adventures in the Garden of Eden, the rise of Satan as a potent evil force in human events, the allusion to a futuristic Son of God appearance upon the Earth, a description of God the Father, a profile of the Archangel Raphael, who had been swiftly dispatched to Eden to warn Adam and Eve of Lucifer’s imminent encroachment, and finally, this book presents a graphic depiction of mighty Michael the Archangel, God’s most trusty lieutenant who had seriously wounded pernicious Satan during the aforementioned prehistoric, supernatural Angelic Wars."
‘I had always wanted to read this remarkable book when I was a public school teacher,’ I honestly admitted to myself. ‘But I was always too busy preparing specialized lessons on Twain, Poe, O. Henry, Jack London, Shakespeare, Washington Irving and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to ever get around to reading Paradise Lost in my thirty-four year English teacher career. Now that I’m retired from education, here’s my chance to finally make-up for lost leisure time!’
I politely asked the elderly clerk standing behind the grimy counter the price of the antiquated piece of merchandise, and after momentarily examining the object, he specifically quoted, “Nine dollars and seventy-five cents.”
Without any hesitation, and indeed recognizing the existence of a true bargain, I hastily reached into my pocket and handed the wrinkle-faced gent a crisp ten dollar bill. The gray-bearded fellow shakily inserted the flimsy-looking book into a brown paper bag, gave me my quarter change, thanked me for my acquisition and then stepped five paces to his right to attend to the particular needs of another enraptured customer.
Being rather happy with my belated obtainment of Paradise Lost, my understanding wife and I benevolently escorted totally bored Dan and argumentative Nick back to the silver Maxima, and soon the dynamic entourage commenced our northern advance to placid Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, where we would relax and stay before eventually rendezvousing with the 4:30 Ferry from historic Lewes back to Victorian Cape May, New Jersey. Everything in the world seemed pleasantly normal up to then. My mind and heart were in complete harmony with the entire Universe. But I had no idea what John Milton’s sensational masterpiece had in store for me.
*************
For thirty-four years I had been a dedicated New Jersey public school English teacher, and for sixteen of those same years an ambitious summertime businessman and an aspiring novelist and short story writer. I suspect that much truth exists in the speculated proposition that authors are tortured souls, possibly either struggling with self-inflicted masochistic tendencies or with recurring sadistic impulses prevalent in their neurotic nature. I’ve often wished that I could live my adult life over again, using my accumulative knowledge and experience of the future to avoid certain mistakes and bad investments I had regrettably made in my earlier years.
On Saturday morning, August 1st I predictably awoke as usual at 5 a.m. and quietly exited the shadowy master bedroom. Joanne had been spending the weekend relaxing down the shore in a rented home in Ocean City, New Jersey. I slowly paced down the rose-carpeted hall and very deliberately entered the upstairs computer room, turned on the wall switch to the overhead light, carefully shut the door out of force of habit, opened my desk drawer and then warily removed the tarnished Ned’s Nook copy of John Milton’s Paradise Lost.
I perceptively noticed the dull-looking publisher’s page, which explicitly featured the date of publication, April 24th, 1784, London, England. I prudently turned the book’s first leaf, observing that the opposite side was blank. But then my fascinated pupils observed certain typed words suddenly appearing in beautiful italics, the stunning new language all being magically represented in the form of a rather incredibly bold announcement:
By Heaven’s decree, your extraordinary wish shall be granted in order for you to achieve your individual Paradise Lost. Lie-down upon this room’s spare sofa and fall fast asleep. When you wake-up, you’ll be age eighteen again, living with your’ family. You shall live your life over from August 1st 1960 to August 1st, 2014, changing important wrong decisions you had made into dramatic positive results. You will have this exceptional privilege once and once only, so optimistically avail yourself of this divine opportunity.
Sincerely,
John Milton
Michael the Archangel
Astonishingly, the brief printed missive soon mystically vanished from the given space just as mysteriously as it had spectacularly appeared, leaving behind the formerly recognizable blank page. Being stunned and shocked from that most recent phenomenon, I meticulously placed the now-closed book back into the top desk drawer and anxiously pondered exactly what had just transpired.
Obeying the recently provided “blank page” instructions, I arose and promptly shut the overhead light switch, advanced my feet to the now-relevant side sofa, sat down, reclined my body, put my addled head on the soft pillow, closed my eyes and then gradually dozed-off. When I awoke, much to my utter disbelief, I was again eighteen years old and living with my parents and younger sister and brother in the small stone house situated next to Pete’s Farm Market, the newly purchased family business.
Initially it was an awkward, difficult adjustment for me, being a hormone-driven teenager again and having to abide by strict parental rules and regulations, but realizing that I had very special knowledge of future events, I immediately determined that I should make the most of my “most peculiar second chance predicament.”
In April of 1959, my family had moved from Levittown, Pennsylvania to Elm, New Jersey, located in Camden County, just west of Hammonton in Atlantic County. In June of 1959, I had been invited to a Levittown birthday party given by a pretty girl I had once dated, Carol Zella. As I traveled Route 206 south towards Hammonton after leaving my old flame’s shindig, I saw that the two-lane highway was dark, quiet and deserted. I had mischievously buried the speedometer on Dad’s ‘55 Chevy all the way from Atsion Lake to Hammonton, a distance of seven straight monotonous miles. Everything seemed copasetic until I had approached the traffic light at the intersection of 206 and Route 30, the White Horse Pike.
As I waited for the green light to appear I noticed a large cloud of hot steam billowing-out from the Chevy’s exhaust pipe. In my exuberance to experience intense speed I had inadvertently broken the six cylinder’s head gasket, and engine water had leaked into the crankcase, causing a dense jet of white steam to be emitted. I had recklessly cracked the motor block and had stupidly damaged the engine’s camshaft. My wild joyride had resulted in a considerable unexpected expense for Pop, who did not savor the overall damage one iota.
Although Dad was not Robert Young he often had to show me that Father Knows Best. Pop was a good judge of character, believed in punishment for misdeeds, and he also had me easily figured-out as if I was a primary school simple addition problem. I was forbidden to drive his repaired ‘55 Chevy out of Hammonton for an entire year. But now, during my second time around as a teenager, I adroitly skirted conflict with my dad by dutifully honoring the 50 mile an hour Route 206
speed limit from Atsion Lake to Hammonton.
Without a doubt my original senior year in high school I had neglectfully clowned-around and antagonized my self-righteous Trigonometry instructor, Mr. Andrews, who at the end of the term felt inclined to fail me, compelling me to attend summer school in a town fifteen miles east of Edgewood Regional High School. But on my second tour of duty as a high school senior, I suddenly became serious about obtaining a decent grade and so I became committed to conscientiously applying myself in learning the very complicated sine, cosine, tangent and cotangent Trigonometry functions. Much to my immense satisfaction, I had earned the respectable grade of B, and my genuine effort had skillfully evaded the necessity of attending the ever-dreaded summer school assignment.
Because I had then wisely passed Trigonometry, I could now be admitted into Glassboro State Teachers College. In my previous teen evolution, I had to stay out of higher education for an entire year, so after the family farm market closed in late October, my father had used his foreman’s influence at his location of employment, Martin and Quade Company in Norristown, Pennsylvania, where against my obstinate will, I punctually became an apprentice welder of stainless steel tube products, a job that I had formerly detested with a nasty passion. Fortunately, by showing emotional maturity and academic perseverance this fortuitous second time around, and by exerting myself and passing Trig, I no longer had wasted a full year of my life breathing-in toxic and obnoxious welding fumes.
On April 24th, 1966, Joanne and I were married at St. Joseph Church, Third Street, Hammonton, New Jersey. I was in my second year of teaching and my wife was about to graduate from Glassboro State College with an Elementary School teaching degree. I never had too much peace of mind working that first summer for my mercurial-tempered Sicilian father-in-law, who incidentally owned a reputable four hundred acre very successful peach and apple farm, so in my new alternate existence, I had intelligently traveled down to Ocean City, Maryland a year earlier than I had done the first time around while giddily riding upon the ever-revolving Wheel of Life. A fellow teacher/friend needed a competent and trustworthy assistant manager to help him run Dealers Choice Arcade, so naturally I had perfectly and luckily fit the basic job description.
The following winter I had used my hard-earned savings and borrowed additional funds to invest in a partnership for Dealers Choice, an operation which consisted of thirty-poker machines, fifteen situated on either side of the store. A seated player would drop a dime into a side slot and five wheels would automatically rapidly rotate. Then the given player would press five red buttons on the machine’s console and eventually develop a recognizable poker hand with actual playing cards indicated upon the five stopped wheels. Jacks or better would be worth ten cents towards prizes and merchandise, two pair twenty cents, three of a kind fifty cents, a straight seventy-five cents, a flush a dollar, four of a kind two dollars, a straight flush five dollars and finally, a royal flush would command Choice of the House, a noteworthy twenty-five dollar prize.
Around two hundred different gift items ranging from ten cents to twenty-five dollar stuffed animals, kitchen blenders and cooking skillets were on shelf display, and the interested clientele could accumulate coupons, add them together and upon finishing their boardwalk entertainment, trade the collected cash value tickets in for exhibited “plush” and “high-line” household appliances.
But several years later I quickly learned how the all-powerful Internal Revenue Service could absolutely crush an industrious boardwalk businessman’s enthusiasm. Everything was functioning just fine until mid-July of 1976 when a pair of black-suited IRS agents sauntered into the Dealers Choice Arcade and stridently maintained that my thirty poker machines were “gaming devices” and not mere ordinary “amusement devices.”
“These are not casino slot gaming machines with timers simultaneously halting the five wheels,” I futilely argued. “They are common amusement devices approved by the State of Maryland, by the County and by the Town, which have all granted me licenses to legally operate. If they were gaming devices as you maintain, I would be violating my state, county and town ''game of skill'' licenses.”
I next had my loyal manager demonstrate how he could use skill to register four aces and then a royal flush in spades on the five rectangular windows on one of the poker machine devices. The first unimpressed IRS agent declared, “He’s a shill! The average person coming in here can’t do that!”
The second IRS official then austerely stated, “You are hereby being assessed a hundred and fifty dollars per machine. How many years have you been in business here?”
“Ten years since 1967,” I innocently and naively answered.
“Then your total fine liability will be in the neighborhood of forty-five thousand bucks,” the first federal man cited with a broad grin, “and adding in associated interest and penalties of a decade-long non-compliance, your grand total owed Uncle Sam ought to be in the vicinity of seventy-five thousand smackers.”
“And what if I don’t pay you right away?” I shockingly asked. “What’s the punishment under those circumstances?”
“Then we’ll have to administer what we call ''a jeopardy seizure'' of all your in-house machines and related property; we’ll next padlock your doors and that drastic action will certainly make your landlord very unhappy with an empty closed store situated right in the middle of his busy block!”
In my second chance to redeem my former erratic economic life, thanks to the miraculous intercession of Mr. John Milton and the wondrous Archangel Michael, in the fall of 1975 my financially encumbered partner and I eagerly sold Dealers Choice to a Salisbury, Maryland amusement tycoon, and obviously the IRS investigation became his growing problem the following July. I then used half of the vital proceeds from the sale to invest in a very profitable boardwalk pretzel and lemonade concession, and the remainder of the sum was infused into a thriving hot dog and hamburger stand along with a majority stake in a well-patronized local bar, and soon I was making much more money with my new boardwalk enterprises in the altered version of 1976 than I had been earning before in 1976 when the rather distressful IRS Dealers Choice intrusion had occurred.
During that same time period I still operated my Rehoboth Beach boardwalk tee-shirt store where decals were heat-transferred by machines onto summer apparel, and so thanks to my cherished copy of Paradise Lost, I had deftly evaded financial disaster and was in the process of adroitly amassing an envious Merrill Lynch stock portfolio in the interim.
During the spring of 1979 in my first tour of duty, several of my former Dealers Choice managers and I had opened an amusement arcade on Missouri Avenue and the Boardwalk, Atlantic City, New Jersey. In the fall of 1981 we were notified by our mercenary landlords that our lease had been ruled null and void because the whole block had been recently sold to Caesar’s World Incorporated for the construction of a magnificent boardwalk casino.
However, in my new second 1979 reality, I never invested in the prospective Atlantic City arcade enterprise, instead using the original seed money to purchase Microsoft and Apple Computer stocks, which ultimately transformed into a terrific economic bonanza. My two partners and I also gambled our combined resources and acquired an old fleabag hotel on Pacific Avenue, which we gladly sold two years later to a huge casino syndicate for a considerable capital gain. That outstanding good fortune was soon parlayed into joint ownership of a prosperous Atlantic City Marina Bar, which effectively churned a handsome yearly dividend that subsequently allowed me in the 1990s to buy a rather decent amount of quality Google and Amazon.com stock.
In 1987, my loving grandmother had died, leaving me thirty-thousand dollars in her will. In my first mortal reality, I had foolishly invested the new-found money into an upstart computer company, which abruptly went bankrupt in 1991. In my second chance at Wall Street redemption, I sagaciously utilized the windfall inheritance to obtain a handsome chunk of Comcast Cable stock, which to my personal satisfaction, then greatly appreciated in value over the course of the next economically volatile decade.
In 1993 I originally had made a forty-thousand dollar gain in an upstart biotech company, but then brainlessly lost the easy-found dough that had been plowed into the stock of a suddenly defunct North Jersey appliance store distributor. In my second opportunity that had been beneficially granted me by Paradise Lost, the formerly dissipated money was healthily put to excellent advantage in my possession of more Apple and Google stock, which naturally over the past two decades has tremendously and marvelously enhanced my personal wealth.
And because of my superb knowledge of history, I cleverly sold all of my stock market acquisitions just prior to the “anticipated stock market crash of 2008”, and a full year later, purchased fifty thousand shares of Ford Motor Company at three dollars apiece, which today are worth a staggering seventeen dollars each. In my substitute 2014 scenario, I’ve now presently taken a mild risk and have invested half of my Ford proceeds into Yahoo and SoftBank Corporation, which together own fifty-one percent of a massive Chinese Internet juggernaut named Alibaba.
All the while during the lengthy enactment of my robust second series’ financial escapades, I have been coyly using some of my sustained monetary resources to bolster my fledgling writing career, self-publishing various books in hardcover, in paperback and into familiar Kindle and Nook e-book formats. I’m hoping that this new minimum-risk entrepreneurial endeavor will sometime in the future translate into handsome inheritances for my devoted wife, my three sons and my four grandchildren.
Finally, looking back in retrospect, in 1968, during my alternate voyage through adulthood, I had diligently earned a Master’s Degree in Guidance Counseling, so consequently, I engaged teenagers in one-to-one office conferences, and I didn’t have to emotionally endure a thirty-four year teaching career being exposed to a plethora of defiant, insolent and recalcitrant public school “students” like I had encountered and suffered my first time around while wildly riding the extremely formidable educational career carousel.
*************
During my second tenure on this stellar planet, I recollected having certain ankle and knee sprains accidentally sustained in 1997-‘98, which I then discreetly eliminated from my human experiences. And in late February of 2014, I had had my first routine colonostomy done, which revealed a large polyp present in my ascending colon. On March 8th I had gotten the benign growth along with eight inches of my large intestine removed at Virtua Hospital, but later on my second trip around adulthood, I had the first colonostomy completed in 2005, and as a result of my judicious judgment and insight, I had cunningly bypassed the painful surgery along with the accompanying uncomfortable four-day 2014 hospital recovery.
On Sunday, July 27th to Wednesday July 29th of 2014 I again drove Joanne, Dan and Nick down to Ocean City, Maryland via the Cape May-Lewes Ferry, just as I had done fifty-four years before. On Wednesday after breakfast at the Quality Inn we traveled to Ned’s Nook in Berlin, Maryland. Inside the dilapidated store I immediately found the all-too-familiar dusty bookshelf, and my on-a-mission awareness instantly noticed that a copy of John Milton’s Paradise Lost was not there occupying any physical space. Instead I observed an ancient representation of Dante’s Inferno, but feeling despicably craven at that oddly stark moment, I dared not even examine it.
On August 1st 2014 I awoke for the second time, much more discerning and wealthy than I had exited my slumber the first time around. Contrary to my previous mortal existence, my spouse now believes that I am a true stock market genius and that I’m not the pathetic loser that her gruff father had imagined me to be back in tumultuous 1965. Joanne and the rest of my merry family were safely away that particular Friday, vacationing at the splendid beach house I had purchased three years ago on 17th and the boardwalk, in pleasant Ocean City, New Jersey.
But my consciousness was aware that it was again August 1st. After fearfully and reluctantly stepping into the upstairs computer room, I hesitated before opening the top desk drawer, which I recollected had contained the sensational copy of Paradise Lost, the wonderful book that I had intended to finally read and fully appreciate.
I nervously opened the archaic masterpiece, turned the initial leaf and next intensely glanced at the dull-looking publication page, which then instantly transformed into a full blank. Suddenly, much to my mounting consternation, a distinct other-world statement slowly appeared in medieval-style italics’ script and then several moments thereafter, the message eerily vanished into infinite oblivion. The incomparable dual synergies of the book’s famous author along with the eternal talent of the omnipotent Archangel Michael were extraordinarily startling to say the least.
Well now, rich Jay Dubya, do the elementary math’ and you’ll arrive at the only possible conclusion. By Heaven’s mandate, you had originally almost reached seventy-two years of age in 2014, and then your mediocre being was supernaturally transported back to 1960 to again live and rearrange your disheveled and haphazard financial and physical life. That unique opportunity has afforded you the expressed ability to make myriad shrewd business transactions. Now Sir, it is almost the appropriate time for your stained soul to finally make its necessary amends.
According to St. Peter’s records, you are nearly seventy-two years old, and quite frankly, there isn’t too much sand left inside your biological hourglass. In the final analysis, our accurate and infallible records clearly show that you will have to spend fifty-four monotonous Earth years quietly meditating your numerous faults languishing inside the vast confines of obscure Purgatory, the needed contemplation will be especially performed by your restive and secluded spirit. The specific punishment will be enacted for you to penitently atone for your nefarious propensity of blatantly and relentlessly practicing excessive and egotistical human greed.
May Almighty Merciful God save your poor lackluster soul,
John Milton
Archangel Michael
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interesting read!
In my doctoral program at West Virginia University we had three or four master's and doctoral students from Glassboro State. Since you and I are the same age, I believe they were all younger and all of them were in industrial education. I was not.
When I was 18, I often drove my dad's 57 Ford Fairlane 500 V8 to the limit of my driving ability. One day while talking to someone else, about the car, my dad casually asked me, "Ron, how fast does the car go?"
Shocked at the question, I replied, "I don't know, 120?" I got away with that one.
Ron