Robert Lee - Wild People I Have Known

WILD ANIMALS PEOPLE I HAVE KNOWN

ROBERTLEE

Published byRobert Leeat Smashwords

Copyright 2011 RobertLee

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The real, everydaypeople with whom I have had both the privilege and the penalty ofassociating throughout my life have enhanced my appreciation of thegoodness and the uniqueness of every person, regardless ofsocio-economic position, race, education or upbringing.

I would not beable to claim the richness of experience, the breadth ofunderstanding or the luxury of tolerance for the diversity aroundme if it were not for those people. They have been invaluable tome, and for that I am grateful.

This collection ofanecdotes is not a recounting of incidents, but a memory of peoplewhom I treasure.

For those that Imay have harmed in my interactions with them, I sincerelyapologize. For those who have enriched me, I am truly thankful.

If you recognizeyourself in these stories, know that you have improved the life ofthis author, immensely.

When I was aboutseven years old, I received a book titled, Wild Animals I HaveKnown, by Ernest Thompson Seaton. It chronicled his interactionswith several wild beasts that appeared to him to have human-likequalities, and who adopted him.

In addition, whenI was about seven, we had a neighbour in the rural community inwhich I was raised who had befriended two deer in the early spring.This sweet little lady hand fed these animals for months. ByOctober, they willingly ate from her hand. When hunting seasonstarted in November, she shot them and ate them. So much for sweetold ladies and wild animals.

One day, Iobserved this little woman running past our place in pursuit of oneof her sons, with a .22 gun in her hands. I remember her wordsvividly: Come back, X (her son), come back. You know your fathersaid I could shoot you.

I later heard thather husband, in frustration with her constant complaints about theboy, had said to her, Well, if you cant take care of him, whydont you just shoot him? I doubt that it was meant literally. Ialso doubt that she would have shot him, but you never know, doyou? That is part of the intricacy of the human being: we have morethan one layer and more than one aspect to who we are and how wethink.

My childhood wastypical of the rural environment in which I was raised. Most of thepeople in our community were, if not dirt poor, then much closer tothat condition than to affluence.

As I grew up andmoved into the city, my environment did not change much for severalyears. In that time, I met a great many people from a variety ofbackgrounds and income levels.

In my latetwenties, I worked as a bouncer, or security, for two of theroughest bars in our city, even though I was far from a large andmuscular person. In subsequent years, I owned an investigativecompany that was involved in extensive corporate security issues.It is largely on these acquaintances that I draw for thiscollection of true anecdotes about the more edgy side of life.

You will findaccounts of twenty-eight people from that array of individuals, ofwhich fourteen were involved in murders or manslaughters some ofthem involved in more than one. Three were killed by someone else,and eleven were involved in numerous violent crimes. I alsochronicle a handful of police officers who crossed that line ofacceptable behaviour. A couple lived significantly on the wrongside of the law.

The level ofviolence involved in each of these persons lives is astonishing,and may seem appalling, but there is a constant across all but twoof those individuals: an element of decency and humanity that isvery rarely seen by the public.

The list ofviolent criminals with whom I have been associated includes thosethat have murdered children, raped women and young girls, shot atpolice officers, caved in another mans skull with a metal bar,robbed people at gunpoint, sold hard drugs, been involved inprostitution rings, and dozens of other major crimes.

I have writtenthese stories, though, to show how, in even what most of us see asthe worst of humanity, there is goodness, and that the world inwhich these people live and move is never as wicked as many of usassume, or the media portrays. While you, the reader, may see thesepeople as wild animals, I see them as people, with depth, andcharacter, along with exceptional flaws. They are, for the mostpart, people who do not fully understand the rules of society, ordo not wish to be part of that world. Therefore, I have titled thisbook, Wild Animals People I Have Known,with apologies to Lord Thompson Seaton.

I have changedsome of the names of the people involved, primarily because they donot deserve to be branded as animals by readers of these accounts.They are common people that I knew. I have changed a few of thenames because they would identify others, close to them. I haveleft many names as they were, because many of the people in myanecdotes are people with whom I am pleased to claim arelationship, however tenuous.

On Christmas Eve,1987, two armed men burst into a home in a quiet residential area,where a man, his partner, their five-year-old and an infant childlived. According to court records, the men were members of a localbiker gang, and were there to enforce a debt owed by the male inthe home.

That fact, initself, is in dispute. There has been a claim made that one of thetwo had a spouse who was a heavy drug user. The one biker did notapprove, and had decided to compel her supplier to stop selling herdrugs, by force.

The male in thehome anticipated that events were not likely to work out well inhis favour, so he fled to an upstairs room and escaped out thewindow. The two enforcers resolved the debt/drug issue their way:the woman and two children were murdered.

The outcry wasdeafening, and the revulsion almost universal. To kill two innocentchildren, and on Christmas Eve, was seen as one of the most heinouscrimes imaginable. The two assassins had to be unredeemable, withno morals or values!

Both of thekillers were convicted of the crimes, and sentenced to jail. One ofthe two died while serving his time. The second was released onmandatory parole many years later, only to be rearrested for aminor, non-violent crime later (smuggling cigarettes). No one sheda tear for the two savages that had committed this repulsive act ofmurder.

I first met JonWaluk in 1980, while I was working as a bouncer for the MarylandHotel. Jon was known as an exceptionally tough person. I heardseveral stories about his kick boxing skills, and tales of how hehad pulverized six guys that had attempted to attack him. He was amedium sized man, with an abundant beer belly, yet was not anintimidating figure.

Over a six-monthperiod, I had numerous interactions and encounters with him. Notonce did I see him start a fight, or cause a disruption that led toone. He kept his peace, and had fun. Most people in the barexpressed a liking for him.

I met Larry Fisherin the same bar, but spoke no more than a dozen sentences to him infour months. Again, he was a medium to larger sized person,bearded, blond, and in no way an imposing individual. Larry wasmore intense and focused than Jon, but never started a fight, andappeared to be the peacemaker when things got heated in his groupof associates. The best way to describe the two was everydaypeople.

The Maryland MotorHotel was home to an assortment of low- to middle-income regulars,from a wealth of backgrounds, but almost all labourers. Situatednear the core area of Winnipeg, The Maryland represented the ethnicorigins of most of the local community, with pockets ofaboriginals, Portuguese, Mtis, Filipinos, blacks and whites.Although, for the most part, there was no racial antagonism orconflicts, each of the groups kept largely to themselves. In manyways, it was pleasant to observe that, although distinct, thevarious ethnic factions co-existed well, in a very seedy part oftown, Fights within the bar were very frequent usually at leasttwo per day, which I was hired to mediate but in the ten monthsthat I worked the facility, none ever originated as an act ofracism.