After leaving high school, Dale continued to live with his father, until they had an altercation. Dale asked his father for money, when he was already intoxicated. His dad knew that Dale was going to go to a bar to get drunk if he gave him more money, so he refused. Dale became furious and he threw a bowling pin at his father. He did not hit him, but his father called the police and Dale was arrested for assault. Dale served a short sentence, and he was let out on probation. Dale begged to be able to go to a half way house in Cincinnati to serve his sentence. He thought that he would be able to have a new start, but his parole officer decided to send him back to his home town. Dale said that over the course of the next several years he had three DUIs and “probably 100” public intoxication charges. He said that he was in bar fights and fights at home.
He just couldn’t get away from the life of drugs and alcohol. Despite all of these troubles, he was able to get his commercial driver’s license (CDL). When he was 28 years old and he was driving, his truck broke down, so he had to take a bus home. On that bus trip he met his future wife. They got married when Dale was 30, and they have four children together. During that time, Dale continued to struggle with addiction, and eventually he also became addicted to going to swinger clubs. Tired of his lifestyle, he remembered sitting in a truck stop in Chicago when he began to pray. He said, “God, the only time that I ever feel close to you is when I am locked up. If that is what it takes, allow me to get locked up.”
Two weeks later he was incarcerated. He said that he had been parking his truck in a parking lot near a factory. The police officer had given him several tickets, but the owner had given Dale permission so he was disputing the tickets. He said that one day he was sleeping in his truck when the officer came by and immediately said, “Mother %^&*&, I told you that you can’t park here. It’s against a noise ordinance.” Well, the parking lot was by a railroad track, so Dale told the officer that he thought he was being harassed. The officer accused Dale of spitting on him, and Dale was incarcerated for assaulting an officer. Dale still maintains his innocence of this offense. He said that the district attorney would not release a video tape that would have shown that he did not spit on the officer.
Dale continued to dispute this case while he was in jail, and he was eventually released early and given the video tape. Ironically, the incarceration allowed Dale to have time to rehabilitate himself. He said that he decided he would quit smoking, drinking and doing drugs, and he would start going to church when he got out. He said, “Even the other inmates knew I was legit.” He also said that being incarcerated with a bunch of sex offenders was actually healing because he made some relationships that allowed him to forgive his offenders.
Dale made a significant change in his behavior while incarcerated, but he continues to face more than his fair share of misfortune. When he was released from jail in 2010, he learned that his wife and mother of his children had started to sleep with another man, and she was pregnant. Dale is not sure if his youngest son is his biological son, although he believes that he is and does not want to find out. Dale simply says, “He’s my son.” Not long after that, Dale’s father died, and the day after he died Dale discovered that his wife had been texting his brother. His daughter had made him aware that his wife had been having an affair with his brother, and so he asked her to leave.
They were divorced and several months later, Dale met his current wife. She is a nurse and a Christian, and she was recently divorced. She had one child, and she had spent thousands of dollars during her last marriage to have another child, but she never could. Finally, she was pregnant. Things were going well, when the left side of Dale’s body went numb while he was at a weigh station in Boston. He would later find out that he had a slipped disc in his neck, and he would have to have surgery. Then, while he was on sick leave his wife was put on bed rest by her doctor due to pregnancy complications. Dale and his wife used all their savings very quickly, and their ability to get government assistance was severely limited because the government agencies based their assessment of need on their earnings from previous years.
Currently, Dale and his wife are back at work, and she is pregnant with another child. Dale is unable to make nearly as much money because he can only drive locally and not “over-the-road” as he did before his neck injury. Dale is happily married, has a stable job and is very engaged in trying to give his children the opportunities that he did not have. Dale closed by saying reflectively “if more people like Mr. Adams would have asked how they could help me instead of punishing me and humiliating me, I would have just broke down in tears. I wanted their help. I wanted to do better.”
Images: Pixabay and Marion Be The Change.
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