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So I became more creative in ways to keeping her near. I hired her at the restaurant I was a Manager at. We continued our relationship of drugs & sex. One night a friend of mine came running up to the apartment. Exclaiming that the girl's father had found out about us & was coming there with a shotgun to visit me.
My mind snapped into over load, I realized immediately that I would have to stay straight to keep my wits about me. I convinced Sandy, that we have to go underground, disappear & leave everything behind. I had to obtain another vehicle I traded off mine, so that I wouldn't be spotted. Finding a place to hide out was next on the agenda. We headed out to the far south suburbs of Chicago where we found a small-furnished apartment, above a bar. I then, ran into an old acquaintance that had rented an old farmhouse, further south. She agreed to allow us to share the place with her. She also allowed me to use her vehicle to go out and look for work. I secured a job as a welder at a local railroad car manufacturing plant. I saved enough money to purchase another car & rent a mobile home just over the state line. When, Sandy was about 5 months pregnant, I concluded for my freedom sake, we should get married. Thinking that the law couldn't make a wife testify against her husband, should her father wish to bring charges against me later. She contacted her parents; explain our situation & our plans to marry. Shortly after the conversation we returned to the area & got married in May of 1978.
Tracie Lynn was born three months later in August 6, 1978, two months premature. This scared me to the bone, my past experience with a premature baby left so frightened, that I found it difficult to bond with her. I was fearful that Tracie would soon disappear the way my son Ernie did.
Unfortunately our marriage was more a means of protecting my freedom rather than an actual commitment of marriage. I quickly established an open relationship, so we both could see other people. As time went by, I began to relax & returned to drug usage. This time I planned that I was going to only use on the weekends. That plan ended in a matter of the second week when I increased my usage to daily. Which resulted in the loss of my job, because of my unusual behavior & shady dealings, were detected on the job.
Reality quickly faded into delusional thinking. Thoughts would enter my mind that normally wouldn't have made any sense. Strangely enough I started to accept those thoughts as being real. At first it would happen only every once in a while. Then without warning I was slammed into a realm of where anything thought was real & reality itself was no longer visible to me. Luckily my parents convinced me that I needed to seek professional help. I had to agree with them because I sensed that I was lost inside myself & couldn't find the way out. They brought me to the local mental institution where after a brief assessment they allowed me to check myself in.
My memories of the days I spent the next 30 days are best described as bizarre, weird & a living hell. I was quickly placed on medication to take. But in my unstable condition, I concluded that the medicine would cause me to remain this way
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