early 1955

THE DAY I CUT MY eye OUT
 

Born at the end of 1949, that makes it easy to keep track of my age.  For example, I was 5 in 1955.  Like a lot of kids that age, I was young and stupid. 

For reasons that escape me now, one morning it was terribly important to take a thick piece of rope and cut it in two.  My mother was in another room watching TV as I searched for a tool.  Sharp knives were kept in places I could not reach, so the only thing I could find was a dull kitchen knife.  The weak serrated edge was not getting the job done.  It was taking forever to cut through this rope, so without thinking I changed directions and began pulling the knife towards me.  I was stronger pulling in the wrong direction, so I continued.  It was slow going, at least ten minutes, possibly longer.

I was nearly finished when suddenly my mother called from another room in a loud, demanding voice.  "Richard, it's time to go."

I immediately protested.  "But, Mom, I'm not done yet!"

Mom responded, "I don't care.  Andale!  (Spanish for hurry).  Whatever you're doing, finish it up and let's Vamanos."

A sense of urgency came over me.  I was almost done, so I gave the knife one big jerk.  The knife went through the rope like butter and, since I am left-handed, continued in an arc that sliced the pupil of my left eye.  Strangely enough, it did not hurt at all.  All I remember is some fluid gushing out and then the eye went blank.  Of course I screamed.

Next thing I know, Mom was rushing me to the hospital.  Tough luck.  Ultimately the eye could not be saved.  I developed a cataract but two surgeries to correct it were unsuccessful.  Even more problematic, I developed a detached retina.  At this point, the doctor detected early signs of 'sympathetic ophthalmia'.  This is an inflammation of the bad eye which can follow trauma.  Somehow the inflammation can transfer from the bad eye to the good eye, causing the good eye to go kaput just like the bad eye.  This condition can leave the patient completely blind, so they decided to completely remove my bad left eye as a precaution.  I was given a plastic eye to fill the empty eye socket.  As I aged, the risk of losing the good eye kept me out of high school sports.  That was a shame because I turned out to be a pretty good athlete.  We will get to that in due time. 

Over the course of my life, I blamed my mother for a lot of things, but not this one.  There is no way for even the most overprotective parent to anticipate all the extremely ignorant things a child is capable of.  Especially one like me.

What turns this accident into a potential Supernatural Event is the curious timing as well as the collapse of my better judgment.  As for Timing, my mother called out to me at the worst possible moment.  If she had called earlier, there would have been no problem.  Or if she had called out with less urgency in her voice.  I would have calmly put the rope aside and resumed later.  I only gave the knife a giant jerk because I could see the rope was down to its last fiber.  Let's finish this and get it over with. 

The other area of concern was the mysterious loss of my common sense.  At age 5, I knew better.  I had been warned to cut away from myself.  I sometimes wonder why I forgot that warning.  So this brings up the possibility of Cosmic Blindness. 

Cosmic Blindness, you ask.  What the heck is that?  Well, as a favor to my Readers, we might as well start the weird stuff now.  The danger here is that if I postpone talking about "The Weird Stuff", you might risk really enjoying this book.  They say it's better to have loved and lost and so on.  In the case of this book, I don't necessarily agree.  I say it is better to decide early on if your author and this odd book are just too far-out to make continuing worth your valuable time.

Based on several experiences over the course of my lifetime, I have developed a theory that says there will be times in our lives when our Fate decrees really bad needs to happen.  An easy way to allow Fate to take place at its assigned time would be to suspend our judgment temporarily.  After the deed is done, we get to spend the rest of our lives wondering how a smart person like ourselves could have ever done something so pathetically stupid. 

As it turns out, I have a kindred spirit who I suspect thinks in ways similar to mine.  Author J.K. Rowling once said, "Talent and intelligence will not inoculate anyone against the caprice of the fates.  Humans have a knack for choosing precisely the things that are worst for them." 

Blind eye.  Good Luck or Bad Luck?  As we shall see, some of my worst mistakes turn out to disguise a hidden benefit.  Unfortunately, no Silver Lining in this one.  In Hindsight, I cannot think of a single benefit over my lifetime.  Verdict: Bad Luck.  Really Bad Luck.

RICK ARCHER'S LIST OF SUSPECTED SUPERNATURAL EVENTS
 

A SIMPLE ACT OF KINDNESS

Suspicious

GOOD LUCK BAD LUCK
 

Jim Archer, my father, was very interested in Fate.  However I am not sure where he got his outlook.  I was probably too young for him to talk about his philosophies.  Dad was religious.  He and Mom were members of the Quaker Meeting here in Houston.  Dad was fascinated by Edgar Cayce, the man known as the Sleeping Prophet.  He also had an affinity for a 50's TV show called One Step Beyond, advertised as a guide to the supernatural.  The show presented tales of paranormal events and various situations that defied logical explanation.  In particular, Dad fixated on stories about Peter Hurkos, a Dutchman considered by experts to be the world's foremost psychic.  Dad could not stop talking about him afterwards.  "I think there really is something to this ESP business!"

Oddly enough, just like me, my father lost his left eye as a young boy.  A brick falling from a stone wall struck him as he walked home from school.  Dad heard a commotion above and looked up at the worst possible time to allow the brick to take his eye out.  So when I cut my eye, Dad freaked out.  This was too big a coincidence for him to overlook.  He was convinced something very weird was going on and told me so.  My father was extremely superstitious.  So am I for that matter.  I get my big mouth from my mother and my superstitious side from my father.  Dad was very upset because it seemed weird that we would both lose an eye during childhood.  However, if you thought he was superstitious about that, you should have seen him the day we barely escaped death.

I had cut my eye out just days before the family's big 1955 move to Texas.  Dad was an electrical engineer.  He had recently been transferred to Houston from Bethesda, Maryland, by his company Square D.  Mom and I stayed behind in the hospital while Dad went ahead.  When we reached Houston, I underwent my second unsuccessful operation to remove the cataract.  It failed due to a detached retina.  However the doctor said I still had a chance to save the eye.  He recommended I stay bed-ridden for a month to see if the retina would heal on its own. 

Since I was healthy otherwise, I despised being forced to stay in bed 24/7 with a giant bandage over my bad eye.  During my bed stay, my father would visit me every night and sit on the bed.  As a little boy, I worshipped the ground my father walked on.  Every now and then I would ask him to show me his Purple Heart medal from World War II.  Invariably I would also ask to see the impressive scar on his upper thigh caused by the bullet wound. 

"Dad, was getting shot the worst thing to ever happen to you?"

My father would nod and remind me how he had been in extreme pain during his six month stay in the hospital.  One day after I asked him to show me his scar again, Dad stared at the bandage covering my damaged left eye.  Sitting at the side of my bed, he said, "You know, Rick, I am really sorry that you cut your eye.  But being blind in one eye is not the end of the world.  I'm blind in my left eye too and things have worked out okay."

I protested.  "But, Dad, I've had two operations and they haven't done any good.  Plus I've been forced to lie in bed for the past month because the doctor says that's the only way for my detached retina to heal.  I'm sick of it!  I just want to go running in the fields with my dog and play baseball and stuff like that."

My father was crazy about me back in those days.  We did everything together.  Wherever Dad went, I went too.  It made Dad sick to think about what I was going through.  At the time, I was allowed to walk around with a giant patch over my bad eye.  My father already knew I was going to have my damaged eye removed, but so far he did not have the heart to tell me.  Dad felt really sorry for me, so one summer night he tried to cheer me up by taking me to a carnival.   Afterwards, the plan called for us to attend a stock car competition held on a race track located at the back of the carnival.  

Dad and I had a deal.  I could play all the games I wanted as long as I promised not to protest when it was time to go see the race.  Dad let me play games, the usual stuff, ring toss, baseball toss, haunted house, house of mirrors, etc.  However, after an hour, Dad became impatient when he heard the sound of the race cars warming up in the distance.  Dad said it was time to go see the stock car show.  I could have cared less about the cars, but that was what Dad was interested in so I cooperated as I said I would.   

As we began making our way to the race track, the loud roar of the powerful car engines was intimidating.  Due to a tall wooden fence, I could hear the cars, but I could not see them.  I asked Dad why the noise was so loud.  Dad said the drivers were warming up their cars by barreling around the track at breakneck speed.  Then he added there must be a curve just on the other side of the fence.  

As we walked along the sidewalk to the ticket booth, we passed an arcade game where I could shoot slow-moving wooden ducks with a cork rifle.  I froze in my tracks with excitement.  Overcome by a sudden irresistible urge to play, I grabbed my father's arm and forced him to stop him too.  I pleaded with Dad to let me play one more game. 

Dad said, "No, son, you've had enough. We're going to be late as it is."

But I wouldn't take no for answer.  I held onto his arm and insisted. 

"C'mon, Dad.  Just this one last game, please??"

Just as the word 'please' left my mouth, we were startled by the frightening sound of a loud crash.  We had been standing there debating for no more than three or four seconds when a race driver lost control of his car on that curve.  His car plunged through the flimsy wooden fence as if it were made out of thin paper.  Whirling our heads in panic, we screamed at the sight of an enormous race car hurtling straight at us.   

Something had caused the car to leave the ground, so it was literally flying in air.  Since the rickety old fence did nothing to slow this giant projectile, there was no time for us to dodge.  We were sitting ducks!  Fortunately, the car missed us by about three feet.  The displaced air was so powerful it knocked us down with a rush.  As I fell to the ground, I looked up to see the car crash violently into a telephone pole ten feet to my right.  The impact was brutal; the driver was killed instantly.  He had paid the ultimate price for losing control of his car. 

As I scrambled to my feet, I heard a snapping sound.  Dad and I stared in horror as the telephone pole broke in two, then fell on top of the crumpled car.  Dad was in shock.  I guess I was too.  Unable to get over seeing that poor lifeless driver slumped over the wheel of the car, I started to cry.  Meanwhile Dad stared at me with the weirdest look on his face.

"Son, if you hadn't stopped me, we would both be dead now.  You should thank your guardian angel for saving us."

The timing of my sudden interest in that arcade game was a Coincidence of the highest magnitude.  It saved my life.  Otherwise we would have been right in the path of that car.  Due to his belief in ESP, Dad believed my guardian angel had telepathically persuaded me to stop where I was.  That confused me.  Angel?  What angel?  I took Dad literally and looked around.  There wasn't any angel I could see.  However, my father was right about one thing.  We had missed death by an instant.  Had we continued walking, we would have been right in the path of that speeding car. 

Dad was so convinced a Higher Power had intervened to save us, I became very interested in my guardian angel.  If I had a angel, then why didn't that driver have an angel?  Furthermore, where was my guardian angel when I cut my eye out five months ago?  Although I was too young to fully understand the metaphysical implications, thanks to my father, I became interested in the Hidden World at an early age.  Dad talked about Fate on several occasions and always reminded me of the race car story.  Dad was convinced we had been saved that day because it was not our time to die.

RICK ARCHER'S LIST OF SUSPECTED SUPERNATURAL EVENTS
 

A SIMPLE ACT OF KINDNESS

Serious

Suspicious

early 1955

MOM AND DAD
 

"But, Rick, you have to tell them about your childhood.  Otherwise no one will ever understand just how screwed up you were when you started your dance career."  -- Marla Archer, 2013

Be forewarned I intend to speak of my parents in a distinctly candid way.  I apologize in advance for my candor, but my story will not make much sense otherwise.  Out of respect for my parents, I waited till they passed on before writing this memoir.  However, once they died, I saw no reason to disguise or sugarcoat the truth.  Although my parents deserve credit for helping me obtain a fine education and for giving me a home, beyond that they came up woefully short.  While I understand that parents worse than mine can be found in the filth of Mumbai and the mean streets of Detroit, by any standard of middle-class parenting, my parents belonged at the back of the line. 

My mother Mary Griffiths came from a solid home in mid-Pennsylvania

Mary's father William was the district supervisor for a Pennsylvania oil company.  Mom grew up in a comfortable, upper-middle class home atop a hill in a rural area located near Reading, Pennsylvania, her birthplace. 

There were two boys and two girls in the family.  Mom was extremely close to her younger brother Dick, but always felt inferior to her older sister Gwen who was quite beautiful.  By contrast, Mary was plump, plain and wore thick glasses.

Unfortunately Mary's mother Lenore never failed to point out the disparity.  Lenore constantly berated her daughter about her looks.  She asked why Mary couldn't try harder to be pretty like her older sister.  Do your hair, use some make-up, but for heaven's sake, do something!  And while you're at it, lose some weight. 

As one might guess, Mary grew up feeling like the ugly duckling.  Mary wasn't particularly athletic or social.  On the other hand, Mary was extremely bright and excelled in school.  Her books were her best friend.

So what about Dad?   Like me, Jim Archer was an only child.  Born in Lima, Ohio, following the death of his father at age 6, his childhood was very lonely.  He and his mother moved to Reading, Pennsylvania, when he was 13.

The nicest thing I can say about Jim is that he was a very smart guy and brilliant in his field.  Unfortunately, he was also a superficial man who lacked character.  He was soft.  I think the world knocked him down at an early age and he never completely got back up.  For the rest of his life, he always took the easiest way out of any dilemma.  Dad spent most of his life hiding behind the skirts of domineering women.

The parallels between my father's childhood and my own are disturbingly similar.  Dad was an only child who didn't get along with his strange mother.  Interesting. 

Like me, my father lost an eye due to a childhood accident. 

Like me, he had a serious bout with acne, although not nearly as bad as my problem. 

Jim's father died from acute appendicitis.  While my father didn't exactly die on me, he more or less removed himself from my life at age ten.  Which is another way of saying Dad abandoned me. 

Jim became lonely, insecure young man who turned to books as his escape route.  Hmm, so did I.  Jim told me how much he missed having a father.  How ironic.  I often wondered if Dad ever realized he was making me suffer the exact same fate he did.

My father caught a lucky break in World War II.  Practically on his first day of action, a German sniper popped him in the hip while he was on patrol during the Battle of the Bulge.  Although Dad was unable to walk for a while, it was a non-threatening wound that left an impressive scar. By the time the wound healed, the war was over.  Dad collected his purple heart and began his free ride to college paid for by Uncle Sam.

However, Uncle Sam didn't pay for room and board and Jim was penniless.  One might suppose Jim could work odd jobs to pay his way, but he had a better idea.  My mother came from a wealthy family in my father's hometown.  Although Mom was plain and lacked confidence, Dad needed a meal ticket and Mom was a good catch. 

My father had a rather checkered genealogy.  The English set of ancestors landed in Connecticut in the 1600s.  The Irish line settled in Ohio and Michigan.  Sometime prior to 1900 Clara Randle from the English line married William Peet from the Irish line and gave birth to a son.  Peet was a lout, so Clara Randle escaped with the boy.  Soon after that Clara took up with a guy named George Archer.  There is no record of a marriage, but the woman adopted his last name nevertheless.  At that point she changed her son's name to Orlo James Archer which is ironic because George promptly deserted Clara, leaving young Orlo the First with no legal reason to be called 'Archer'.  No big deal; people changed their names all the time when they moved to the New World. 

When he grew up, Orlo became a traveling insurance salesman.  Somewhere around 1925, Orlo married Dorothy Johnson who gave birth to a boy, Orlo the Second.  Sad to say, Orlo the First died when my father was 6, leaving his widow Dorothy and her little boy to face a hardscrabble existence.  I don't think Dorothy remarried, so it was just her and Orlo James the Second.  Incidentally, the crazy thing is I had no idea my father was a 'Junior' until I was in my 70s.  Nevertheless I suppose I should be grateful things worked out like they did.  I would much rather be an 'Archer' than a 'Peet' and thank God I didn't end up as Orlo the Third.  Just the thought makes me shudder.

I don't recall much about my father's mother Dorothy, but my mother had few good words to say about her weird mother-in-law.  Dad's domineering mother was said to have a bad habit of relating to her son Jim more as her "companion" than son.  Which is another way of saying this lonely woman treated him like a boyfriend.  I have no idea just how far this went, but no doubt this strange relationship contributed to my father's suspect character issues. 

Mary probably suspected Jim had his shortcomings.  On the other hand, he was a good-looking man and extremely bright.  Plus I can't imagine my mother had a wide range of marriage offers, so I expect she decided to take her chances.  And so the Momma's Boy married the Ugly Duckling.  Considering the baggage each brought to the marriage from their respective childhoods, it was an inauspicious match that bode poorly for the future.  Their wedding picture alone sends chills up my spine given the unfortunate disparity in their looks. 

Dad received his training as an electrical engineer from Drexel Tech in Philadelphia.  Mom dropped out of college to support him.  This was a noble gesture at the time, but it would prove to be a serious mistake ten years down the road. 

Dad started his career a year before I was born in 1949.  My first home was in Bethesda, Maryland.  Dad worked as a salesman for Square D, a manufacturer of fuse boxes and equipment used to control and distribute electric power.  The company transferred Dad to Houston when I was six.  Dad was good at sales, but yearned to put his engineering talent to better use.  While I was in college, Dad moved over to Kranco, a company that built massive cranes.  During his career at Kranco, Dad was finally able to show the world what he could do.  He became the go-to guy for large and difficult projects that called for unusual solutions.  My father was frequently called in to handle the toughest assignments.  For example, he designed the electrical system for a rocket-launching crane at Cape Kennedy meant to hurl astronauts into space.  Another time he designed the electrical system for a crane to remove spent tie rods from a nuclear reactor. 

My father's forte was succeeding at jobs where others had failed.  He designed the electrical system for a crane forced to work in sub-zero temperatures at a lumber mill in far northern Canada.  The Canada project is where he showed his special talent.  Several engineers had worked on this assignment previously, but could not overcome the problem of the extreme arctic temperatures.  Dad nailed it.  Once Jim was able to get that lumber mill equipment to work despite the freezing cold, he received several impressive new projects and watched his salary rise in proportion.   And so did my father's fame.  He was considered a genius in his field.

Dad's most interesting project was designing a crane to handle a secret prototype aircraft for the military.  Asked to work strictly from specifications, Dad was never allowed to see the actual plane itself in New Mexico.  Dad loved to talk about that project.  Due to his superstitious streak, he was more than willing to believe in UFOs, especially since the dimensions he worked with did not exist for currently known aircraft.  Consumed with curiosity, Dad was positive his crane was being used either for a plane with stealth technology or some sort of alien space ship.  Considering the proximity of the airbase to Roswell, his UFO theory seemed plausible. 

The Civil War was my father's other favorite preoccupation, but my father was also very interested in the unexplained, especially Gettysburg.  He was convinced that the South should have won the war.  Why did Jeb Stuart, the main scout, disappear when Lee needed him most?  Why did Stonewall Jackson have to die of an injury little more serious than a flesh wound?

For Christmas one year, Dad gave me a book on Edgar Cayce, the sleeping prophet of Virginia Beach.  Dad would explain to me how Edgar Cayce would go into trances and magically come up with amazing cures for very sick people.  Mr. Cayce also raised the prospect of reincarnation as a fact of life, not just some mumbo-jumbo Hindu philosophy.  Dad used to say Edgar Cayce interested him more than any other person on earth.  Following some  strange college experiences, I would one day come to agree with him. 

My first eight years were idyllic.  Not only did I love my father with all my heart, Dad was very fond of me.  Aunt Lynn once told me that back when I was a little boy, my father used to watch me with a look of pride that touched her deeply.  Lynn said, "Your father absolutely adored you." 

I agreed with Aunt Lynn.  That was my impression too.  I think Dad liked me a lot, or at least he did in the beginning.  As for me, I worshipped the guy when I was little.  I tagged along everywhere he went.  Whenever my father built something in garage, I would sit there and watch him all day long.

In particular, I remember watching in awe as Dad built an ultra-complicated electric train network in the attic.  Dad covered a giant table with interlocking train tracks, then added mountains, tunnels, and bridges.  Using split levels, one train would pass over the other.  This amazing complex was huge.  It took up half the attic.  I was absolutely mesmerized as two different trains crisscrossed the complicated tableau without ever crashing into each other.  I beamed with pride.  I had the smartest Dad in the world!

Jim was not an aggressive man by nature.  Rather than use his fists, he was more the passive-aggressive type who got even in sneaky ways.  I suppose my mother was the same way, but one parent at a time.  When I was 8, we had just moved to Sharpstown, a brand new subdivision at the far western edge of Houston.  We lived next to a neighbor whose house was on the corner.  He was a grouchy old guy who lived and died for his beautiful St. Augustine grass.  Every time I walked past his house, he was working on his lawn. I had just gotten my new puppy Terry.  One day as Terry and I came home from a nearby field, this old man screamed at me for walking through his lawn.  My mistake was using a well-worn shortcut that crossed diagonally across his lawn instead of using the sidewalk rectangle around the corner.  It wasn't all my fault.  Every kid in the neighborhood did the same thing.  Except that I got blamed for the problem.  As I cringed in fear, the man pointed to the barren path where his precious lawn had been damaged, then really laid into me. 

"From now on, kid, use the damn sidewalk!  And while you're at it, I want you to keep your damn dog from doing his business on my lawn!" 

When I told my father what happened, he was furious.  Dad thought of a very unusual way to get even.  He drove to the hardware store and brought back three sacks of fertilizer.  That night after I went to bed, I heard Dad working in the garage.  So I went and peeked through the door.  Dad got out that fertilizer and hand-sprinkled huge quantities into the man's yard in the middle of the night.  However, that was not good enough.  Dad found some sort of contraption and modified it into a make-shift catapult strong enough to reach the far corners of this guy's lawn.  This way he could fertilize the entire lawn undetected.  Dad did this every chance he got. 

Sure enough, that man's grass began to grow like crazy, but Dad refused to stop.  At least once a week he got out his catapult.  For the next four months, that poor neighbor was forced to mow his lawn practically every day in the hot sun.  Dad thought it was the funniest thing he had ever done. 

Dad and I had a grand adventure when I was 8.  We embarked on a cross-country summer camping trip that took us all the way to the Grand Canyon.  One night in some obscure, completely deserted park in Arizona, we were awakened by two bears who got into the trash can outside the tent.  Uh oh.  Dad had left some food out.  Unfortunately, we were the only ones at the campground.  There was no one around to save us if the bears came after us. 

Boy, was I scared, especially when the bears growled!  As we cowered in our tent, Dad pulled out his prized Bowie knife.  Dad told me not to worry; he was ready to defend me.  I wasn't so sure that big knife was going to be enough, but fortunately the bears never bothered us as we remained huddled and quivering in our tent.  We eventually made a run for our car and drove to a motel.   When we returned the next morning to pick up our gear, there were bear tracks all around our tent.  We were both pretty shaken by he ordeal.  Not surprisingly, Dad was done with camping. We stayed in motels for the rest of the trip.  Oh, so what?  Bears or no bears, that was a great trip!  Dad and I had a wonderful time together.

Sad to say, that 1958 trip was our final moment of happiness together.  We were so tight that his later abandonment made it that much harder to understand.  How does a father go from idolizing his son to forgetting his son?   Why would a man go from caring to not caring?

1958-1959

THE STORM BEGINS

Not long after we returned home from Arizona, serious marital problems developed.  My parents began arguing every single night of the week. 

I am an only child.  As many an only child can attest, 'only' and 'lonely' rhyme for a reason.  Age 8, I was terrified when my parents began fighting practically any time they looked at each other.  Their raised voices during the nightly arguments reverberated throughout the house. 

Frightened, I would run to my room.  However no walls could contain the sounds of their anger and loud voices.  Consequently I spent many a night crying myself to sleep.  Trembling and alone, I learned to depend on my year-old border collie Terry for security.

I had no idea why my father had become such an angry man. He had gained weight and grown distant.  When he wasn't arguing with my mother, he spent his nights locked in his study reading or solving math problems.  Personally, I wish he had stayed in his study.  When he did decide to come out, Dad turned into something straight out of the Shining.  Here's Jimmy!!

My memory is that Dad started the fights.  He liked to pick on my mother.  Dad would to come home and inspect the house.  He found fault at the drop of a hat.  Seriously, Dad would walk in the door, put his briefcase down, hang up his hat and immediately stroll around the house.    It was obvious he would keep looking until he found an excuse to start an argument.  Eventually Dad would find something to criticize my mother over.  Dad's favorite trick was to run his fingers over every surface until he found dust.

I knew the script by heart.  "Mary, god damn it, I work my ass every day and all you do is sit around the house and do nothing!"

Game on.  My mother would take offense at his effrontery and the fireworks would begin.  Dad loved to tell my mother how lazy she was.  I suppose he was right.  Mom was not big on housework.  Furthermore she was quite comfortable with clutter.  On the other hand, the house wasn't that bad.  My father didn't see it that way. He expected the house to look perfect.

Why the hell should he have to work so hard only to come home to a dirty house?  What did she do all day, watch TV?  Read magazines?

"Damn it, woman, get off your fat ass and do a little work sometime!"

Duke was Mom's dog as well as Terry's father.
Terry is the middle dog.  Mom gave Susie away.
 

Those were fighting words.  Sure enough, a major battle quickly ensued. Things would escalate and some really mean things would be said.  

In my opinion, my father was totally off base.  Whatever he objected to was hardly worthy of a screaming match.  In addition, my father had conveniently forgotten this was the same woman who sacrificed her own education so that he could get his.  Now that he didn't need her any more, my father began to tee off on Mom nightly. 

My parents never even noticed me as I stood there watching them in horror.  When their voices began to rise, I soon learned to run to my room for shelter.  I had only my dog Terry for comfort.  It didn't matter that Terry was little more than a puppy; he was the only friend I had.  I would shut the door to lesson the noise and pull Terry onto the bed.  Then we would both hide under the covers.  When the arguing got too intense, I would start crying in the solitude of my room.  Once I ran to my room, the door stayed closed for the rest of the night.  Neither parent ever came to check on me after the battle was over.  That was a really rough year.  I became a major disruption at school and my grades plummeted. 

Now for the irony.  When my grades dropped, my father concluded I wasn't nearly as smart as he was.  That is what led to the Devil's Bargain.