When All Else Fails, Clean Windows

-autobiography by Steven P Brick

Steven P Brick
Aug 25, 2017 · 12 min read

I was born in Oxnard, CA in the US Naval hospital.

My mother had relocated from Eastern Arkansas as a teenager to live with her older half sister and her brother-in-law who worked for NASA. My mother finished high school in Semi Valley and later met my first dad in her mid 20s. She gave birth to me at age 29. When I turned 18 months old, my parents decided to take their first family vacation to Eastern Arkansas so that my first dad could meet my mom’s family.

Along the drive to my mom’s original home place, my parents observed the seemingly untainted landscape of Western Arkansas, and eventually decided that would be a great place to raise their family away from the dense activity of Los Angeles, California. Little did they know that the lack of people also meant a lack of financial resources to raise a family comfortably.

A year later my sister was born in Ozark, Arkansas, where my parents owned, and ran a small mom-and-pop gas station and store. They soon thereafter sold the station, and purchased 40 acres South of the Arkansas river in Ozark, which they only owned a couple of years till my first dad decided to enter a cattle deal with a local veterinarian. That deal included being deeded 5 acres on the corner of the vet’s 300 acre cattle farm. That next year was 1975, the lowest the prices on the cattle charts has ever been, and my first dad lost his investment in the cattle deal, but they had 5 acres to build a house on and sell their mobile home trailer house that was paid for. My mom begged my first dad to build a simple modest home to raise a family in, but he insisted to build a fancy 3,000 square foot dream home to boost his ego. In that town we had one of the nicest houses there was, and I did not understand why other people did not have fancy houses like we did. The concrete slab was poured in 1978, where my and my sister’s handprints were placed with the date, and within a couple of years the house was completed by mostly my dad, and some helpers to finish the A-framed roof on the second floor.

By 1983 my first dad had became an alcoholic, and my mom asked him for a divorce. He lived in our town nearby for one year and then relocated back to Minnesota to live with his uncle where he eventually became a sales manager for Electrolux vacuum cleaners. In 1984 my mom had started selling real estate, sold the fancy house my first dad built, and relocated 30 miles West to Alma, AR to have a better financial market to raise me and my sister through our high school years. The house my mom purchased for us to live in was modest and she had a little remodeling done to it. This house was close to the high school my sister and I needed to frequent. Mom was always sales person of the month at the local Century 21 real estate office, and by 1989 she remarried for the 3rd time to a nice man whom she sold a house to who was buying a house for his mother.

I had graduated with honors from Alma High school with an emphasis on math and science. I was the class photographer for our annual staff my senior year, where I learned to develop black and white film in my darkroom at home. Life was going pretty good then. I became interested in bodybuilding at that time during 1988, and continued to train for the Mr. Teen Arkansas competition in 1989. I had a training partner who was 9 years older than me and he was training to win the Mr. Arkansas overall in ’89 as well. We had a great time motivating each other and training consistently up till our show. I placed 5th out of 12, and my training partner took the Light heavyweight title. Chris O’Banna took the overall title as the top heavy weight. My training partner went on to place 12th in the Junior Nationals in Memphis two weeks after our state show.

The Navy had called me during my first semester in college and talked me into enlisting as an avionics technician. I was pursuing a degree in exercise science, and honestly had no interest in the military, but my mom did not have a lot of money, and I wanted to give her a break from supporting me, so I joined the Navy.

I flew to San Diego for boot camp, and 8 weeks later found out my girlfriend had flaked out on me, who was supposed to be waiting on me at my sister’s apartment while I finished boot camp. I then learned not to trust people more than ever before.

My first school in the Navy was 9 months long, 8 hours per day 5 days per week located in Millington, TN; AVA-1 school. I graduated #1 out of 60 students in my class and submitted a special request chit to get 3 months of advanced avionics training called AFTA, which I got along with a 2-year extension on my already 4 year commitment, and two pay grades advancement to E-4. I started out of boot camp as an E-2 because I had one year of college when I enlisted. So I never was an E-1 and I never was an E-3 and the first time I was up for advancement at my new squadron work assignment in California, I made E-5 in under 2 years total time in the Navy. After my second 3 month school in Millington, TN; I was sent for another 3 month (FRAMP) school in Cecil Field, Florida to learn the avionics systems on the F/A-18 Hornet. While in Cecil Field one of my classmates, who happened to be a Marine, asked me to use my car to take both of us to his uncle’s for a weekend in Clearwater, FL where I met my classmate’s cousin.

You can see the maintenance hanger where I worked in the background.

I soon married his cousin after only knowing her for 3 weekends, and we were transferred by the Navy together to NAS Lemoore, California where I worked for VFA-303 (The Golden Hawks) F/A-18 squadron on the flight line. Eventually I found my job to be pretty boring. All we did mostly was swap out electronics boxes and send them to intermediate level for repair. I felt like an over glorified spark plug changer to be honest. I was told my job category needed no one to advance to E-6 rank no matter how hard they worked or how smart they were, so I started taking night classes at Embry Riddle aeronautical university on our base to finish my 4 year degree to be qualified for OCS, Officer Candidate School. My wife soon after this asked me for a divorce when we had only been married 2 years. I did not want a divorce and wanted to make our marriage work, but she had already given up on us in her mind, beat me up in the hallway of our home, and forced me to give her the divorce, which I did. She packed her bags, I took all our bills, and never saw her again since her departure from the local airport in Fresno. Soon after our divorce, President Clinton was downsizing the military, and the Navy offered me early out, which I jumped at. I got out ASAP. I worked as a baker for a new mom-and-pop donut shop in Lemoore for one year, before asking for a raise, which I was denied. I then sold cars for 3 months, and was let go. I then managed a kiosk for Contel Cellular for one year in Visalia, California before returning to Arkansas and attending commercial truck driving school at age 25 in Little Rock, Arkansas with Harold Ives Trucking company.

This was finally another exciting time in my life, and life was fun again, thank God. I love to travel and see new sites, so truck driving cross country was awesome to me the first few years till I had seen every place in the United States at least 4 times. By my 7th and final year, I needed something more to live for than the wide open road and a paycheck I barely had time to enjoy.

Truck driving allowed me to discover Portland, Oregon; and I moved there at the end of 1999 to work locally for a year. My first job was with Renaissance Bankcard services as a customer service representative answering phone calls all day in front of a computer, which I did for a few months commuting on my bicycle every day 45 minutes to work rain or shine. Then I got a job as a cashier at a grocery store, Haggens Food and Pharmacy in Tualatin, just a mile from my trailer park where I had parked my 38ft. 5th wheel trailer. I rode my bicycle the entire year of 2000 in Portland. I filed bankruptcy, and started living one day at time again, the best thing that ever happened to me I think, because it was so much of a stress relief not having all that debt hanging over my head day in and day out….OMG

Cost me $900.00 cash, but it was paid for.

In Spring of 2001 I gave my little camper trailer away to a homeless couple along with my bicycle and bicycle cable lock, rented a rental car with my first credit card after bankruptcy, and moved what little stuff I had left back to my mom’s in Arkansas. I got a job working in a cabinet shop eventually making the raised panel cabinet doors and helping the installation crew install cabinets into nice homes in Little Rock. That was the year 9/11 took place. I remember vividly the radio announcer on KISR 93 giving the unbelievable report of the twin towers being hit by planes.

OMG…WTF

At the gym next door to the cabinet shop where I was working I met a Van Buren police officer who hooked me up with a dump truck driving job working for the soon to retire chief of police in Van Buren. His company name was Sandlin Trucking, and they mostly had dump trucks, but two over-the-road trucks leased on to Buske lines in Illinois.

I drove the dump trucks till late Fall 2001, and had applied to Buske to drive one of Sandlin’s over-the-road trucks, but Sandlin decided to go out of business the same time I had applied to Buske, so I got Buske to just let me go to work driving for them on my own. I drove for Buske Lines for 6 months, and then started driving in their lease to own program. Not long after starting this new adventure, I no longer had the dedicated route I had been enjoying from Tulsa to Ft. Collins and back twice per week, so I was suddenly not making any take home pay.

Next Day Organics

I then quit that mistake and moved on to land in Ozark where I had lived as a little kid to build a small farm for a few years. Mom had kept an acre and a half when she sold the fancy house my first dad built. I became an alcoholic by mid 2008 when the rabbit feed suppliers would raise the price on rabbit feed as soon as the farmers would get a little more money for their rabbits. I threw in the towel on my little farm to relocate to Taos, NM.

Downtown Taos, New Mexico

Taos was very good to me, and I rode a bicycle to get where I needed to go the majority of the time I was there. Bicycling has always been very good to me in terms of improving the quality of my life, and this brought back memories of my year in Portland. It was not long till I was in great shape again mentally and physically. Life was simple and predictable again for the most part. By Summer 2010 I was itchin’ for new adventure, so I planned to move to Austin, TX with a motorized cargo bicycle I had built from a new Surly Big Dummy frameset, parts from another new mountain bike I did not care for, and a GXH50 Honda engine kit I got from Staton Inc. in Oklahoma City.

My cargo bicycle before I put engine on it.

This was so much fun traveling 740 miles by cargo bicycle with everything I owned in an 8 foot cargo trailer, and sleeping in my tent every night. My typical ride each day of the trip was about 65 miles. My butt hurt so bad after this much riding each day, I could not go any farther without a good night’s rest. I finally made it without any major problems and learned to live in the Austin area.

I had met a nice couple through a church group, Spirit and Truth Fellowship International, to stay with a couple of weeks, and soon found a job working with a tree service out of San Marcos, TX, The Roving Arborist tree service. That worked out pretty good till Winter set in for 2010, and I had to find another job. I got a job through the employment office, Workforce Solutions in San Marcos, working at Wide Light commercial lighting assembly plant owned by Phillips. That was a pretty lame job which only paid $8.00/hr to start, but it was better than nothing almost. I was sent home for Christmas two week vacation with only $178.00 pay check. I worked there a few more months after returning and was laid off for a month. I purchased window cleaning tools from Lowes home store, and finished competing in the Bodybuilding.com 12 week transformation challenge March 29, 2011.

March 29, 2011

My sister offered to help me move back to her place in Rogers, AR where I put most of my belongings in her storage unit before I left on my bicycle for Martinsville, Indiana where I stayed 3 weeks at Camp Vision, a church camp operated by Spirit and Truth Fellowship International. After three weeks there and riding my bicycle 12 miles to town every day to look for work, I moved into the basement of a new friend’s home on the South side of Indianapolis where I looked for work for 2 weeks before getting on the road again to Eden Prairie, MN. I had spent quite a bit of time at the San Marcos, TX public library looking for the best place to live in the United States and Money magazine said Eden Prairie, MN was the best the US had to offer. Eden Prairie was very disappointing to me, very pretentious and very uncomfortable. Not a good place to get on one’s feet, that is for sure.

Tell me there is no God…lol

I corresponded with friends I had met in Mora, New Mexico at an intentional community called Hummingbird, and they suggested I find an intentional community to live at on www.IC.org, which I did. The first community I visited was very misleading by name, and I only stayed there one night. The second community was a lot better, and I eventually started my window cleaning business from there called Wind O’ Washin’. That was the most lucrative thing I had ever done in my life over a few years. I even got a $500.00 tip the last time I clean for one of my best repeat clients. When you learn to do the right things for the right people, it makes a huge difference in your quality of life…LOL

Today I have way to much stuff in my life again, and I am working on a new chapter in my life called affiliate marketing. Thanks for checking out my new websites(http://StevenBrick.com & http://OptimumMuscles.com), and thank you for your business if you see anything there that you like.

Steven Brick

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