I don't know how many days I spent hitch hiking back and forth to work, but I was tired of it. Of course I had no one to blame but myself. When I got paid instead of putting money away to fix my car, I was spending my money on partying and having a good time.

I used to have a cross around my neck that I held and prayed with as I hitch- hiked. It's Kind of a strange story of how I acquired the cross. I had been living in West Hampton, and I was renting a room in a house with three Suffolk County Cops who were in the academy. I had my own roofing business and I had a helper named Billy. He was pretty much homeless, and I would get him an apartment somewhere and pay his rent for him, or else he wouldn't pay his rent. When I moved to Westhampton that year he followed even though he had no place to live. I let him stay in the basement in the really cold winter nights. I did my best to help him, and I taught him the trade of roofing.

Everyone called him dirt bag Billy because he almost never showered, or had clean clothes. He used to go to this old dumping ground and dig up old medicine bottles and sell them for beer. I don't know how it came about, but we talked about doing some grave robbing. Wondering what kind of treasures we might find. I had heard it was legal to dig up a grave over a hundred years old, and he said he knew an old cemetery. I told him I couldn't really go through with it. It was just too creepy for me.

That's when my shovels started disappearing. Eventually my cop friends told me that someone had dug up some graves in the old cemetery and Billy had recently came to me with this coffee can full of religious chains and rings. They said it wasn't illegal, but if they caught him in the act they could get him for trespassing. I had purchased one of the crucifixes and put it on a silver chain before I knew where it came from. He told me some old religious lady had given him the jewelry. When he first gave it to me out of the can, it was strangely very hot. It had a little blue stone in the middle.

I know it sounds very creepy, but it's what happened. Didn't fully realize it at the time. Anyway I paid the price for wearing it. Around a year after I got it I was riding waves at the beach, and one wave I was riding drilled me into the sand and folded me in half almost breaking my back. When I got back to the blanket I noticed my chain and cross were no longer around my neck. My back still isn't right some twenty years later.

Billy has long since died at around age thirty. They say he drank himself to death or something. He had a tough life and deserves pity. May God have mercy on his soul.

Anyway I had the crucifix around my neck and I would pray to Jesus and Mary and God and the holy spirit for a ride.

Once when I was going past a church the Pastor of the church came and said, "God wants me to give you a ride."

"He told you that?" I asked.

"Yes he wants me to prevent something, but it's inevitable anyway."

Wouldn't tell me what it was. I was just happy to have a ride. Strangely enough that's my church now. I go there every Sunday. It's called Lamb's Chapel in Center Moriches. You won't find a better church anywhere. Any way that pastor isn't there anymore.

Well most times I never got a ride. Just walked and walked while every car just ignored my request for a ride. I got angry with God and Jesus and I know, I shouldn't have but I cursed them both.