My Dear Cousin - We’re Trying to Help You

                                12^th May 2021

My Dear Cousin,

In my last letter I think we got up to two thousand and five or there about. More than fifteen years to go to get you up to date in the story of my family. Well, to be honest nothing of note happened this year, but we still have a ways to go.

In any case, I had the car I had owned for the eight years and the car owned by my old man. Neither car was in all that great shape, but the old man’s car was a lot newer. (Pony Girl) wanted the old man’s car to be her car that I paid for, and that didn’t go well with me so I got nothing but flack over having two cars.

The old man had begged me to take his car. He said he wanted me to drive his car. Then I drove his car, and in a day (Pony Girl) was pressing me over it. In a week the old man called and made me a deal, if my car wasn’t working in six months I was to get rid of it. Two weeks later he was screaming at me to get rid of my second car.

Mind you now that I was having money problems, because I hadn’t gotten the college funds given to my siblings and this was exactly why I didn’t want the old man’s car in the first place. I had even told him to trade it in and give me half the money he saved. He offered me two thousand dollars to get rid of my old car. I said no. I said no because I knew that the harder they tried to get me to do what they wanted giving in would only make it worse.

It was at that point I stopped paying for repairs to the old man’s car. He gave it to me with four bald tires and so I started having to pump up flats as the old things wore down. I had paid for two tires already, but the second two I was just done with.

The whole family pounded on me to get those tires replaced. They said, “You’re gonno’ kill yourself.” My older car had a bad sensor that made the car stop when it got too hot. It was three hundred dollars that I didn’t have to get it fixed.

One night I was working on my old car and (Pony Girl) and her boyfriend where just heckling me and heckling me. At one point my (Pony Girl)’s boyfriend even pinned me against the cabinets in the kitchen trying to convince me to get the old man’s car fixed. “We’re trying to help you,” he said, but was he?

Then (Pony Girl) came in with three nails, three nails just like for a crucifixion, and screamed that I was letting nails roll into the driveway. I screamed “hay” and went after her.

Her boyfriend grabbed me and started screaming “Don’t you touch her, Richard!”

My intention was to give her a piece of my mind, but that man putting his hands on me was the last straw. I fought him off and called the police. (Pony Girl) made her boyfriend wait outside and came in and apologized, but she had pushed me too far.

The police told her she had to leave the house for three days. The old man finally paid for his tires, but it wasn’t over.

Best,

 

Richard Leland Neal