"Ballard House"
My new apartment was in a much newer house that had also been divided up into apartments. It was a two-story house across the street on the south side of campus, only a few blocks from 920. Earlier that semester, I had taken a job working nights as an auditor for a hotel. It was a really nice place; it took me about a week of training before I could work the night shift by myself.
My shift had me working five nights and then two nights off. On the morning off from the end of my first week working by myself, I got a knock at my door. It was a policeman who informed me that the hotel had been robbed. I asked him if anyone had gotten hurt and he informed me that no one had.
He then told me that everyone that worked there had to come down to the station to take a polygraph. He asked me if I would be willing to do so too. I agreed to do it and we set up a time the next week for me to come in and take the test.
On Monday I went to work only to find out that I had been fired as I was the main suspect for the robbery. I was totally shocked at first but then a bit scared. I called a defense attorney, and he talked me through the possibilities of what to expect.
The attorney told me to go to the manager of the hotel and ask for an Employment Service Letter where the employer would explain my work there, and why they fired me. Mainly to see what they would be willing to put in writing, which might give me an idea of what they were thinking.
My request freaked out the management. Shortly after, I got a call asking me what I wanted. I told them that I had nothing to do with the robbery and that I just needed a job to get me through the semester. They gave me a job as a dishwasher in the hotel restaurant’s kitchen. I was grateful for the job.
When I showed up for the lie detector test, I found out it had been canceled. It turned out the new manager took the money and tried to blame it on me to cover her tracks.
I started dating a gal that worked as a waitress in the restaurant at the hotel. She was a sweetheart, and told me she had recently become a Christian, but we only dated for a few months before parting.
Most of my time after I moved was spent thinking about all that had happened over the last couple of years. I spent a lot of time listening to Jesus Christ Superstar, thinking about faith, and my dreams, as well as my car wreck experience. It was like I just put my life on hold except to think.
When I lived in Butler, I worked at Pizza Hut and the manager, Ryan and I got to be friends. We would talk about investments, especially in real estate; buying a property with little to no funds down and working out the closing with cash to the good was the goal, and then letting the property pay itself off from rent payments or fix up and flip the house for profits.
Ryan called me as he had tracked me down through Shirley. He and his wife invited me out to talk about a house in Branson they were wanting to buy. We went through the specifics and together we came up with a plan to make an offer to purchase the property. They ended up buying the house with no money down, owner financing, and walked out of closing with a couple hundred dollars to the good.
The house needed some updating which they did, and about a year later he called telling me the house now appraised at 50% higher than what they had bought it for. Now they had their sights set on an apartment building in Springfield, and they were asking me to help them put the deal together.
The owner was asking a lot, but the listing was about to expire, and all parties involved were wanting to make a deal. They ended up being able to purchase it for half the asking price and walked out of closing with $20,000 to the good.
They offered me half the apartment building for helping them, and if I would continue helping them with the project. I refrained from accepting as I wanted to just focus on school. A few months later though, the city pulled eminent domain and purchased the property for an enormous profit.
One day I was at Shirley’s house, and she had taken a job working for Radio Shack. She had come home really upset because she had to fly out that weekend for a company training required by all managers. I asked her why, but she told me she couldn’t tell me as it was a companywide secret. She could have gotten fired if she did.
I asked her who do you think I would tell and assured her I would not tell a soul. There was a light on this. She told me that Radio Shack was about to introduce their line of computers that next week.
Immediately I asked her, “Who owns Radio Shack?” She replied it was owned by Tandy Corporation. I told her to take as much money as she dared to invest and buy as much stock as she could right away. She did. The stock doubled in a week and so on. She bragged for a year about how much she made on her Tandy stock. No gratuity for me though.
From time to time, I would get hungry for a donut from the bakery I had worked at. I would walk there to stock up. On one trip the owner asked me if I was working. I wasn’t at that time and so he offered me my old job back. I took the job as it was my favorite job ever. Little did I know my life was about to change forever.