My Life With Comic Books: Part # 175

A brief introduction:

My name is Paul Howley. Some people have called me the "luckiest man in the comic book business" but that all changed as of January 9th 2001.

The current cast of characters:

Paul Howley: age 46
Mal Howley: age 46
Adam Howley: my son, age 21
Cassy Howley: my daughter, age 16


MY LIFE WITH COMIC BOOKS: THE HISTORY OF A COMIC SHOP-Part 175

“Ob-la-di, ob-la-da.”

After the memorial service, my sister Sharon and her husband Greg invited family and a small group of our friends back to their home. I don’t remember much of what went on there, but I know we were glad to share this time with this group of people. After everyone had left, we eventually had to go home and begin our life without Adam.

We still had an abundance of food that was prepared for us by friends and members of our church and that’s what we ate for several days. We invited some of our closest friends over to help us eat up the remaining food but we eventually needed additional items from our local grocery store. I went by myself to do a quick shopping but as I went down each row I was overwhelmed with memories of Adam. His favorite breakfast cereals. Fruits and yogurts. Cheeses. Lots of cheeses. When I got to the juice aisle I saw the individual small cans of V-8 vegetable juice and remembered when we used to buy the large container and fill Adam’s thermos each day for his school lunch because it was cheaper than the small cans. I know this probably seems silly, but this memory was too much for me. I needed to get out of the grocery store right away before I totally broke down. I left the cart, full of food, right there in the aisle and rushed home.

When I was a kid, my father taught me that happiness in this life is mostly about our attitude. We can choose to be miserable or make the best out of our situation. I didn’t want to be miserable but losing Adam seemed overwhelming. It seemed like no amount of positive, wishful thinking could make me truly happy again. But I needed to try. I needed to be strong for my wife. I needed to be strong for my daughter.

I was fortunate that I was allowed to be a school board member at Cassy’s school. It gave me something to do that seemed worthwhile and it filled up lots of my time. The students, staff, and teachers were very caring people who were instrumental to my healing process. Spending time at the school with Debbie Monnell, Roger Allen, Brenda Carney, Belinda Simpson, and Jim Morel and others, gave me another purpose and reason to try to function normally. But my “normal” was now going to be very different for me. It’s hard to explain.

Mal spent many of her days with Liz Verhoeks at Liz’s “Laconia Pottery” store. Mal had been teaching rubberstamp card making classes at the store for a while but she wasn’t up to socializing with strangers so she decided to take some time off.

We were invited out for lunch one day with a couple we knew. Both are very nice people who wanted to comfort us. But at one point during our lunch, the wife (trying to empathize with our pain) explained how much she misses her oldest daughter. She said that there are times that she missed her so much that she’d wear one of her daughter’s sweaters just to feel close to her. We understood what our friend was trying to communicate but it just didn’t work. Her daughter was attending college about two hours away. Our friend could see or talk to her daughter anytime she wanted. Our son was gone.

Cassy’s life was very busy. She had lots going on at school with sports, studies and the upcoming school play. She felt the need to dive right back into school as soon as possible. I still remember the sick feeling I had as I watched her drive off to school on her first day back.

Right after Adam’s accident, Cassy’s old boyfriend, John, begged her to break-up with her current boyfriend. John assured Cassy that he regretted previously breaking up with her and that he wanted to “be there” for her in her time of pain and sorrow. We encouraged Cassy to seriously consider this before she did anything. It’s not a good idea to make important decisions while you are very emotional. She said she understood but she was determined to get back together with John. It didn’t take very long for the “real” John to come back and he broke her heart again. This is not what Cassy needed right now.

Mal had a growing urge to do something to help Adam’s friends from the park in Newport, Rhode Island. She wanted the “Park Rats” to know more about Adam and explain why he loved them. She discussed this desire with church members Ron and Christine St. Cyr.

Next chapter: Our church makes a plan.

My Life With Comic Books: Part # 148

The current cast of characters:
Paul Howley: age 45
Mal Howley: my wife
Adam Howley: my son, age 20
Cassy Howley: my daughter, age 15

MY LIFE WITH COMIC BOOKS: THE HISTORY OF A COMIC SHOP-Part 148

My wife, Mal, and I were getting more involved at the school that my daughter was attending for her sophomore year of high school. Mal was organizing and running the snack bar at almost all of the school’s sporting events as a fundraising event for Cassy’s senior class trip. I was enjoying my involvement with the school board even through some difficult times.

After our very successful (and profitable) performances of “Annie” last year, Brenda (the director) and I were asked if we could do more than one play for this school year. Since Brenda was very talented as a director, it was decided that she could do another play with just the high school students. I would attempt to direct a play with just the middle school students. Brenda chose “Oklahoma” and I chose “You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown.” Brenda was lucky to secure the talents of Barry and Margaret Armitage to handle all of the musical aspects of “Oklahoma.” These two dedicated people worked very hard to teach the kids all of the songs. For my play, I’d need to find someone else to perform the music. They would have to learn to play all of the material and be available every day to teach the songs to the kids. Trust me; it’s not easy to find someone who is willing to take on such a big responsibility. This left me with the difficult job of finding another pianist to play the music for “You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown.”

Around the time we began our pre-production work on these two plays, we got a phone call from the owner of the home in Newport, Rhode Island where Adam had been staying over the summer. She expressed her concern for Adam’s health and well being. She was concerned because Adam seemed to have lost his motivation to be productive and he just wanted to spend his time hanging out with the large group of kids known as “the park rats.” These were the troubled kids with lots of body piercings, tattoos, unusual clothes, and oddly colored hair. These things by themselves are not necessarily a bad thing, but there was a lot of drinking and drugs in this group of underage kids and that worried our friend. It worried Mal and me too, but we thought Adam was smart enough to avoid these things.

We had no way to contact Adam because he didn’t have a cell phone and he was no longer staying in our friend’s home, so we decided to drive down to Rhode Island to find him. The three-hour drive to Newport seemed to take “forever” because we were very worried and had no idea what to expect when (or if) we found Adam. We drove around the area and eventually decided to stop and ask a store owner if they knew of a park where kids hung out. They directed us to a small seaside park but when we got there it was deserted. We weren’t convinced that this was even the “right” park because we had the impression that the large group of “Park Rats” usually stayed in the park until very late almost every night. It would be unusual for the park to be empty. After driving around for a while longer, we decided to get a hotel room for the night and resume our search in the morning.

We didn’t sleep well that night but getting back to our search early in the morning didn’t make much sense since Adam and his friends rarely got up early. When we drove up to the park around mid-morning we were relieved to see Adam there with several of his new friends, several of whom told us how much they loved Adam. To be honest, I didn’t care. I wanted Adam out of there and away from these bad influences.

We took Adam out for lunch and we told him about some of our concerns. He did his best to convince us that although he knew he was doing some things that were not very smart, he felt that he needed to remain here with his new friends. He had no interest in returning to The Boston Conservatory to begin his sophomore year of college. He didn’t want the stress of the increased debt of $30,000 per year and he wasn’t convinced that the education he was getting was worth the price.

After lunch, we drove him to the place he had been staying in Newport. We had no idea that he had been sleeping on the couch of a family who lived in “the projects” of Newport. We didn’t even know that Newport had “projects!” This wealthy city did indeed have low-income government housing and it was just as run-down and disgusting as the government housing in most major cities. Adam told us that there were frequent gunshots heard during the nights and there was drug dealing and violence on an ongoing basis. This convinced us that he needed to come back home to New Hampshire to live with us until he could decide what to do with his life. After much pleading, he agreed to come home for a three-week trial period. You see, once he had tasted the independence of living at college and had experienced basically living on the streets of Newport, he wasn’t excited about the idea of being “controlled” by his parents. We promised to try to work things out while he stayed with us so it would be tolerable for all of us. We left Adam there that day but returned a week later, as arranged, to bring him back to New Hampshire.

Cassy’s friend, “Amy,” was still living with us at that time in our extra bedroom upstairs. Adam set up a bedroom area in the finished basement so he could have his own space and this arrangement worked out just fine.

Next chapter: Adam needs our help.

My Life With Comic Books: Part # 144

The current cast of characters:
Paul Howley: age 44
Mal Howley: my wife
Adam Howley: my son, age 19
Cassy Howley: my daughter, age 15

MY LIFE WITH COMIC BOOKS: THE HISTORY OF A COMIC SHOP-Part 144

This chapter was originally going to be about the friend of Cassy’s who came to live with us for a while, but I realized that it happened after the events in the story that I’ll be telling now.

Our son, Adam, was spending the summer in beautiful Newport, Rhode Island with Phil, his best friend from high school. They were living in a nice, fully equipped small home behind one of the famous Newport mansions, just a short walk away from the ocean. It was Adam’s intention to work full-time to save up some money to pay for his second year of college at The Boston Conservatory but he knew he’d have lots of time to enjoy this three-month arrangement.

Adam was a very independent nineteen-year old and although he did like to have fun, we assumed that he’d make smart decisions, especially because he would be living with Phil. But, as it turned out, Phil had several family trips planned so Adam was basically living by himself for quite a bit of the time. Adam enjoyed being with people, so he explored the area in an attempt to connect with people his own age. Adam would call us about once every two weeks, mostly because we pressured him to call. He’d fill us in on his activities, his hunt for employment, and he’d tell us about his newly made friends from Rhode Island. It was his new friends that worried us.

Mal, Cassy and I spent a weekend in Newport so that we could visit Adam since we hadn’t really gotten to spend much time with him since he went off to college in 1998. Cassy went to spend the night at Adam’s place. The next day we decided to take Adam out to lunch so we met him at a park where he was hanging out with some of his new friends.

These young people (nicknamed “Park Rats”) spent most of their waking hours hanging out in a seaside park in Newport. Most of these kids were in their late teens. They were tattooed, pierced, and dressed in a punk-style. Some of them used various illegal drugs, (Ecstasy was the most abused drug) while most of these kids smoked cigarettes and illegally consumed alcohol. These were not the kind of kids we wanted Adam to be spending time with but I was surprised to hear all of the nice things they had to say about my son. It was clear that they loved him. This was comforting to us but we were still concerned about the influence that these kids could have on Adam. Adam was a confident “leader” as a youngster and wasn’t easily swayed by peer pressure. We hoped this would continue to be one of Adam’s strengths.

Adam got a full-time job working as a reservations clerk for a local hotel. He didn’t like the job because he was stuck in an office with no personal contact with other people but he knew he needed the money for college. He told us, quite frequently, when he’d call us, how much he hated this job.

Late one night, at about midnight, Adam called us. He told us that he and his long-time girlfriend, Meridith, had just broken up. Although he assured me that the decision was mutual, I didn’t believe him. From our conversation, and the lateness of the phone call, I could tell that the break-up was not his idea. I knew he loved her. We had no good advice for him so we just listened while he tried to express his thoughts about this situation. Eventually it became clear that Meridith was unhappy with the way Adam was currently living and spending so much time with the “park rats.” She told Adam that he needed to grow up before they could get back together. Adam tried to convince us, (and himself) that this break-up was a good thing.

As the weeks went by, Adam seemed to believe that everything was under control and he’d tell us about some of the positive things going on in the lives of his new friends. He’d call to tell us how excited he was that he convinced one of his friends to stop using heroin and that he got him to join a drug abuse program. He told us about how he convinced another kid that a “life of crime” was not a good thing. While we were glad that Adam was helping these kids, we really just wanted him to come home because we were nervous about the influence this group could have on him. Adam insisted that this is where he needed to be. He was now an adult and he could legally make these kinds of decisions on his own. Besides, the summer would be ending soon and he’d be going back to college.

Next chapter: In the meantime, Cassy has a school friend who needs a place to live.
Pictures: Adam and some of his Rhode Island friends.