Books by Jack Whalen

When a fraternity prank turned terrible, I found myself in a snowstorm on a back road somewhere about four hours from the frat house. Blindfolded, during the entire trip, I was lost and disoriented when we stopped to let me out. I had no idea where they left me. Worse yet, they didn''t tell me which way to walk to find the college town. The horizons were black, so I walked in the tracks in the direction we came. After about an hour into my walk, a nice older man in a beat-up pickup stopped to invite me to stay at his place overnight. His drunken partner unnerved me with his unfriendly attitude toward me. I was grateful for a bed in the freezing house until I heard the lock click shut. From that point, the routine was I work while they drank and plotted how to keep me working.It took me a week to escape. I waited till the drunks made an alcohol run to escape in the truck bed under a tarp. During the course of my escape I met the love of my life who sheltered my brothers and me that night. Although I was satisfied to leave my captors in the rearview mirror, my frat brothers had other ideas. To punish the captors for taking me, we took Miles for a ride the other way on the Thruway to the frat house I''d left days earlier.It turned out to be Hell Night for my Pledge Class, and everyone decided Miles payback would be to spend the night as a Pledge. So he stripped naked and took his bare ass paddling like the other pledges then began a week of frat house chores.When we dropped him back at the college town, he didn''t wait to execute his revenge. He followed me to Maggie''s place to smash all the windows in her car.I wasn''t the only young person taken prisoner by these guys, but only the second to live to tell about it. The other was their daughter since neither knew which was her biological father. She ran away so often when she could; her dads paid a local junkie to keep her and maintain an addiction program that would keep her.Then it happened, the drunks took Maggie to play the game with her. Just the thought caused me to tear up. I contacted the FBI as I didn''t trust any law enforcement beneath them. Miles, the brains of the two, proved he was, more depraved than when I knew him. Matt was murdered, so Miles left the farm to live as a fugitive. His wealth hid him, and he drove new cars and used apartments for his games. I put Maggie in a rehab days after we rescued her to help her assimilate back into society and love me again. I assisted the girls in capturing Miles and again escorted him to the frat house. The house was closed down, so we left him in the basement to take his punishment like that he inflicted on college students.After a few weeks of torturous treatment by the frat brothers, we dumped him in a local ghetto to eke out a living. His surprising return to the college town had hardly changed him. He was determined to exact revenge on me for all that went wrong in his life, and he knew to hurt me; all he had to do was capture, Maggie.He also carried a gun for small robberies to stay alive, and with his police record, that crime was a drop in the bucket.He had been arrested twice for rape, drugs and general unlawful behavior, but escaped both times and lived on the same farm with Matt after his escapes. His attack on the police force proved too much for him as he didn''t get off. With Matt dead, the tale of the two drunks on the little secluded farm ended.

My college sweetheart was five months pregnant when we got married at a formal wedding her family planned for us. Times were crazy as I'd graduated from college two weeks earlier and was getting ready to move to a strange city to begin a career. My concerns were where would we live; could I do the job I never tried, and would my salary be enough to pay the bills; give my new wife and I a life, and most of all provide the required baby things.I excelled at my career, but money was tight, so we read and fed the ducks in a quiet lifestyle with our “love child.” Our only exception that summer of 1969 was the infamous Woodstock Music and Art Festival. I was concerned my best friend’s wife was pregnant, but we picked them up in New York State as we passed through from our new apartment in Connecticut.  Within four years my wife was pregnant again, and my job was boring, so I got a new job about four hours to the west. It was a living accommodations upgrade; the job was challenging, and we met a nice couple with two kids the ages of ours. Over then few years we socialized and played sports with them. We became tight with them until the next better job came along. We moved six hours farther west.And that was our lifestyle for the next 7 or 8 years until we could afford a house, but the change was negligible. The only significance aside from yard work was I met a couple of high-powered addicts with high-level jobs. With their assistance, I added speed to my habits. Fortunately, my LSD experiment was not impressive.As my addiction to my increased use, my wife joined us to a lesser degree. Less than a year in our house, I was transferred to headquarters with recommendations. I was placed on the “high potential” list indicating the sky was the limit if I worked hard and stayed out of trouble.Those two requirements proved too much for my lifestyle.This was a Fortune 5 company so it surprised me as the year before the move I was asked to join an elite group headed to upper management, but it was all accounting, which wasn’t on my career path, so I quite early on. The day I handed in my book my boss went ballistic screaming – no one quits - it took me a lot to get you in.After breaking down walls of digital ignorance the company gave me a management award, which I suggested we split with one of my direct reports. She was deserving, but once again that’s not done. After that embarrassment, I was told in private if projects are a success it’s because the project manager made it happen. For failed projects, it’s always the people actually doing the work who screwed it up.At the corporate office, I fell in with a couple of partiers who brought me down to their lifestyle. I was not feeling good about myself – I was at the bottom of my life and with every opportunity to excel I failed. In 1982, I was given a project that included a communications link to Singapore. I visited there for a five-week stay and loved the challenge of the work.Upon my return, there was a domestic situation that started at the airport. I didn’t handle it very well after my 27-hour plane trip. Part of the issues was a transfer to New Hampshire. As everyone expected I was able to straighten out my life in the quiet environment of New Hampshire. – no drugs, reduced drinking.