Is there a difference between lowlifes and deadbeats?
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John Hubertz
Yes - and some of us actually hit the trifecta... drug-addicted lowlife deadbeats.
In the go-go 1980s I brought an enormous amount of money and a Wicked Cocaine Habit back to my home in Orlando from my high-level corporate job in Miami. A Ford engineer, I actually was IN the painted-wallpaper office at the Mercedes-Benz dealership in Coral Gables... which at the time was owned by a mobbed-up guy who had "retired" from the NYPD and arrived in West Palm in 1968 with a new Ford automobile and a trunk full of cash.
When I met him in 1988 or so he owned about 8 dealerships including a Lincoln-Mercury store near Palm Beach. We would deliver experimental Lincolns to his store to give to the Kennedy's and other uber-wealthy Palm Beach residents. (free of course).
Pintos were burning, pubic hair still had "cooties" (now on the endangered species list) and the only STD we couldn't cure with a shot was the plague of lowlifes rapidly converting perfectly good wives into divorcees and abandoning their responsibility for drugs, sex and money on cigarette boats off Miami Beach.
Here is an interesting truth - even if you have enough money to afford coke and a couple of ex wives, it still destroys your life. Responsibility, decency and compassion for your own children are the secrets to a happy existence.
So yes Shelly Andrews, there is a difference between a lowlife and a deadbeat, but they all come from the hollow, moral-free cauldron of American cultural decay and greed.
The result? The fastest growing homeless population in the world - almost 100% the result of divorce and family dissolution. Marriage matters (gay or straight), commitments should be honored, and children are the precious future we should all protect and defend.
Unlike most, my family (traditional Catholic), my intellect and the kind of good luck reserved for "mad dogs and Englishmen" allowed me to live through these dark times. I've bought more than one rope with the intention of hanging myself, but like most alcoholics/addicts, I just didn't have the balls.
Thank God. Life is good, my second marriage (ended in her death) was rich with responsiblity, meaning and the kind of love that sticks and stays. I'm just an old hippy with no hair and real hips - and here is the message: Life Happens, Choices Have Consequences, and Traditions of Family and Citizenship truly matter.
Peace. JEH
