Part 2: Fact is stranger than fiction--Kerry

Okay so if you really want the whole sordid scoop, here's the basics:

My father Jim and his brother, John ran a grain/fertilizer mill in McMinnville that my grandpa Harry started in 1919. My Dad played the violin and made pets out of animals on the farm, my uncle John shot squirrels and drank whiskey. They fought violently with each other even as children. A third son, older son named Richard mediated the fights until he was killed at aged fifteen as he was delivering the morning paper on a bike and struck by a car. He died on the kitchen table in front of the family. Profound grief still envelopes my father over his death, the one person who probably could have prevented the drama of the next fifty years unfolding as it did.

My grandfather was a class-one miser amidst his millions, his one indulgence, besides his grandchildren, was an occasional black cadillac that he drove around with various tools and garbage that shifted from one side to the other when he rounded corners. When he died, he gave me my grandmother's diamond ring, bequeathed the eight grandchildren $10,000 each, and gave the whole mill operation to my uncle, writing my father completely out of the will because he thought the "older brother" should be the appropriate heir. A month before his death he expressed remorse but was too weak to rewrite the estate and heavily manipulated by my uncle.

My aunt Shirley, married to my uncle John, was a 1950's beauty queen raised in an impoverished household who married my uncle for his money, among other things. Both my uncle and aunt descended into rampant, but somehow functional, alcoholism. My aunt bought a new Lincoln every year changing only to Lexus in the last decade. She parked the cars on a carpet in the garage so she could step out onto the carpet. She was a compulsive neat freak. The whole house was white/neutral colors and since she favored her two daughters over her son, she stuck him in the unfinished basement, where he would get so mad at his mother that he would sneak upstairs and pee on the aforementioned carpet.

John started having affairs and would charge hotel rooms bills to the mill expense account until the accountant starting yelling one day in front of the whole office staff:
"I'm tired of paying for John's "f------".

You beginning to get a feel for the cast of characters?

As adults Jim and John continued to disagree on most operations of the mill, so the one thing they could agree upon was to split it down the middle, 50/50. My father took the grain mill and the land on one side of town, John took the fertilizer plant in the other side of town. My Dad planted a vineyard twenty miles away and tried to escape my uncles increasingly illicit behavior.

Then an arsonist, who had burned down the country club, the high school football stadium and twenty-three local garages and outbuildings, decided to apply for a job at the grain mill after serving prison time. My father gave him a chance and hired him to sweep and clean the mill. The man started a fire in garbage can a week later so my Dad let him go. A few months later the man returned and burned down the mill, followed by two more mills in the downtown complex. Before the arsonist was caught, my parents and I were on sheriff survelliance with tapped phones and I was not allowed to walk or be alone without supervision after continued anonymous threats by the arsonist, until he was finally caught trying to light the downtown Thrifty-drug and fire and confessed to the whole thing in a plea bargain attempt.

To make a long story short, during these events my uncle quietly skimmed money off the top of the profits and carefully destroyed financial records. The statue of limitations had long since run out on anyone's ability to sue.

When he died ten years ago, his widow was left with hundreds of acres of farmland and the aforementioned money. She died last week of leukemia estranged from her son with the acreage and money still intact.

Even though my father never saw his rightful inheritance, he did retire at 54 after he sold his one remaining mill and has lived managed to survive and thrive, while his brother has been gone for ten years. There has been some vindication, at least.