Big Jake won contracts for his trucking company by the force of his many contacts flowing from his Southern California roots. But his self marketing talents were eclipsed by his self maintenance skills aided by his baseball glove sized hands that, creased by wrench grip scars from the multitude of in flight maintenance diesel repairs this gentle giant of German English ancestry managed through his 50 year company history — hauling newsprint for his California based publishing company clientele — equipped his Kenworth fleeted tractors well for dependable, on-time reliability. And given his wide set baby blue eyes and shock of blond brown beach boy surfer hair, our six foot four two hundred thirty pound client not surprisingly fathered the most delightfully pert seven year old Goldilocks like girl in the county.
How she adored her daddy!
So much so that jealously framed mother’s agenda to rip into the heart of our latter day Paul Bunyan by stealing away in the night with little Rebecca in tow of her Berkeley- Doctored new mate to the Greek Islands for his post doctoral research project enveloping the demise at the hands of Scipio Africans, his hero and his target of historical focus — Hannibal of Carthage.
But we cut off our bespectacled wasp with his anxious entourage at the boarding gate with the Vista Family Court’s restraining order recorded with the US Department Of Justice tagging Rebecca’s passport!
And Mother’s Mr Peepers bolted with Rebecca and Mother into darkness somewhere east of Raleigh and north of Savannah.
That is, until or gentle giant landed an overland cross-country consignment bound for Philadelphia with restraining orders in his glove box.
Soon afterward, and southbound for Tallahassee, our law firm’s investigator spotted Rebecca’s caravan in Southern Georgia, eight months to the day of Rebecca’s disappearance from her Oceanside California home. The hunt was on.
Our Midwest connections with the Chicago Tribune’s law firm led to legal connections in Tallassee where our new co-counsel having the local banking industry in legal lockstep identified Mr. Peeper’s newly opened Tallahassee bank account and his local motel address, where sharply early the following morning over-nighted orders were served requiring court surrender that very day.
Big Jake had meantime been storming his lighted rig, freed of it’s delivered cargo’s weight, south east to Florida. Contemporaneously or firm’s on sight PI kept watch at a respectful distance as the flushed prey efforted an escape west bound towards the Panhandle across north Florida – Mississippi Bound, our glue foot racing to the rear in chase.
But our over-educated, mental Mensa-man and his maul chose both the wrong weekend and the wrong Mississippi town for cover. For it was the very Saturday in December that Florida defeated arch rival Alabama, and Mississippi State beat Oklahoma!
Meridian, Mississippi and Tallassee were all in sleepless celebration mode.
Rebecca’s Tallahassee court issued restraining order was delivered by wire to a hoop hollering Meridian judge who alerted his wide eyed police chief early Sunday morning and the itinerant band and their Mercedes and RV fleet were seized and placed in the local caboose.
Rebecca, herself, spent that Sunday at the Mayor’s plantation home in honor of his alumni status with the Florida judge issuing the over-nighted Florida arrest citation — Florida State had been their mutual Alma Mater!
Meantime Big Jake had swung his broiling hot, diesel powered behemoth West from Tallahassee towards the Deep South, escorted by two Florida State Trooper squads by-passing the required checkpoints towards his beloved Rebecca.
Come Sunday Noon, yours truly was conference calling from my La Costa kitchen phone with Peeper’s newly retained Florida counsel arranging with the stern encouragement of two reunited alums of Florida State School Of Law, the assignment of Our Mr Big Hands of Sandy Hair as special deputy to personally escort Rebecca and her felon former parens patriae back to Tallahassee for arraignment with Rebecca delightedly reunified sitting shotgun aboard Big Jakes smokin big rig enroute for a Tuesday afternoon court Hearing.
Early Wednesday morning beaming Rebecca was released into her daddy’s care for her return to Oceanside while her former travel companions remained behind pending a preliminary hearing and trial.
Following further California proceedings Rebecca was returned full time into her father’s care and 15 years later earned her psychology degree — from UC Cal, where else!
Dr Richard Gardner, Professor of Child Psychiatry, Columbia University, testified for law firm client, physician and father of three young girls, that mother’s tactics to deny father custody constituted a mild form of parental alienation. Rather than excuse mother, Dr Gardener testified that her persistent and pressured tactics to remove the children from their father — including her having feigned a trip to Disneyland for a flight to New York to secretly relocate — had actually failed to break the bonds of attachment between father and daughters explaining that father’s resistance and legal challenges to mother’s relentless campaign to estrange his children from him had provided antidotal relief to what otherwise would likely have estranged the children from him completely.
Comments RSS 
