It's been two years since I started writing "Evangeline." I've been thinking about the past two years and about how much I've been through and how my life has changed. I have gotten to know some of you on a personal level and I'm very thankful for that. But I know some of you don't know all of the details about what I've been through and how it affected my life and my writing. So I feel compelled to share some things with you all.
First, I have to tell you that, most of the things I share on this blog are things that I haven't shared with anyone else. This blog is my haven. It's the place where I can come and say whatever I feel like and not have to worry about the fallout from friends and family. And specifically, I'm talking about the spiritual connection that I have come to have with Peter Deuel.
I've spoken with some of you privately about the connection, and I know I'm not the only one who feels it. And it's something that I don't feel comfortable speaking about with family and friends. But lately I feel the need to speak more openly about it with you guys. And in greater detail. I know some of you who read this will probably dismiss what I say as a love struck woman going through a crisis, seeing and hearing what she wants to hear. Or that I'm just reading more into ordinary everyday occurrences than is actually there. Believe me, I've said all those things to myself. But when things that are inexplicable keep happening and those things are accompanied with a feeling inside of your spirit, then I think you have to stop and say "Hey maybe I'm not crazy after all."
May I start by sharing the beginnings of my love affair with Peter Deuel. Like most of his fans, my love began with Hannibal Heyes. I was a teenage girl in school when the local tv station aired reruns of Alias Smith and Jones. I can't remember exactly what year, but I was in school and it was in the eighties. But I fell for Heyes hard. I would rush home from school every day and wait for it to come on at four o'clock. I remember so well, crossing my fingers when it was time for it to start and saying over and over again "Please, don't let it be a Roger episode," If it wasn't a Pete episode, I would pout and go to my room, where I would spend the next few hours drawing my own story boards of new episodes, in which I was, of course, the female guest star who was also HH' s love interest. And this went on for months and I suppose my mother could see how invested I was becoming and one day she dropped the bomb on me that Pete Duel, who played my beloved Hannibal Heyes, was no longer alive. "You do know he's dead, don't you?" she asked me one day. I will never forget that moment, I don't know why but I tried to pretend that it didn't bother me. But in secret, I was devastated. I cried in my room. Of course, back then I couldn't hop on the internet and look up pictures of him or watch any of his other work. All I knew of him was HH and that I loved his face more than any other face I'd ever seen. His face would become the picture of perfection by which all men in my life would then be compared, although I didn't realize it. I don't even remember how long those episodes were rerun on that station, but eventually it was replaced with some other oldie from the past, and as it always does, life happened. I finished school, went off to college, married had children, divorced, struggled, remarried, yadda yadda yadda. Little did I know that somewhere in the very back of the very bottom draw of my brain's file cabinet of memories, was a picture of that perfect face and an account of how that perfect smile made me feel. And even littler did I know that 25 years after filing it away, the image of that face and those feelings were about to be pulled out and they would recast their spell on my tiny little existence.
Fast forward to 2009. I treat myself to a new laptop for Christmas. One of the very first things I do is go to HULU and there in their list of choices is Alias Smith and Jones. Seeing that title was like making a crack in a dam. The memories were a mere trickle at first, but once I started watching the pilot episode (which I had never seen until that moment, because it was never aired in the reruns) I started recalling episodes and quotes from the show. The dam broke and I recalled how much joy I had when I had watched as a girl and how much I had loved Hannibal Heyes. After 25 years!!! I have heard so many of you give your account of your rediscovery of Peter. And mine is no different. I got one look at that beautiful dimpled smile and I fell instantly in love again. I guess I never really fell out of love. I had just forgotten the love was there. It had lain dormant for decades and now like a flower bursting free from its bulb, it was about to grow into something that I never expected.
April 2010 would prove to be a very trying time. I had only recently discovered that my husband of six years was addicted to prescription pain killers. Since he did not have a prescription from a doctor to get them, he had to buy them off the street. The street price for one pill is five dollars, IF you get the cheap ones. The ones addicts prefer are seven or eight dollars a pill. My husband had gotten up to 12 per day. That's close to $100 a day to support his habit. His habit was out of control and it was costing me everything. My bank account was empty and my sympathy and my love for my husband were wearing very thin. The tension in my home between my husband and myself was bad enough, but the tension between my husband and my sons was even worse. And it was all about to come to a head.
One day when I'm at work I get a phone call. It's my husband telling me that my son has stabbed him. I panicked. I rush to get my purse so I could leave and go home when my cell phone rings. It's my mother who lives next door. She tells me to get home and get my blankety blank husband off of her property (she owns the property I live on). I get home and find that he had accused my one of my sons of something so ridiculous that only a person under the influence of an illegal substance would have even thought of it. My son, a very mild mannered, laid back individual, had had all of it he was going to take. Six years of pent up frustration and anger at his step dad erupted and a fight ensued, ending with him stabbing my husband in the arm. I told my husband I wanted him to go. I was done with him and our marriage. I end up having to involve the police which I didn't want to do, but I couldn't get him to leave. So he left. He left me emotionally, financially and spiritually crippled.
The next six months would be dark days for me. I became depressed and secluded. I didn't want to see anyone or talk to anyone. I went to work. I came home. My mother blamed me for everything because I had allowed things to escalate to the point that they had. I have never done drugs in my life. I've never even smoked pot. I have drunk alcohol once in my life and found it to be one of the most disgusting and regrettable experiences of my life. I have never had a drop of alcohol since. So for someone like me who doesn't self medicate with substance (unless of course you count the occasional bag of Hershey's kisses as a substance) then I am forced to just deal. And I wasn't dealing very well. I didn't even open my laptop for months. But time began to work its magic and eventually I did open it up and start reconnecting some with friends on facebook. But I was still not a well person.
I had always been a woman of great faith. Others had even told me that God had given me the gift of faith. But I had been praying and praying for my husband to change, peace in my marriage and my life and all I got was chaos, turmoil, depression and a pile of bills I couldn't pay. My faith was gone. I stopped praying. I couldn't pray. I felt like a huge hypocrite for even speaking to God, because I guess I was blaming Him. Well, maybe not blaming him so much as accusing Him of not being there for me when I had needed Him most. So I figured what was the point. I had nothing to believe in. Not even myself. And like any co dependent enabling wife, I was letting my husband gradually ease his way back into my life by making me feel sorry and by making me feel guilty.
Enter Peter Ellstrom Deuel.
I started once again to watch ASJ episodes online. And all the old feelings I had started to feel before, began to resurface. I started researching Peter's life and his death. I learned things I'd never known about him. I saw pictures I'd never seen before and I felt so much more than what you feel with your typical starstruck crush. I began to feel connected. That is the only word I can think of to describe it. I went through a tremendous bout of grieving. The grief lasted for a long time. There were times when it would be overwhelming. I would go to work and people would ask me if I was okay. They thought all my blues were coming from my personal problems with my husband. And that's what I told everyone it was. But in truth there was something else. I was in mourning for a man I never knew who had died almost 40 years ago. Now, I don't know about the rest of you but that's just not something you tell everyone. So not only was I trying to cope with this tremendous grief, I was trying to do it in secret.
It was on one of those nights when the grieving had been particularly bad that I had the very first of what I call Petey experiences. I had been working all day and he had been on my mind constantly. I was driving home and I was crying and speaking to Peter. A feeling came over me. It was as if a voice inside of me was telling me to turn on the radio. I did. That's when the song "See You on the Other Side" by Ozzy Osbourne came on. I have blogged about this experience before so I won't go into detail, but I will share the link for those who may not have read it. It was in that moment that the clouds of grief began to part. My spirit started to feel relief from the sadness.
I rode on a small high from that experience for a while, until my human mind began to persuade me that it was a mere coincidence. Then the clouds of grief and the pain and loss began to seize me in their grip once again. I would watch memorial videos that others had made and I would just sit and bawl my eyes out. Peter was the first thing on my mind in the morning and the last thing on my mind at night. He stayed on my mind constantly. In short I was becoming obsessed.
During this time while my obsession grew, my husband's addiction got worse and worse. He would come to see me occasionally in secret, because my family did not want him around. I really didn't either at that time but he was basically homeless and I felt sorry for him and responsible for him. And like a typical co dependent wife, I would give him money and let him shower and sometimes sleep there. It created another stress for me, trying to sneak him in without anyone knowing and trying not to cave in when he asked me for money. I was going crazy. I wanted to leave. I wanted to pack my car with everything that would fit, fill up with gas, start driving and wherever I ran out of gas, that's where I'd be. I just wanted to go where nobody could find me. But that of course was unrealistic and out of the question. The only peace I had was when I was reading about or watching Peter. He was keeping my head above the water.
It was the fall of 2010 and I had watched every episode of ASJ and read all the articles on Peter I could find. But I wanted more. I wanted more episodes. And during this time, I started to speak to Peter. I didn't think he was really there, but it made me feel better to think he could hear me so I talked to him. I told him that I felt cheated because I never got to see him in a beautiful love story, and how I wished he could have starred in a timeless romance where I could picture myself there with him, being with him, falling in love with him. And once again this feeling comes over me that he's speaking to me, not in an audible voice, but deep in my spirit telling me that if I want that kind of tale I should just write one of my own and make it like I want it to be. Good advice, I thought. One of my friends from work and I had talked before about our love of romance novels and we both agreed that it wouldn't be that hard to write one. And so I opened a new page on my computer's notepad and I started typing a description of the movie I saw playing in my head starring Peter as Hannibal Heyes.
Over the next few months I would start the tale that you have all come to know and love as "Evangeline ~ A Hannibal Heyes Love Story." I can't tell you how many times I would be writing and I would feel like something or someone else took over and the words just flowed from some secret well of inspiration inside of me. I thought it was pretty good but I was too scared to share it with anyone. It was becoming my lifeline. All day my thoughts were consumed with story lines, plot twists and character dialogue. The energy I had been using to grieve was now being used to create. And I could feel Peter's joy at this. He did not want me to grieve and be sad. I truly believe he helped me write this story. It was his way of saying, don't waste anymore time on grief, use your energy to make something that will bring joy to yourself. If you want to honor my memory do it with laughter and tears of joy, not sadness. And so I wrote. Everyday I wrote and rewrote and perfected. My love story and my ever present muse were now my reason for getting up in the morning and my reason for smiling. I was slowly breaking out of my self engineered cocoon and I was going to emerge different and changed.
http://hannibalheyeslovestory-karen.blogspot.com/2011/09/comfort-for-grieving.html link to the Ozzy song experience.
First, I have to tell you that, most of the things I share on this blog are things that I haven't shared with anyone else. This blog is my haven. It's the place where I can come and say whatever I feel like and not have to worry about the fallout from friends and family. And specifically, I'm talking about the spiritual connection that I have come to have with Peter Deuel.
I've spoken with some of you privately about the connection, and I know I'm not the only one who feels it. And it's something that I don't feel comfortable speaking about with family and friends. But lately I feel the need to speak more openly about it with you guys. And in greater detail. I know some of you who read this will probably dismiss what I say as a love struck woman going through a crisis, seeing and hearing what she wants to hear. Or that I'm just reading more into ordinary everyday occurrences than is actually there. Believe me, I've said all those things to myself. But when things that are inexplicable keep happening and those things are accompanied with a feeling inside of your spirit, then I think you have to stop and say "Hey maybe I'm not crazy after all."
May I start by sharing the beginnings of my love affair with Peter Deuel. Like most of his fans, my love began with Hannibal Heyes. I was a teenage girl in school when the local tv station aired reruns of Alias Smith and Jones. I can't remember exactly what year, but I was in school and it was in the eighties. But I fell for Heyes hard. I would rush home from school every day and wait for it to come on at four o'clock. I remember so well, crossing my fingers when it was time for it to start and saying over and over again "Please, don't let it be a Roger episode," If it wasn't a Pete episode, I would pout and go to my room, where I would spend the next few hours drawing my own story boards of new episodes, in which I was, of course, the female guest star who was also HH' s love interest. And this went on for months and I suppose my mother could see how invested I was becoming and one day she dropped the bomb on me that Pete Duel, who played my beloved Hannibal Heyes, was no longer alive. "You do know he's dead, don't you?" she asked me one day. I will never forget that moment, I don't know why but I tried to pretend that it didn't bother me. But in secret, I was devastated. I cried in my room. Of course, back then I couldn't hop on the internet and look up pictures of him or watch any of his other work. All I knew of him was HH and that I loved his face more than any other face I'd ever seen. His face would become the picture of perfection by which all men in my life would then be compared, although I didn't realize it. I don't even remember how long those episodes were rerun on that station, but eventually it was replaced with some other oldie from the past, and as it always does, life happened. I finished school, went off to college, married had children, divorced, struggled, remarried, yadda yadda yadda. Little did I know that somewhere in the very back of the very bottom draw of my brain's file cabinet of memories, was a picture of that perfect face and an account of how that perfect smile made me feel. And even littler did I know that 25 years after filing it away, the image of that face and those feelings were about to be pulled out and they would recast their spell on my tiny little existence.
Fast forward to 2009. I treat myself to a new laptop for Christmas. One of the very first things I do is go to HULU and there in their list of choices is Alias Smith and Jones. Seeing that title was like making a crack in a dam. The memories were a mere trickle at first, but once I started watching the pilot episode (which I had never seen until that moment, because it was never aired in the reruns) I started recalling episodes and quotes from the show. The dam broke and I recalled how much joy I had when I had watched as a girl and how much I had loved Hannibal Heyes. After 25 years!!! I have heard so many of you give your account of your rediscovery of Peter. And mine is no different. I got one look at that beautiful dimpled smile and I fell instantly in love again. I guess I never really fell out of love. I had just forgotten the love was there. It had lain dormant for decades and now like a flower bursting free from its bulb, it was about to grow into something that I never expected.
April 2010 would prove to be a very trying time. I had only recently discovered that my husband of six years was addicted to prescription pain killers. Since he did not have a prescription from a doctor to get them, he had to buy them off the street. The street price for one pill is five dollars, IF you get the cheap ones. The ones addicts prefer are seven or eight dollars a pill. My husband had gotten up to 12 per day. That's close to $100 a day to support his habit. His habit was out of control and it was costing me everything. My bank account was empty and my sympathy and my love for my husband were wearing very thin. The tension in my home between my husband and myself was bad enough, but the tension between my husband and my sons was even worse. And it was all about to come to a head.
One day when I'm at work I get a phone call. It's my husband telling me that my son has stabbed him. I panicked. I rush to get my purse so I could leave and go home when my cell phone rings. It's my mother who lives next door. She tells me to get home and get my blankety blank husband off of her property (she owns the property I live on). I get home and find that he had accused my one of my sons of something so ridiculous that only a person under the influence of an illegal substance would have even thought of it. My son, a very mild mannered, laid back individual, had had all of it he was going to take. Six years of pent up frustration and anger at his step dad erupted and a fight ensued, ending with him stabbing my husband in the arm. I told my husband I wanted him to go. I was done with him and our marriage. I end up having to involve the police which I didn't want to do, but I couldn't get him to leave. So he left. He left me emotionally, financially and spiritually crippled.
The next six months would be dark days for me. I became depressed and secluded. I didn't want to see anyone or talk to anyone. I went to work. I came home. My mother blamed me for everything because I had allowed things to escalate to the point that they had. I have never done drugs in my life. I've never even smoked pot. I have drunk alcohol once in my life and found it to be one of the most disgusting and regrettable experiences of my life. I have never had a drop of alcohol since. So for someone like me who doesn't self medicate with substance (unless of course you count the occasional bag of Hershey's kisses as a substance) then I am forced to just deal. And I wasn't dealing very well. I didn't even open my laptop for months. But time began to work its magic and eventually I did open it up and start reconnecting some with friends on facebook. But I was still not a well person.
I had always been a woman of great faith. Others had even told me that God had given me the gift of faith. But I had been praying and praying for my husband to change, peace in my marriage and my life and all I got was chaos, turmoil, depression and a pile of bills I couldn't pay. My faith was gone. I stopped praying. I couldn't pray. I felt like a huge hypocrite for even speaking to God, because I guess I was blaming Him. Well, maybe not blaming him so much as accusing Him of not being there for me when I had needed Him most. So I figured what was the point. I had nothing to believe in. Not even myself. And like any co dependent enabling wife, I was letting my husband gradually ease his way back into my life by making me feel sorry and by making me feel guilty.
Enter Peter Ellstrom Deuel.
I started once again to watch ASJ episodes online. And all the old feelings I had started to feel before, began to resurface. I started researching Peter's life and his death. I learned things I'd never known about him. I saw pictures I'd never seen before and I felt so much more than what you feel with your typical starstruck crush. I began to feel connected. That is the only word I can think of to describe it. I went through a tremendous bout of grieving. The grief lasted for a long time. There were times when it would be overwhelming. I would go to work and people would ask me if I was okay. They thought all my blues were coming from my personal problems with my husband. And that's what I told everyone it was. But in truth there was something else. I was in mourning for a man I never knew who had died almost 40 years ago. Now, I don't know about the rest of you but that's just not something you tell everyone. So not only was I trying to cope with this tremendous grief, I was trying to do it in secret.
It was on one of those nights when the grieving had been particularly bad that I had the very first of what I call Petey experiences. I had been working all day and he had been on my mind constantly. I was driving home and I was crying and speaking to Peter. A feeling came over me. It was as if a voice inside of me was telling me to turn on the radio. I did. That's when the song "See You on the Other Side" by Ozzy Osbourne came on. I have blogged about this experience before so I won't go into detail, but I will share the link for those who may not have read it. It was in that moment that the clouds of grief began to part. My spirit started to feel relief from the sadness.
I rode on a small high from that experience for a while, until my human mind began to persuade me that it was a mere coincidence. Then the clouds of grief and the pain and loss began to seize me in their grip once again. I would watch memorial videos that others had made and I would just sit and bawl my eyes out. Peter was the first thing on my mind in the morning and the last thing on my mind at night. He stayed on my mind constantly. In short I was becoming obsessed.
During this time while my obsession grew, my husband's addiction got worse and worse. He would come to see me occasionally in secret, because my family did not want him around. I really didn't either at that time but he was basically homeless and I felt sorry for him and responsible for him. And like a typical co dependent wife, I would give him money and let him shower and sometimes sleep there. It created another stress for me, trying to sneak him in without anyone knowing and trying not to cave in when he asked me for money. I was going crazy. I wanted to leave. I wanted to pack my car with everything that would fit, fill up with gas, start driving and wherever I ran out of gas, that's where I'd be. I just wanted to go where nobody could find me. But that of course was unrealistic and out of the question. The only peace I had was when I was reading about or watching Peter. He was keeping my head above the water.
It was the fall of 2010 and I had watched every episode of ASJ and read all the articles on Peter I could find. But I wanted more. I wanted more episodes. And during this time, I started to speak to Peter. I didn't think he was really there, but it made me feel better to think he could hear me so I talked to him. I told him that I felt cheated because I never got to see him in a beautiful love story, and how I wished he could have starred in a timeless romance where I could picture myself there with him, being with him, falling in love with him. And once again this feeling comes over me that he's speaking to me, not in an audible voice, but deep in my spirit telling me that if I want that kind of tale I should just write one of my own and make it like I want it to be. Good advice, I thought. One of my friends from work and I had talked before about our love of romance novels and we both agreed that it wouldn't be that hard to write one. And so I opened a new page on my computer's notepad and I started typing a description of the movie I saw playing in my head starring Peter as Hannibal Heyes.
Over the next few months I would start the tale that you have all come to know and love as "Evangeline ~ A Hannibal Heyes Love Story." I can't tell you how many times I would be writing and I would feel like something or someone else took over and the words just flowed from some secret well of inspiration inside of me. I thought it was pretty good but I was too scared to share it with anyone. It was becoming my lifeline. All day my thoughts were consumed with story lines, plot twists and character dialogue. The energy I had been using to grieve was now being used to create. And I could feel Peter's joy at this. He did not want me to grieve and be sad. I truly believe he helped me write this story. It was his way of saying, don't waste anymore time on grief, use your energy to make something that will bring joy to yourself. If you want to honor my memory do it with laughter and tears of joy, not sadness. And so I wrote. Everyday I wrote and rewrote and perfected. My love story and my ever present muse were now my reason for getting up in the morning and my reason for smiling. I was slowly breaking out of my self engineered cocoon and I was going to emerge different and changed.
http://hannibalheyeslovestory-karen.blogspot.com/2011/09/comfort-for-grieving.html link to the Ozzy song experience.
Thank you for sharing this with us Karen you've been through some dark times, some of those feelings that you had whilst watching Peter in AS&J were similiar to mine the very first time I saw him in the 70s and had a need to escape from what was happening in my life at the time. Maybe one of these days I'll get around to writing my own blog!
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