BILL BATCH WHERE ARE YOU???

0129 733 pm

Recently my Mother and I have been discussing an experience that happened to our family in the late Seventies, a story that doesn't seem quite real but sure enough it happened. The other day, on the phone, I asked my Mom about a man named Bill Batch, a person who I never physically met and yet still seemed somehow connected to the fragments of stories I heard my Mother tell about him.

Why are you thinking about him, she asked, and when I thought about it I realized I dreamt about discussing him with some ghost in my subconscious. So, we had a long conversation about what really happened, without the distorting of one's own memories. She said it was around 1978 or 79, at a time when my parents were separated but not yet divorced, with my father living out of the house, with his new girlfriend Glenna, and my Mother in the house in Greenford, OH, a tiny little fleck on the map of Ohio, with five kids and no way to support them. So my Mom learned how to upholster, starting with car and RV interiors, eventually expanding beyond that to reupholstering people's furniture. She was amazing at it, and what else was cool was going into people's houses, just invading their spaces and taking out their furniture--I went with my Mom on pick-ups and I'd bring in the Swatch books and wait patiently while old ladies picked out their favorite fabrics. My Mom was an amazing businesswoman, basically learning from scratch the in's and out's of doing business for yourself, totally DIY.

But, in that line of work, one was prone to meeting strange people. People would cold call my Mom to come and fix their furniture, make it look better than brand new, she ruled at it. So sometimes the paying customers could get strange. She said one time she had a call in Salem, OH to reupholster this guy's couch. She said she and my late brother-in-law Eric went to his house, and although he was a complete stranger, he seemed to know things about my father, things my Mom didn't think someone as random as this man should know about her estranged husband. Later after they got out of there with the couch, Eric told my Mom the man really frightened him, and Eric was not easily frightened. My Mom said there was something almost too powerful about his presence, the way it seemed to intrude into your unconscious mind. They had the couch in the basement in the house in Greenford, and my Mom found a folded up blanket inside of the furniture's frame. She called him, Bill Batch, and told him she found his blanket just in case he was missing it. But he told her to cover her child in it, the one who was in danger. She got off the phone, rattled and not sure what this freaky dude was all about. Eric took the folded up blanket and tried to immolate it in the barrel, but it wouldn't burn. My Mom said he buried it somewhere on the property.

They brought back the reupholstered couch, looking amazing, but I guess Bill seemed somewhat distracted. He paid my mom, and told her of a book he had written. He gave her a copy of it, but she says she doesn't remember what she did with it. But during this meeting, Bill Batch got even weirder. This man seemed to put himself into a trance by tapping his pen on the desk, with his face going blank, his voice altering with his facial expressions, channeling some outside force to the two of them. He was ready to transmit a message to my Mother, and Eric urged her home.

The story doesn't end there. A few days later my Mom came home and found a note from Bill Batch, attached to the body of a headless chicken. In the midst of the dead chicken on her porch she says she doesn't remember much of what the note said, she was super unnerved by the gesture. Why did he leave a blessing like that for her? She didn't know. But a few days after that, maybe a week or more, a cop car drove down into Greenford and came down our drive way. My Mom came out to meet the police. They told her that a man named Bill Batch had been committed to Woodside, the local psychiatric hospital. And he had escaped from the hospital, and he told everyone he had to get to Greenford, because he had a message for Jackie, my Mom. He was still on the loose, the cops told her, so lock up the house and windows and call us if he comes here. They left, and my Mom was left in a delicate state of sheer pants shitting panic. Who was this maniac and what was the message he had to deliver to her?

That's where it seems that Mr. Batch had more than a similarity in his practices of some sort of Caribbean religion, be it Santeria or something else more localized, but within the definitions of these beliefs, one can see this man was being compelled to make contact with my Mother. One of her children seemed to be in danger, and he had information that could potentially redefine our whole lives. But he never got to my Mom. They caught him, and put him away somewhere no one could find him. All alone in solitary confinement, he knew he failed in delivering the message he was commanded to deliver. This is thirty years ago, and I want to know what happened to this man and, most importantly, I need to know what was the message. Why did he have to deliver it? I don't think we were in any danger of this man harming us. In fact, I believe he was responding to some spiritual sentiment sent to protect us.

So, I know he wrote a book. I know he was a patient in Woodside Hospital, more than once no doubt. He lived in Salem, OH. He'd be between 60 and 70 years old, a man with a life's purpose nullified, beyond recognition. He failed the Spirit that spoke to him, and yet somewhere in him the Spirit still dwells, and maybe if I can find Bill Batch and ask him what the fuck happened. I want to know, because I think this experience has a much greater significance in the grander scheme of our day to day existence. I don't buy the insane plea. I think there is divinity in insanity, I have felt it myself in darker times, I know it is there, and I know there is truth within the candleflame, and the reflections it makes are divinely inspired. This man Bill Batch, was he a psychonaut, some kind of wizard? He was a nobody in a sea of faces, of jobs done and forgotten he gets remembered for trying to get involved with us spiritually.

When I find him, I will record his explanation for his actions, and maybe something will flicker again and that energy will answer what we seek.

Butthole Surfers--Creep in the Cellar