Sandi, studying psychology, brought over to Tom's house tests for him to take. 
It helped her in writing papers when she could experiment on him. Problem was,
 Tom was too ethical to pass any of the ethics tests Sandi gave him. (Ha, you laugh.)
 "How did I flunk the last one," Tom asked. 
"It was the question that said if you found change in the coke machine slot, would 
you take it. You said no."
" So, how did I flunk that one?"
" Nobody leaves money in the coke machine."
" I do so, replied Tom. If the money isn't mine, I'm not taking it.
I didn't earn it. I didn't work for it."
" Nobody believes that! You say that on the test and the test thinks
 you're lying."
"  Well, people leave pennies in cups near cash registers. How is that
 different? Does the test think they're lying, too?"
" Next question. You flunked the one where you said you never
 talk about people behind their back."
" I don't."
" You never gossip."
" Gal, I never even say good things about people behind their back."
" Why not? I don't know. Next question."
" You flunked the one that says that you always wash your hands before you eat."
" I do."
" Now, how is that possible?"
" I use the condensation around the soda cup and wipe my hands on 
the napkin. Bet the test never thought of that one. Next question."
" You said that you wouldn't turn in to the police a person who 
steals pens on the job."
" I wouldn't. I would refer them to my favorite psychotherapist for counseling." Tom smiled at her.
" Well, the test thinks you are unethical on that answer, too."
" Who wrote this test? Tom demanded to know. Where did I score normally?"
" The ones where you said you would gamble for pennies. And the one that says
 you would sneak into a movie theatre to catch the last half of the movie 
before your show started."
" Well, I do have a mischevious streak," smiled Tom.
" Well, this test thinks you're weird."
" I think that test is weird," replied Tom.
 Tom also had a great compassion for all living things. 
His folks were Russian, and they had come over around 1930 and settled 
in New England. They had started up a farm, on which the major crop was bees 
and honey. There were hives behind every barn. And great lawns of flowers 
and fruits for the bees to pollenate on the property. Tom remembered as a child his 
grandfather taking him for a tour of the hives. They walked in front of rows and rows
 of wooden boxes on stands with oval holes cut in front for the bees to enter and exit.
 The bees swarmed all around them and Tom could see the bees coming in, hovering in place
 like helicopters,  waiting for their turn to fly down and enter the hive. 
He could see their little back legs with yellow blobs of pollen on them that they had 
collected. Great swarms flew around Tom and his grandgather Tony coming and going from 
the hives. It was as if grandfather Tony was saying: Bees, here is Tom. Tom here are my bees.
 In the wintertime, Tom would find bees that had fallen in the snow. Tom would get 
a big spoon, scoop them up and bring them into the basement  and drop them on the table.
 They would thaw out and walk around on the table. Tom would get a jar of honey from the 
cupboard and put drops of honey on the table and the bees would crawl over for a meal. 
Then rejuvenated, they would start to fly around and Tom would open the basement door 
and out they would fly back to their hives. In the summer, sometimes the queen would fly
 out of the hive and her colony would follow her. Then Tony would get his ladder, go to
 where the swarm was in the tree, climb the ladder, wipe the bees away with his bare hands,
 grab the queen and walk back to the hive with her, the bees all following.  When it was 
time to collect the honey, Tony and his friends would don hats with netting and wear thick
 clothing and gloves and bring smokers to smoke the bees to calm them, because the bees knew
 their honey was being stolen and they would get mad and sting the thieves. Tom would stand 
at a safe distance and watch the grown men do this task. The men lifted off the roofs and
 pulled out the wooden frames that had combs filled with honey. They would put in new, 
empty frames for the bees to fill up. Then they would take the full frames back to the 
basement and cut off the protective wax that the bees had covered the combs with. They 
would then put these frames inside a big metal drum and turn a handle. The inside of the 
drum would spin faster and faster as you turned the handle and the honey would fly out and 
splat against the walls of the drum, then drip down below. At the bottom of the drum was a
 faucet which one turned to fill jars with honey. Tony sold the honey, gave some away as 
prizes at fairs and kept some for himself. The honey needed no boiling, no cooking, 
no pasteurization, no sterilization, no preservatives. One ate it just the way it came 
out of the honey comb. And honey would keep forever. Reportedly, honey has been found in
 3,000 year  old tombs in Egypt that is still edible. When Tom was sick or had a sore throat,
 they didn't give him any commercial cough syrup.  They gave him a teaspoon of honey.
 In the old country, there was no coke, they drank beer. They tried to get Tom to like beer
 but he turned his nose up at it. But the grandparents drunk it heartily. Then they would 
start dancing by the music of an accordion. when they got really drunk, they would start fist
 fights, usually over their war records- who had the more medals- and then the picnic table under
 the grape vine next to the apple tree would get knocked over. Grandma would watch from the kitchen
 window and say:"Oy, Oy, Oy! Big shame!" Then they would get embarassed and quiet down. 
(Where were Tom's parents? Mom was touring in an Opera company. Dad was a college professor 
teaching in Boston.) By one barn horseradish plants grew. What made these notable was that 
all the neighborhood boys would relieve themselves on the side of this barn. Oh, well. When 
it came time to make the horseradish, all the basement windows would be opened, for this was
 pungent stuff. No vegan or kosher or macrobiotic zen diets here. It was all meat and potatoes.
 In enormous quantities. Save for beer and maybe okra, Tom ate everything and liked everything.
 But one day an episode at a truck stop got him questioning his taste for a particular kind of
 meat. On a trip up I-95 Tom stopped at a truck stop diner where truckers come to refuel their
 rigs with diesel. One could see lines of trucks pulling various cargo at each of the pumps.
 Now, when cows are upset, they just moo. But when pigs are upset, their sound is very different.
 One of the trucks had a load of hogs that were being taken to market. It was a really hot day,
 and evidently the hogs were hot and thirsty, so much so that they were screaming in agony.
 Very unsettling. Tom was outside near the rig about to go into the restaurant, and he looked
 at one trucker who had just come out from eating and taking a shower, his hair wet and combed back.
 He was lighting up a cigarette. Tom pointed at the truck with the screaming hogs. 
"I know," replied the trucker. "That can happen when it gets really hot." 
He took a puff and went on his way, back to his rig parked up on the hill. 
When Tom went into the restaurant, there was bacon bits on the salad bar and Tom found himself
 staring at it. The trucker couldn't turn aside and hose down the hogs, probably because he was on a tight
 schedule and needed the money. The drive for money made alot of things unsavory. Tom once 
heard a story about a slaughterhouse that killed cows in an inhumane fashion. 
Normally cows are whacked on the head. But this was a kosher factory that instead 
slit the cows throats. Normally that would be humane, but the conveyor belt went so fast
 that the cows didn't have time to bleed to death before their legs were cut off with 
shears and they were stripped of their hides, so that what was still left of them was still 
mooing at the end of the conveyor belt. Somebody complained, and the converyor belt was slowed down. 

In college, Tom’s major had been biology. Now, when people major in biology, that usually means 
that they like animals. They hung out at the pet department in the store, their bedroom was 
filled with pet stuff, like aquariums, they ended up raising a whole bunch of hamsters or 
mice or breeding guppies and the like. They like animals. But when you major in biology in 
college, they make you experiment on them. It has to do with the scientific method.
 Religion made such a mess of western civilization with its dogma and presumptions 
that now science has turned into a sort of religion, so that poor little animals have to
 be sacrificed over and over to prove a point. We know that hamsters and fetal pigs 
and mice and toads have hearts. Why do we have to keep cutting them open over and over again
in biology class to see their heart? If you think most biology majors enjoy experimenting 
on animals, you would be wrong. And after college, they go right back to being nice to animals,
 such as becoming veterinarians. At Tom’s college, which by the way, was Boston University,
 the experimentation was pretty minimal. Now, during the summers,
 Tom’s dad wanted him to be in school, as Tom’s dad didn’t cotton to spending summers 
at the beach or goofing off or whatever. So during Tom’s summers, he attended a school in Virginia
in the mountains which shall be nameless here. They had a different attitude towards animals.
 It was rougher. They would take hamsters and pin them down on wax blocks through their
 little hands and feet so that they could cut their chests open while they were still
 alive to look at their beating hearts. And Tom remembers one girl who was trying to
 get her master’s degree by keeping a little black kitten in a cage for a whole year,
 feeding it nothing but ground up toads in order to prove that cats were transmitters
 of Taenia Solium. She didn’t succeed. Tom remembers going into the cold lab and 
hearing the poor little thing month after month crying piteously to be let out. 
And then some professors would get together and shoot pigeons from their windows. 
They also kept sheep in stalls with their heads in holes in boards and  
the floor of one of the stalls rotted away from the urine and feces and caved
 in one night and the sheep in that stall hung by its neck and strangled to death.
The whole campus, indeed, made Tom uncomfortable. 

 One time Tom was thinking about the nature of good and evil, so, what
 else is new? Tom thought that if all the world's problems were 
due to Satan, then why didn't God kill Satan? But that seemed 
to be everyone's solution to everything: If it bugs you, then kill it. Nobody wanted 
to compromise, nobody wanted to talk  about it and be reasonable and work it out. People 
just wanted to kill each other.  God was better than that. But what if, if instead of
 killing Satan, God just struck him with amnesia? That way, Satan wouldn't know who or
 what he was. He wouldn't know how to do evil anymore.  Satan would be oblivious, 
traipsing through the fields collecting daisies and chasing butterflies. At this point,
 Tom felt incredibly bad. Every part of him was screaming out in infinite agony. Tom 
recognized it. It was the agony of being separated from God. Luckily, the feeling 
lasted only a split second. The feeling was bad enough to kill you right on the spot. Tom hopes
 he never experiences that feeling again. 
Let's get back to something funny. The feds were following Tom and they weren't doing a good job
 of it.  When he was driving down the highway, they would stay behind him, going the same speed
 he was going for miles. thing is, Tom was driving an old truck that couldn't go faster than 55
 without vibrating, and nobody goes 55. So when Tom spotted the turkey, he would start to slow
 down. Slower and slower, until he was going 10 mph. And still the turkey wouldn't pass him,
 But he could feel the annoyance of the driver and it amused Tom. Then Tom would get bored and speed up
 again and the guy would continue to follow him the whole way to his destination.  
Or whenever Tom was coming up to an exit, the car behind him would pull back. Once he passed
 the exit, the car would speed up.Like for ten exits. The brilliance of this 
manuever is that if the person knows he is being 
followed he will keep up speed and take the exit at the last moment and if the guy behind 
doesn't react fast enough, he will zoom right by the exit and he will lose whoever he has 
been tailing. So you fall back to see what the driver will do.  Tom was so bored with this 
when he noticed it.  "Go to the church of your choice. I'm not interested in reforming
 you," Tom thought. And then Tom began to get pornographic email, also. The message was always
innocent looking, such as: "Hey, did you lose this?" And when Tom opened the email message, 
there the porn would be. It was so annoying.  He suspected he 
knew the origin: the other princes of darkness. So he began to block certain words. 
Words like: "Boobs, tits, coeds, girls..." the self-styled princes kept coming
up with new words to get around his blocks...so that Tom's blocked word list for his
email grew to some fifty words. But the problem was, with all those blocks,
 Tom's legitimate email began to be directed to the trash bin along with the porn. 
 When the bobsey twins found out that Tom was under surveillance,they were livid. 
"Dang! This kid of yours is going to bring the feds right to our doorstep!" growled Brady. 
"We have a worse problem  I believe, right now," said the Baron. "Someone by the name
 of Vanderwoode has been sniffing through the records at the State Capitol." He looked 
at Tom. "I have informants there who told me this. This Vanderwoode made a statement
 that he found it odd that prostitution arrests were so few." 
"So few?" asked Tom. 
"Yes. As in, either the police are becoming lenient in snuffing out this crime, 
or there are fewer prostitutes to arrest because someone is killing them all." 
He looked pointedly at Brady and Stone. 
"So," said Stone, "You think this Vanderwoode might in fact be Van Helsing?" 
Tom wanted to know what was going on, and it was explained to him. Stone and Brady
 considered themselves to be full fledged vampires, and so they demanded blood, 
and lots of it. Unfortunately, that much blood at once ususally meant death for 
the victim. And the two of them had been targeting prostitutes. Prostitutes seemed 
the perfect victim. They had no family, were homeless, were already missing persons 
and they just disappeared from sight. Brady and Stone might have just engaged 
in a mild attack so that the girls thought they had a hickey, but Brady and 
Stone were on a mission to rid the area of drug dealers, AIDS, pornography and other
 kinds of crime. These gals lowered property values and spread disease. Brady and
 Stone thought they were doing society a service, and getting a free meal to boot.
 But to their credit, they had stopped their activities when Sandi began to visit
 the DA's mansion. They didn't want her to know this dark secret about them. 
"We can still engage in damage control," said the Baron. "You two must 
instruct your men to arrest every suspected lady of the night they see. Bring them
 to the station, keep them overnight and let them go. Rearrest them the following
 evening. That will raise the arrest record in this area and swing Helsing away from 
us and to other cities and counties." The two instantly disappeared to take charge
 of this task. The DA turned to look at Tom. "I know you don't approve." 
Tom replied: "Mary magdalene was a prostitute and no, I don't approve." 
"The boys are well-meaning. They just get carried away sometimes. I know. You 
just want to have the ladies of the night see mental health professionals. 
"Durn straight."