Retro: "Shit Happens" - A Green Bay Awakening.

 “Shit Happens” – A Green Bay Awakening

“No one is going to figure out your life. It’s your responsibility.”
“Not everyone will like you. That’s life.”
“Shit happens!”
“Go f..k yourself!”
“Holy shit!”

These were a few of the everyday expressions I became well acquainted with during my time living in the United States—raw, unapologetic phrases that peppered the daily rhythm of conversations, especially while I was attending the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay (UWGB) in the early 1980s.

But before I ever stepped foot on a college campus, I spent three grueling years as a boner—a meat cutter—at Green Bay Meats and Cold Storage in the 1970s. Life had given me a few good jolts by then, like suddenly finding myself married with a four-month-old baby, facing my first Wisconsin winter in Duck Creek, Brown County. We lived next to Farr’s Grove, the local tavern where I may well have been the first “colored guy” some of the regulars had ever met.

Thanks to the owner, Mr. Chester Farr, and his wife, my small family and I were taken under their wings. We became part of the Farr clan. My late mother-in-law, Mrs. Beatrice Goerst, made sure our little family stayed warm through that bone-cracking winter—especially me, a tropical fish out of water. We had just landed from Malaysia after three days of air travel and were promptly quarantined for a week due to a case of shigella contracted during the flight.

To say that my arrival in the United States was “challenging” is putting it mildly.

I was twenty-five, hitting twenty-six, when I married my first wife in Georgetown, Penang—at a place now known as Selera Wawasan Restoran. In the face of immigration hurdles and no fixed place to stay, we decided to take our chances in Green Bay.

It was fall, and the skies in Wisconsin were grey. The leafless trees stood stark against a dull, almost “dogshit-colored” sky. I had leapt out of the frying pan and straight into the freezer.

Green Bay is known for its punishing winters—some of the coldest in the U.S., including Alaska. I once lived in a mobile home with no heating during a cold snap that reached -100°F with wind chill. The gas lines froze, the water pipes burst—but still, I found beauty in it all. Snow awakened something in me. It was as though nature herself stripped away all distractions and left me with a blank page.

My rebirth began one gloomy afternoon. I was sitting in a Lazy Boy recliner, watching Gilligan’s Island in black and white, when I saw giant cotton balls floating down from the grey sky. Snowflakes! I leapt out of the chair and ran into the backyard with my arms outstretched, face turned skyward, mouth open like a child catching snow on my tongue. I was barefoot, wearing only a sarong and a T-shirt, dancing in joy in full view of the tavern crowd across the street.

Someone probably yelled, “What the f..k?! Check this guy out! Dancing in a skirt in the snow!”

Then my mother-in-law shouted from the back door: “Get back in here before you freeze your butt off!”

As I walked back in, laughing and shivering, a voice echoed in my head in Malay:
"Hang ada di negeri orang, sapa pon tak kenai hang! Hang takut ka? Hang berani ka? Hang tepok dada tanya selera—baik buruk dalam tangan hang!"
(“You are in a foreign land. No one knows who you are. Are you afraid? Are you brave? Beat your chest and make your choice—your fate is in your hands.”)

That day, I woke up.

“No one is going to figure out your life for you. It’s your responsibility.”
I took that to heart.

Within three years, I had built a life—but at the cost of my soul. Working in the meatpacking industry, in Green Bay and later Milwaukee, broke me in ways I didn’t even understand at the time. Day after day on the boning table, I lost my sense of self. I turned to alcohol, spiraled into despair, and became someone I barely recognized.

I took it out on my wife and son. The divorce was inevitable.

She said, “Sure, now you’re free—and dumping the kid on me.”

And I told her, “If I take him, you may never see him again unless you're willing to come to Malaysia. At least there, my family can help raise him.”

Our lawyer—her employer, but my friend—told me it was best to let go before things got uglier. I didn’t even have to pay for his services. That didn’t go over well either.

I was scared. I was ashamed. I felt humiliated and empty. But I was also relieved. I had escaped a toxic life I didn’t know how to fix.

“Not everyone will like you. That’s life.”

I don’t seek forgiveness for the pain I caused. But I do seek to understand. How did I fall so far into anger, alcoholism, and spiritual darkness?

“Shit happens.”

Losing my wife and son was the hardest hit. I was broken. I drank. I wandered into sleazy bars and porn theaters. I worked on the meat table like a machine by day and crumbled into pieces at night.

Then Allen Hautamaki came into my life—a friend from our apartment building. He saw my state and encouraged me to go to college. He was a student counselor at UWGB. Thanks to Allen, I found a new path.

“Holy shit!”
From meat cutter to university student—who would’ve thought?

It was a miracle. A rebirth. The beginning of a long, painful, but necessary journey to discover the answer to the question that had been whispering to me all along:

Who am I?

And if you're ever in Green Bay, drop by Jake’s Pizza on East Main Street. Tell the owner I’ll have the usual. You’ll find me next door at the Wolf’s Den—just checking out the chicks a bit.

Ya hey, Green Bay.

Go Packers.