Then, I remembered the dream and thought, hmmm, that lake kinda looked like where my younger brother Major's body was found in early 2010. I thought maybe I need to delve into that, since Golden Flake was involved.
I had an apartment just off Duval Street in Key West. After rising each morning and having breakfast, I walked a few blocks to Sippin' Internet Cafe on Fleming Street, where I wrote posts for goodmorningkeywest.com and goodmorningfloridakeys.com, which had pretty good local reader numbers.
One morning in my apartment, I received a phone call from a fellow named Herman, who had worked most, perhaps all of his adult life for Golden Flake.
Herman said it was all over the local radio and TV news that Major had gone missing. Had I heard that? I said, no. Herman said it's also in the news that there is a typed note that got left at different places, including Golden Flake, accusing management of sucking the company dry, and if that did not stop, more action would be taken.
Wow. Thanks for letting me know.
Herman's territory was Montgomery and everything close around to it. I spent a week riding with him, after I was brought back to Birmingham from Louisville, Mississippi.
Herman had gotten a grocery store owner in Prattville to agree to let him replace Frito-Lay's racks with a Golden Flake rack. He drove us to that grocery store and dismantled a large half-empty Frito-Lay rack. Half-empty, because of purchases by the grocery store's customers and the Frito-Lay salesman was not due back until the next day.
We pulled the Frito-Lay rack into an aisle and assembled a Golden Flake rack and put it where the Frito-Lay rack had been We filled the Golden-Flake rack to the brim with Golden Flake products, and put the Frito Lay rack around the corner of the gondola, behind the Golden Flake rack, and left the store, laughing our asses off.
Years later, Golden Flake moved Herman to Birmingham, to be the sales manager for all of the company. Herman had a great life in Montgomery. His wife and his home were there. He had rental property there. He was happy as a clam there, lord of his own jungle. He would have made a great sales manager, if Golden Flathead had let him stay in Montgomery. But that was not how Golden Flake did things. Company first, always.
Herman made a lot of money off Golden Flake common stock. He still had friends in the Birmingham office - female office workers. He heard things from them and told me what he had heard.
Like, my father's widow Joann had her own Golden Flake employee, a financial person, a spy, reporting directly to her.
Like, Golden Flake's management and board of directors and Joann were making so much money that they were crippling the company and hurting rank and file employee morale. I
I was hearing the same thing from my other Golden Flake friend, who had the dream about him and me going to the Menninger Clinic..
A few minutes after Herman called about Major going missing, my cell phone rang. A childhood friend called, asking if I'd heard Major was missing? I said, yes, from Herman just a little while ago. My childhood friend knew Herman somewhat.
I got ready to go to Sippin'
My cell phone rang again.
My childhood friend said he'd just been called by a Birmingham News award-winning business journalist, whom he knew. The journalist wanted to know if I might let him interview me? I said, sure, but I want to see the typed note that is going around, before he calls me.
My friend called back, saying the journalist had a copy of the note and would FAX it to Sippin'. I said, give the journalist my phone number and tell him to call me in about an hour.
As I walked to Sippin', it came to me from out of the blue, it came strong, that Major killed himself and tried to make it look like murder.
I reached Sippin', got its FAX number and called my childhood friend and gave it to him, to give to the journalist. I soon received a FAX containing the typed note.
The note was short, perhaps 5 lines. I was well written. Whoever wrote it, knew Golden Flake.
The journalist called. He began by asking if I had any thoughts on what was going on with Major?
I said Major is an estate lawyer and has a tax law degree. He is a wizard with computers. He built a telephone company from scratch and sold it for a really good profit. He certainly knows how to set up an offshore account and disappear.
The journalist asked me about the note. I said, I could have written it, for I agreed with it. And in past years, Major and I were in agreement about Golden Flake .
The journalist asked me about Golden Flake, and I gave him some history, and that I was the son of the boss that had worked there full time, while Major had worked there very little.
I told the journalist that I would like to see what he wrote for his article, which came from me, to make sure it was accurate. He said he would send me a copy.
He asked me if I had any other thoughts about what might have happened to Major?
I paused. Then, I said, I have experiences that I don' talk much about around most people, but since you asked ... As I walked to this coffee shop, it came to me out of the blue that Major killed himself and tried to make it look like murder.
The journalist said cold chills were running up and down his spine, the same thought had come to him right before he called me.
Chi ching.
Later that morning, the journalist emailed the portion of his article that was based on what I had told him. Nothing in it about Major killing himself, but otherwise accurate.
I called him and said I was good with it. He said it would run the next morning.
I reported all of that in that day's blog posts.
I emailed John McKleroy. The Birmingham News had interviewed me about Major and Golden Flake and the article would run the next day.
The article didn't run the next day.
I called the journalist.
He said something about higher ups ...
He sounded weird ...
I called my childhood friend and told him what the journalist had told me.I said the News had caved to Joann Bashinsky and Golden Flake management.
My friend became indignant, said, no way the Birmingham News did that!
I said there was no other explanation.
I published that at my blog.
Alabama people got wind of my blog and its readership exploded.
The Starbucks in Fire Pants South was reported as saying Major was a regular customer and he was in there the afternoon of the day he went missing.
It was reported that someone fitting Major's description was in Five Points Hardware the afternoon of the day he went missing, buying rope and duct tape.
Major's daughter by his first wife found his car near Five Points South. In the car was a flash drive, on which was a draft of the typed note critical of Golden Flake management and directors and threatening further action.
I wrote about Major for weeks, interacting with Birmingham people who had emailed me. I published texts of their emails. I made some new friends. I made more enemies.
I offered myself to Birmingham law enforcement and the FBI, as someone who knew Major. No takers.
The Birmingham News had an article nearly every day about Major. His second wife was interviewed in their home by a local TV station.
A different Birmingham TV station did an audio interview of me, in which I talked about Major and me growing up and later, and about Golden Flake. I said nothing about Major having killed himself.
About 2 weeks after Major went missing, his body was discovered floating in a public golf course pond adjacent to Highland Avenue.
Early in my law practice, I lived in an apartment building above the golf club's pro shop and tennis shop and tennis courts.
My apartment had a clear view of the pond.
Major met his first wife at the tennis courts, she was the tennis pro.
Major met his second wife at the tennis courts, she was the tennis pro.
Major's mouth had an empty Golden Flake potato chip bag in it.
His mouth was taped shut with duct tape, which was wrapped around his head.
His upper torso was wrapped with rope tied with knots. His arms and hands had some free range of motion.
There was a bullet hole in Major's left temple. He was right-handed.
Law enforcement divers found a pistol on the bottom of the pond, under Major's body.
All of that the Birmingham News reported.
My childhood friend told me that someone he knew in the FBI said not to expect a happy result.
About two weeks after Major's body was found, the Birmingham News reported the findings of the Jefferson County (Birmingham) Medical Examiner and the Birmingham Police Department detective assigned to investigate Major's death: suicide made to look like murder.
That was the last thing the Birmingham News reported about Major's death.
There was a great commotion in Alabama on Facebook and at a blog operated by someone in Birmingham.
People who didn't know Major, who had never laid eyes on him, were saying: No way Major killed himself! He was murdered! Plain and simple!
Major's first wife and their daughter, who had found his car, told me that they thought he had killed himself.
The Alabama blogger suggested I may have been in on Major's murder. He seemed to get some traction on that with his readers.
I had not seen or spoken with Major since just after our father's memorial service in early September 2005. I had nothing whatsoever to gain from Major dying. I had no motive.
The next year, I had a dream that caused me to write to the FBI and request a copy of their file on Major's death. The person who responded didn't sound inclined. I replied that I was the oldest of my father''s bloodline and the family still had questions. I then received a large paper file, with many names and addresses lined through with thick black ink - redacted.
There were two very interesting things in the FBI file, which the Birmingham News had not reported.
A surveillance photo negative of a man standing at the sales counter in Five Points Hardware, dated the day Major went missing. The photo was taken from the man's right side. Major, I and my father had similar postures. There was zero doubt in my mind that was major in the photo. Zero doubt.
The gun found in the pond under Major's body was a Browning .32 automatic. A rare gun. A collector's gun. A similar gun was in a plastic display case in Joann Bashinsky's home. I thought it would have been just like Major to see that gun at his father's home and find himself one just like it.
Back to the Birmingham blogger.
He published that there was no stippling at the gunshot wound on Major's left temple, therefore it was not possible that Major shot himself.
Stippling is a powder burn pattern on the flash caused by a gun fired close to the skin.
The Medical Examiner's report stated there was stippling at the gunshot wound.
Years later, I met someone, who said he started following my blog when Major went missing, and had followed it ever since.
He said he knew something about guns and he knew a Birmingham gun dealer, who probably was the only person that could find a Browning .32 automatic. So, he drove to Birmingham and went to see that gun dealer,
The gun dealer said Major wanted the same gun his father had, and he was willing to pay a lot to have it, and I found it for him.
I did more digging, which I reported from time to time at my blogs.
More people knew things that were not in the FBI report.
There were several reasons for why Major killed himself.
Perhaps there is yet another reason, as yet unknown to me?
The empty Golden Flake potato chip wrapper in Major's taped-shut mouth always puzzled me.
I truly hope he is doing well in the afterlife, because he really struggled in this life.
Post-Script:
My friend who came to Birmingham and talked with the gun dealer that found the .32 Browning pistol for Major helped me do a podcast about Major, in which I said much the same that I wrote above. My friend created The Redneck Mystic Lawyer Podcast in 2022.
Maybe 10 days after the podcast went public in the Torrent system, which welcomes different, even controversial material, if it is free and does not promote or solicit anything, my friend told me about a dream he had about Major. I asked my friend to write up the dream and email it to me, Here's what he wrote:
"Had a dream that Major looked much younger and much healthier. His hair was a little longer and his smile was more genuine. He said that he felt that finally someone had done him some justice with the podcast. All these years and only his brother and maybe one more ever considered what the burden of Golden Flake placed on the family, and how it silenced all the “Golden Flake” children. He was in a place now much happier, much freer, and where he could be himself without worry for image or keeping up appearances. He was down on Islamorada except it was like Islamorada of the late 70’s at most.
"I asked him,
'Are you upset at Sloan?'
'Lawhd no, son. Bash has to tell the truth. It's who he's representing. He can't suborn perjury.'
'Who is he representing as a client ?'
'God. Attorney client privilege. Sloan's client is God and God won't let him lie.'
"Before he walked off into the aethers, Major said in the afterlife he had learned it is better to live your truth and freedom rather than construct a facade which would collapse with a whisper.
"As I finished up writing this for Sloan, the following came to me:
'Death and how a man dies? It frees up a man to actually live and speak as he so wished in the world of people who are only lying to themselves that they are living a life true to themselves and free.'
Perhaps some context for my friend's dream: Major was bisexual, in the closet. Someone knew it and was threatening to out him and there was nothing he could do to stop it.
The last paragraph of what my friend wrote reminded me of a poem that fell out of me as fast as I could write it in May 2003. I was sleeping nights in a small tent in the wetlands near the Key West airport, not yet aware that I had contracted life-threatening MRSA flesh-eating bacteria, and two local doctors and the local hospital and the Florida Keys Outreach Coalition homeless shelter would save my life.
“I AM A MAN”
I am a man.
I said,
I am a man!
What means it,
being a man?
A man is a warrior:
he lives by a code of honor,
his word is reliable,
his actions confirm his words,
his commitment is holiness,
his enemies are welcome at his hearth,
he fears but moves forward,
he cries and gets up again,
he hates but forgives,
he loves and let’s go,
he doubts but trusts God,
he’s a good friend,
he seeks resolutions,
he demands nothing,
he risks everything,
he regrets his mistakes,
he seeks to make amends,
he puts others’ welfare first,
he accepts apologies truly made,
he expects nothing back,
he lives ready to die,
he laughs when he “should” scream,
he screams when he “should” laugh,
he sings just because,
he shrugs off insults,
he learns from misfortune,
he cusses God for making him,
he wishes he was done,
he loves children and animals,
he relishes a woman’s scent,
he smiles when he’s content,
he knows God’s his master,
he walks in rainbows,
his garden is the world,
his way is nature,
he loves fishing,
his wife is his soul,
his food is life,
his pay is whatever he receives.
Yep, he’s crazy.
(2003)
2d Post-Script
About two weeks after I wrote the above, I received a Facebook friend request from a young woman showing a middle name of Hazelrig. I asked her if she was related to Chip Hazelriig, and she said he was her father. We had further discussion.
Me
I know he went through a rough pratch some years ago, and hope he's doing better. Please tell him that for me. As for the friend request you sent to me, do you know anything about me? Your Dad knows I'm ... different. But probably not just how different. I'm writing a book about my father's family and his company Golden Flake, which might, or might know your Dad. I'm the keeper of the family skeletons.
Her:
Thanks for the kind wishes. He has a tough row to hoe these days…but he manages better than I would under those circumstances! I remember your Daddy’s kindnesses to our family. One year when I was in college, we stayed at his place in Islamorada. I can remember seeing the tiny baby sharks off the dock first thing in the morning. Families are complicated. I’d love to read your book when it’s done. I’ve always been interested in Birmingham history. Golden Flake has always been an iconic brand in my book.
Me
I think most people would find my the book challenging, or off-putting. If you give me your email address, I'll send you the chapter about how my family got involved with Golden Flake,and in that way you will see what I mean.
Her
That would be great. XXXXXXXX@gmail.com
History is challenging in that way. Most people want it sanitized to be more palatable, but it doesn’t change what actually happened. The truth is refreshing.
Me
be careful what you ask for.
I emailed you that chapter
Her
Thanks! I’ll check it out.
Her
I really enjoyed reading the chapter. And I am so sorry to hear about your child. I couldn’t imagine showing up to law
Me
If he had lived, I doubt I would have become a writer, I doubt I would have lived past 50.
Her
I just watched Tiny Beautiful Things on Hulu based on the book of the same name. There was a line of dialogue you reminded me of. Basically how we have all these parallel lives depending on how certain things would have turned out differently. I am butchering it, but you would perhaps enjoy it.
Me
Parallel universes, that was talked about a lot back in the late 1980s, around when I started to live in different universes on this planet, and by now I suppose I've lived in over a dozen different universes on this planet, or, if you wish, a dozen different ives. If you like different, check out The Redneck Mystic Lawyer podcast at YouTube, and my first novel, which now can be read for free at archive.org. https://archive.org/details/kundalina
Her
Cool, I will! Thanks.
Me
I will send you what I wrote this morning about meeting your Dad in Key West shortly after my younger brother Major went missing in early 2010. You will find it interesting, and there's stuff, which later happened, that your father might also find interesting.
So, in early 2010, my younger brother Major was missing for maybe a week. I'm living in an apartment in the back of a building, the front of which faces Duval Street in Key West. I'm writing about Major every day at goodmorningkeywest.com and goodmorningfloridakeys.com. As is the Birmingham News. I'm getting a whole lot of page views in Alabama, and am hearing from people there I know and don't know.
My cell phone rings, I answer. A man asks if this is Sloan Bashinsky? I say, yes. He says he is Chip Hazelrig. I have heard of Chip, as having had oil and gas investment dealings with my father. but that's all I know about Chip.
He says he came down from Ft. Lauderdale (I think) to Key West on a boat with a friend, who likes to fish, and he got worn out fishing, and, since he had heard I live in Key West, he thought he would try to find me.
I ask how he got my cell phone number? He says he went into a bar on Duval Street and asked a man sitting at the bar if he knew me? The man said, yes. He asked the man if he had my phone number? The man said, no, but the fellow sitting next to him did.
I didn't say that I could not imagine how anyone in a bar in Key West knew my phone number. In the context of Major being missing, I figured it was arranged by God, regardless.
I ask Chip if he knows where Sloppy Joe's Bar is on Duval Street? He says yes. I suggest we meet around the corner at the steps of Old City Hall, where we can be away from the Duval noise and in the shade. He agrees.
I hop on my bicycle and am there in a few minutes, greet Chip, shake his hand, and lead him around the east side of Old City Hall, where there are railroad ties we can sit on in the shade and talk.
First, we talked about Major. What was going on with him? I said I really didn't know. Maybe I also said, right after I learned from Birmingham friends that Major had gone missing, it came to me from out of the blue that he killed himself and tried to make it look like murder; and when I shared that with a Birmingham News award-winning business journalist, after he called me about an hour later to interview me, the journalist said cold chills were running up and down his spine, because the same thing had occurred to him right before he called me.
I had published that on my blogs the same day.
Chip said, what he really wanted to talk with me about was my father, whom he loved, and a lawsuit that my father's widow Joann and my father's estate had filed against Chip and his partner and their oil & gas investment company.
My recollection all these years later was the lawsuit claimed Chip and his partner owed my father's estate money, or at the very least, a better accounting of my father's money and investments with them.
The lawsuit had dragged on, and finally it was settled by Chip and his partner paying a sum that covered the fees of the law firm that was representing Joann and my father's estate. I think that law firm was Spain & Gillon, which had represented my father and his father and Golden Flake all along.
Chip said he had a very low opinion of the law firm. I said I did, too. I don't recall if I told any of my reasons.
Chip told a story that cracked me up, which had preceded and probably caused the lawsuit to happen after my father died.
Joann and the law firm and the fellow running Golden Flake, under whom I had worked when I was there, demanded a meeting with my father and Chip and his business partner. I think the meeting occurred at Golden Flake. After a lot was said by Joann and the law firm, about Chip and his business partner and their and my father's oil and gas investments, my father said, "This is how it is. You folks run the potato chip company, I will run the oil and gas company."
I thought it was hilarious. I laughed, said, that sounds just like my father!
Chip and I talked for maybe an hour, then said goodbye, and I left on my bicycle.
I reported that on my blogs the next morning.
A blog in Birmingham, named Legal Schnauzer, picked that up.
First I'd heard of that blog.
The blogger was making claims about Chip being in on something shady in Alabama, but I don't now recall what.
The blogger had gone after, or would go after, Alabama Governor Bob Riley and his family.
After Major's body was found in the Highland Park golf course pond next to Highland Avenue, the blogger insinuated I might have been in on it. Maybe the blogger insinuated Chip might have been in on it, too?
The blogger kept that up after the Birmingham News reported that the Birmingham Police Department detective assiged to the case, and the Jefferson County Medical Examiner (Coroner) both had concluded it was suicide made to look like murder.
The News reported nothing else on Major, but I kept writing about him on my blogs.
I later had a number of rows with the Birmingham blogger over his claim that Major was murdered and I might have been in on it.
I had no motive. I stood to receive nothing if Major died, and I received nothing from his estate.
I had not seen or spoken with Major since our father died in August 2005. I knew nothing about his comings and goings.
I had lived in the Florida Keys all that time, about 950 miles away.
Then, the blogger published that there was no stippling at the gunshot wound on the left side of Major's head.
Stippling is a powder burn pattern caused by a gun barrel pressed to the skin or very close to the skin when the gun is fired.
If there was no stippling, someone other than Major obviously fired the pistol.
At Legal Schnauzer, I made a comment that the Medical Examiner's report said there was stippling at the gunshot wound.
After a while, the blogger said I was correct, but it was an honest mistake on his part. One of his readers agreed with him.
I think I replied, it was not an honest mistake. The ME's report was a public document. The argument that there was no stippling at the wound was made for the sole purpose of disproving it was suicide.
I don't know how it went with your father and that blogger, but perhaps Chip would like to see what I have written to you here, and perhaps he would like to see the chapter in the new book, where I wrote about Major's suicide, without mentioning the blogger, with whom I later had more dealings about other matters that involved me, which I probably will not go into in the new book.
However, one thing your father might find interesting regards the blogger getting put in the Shelby County jail by a judge, because the blogger would not remove from his blog what he had published about Bob Riley and his family. That made national news, and lots of people were really mad about the blogger's right to free speech and free press being squashed by the judge.
I emailed the blogger's wife, and I told her that the public was not going to forget what her husband had published, so why didn't she take the Riley stuff down from the blog. She replied that her husband had his password and she couldn't take it down. I said, then tell him what I said, and for him to give you the password so you can take the Riley stuff down and the judge would release your husband from jail. She said she would take it up with her husband.
Not long after that, the blogger was out of jail.
I never got a thank you. I did get a lot more grief from that blogger. Then, based on what I heard from various corners of here and there, the blogger's life went to shit, because the blogger kept shitting in places that shit back.
