If anyone has read my profile you probably notice that I have a tendency to jump into things before I really pay attention to all the particulars of the situation. I am afraid that has been true all my life, even to this day. But that is also why I think it has been an exciting and fun roller coaster ride. Somewhere through the years I decided that I had amazing "springback". Think of one of those spring type doorstops. No matter how much you try to bend or force it down it just pops right back up.
After a less than desirable wedding and honeymoon getting settled in Farmington, New Mexico was not easy. Farmington was an oil boom town on the edge of the Navajo Reservation and although it may be a tourist destination now it certainly was not in 1966. Dennis had made no friends in the seven months he had been living there and working for Mid-Continent Oil and Supply and I don't remember meeting a single person except some Jehovah Witnesses that came to the door once. But we did not live there long as he was transferred to the main office in Fort Worth three weeks after we got there. Let's see - married on January 28th, moved to Farmington and moved to Ft. Worth on February 21st.
I have totally blocked the move to Ft. Worth out of my memory but I am assuming we must have rented a truck as there was no way we could do the Okie/VW routine with his stuff too. In typical Dennis fashion we made the 800 mile trip in one day as staying in a motel was a waste of time and money. One night in a motel in Ft. Worth and then rented a furnished apartment the next morning. Since Mid-Continent's office was downtown it was important to find a location close. Wow, we found one four blocks south of the huge Post Office and I-30 and only ten city blocks from his office.
It was actually not a bad apartment for $65.00 a month and it had a swimming pool. I took Dennis to work each morning and with a map of Ft. Worth and the phone book in the car I toured the city then rushed home to fix dinner before I went to pick him up. When the weather got warmer and other tenants had parties at the pool in the evening Dennis decided it was not a nice place to live.
By some stoke of luck the owners of the apartments had a duplex only three blocks further south. Still close to downtown and closer to John Peter Smith Hospital. We were entertained all night by the sound of sirens from both ambulances and police cars. There was even a nice policeman who came to check on us often which gave us the idea that maybe the neighborhood was less than desirable. The duplex was really nice and much larger than the apartment. There was only one small problem in that it had a water cooler instead of an air conditioner. It was a particularly rainy, muggy summer and by August there was a nice coat of black mold on the bedroom walls. Time to move - again.
I can remember looking at only one place again for this move. It was another duplex one block south of East Lancaster in a nice older neighborhood. It had a garage (with a dirt floor), a big yard and no furniture. We managed to find a cute 1950's round top refrigerator for $90.00 and an antique bedroom set for $50.00. That got us moved in....what more do you need? After a few weeks of curse words about not having any more furniture Dennis's Mom, Alpha, came down and one Saturday while Dennis was at an Air Force Reserve meeting we went shopping. Garage sales and thrift stores came in handy.
When he arrived home there was a kitchen table and chairs, sofa, a chair, end tables and lamps. I always liked Dennis's Mom coming to visit as we had fun together and Dennis tended to not use bad words in front of her.
So, let's see where we are at:
Married the end of January and by the middle of August we had moved four times. Is this a sign someone is not happy anyplace he lives?
The VW was on it's third clutch when the car was only a year old since someone drove it like it was a 327 with a four on the floor.
We had not met anyone except people who wanted us to go to their church (told all of them I was Jewish) and the new next door neighbors. The neighbors did not have a car so the garage was all ours. We nicknamed them Two-Ton-Tillie and Country Coy. Two-Ton ran the car wash down the street and Coy made Ranch Style Beans at the bean factory. According to Two-Ton all Coy would eat was taters and beans. We tried not to be too friendly with them or to put it bluntly, there were no dinner parties.
Oh, and the constant cockroach problem was because they lived at Two-Ton's but smelled the gourmet meals from our place and scrambled over. Guess the roaches were tired of Ranch Style Beans.
We got a cute little American Spitz puppy. I loved it since it didn't yell at me but it barked a lot so Dennis gave it away. Then there was a kitten, Duke, that we both adored that adopted a litter of kittens from a bad mother cat. Dennis hated the mother cat and kittens so he took all of them to the pound. Duke got sick and passed away. Then we found a little German Shepard at a junk yard and named him Oscar. He was fun and cute but as he got bigger Dennis did not like him either so I think he went to the pound. Not doing well with pets.
uI had a job in a department store for a few months but the hours were not the same as Dennis's and there was no dinner on the table at 5:00 everyday. He decided I should go to Arlington State College in September of 1966 and finish getting a degree. It seems really silly that I would have agreed to become an English teacher so I could have summers off. Maybe that song from Bye, Bye Birdie was stuck in my head. Gads, I still know all the words.
Going to school meant we needed another car. One Saturday we bought a 1940 Ford pickup. It was beautiful but after we got it home Dennis discovered it had copper tubing for brakes lines. We took it back and found a 1961 Chevy that looked good but when it started up you could not see the car for all the white smoke coming out of the engine. It was some minor problem that Dennis was able to fix.
For fun Dennis tried building model airplanes you fly. He would sit for hours gluing the thin paper on the struts and then we would go to Forest Park on Sundays to fly them. Well, sort of fly them. Seems like everyone he built took off, went straight up and then crashed straight down. I think three times ended that hobby. I made him go roller skating at this really cool outdoor rink one night and thirty minutes into the session he informed me we were never skating again.(No, HE was never skating again. It did not mean I was not skating again.) Dancing did not ever happen. So we spent weekends watching drag racing at Green Valley Raceway from the spectator stands or running home to Warner to his Mom's house to go fishing.....ugh!
To top off the wonderful year of 1966 my brother Paul and Joan got a divorce. Mother had me come home on the bus sometime before we had a second car to try to talk brother Kenny out of marrying an older girl with two children right after he graduated from high school. I have to confess I did not work too hard at trying to change his mind. To really top the year off after Kenny got married Mother filed for divorce, locked Dad out of the house without telling him and never spoke to him again.
Like the Elton John song - I'm Still Standing - not defeated yet. Being the eternal optimist things would get better. After all, isn't the first year of marriage an adjustment period?
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