.....And Baby Makes Three

The original title of my blog. I Should Have Known, basically telling how much fun it was to grow up being a baby boomer has at times sounded like maybe I wasn't having fun.  Even though there were many trials and tribulations plus some not very good decisions it was still an awesome time to live through.  Life wasn't any simpler then but goals were a lot easier to achieve.

By the start of the fourth year of my marriage to Dennis we had a race car that we were able to build and maintain on money we made from working on other people's cars.  Building the new 3 bedroom tract house for $20,500.00 was actually cheaper than paying rent and it had a decent garage to keep Dennis happy. Since our original game plan was to build a race car, buy a house and then have a baby we were on tract to achieve all three.

When the idea struck me that I just might be pregnant I went to a doctor in Arlington where we had lived and I worked. He suggested upon telling me I was indeed going to have a baby that I go to a doctor closer to where we lived in Carrollton.  That sounded logical and he provided me with several names of physicians he recommended. Perhaps it was logical but it was also terrifying.  Terrifying because I grew up with a father who was a pharmacist and did not trust doctors. The only doctor I had ever been to was the local neurosurgeon in Muskogee since he was the only one my father trusted. Dad had provided me with birth control pills when I got married so going to a doctor, especially to have a baby, was cause for severe anxiety attacks.

I managed to get up the nerve to call the first one on the list and make an appointment. Of course I had heard all the stories about going to gynecologists which added to my terror.  Arriving at his office was interesting in that I actually wondered if I was in the right place.  It was in an office building far from any hospital and not one of those huge medical building places.  The office itself was a small reception area with one rather stern looking lady in a white nurse's uniform and four or five chairs in the waiting room with no one else but me waiting.

In a matter of a few minutes I was ushered into Dr. Herndon's office.  He was sitting at his desk in a suit and tie, stood and shook my hand calling me by my first name then offered me a chair. Remember all those sheets you usually have to fill out at a new doctor's office?  Well, he asked me all the questions and filled them out himself - who does that!  We talked for an hour sitting in his office and the most memorable thing he said to me that day was that if we did not like each other or if I did not trust him to cut off my head and sew it back on then he would help me find a doctor I trusted - who says that!  I was at that point beginning to get a little less terrified.

Then I was sent into the exam room, the only exam room, and the stern looking nurse came in to give me instructions on putting on one of those horrible gowns. Have to admit that the exam was not as bad as I thought and Dr. Herndon had changed from the suit coat to a white lab coat.  After the exam I got dressed and went back into his office for another chat.  He determined that the baby was due on July 7th, I would see him every month for the first eight months and every week for the last month.  Rules for being pregnant in Dr. Herndon's book were quite simple.  No water skiing, no horseback riding and no motorcycle riding. Never having been water skiing I didn't have to worry about that, I questioned the horseback riding only to find out how bad they shake up your insides and it was not possible to deliver a baby if you were dead from a motorcycle accident. 
I was beginning to have faith in this guy. Oh, he did tell me that when it came time to have the baby he would appreciate it if I would go into labor at night or on the weekend so it did not mess up his office hours. (It sounds funny now that a doctor would give you his home phone number to call after office hours.)

All the family was happy about the news.  Alpha, Dennis's mom, made me some of the most gorgeous maternity clothes you have ever seen.  We fixed up the nursery and I kept working until the first of June.  There was some question along about March as to exactly when this baby was going to be born since I really did not need to wear maternity clothes by then. Dr. Herndon did not tell me how much weight I could gain and I found out pretty quickly that his idea was that I should not gain any weight. I got lectures each month about every pound I gained equaled an extra hour in labor, how hard it was to take the weight off later and that he wanted me to weigh my 125 pounds two weeks after delivery.  His famous line was that women in concentration camps that lived on bread and water delivered perfectly healthy babies. That was a challenge.

Most women hate to hear this but I actually felt better pregnant than not.  Life went on as usual with work, building race bodies and racing.
The weekend of my birthday the middle of June was the weekend of the Springnationals at Dallas International in Lewisville. The race car had had it's good and bad weekends before that one but we entered the race hoping for a good. one.  It was a four day race and friends from all over the country were in town.  When we were getting ready to load up on Sunday morning there was a slight kerflubawoozie.  We had two five gallon jugs, one with water and one with gas in the trailer.  Since it was important to use fresh gas for each race Dennis poured the contents of one of the jugs in the tank of the Mercury tow car.  Whoops!  It was the wrong jug, it was the water, not gas. Have you ever seen anyone shred a two inch thick shop manual because he couldn't figure out how to get the tank off the car to empty it? It was a fifteen minute fit of bad words and pages of the shop manual flying all over the garage while I laid under the car and found the right bolts to drop the tank. By some stroke of luck the car was running very well but in time trials there was something that was causing some problems.  At night we had to take the engine out of the car and tighten some bolts somewhere in the transmission or clutch, I can't really remember which. The car qualified for the race on Sunday which was quite exciting.

Sunday came and we actually won the first round (Dennis was not the best of driver's so this was rare). In order to make the next round we loaded the car in the trailer, drove five miles home, pulled the engine and tightened the bolts, loaded the car back in the trailer, then back to the race track. Won the second round and did the same routine, then the third and the fourth round after going home and pulling the engine three times we not only won the race but set the national speed record for our class. Guess Dr. Herndon didn't know about pulling engines out of cars or pushing 1300 pound race cars around or I think he might have added that to his list of things not to do.  By Sunday night I was no doubt tired but so happy to have won a race - finally. Does the picture below taken two weeks before the baby was due even look like I was pregnant?  I should have known.

Dr. Herndon and I tried to figure out when I stopped taking birth control pills and when I got pregnant but didn't come up with anything positive dates.  So he just had me come once a week starting the first of July. Every week after I went to the doctor Dennis's mom would call to find out the latest.  As July dragged into August she began becoming impatient and would tell me how doctors let women die by not inducing labor. Wonder if you call that death by being overly pregnant? Since I had gained the utmost trust in Dr. Herndon it actually got to be funny.  His philosophy was that the baby would come when it was ready and inducing labor was only a last resort. 

I finally went into labor during the early morning hours of August the 30th but waited to call Dr. Herndon until 6:30 on that Monday morning with an apology that I was about to mess up his office hours.  Off to Baylor Hospital where Wesley Allen was born about 11:30 in the morning. Even though the insurance papers state that I was pregnant for eleven months he was born a perfectly healthy eight pound little boy. To put a feather in my cap I weighed exactly 125 pounds when I went to see Dr. Herndon the next week. Guess the concentration camp diet worked.

Okay. We now have a nice house, a winning race car and a healthy baby.  Time to settle into a normal life as a stay at home mom.  Really! 
Did I really think that? Boy, did I still have a lot to learn.

What Do The Simple Folk Do

It may seem strange that drag racing became the center of my life from the beginning of my marriage to Dennis. Actually I came by it quite naturally having two car crazy brothers, started going to the drag races when I was fourteen and it was how I met Dennis in the first place.  There were times when I did wonder what the normal folk did to pass their time but there really wasn't much time to think about other things.

When Dennis went to work for Lincoln/Mercury we had a completed chassis and it did not take long for a racing enthusiast at his office to appear in our garage.  Robert E. Lee Capps, Jr. better known as Lee J came by to visit.  He was single, very smart, very funny and ready to go racing.  Since we had the chassis Lee J. wanted to build an engine and both a partnership and a friendship was formed.  Where the idea to build a six-cylinder Ford engine came from I really don't remember but that was the plan.

Dennis and I were building the aluminum bodies for other racers.  About the same time the company I worked for got the idea to make Spanish style wrought iron bar stools.  Quite by coincidence we had made friends with a racer who did car upholstery so naturally I said I could make the cushions for the bar stools. In reality I had no idea how to make them but learned pretty fast how to cut out the fabric, foam and wood it took to make them.  Between my friend and I we made about two hundred of the tops.  Should note here that as ugly as they look now they were the hot ticket in the year of Spanish houses and shag carpet.

Between the dragster, our side businesses of bar stool tops and aluminum bodies the little single car garage was a little difficult to deal with.  It was time to purchase a garage - I mean house.  Since Dennis thought he should only have to drive ten minutes to work we decided to build one of the starter tract homes in Carrollton.  It was Spanish style, of course and was on the very edge of civilization just north of Trinity Mills road. I got to drive to Arlington everyday to work but the good thing about it was that it was going to be much harder to move if someone did not like the house, the garage or the neighbors. Did I really buy red shag carpet and Spanish furniture?

Hertz had another sale of Ford rental cars and we purchased a '69 

Mercury Convertible and said goodbye to the lovely Mercury Marauder.

It also seemed stupid to keep making car payments on the '68 Chevy pick up since it could not be seen on the Ford parking lot. Since a guy can't live without a pick up Dennis found a '51 Ford to replace it.  It was a cool truck and became the tow truck for the dragster and trailer.  We put an oak bed in it and the only little problem it had was a vacuum leak that caused an interesting whistle when you drove down the street.  I

was always curious how someone who told other mechanics how to fix cars could not fix a leaky radiator, a transmission that didn't quite line up with the engine causing sheared clutch discs or a vacuum leak.  It still remains a mystery of life.

Shortly after we moved into the house the dragster had an engine and was ready to go to the Green valley Raceway.  That should have been an exciting day but was a penchant of things to come.  Somehow when we were loading the car on the trailer Dennis had me stand at the back of the trailer and it landed on my toes. My tennis shoe turned instantly red with blood and rather than be concerned about me Dennis was upset that I was so stupid to have my foot there in the first place.  I hobbled into the house, bandaged my toes, put on my saddle shoes in hopes the bleeding would stop and went off to the race track. Wow, my foot hurt a lot as I pushed the race car around.  The car did not run well, Dennis was grumpy and I ended up in the emergency room at 2:00 in the morning.  Nothing broken, big toe just smashed. Not a great evening.

Just to make sure there was never a dull moment around the Tarkington house Dennis and Lee J decided to paint the race car in the garage.  No one thought anything about the fact that the fan for the heat and air was in the garage.  It was magical how the entire interior of the house had a lovely blue dust all over everything. My dear Mother had met a man from Oklahoma City and got married.  We sort of missed the wedding due to some big race we had to attend.  Not a great way to create pleasant family relationships.  Lee J. got married to a gal named Peggy and they moved a few blocks from us. We did attend that wedding.

It was a very good thing the land in front of the house was designated for a future freeway.  Most of the neighbors were pretty good about the number of vehicles and the trailers that would show up on the weekend. Somewhere there had to be a secret map that showed all the want-to-be-racers and fans where the action was. If someone like Benny Osborn or Kenny Bernstein had us building a body for them the traffic got even worse.  Then there was the slight noise when we would start the car in the street to see how it sounded.

At the end of the fourth year of marriage we had now moved seven times, had eight different vehicles, had a running dragster (sometimes),

bought a house and I found out I was pregnant. But we did have the same dog, Herman, who had learned to speak English and stopped eating tacos and enchiladas. Now we can take the time to figure out what the simple folk do..........maybe.

Just Normal Everyday Life

Let's see - by the fall of 1967 I had been married a year and a half, Dennis was currently at his second job, we are the proud owners of a '61 and a '41 Chevy that teach a lot about auto mechanics on a daily basis, we had already moved five times and after five semesters of college I had not really decided what I wanted to be when (actually if) I grew up. The master plan for a path forward in life, build a race car, buy a house, have a baby, meant I needed to get a REAL job that paid more money than playing with children all day. Aah - time to become a normal person.

Back in those days if you didn't know anyone or have a family business to jump into the best way to find a job was to go to an employment agency.  Since Dennis worked in Grand Prairie and we lived in east Ft. Worth, maybe Arlington was the place to look. When the employment agency discovered I had no skills they sent me to a business they must have had a lot of experience with. It was one they must have sent many girls to with no skills.

It was a small parts manufacturing business on the western edge of Arlington.  It was owned by two gentlemen that I will call Mr. Scary ( A description, not his real name) and Bob. The office was a converted house and there was a machine shop at the back of the property.  Bob interviewed me and sat me down at an electric typewriter for the horrid typing test.  Well, I had never typed on an electric typewriter and flunked that one.  Guess Bob liked the fact that I spoke in full sentences, my dress covered more than the bottom of my underwear and I wasn't trying to look like the local stripper. Mr. Scary would hire people with different qualifications than Bob did including a receptionist that often asked questions like what state was Chicago in. I got hired.

Since I was so nervous when I went to interview for the job I somehow missed the fact that there was a bar in the house/office building.  About 4:00 every afternoon Mr. Scary had a parade of friends who would come by for a few drinks, a few very interesting stories and off-color jokes. Come deer season Mr. Scary would disappear for days only to return with his cronies in their vehicles with Bambi's strapped to the hoods. Bob and I would remain at our desks working away pretending that they were not there.  After all, somebody in the place needed to work.

The good thing about living in the little duplex in Ft. Worth was that I picked up a few skills when I got tired of white walls.  Unknown to the owner, I painted the kitchen cupboards and bought new hardware for them. Since it was years before mini blinds I learned how to make curtains out of really cheap material and wallpapered the bathroom. When it looked really comfy, Dennis decided we should move to Arlington. Oh boy, move number six in two years.

We found a house to rent that actually had a single car garage with a paved floor. One needs to note here that in looking for houses the garage was the most important attribute.  For a rent house it was not too bad and the curtains I made for the other place sort of worked plus it had a fenced backyard. The backyard meant we could get another dog. The cute little puppy grew to be a huge dog that we named Phydeaux.  He was a sweet guy but when he got big enough to jump the fence and scare all the neighbors when we went to work or eat the sofa when we left him in the house to long Dennis said he had to go. Goodbye dog number three.

Phydeauz (Fido)

Over the course of the next year Dennis tired of the '61 Chevy problems.
We looked at Mustangs but they were too expensive at $4,500 so he bought a new '68 stripped down pickup for $2,300.  He was also hellbent on taking the '41 back to his Dad and by some stroke of luck he found a '50 Mercury for $50.00.  It didn't run but all it required was a timing chain for $7.00 plus we found $20.00 stuffed in the overhead light.  What a steal!  I have to admit that I rather liked driving the Mercury.

Back at work, Bob decided he didn't really approve of Mr. Scary and the office situation so he went off and started his own company.  Since I had actually learned to type on an electric typewriter he called me once he was set up in the new business and I escaped Mr. Scary and went to work at Bob's new business.  About the same time Dennis and I started building race car bodies on the weekends. The extra money from building the race car bodies afforded us the extra money to build a race car - a dragster to be exact.

Since the business Bob had started had connections to purchase the tubing required to build dragster he let me purchase it at cost.  Then we took the tubing to Sand Springs, Oklahoma to the shop of a drag racer named Benny Osborn to build it.  I have to say here that in all my years of being involved in the sport, Benny was the nicest person I ever met. He also built us a beautiful and safe chassis.

                      Dragster Chassis and our neighbor boy, Bruce

By chance someone at LTV where Dennis worked saw an add in the paper that Ford/Lincoln/Mercury was looking for service reps. and thought it was something Dennis would like.  He went and applied and got the job as one of those company people who show up at a dealership when you have problems with your Mercury the dealership can't seem to fix. Now he was working in Carrollton, Tx, north of Dallas, and we were in Arlington.  No - not moving yet.  But they did not like his pickup in the Ford District Office parking lot.  Lucky for us that Hertz had a sale of rent cars each year and he bought a lovely '68 Mercury Marauder - gold - not one of Ford's most attractive cars - but cheap.

Funny story about the Marauder.  For the first time since we  went on the honeymoon Dennis decided we should go on vacation to Monterrey, Mexico with his Mother and niece.  Let me tell you the Mexicans loved the car.  Every time we parked it somewhere guys rushed up with buckets of water and wax.  When we came back they demanded money in a way you could not refuse. That had to be the cleanest car on the continent.  Dear Dennis ate tacos from a little street vendor and drank the water.  Add that to the fact that Monterrey was very industrial so he not only acquired Montezuma's Revenge but also a smog attack and couldn't breathe.  Nice....vacations are not turning out to be much fun as there is too much moaning being sick and bad words on the car getting spotless.

By the end of the third year of marriage we had now moved six times, had six different vehicles, Dennis was on his third job, acquired a dragster chassis, had two awful vacations and dog number 4, Herman, the wire-haired fox terrier who only spoke Spanish.  Oh, and a few cats I have not mentioned.  Just your normal, everyday life - right?

                                      Herman and our niece Ninnette

Period of Adjustment

If I thought the first year of marriage was only a period of adjustment just what was the next two or three?  I have been told that in looking back at past events you only remember the good parts and forget the bad. There must be some message in my not being able to remember any really happy times but only constant turmoil and stupid events.

Dennis decided I should go back to college in the fall of 1966 and become an English teacher.  Going to work might have been a better idea since money was tight but only having worked as a lifeguard had not provided me with many job skills.  So I enrolled in Arlington State College in Arlington.  Since this was my first time to go to school in Texas I was hit with taking all the state required courses for graduation which were less than inspiring. With tuition only being $5.00 a semester hour it was cheap enough.

Going back to college as a freshman at twenty years of age and married was difficult but not knowing anyone was the hard part.  Trying to handle taking care of the house and Dennis was the harder part as it seemed there was never time to study for the sixteen hours of classes I was carrying.  Luckily for me there was another girl, a few years older, in most of my classes.

Gretchen was a tall, beautiful girl who stuck out among the teeny boppers more than I did.  She was married to a much older man who was very prominent in Dallas social circles and very wealthy.  Somehow we became friends.  We arranged all of our classes the second semester
to be the same and spent all of our free time at school together.  Without Gretchen I would have never made it through two semesters. 
Neither of us were enthralled with the college and one attempt at socializing outside of school was a disaster.  She invited Dennis and I to a sports car race one weekend.  Her husband had a Lotus and although I enjoyed the race, liked her husband and had a great time.  Dennis was rude and hated every minute of being there.  She transferred to SMU the next fall and I had a hard time thinking about going back to Arlington without her.

Dennis changed jobs during my second semester and went to work for LTV in Grand Prairie, Texas.  He also decided that driving a 61 Chevy with a six-cylinder engine was not cool so a lot of time the second semester on weekends were spent doing an engine swap to upgrade to a V-8.  I don't remember why we got rid of the Volkswagon except Dennis hated it so when I got a summer job with the Ft. Worth Park Department I needed a car.

Dennis's Dad just happened to have an all original, except for the upholstery, 1941 Four-door Chevy sitting in his driveway not being used.  My thought on cars is that if it has four wheels and runs it is fine. So, we borrowed the 41 Chevy for me to drive and towed it to Texas. What a fun car to drive with only one minor little glitch.  Seems like the radiator had some problems and would leak when it got a little overheated.  It as easy to tell when this happened as little drops of water would appear on the windshield.  That was an easy fix as I just carried milk bottles in the backseat full of water and stopped and added water when needed.

The Park Department playground job was awesome.  There were twenty playgrounds at the elementary schools and the recreation centers.  Each one had a boy and girl partner to work at them. I had a partner named Howard.  He was a tall, gangly guy my same age with the biggest feet I have ever seen.  He was going to TCU and wanted to be an Episcopal priest.  Our job was to play with kids all day.  We had a school playground in the morning in a rather poor neighborhood and one in the afternoon in a very rich one. Both of our cars were filled with sports equipment, boxes of board games and craft making items. Our job was to play with the kids and teach them lifetime sports which were bowling, golf, badminton and tennis.

The morning playground had between 40 to 60 kids everyday hanging on the fence waiting for us to get there at 8:00 in the morning.  The afternoon had maybe ten kids the first week and then none.  They cancelled the afternoon playground and made Howard and I the travelling play directors for the big contest the end of the summer. Howard's mother had us come to their house everyday for lunch or if she was busy we would go downtown and his Dad would take us out. Our playground kids won almost every contest at the end of the summer including the play contest.  The last day the kids cried because it was over and I have to admit Howard and I did too.  

I tell this story for several reasons.  First of all I have wondered through the years whether the kids or Howard and I learned the most.
We learned a lot about kids less fortunate than we were, kids that needed snacks because there was no breakfast, kids that never had adults play with them and kids that just needed to have attention. I have also wondered how Howard has done in life as we lost touch.

The other reason I had to tell this story is partly due to the funny looking 41 Chevy.  Dennis had put the bigger engine in the 61 Chevy and things did not work out as well as he had hoped.  That may be putting it mildly.  It seemed like every three weeks or so the clutch plate in the transmission would shear apart - meaning no clutch, no driving possible. So I would have to drive the 41 Chevy to where ever it decided to happen, hook up his car with the trusty tow bar, stop by an auto parts store for a new clutch disc and tow the 61 home.

Here is where the fun began. In the dark of night with only a trouble light he would have to drop the transmission and replace the clutch disc
while laying on our driveway. My part in all this was to be like a nurse 
assisting a doctor during surgery handing him the needed tools while learning a whole stream of new words and phrases. If anyone can tell what "I'll be a suck egg dog" refers to I would appreciate a definition.
This too often an operation on the car made me wonder if it would be like a surgeon operating on an appendicitis and only cleaning out the infection but leaving the appendix.  Was it one of those cases where Chevy put in some bolts that were not really needed so you just leave them out when putting a car back together?  I think I heard car companies did that so they could charge more money.

On weekends when there was no drag racing we went to see family in Oklahoma.  Most of the weekend were spent at Dennis's home in Warner since my family was a mess.  No one ever mentioned Dad to Mother or Mother to Dad.  Paul had remarried to a girl with a cute little boy and I lost all contact with his first wife, Joan, and son, Don. That was hard as Joan and I were really good friends. Plus with Mother dumping Dad Dennis's parents no longer liked her. Mother at this time was going through her second childhood, bought a little house in Muskogee and a Corvette.  Visiting was a nightmare to say the least.

Since I was not enthralled with college when Gretchen was not returning somehow a master plan was conjured up. The new plan was to (1) Build a race car since that was all Dennis thought about and we spent every weekend going to watch them (2) Buy a house (3) Have a baby.  That required dollars so I had to find a job doing something that paid a little more than playing with children all day.

Remember what I said in the last story about friends?  I think maybe Gretchen and Howard were the beginning of learning a very important coping skill.