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.
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| 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.
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?
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