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.