Black Stars?

If my narrative makes it seem like I was terribly unhappy in my marriage to Dennis I have to correct that impression here.  I wasn't because I did not know any better.  I have always said I was and am one of the happiest people I know. Growing up with my family I learned early on to outwardly let bad events get tucked away and forge ahead. There are a few things I wish now I had learned like you can't make someone else happy and how to express my point of view  instead of being so agreeable all the time. You learn a lot of behavior patterns and parenting skills from your parents, some good and some bad.  

Back to the story......

After Wes was born it was a little difficult with Dennis travelling all week.  His mother, Alpha, came down often and usually stayed a couple of weeks. When she came to visit or my Mother and George we did go places so it was a nice break always with Wes in tow. For Ford events when we needed a baby sitter our neighbor had a couple of teenage daughters who were willing to baby sit. I have to laugh when I hear about couples just going out for the evening for a "date night" without children.  What is that?

My salvation was Mother's Day Out which consisted of three or four hours during the day on Tuesdays and Thursdays when I could run errands, have time to clean the house by myself or actually do something fun.  Some how I discovered a ceramics class where I met other stay-at-home mom's and learned I could do something besides cook, clean and run around finding car parts. The best thing was that I met Becky, who actually lived three blocks down the street from me, had two little girls and a lot of artistic talent.  We became instant friends.

Wes

Becky painted pictures mainly for little children's rooms, taught me how to upholster and I taught her how to wallpaper.  Within a year I had bought my own kiln to fire the ceramics and both of us were overrun with ceramic pieces and paintings.  The idea popped into our minds that we could sell our art projects so we formed what we called the Crafty Artists. It didn't take long to find a few other gals who created artworks at home and wanted to sell them.

Our first venue was in a park in Carrollton on a beautiful spring day.  Becky was the organizer and I was the one who set up the craft sale.  To our surprise it went very well and more people came by and wanted to join the group.  At that time all the malls in the area had craft shows on the weekends to attract customers so it was fairly easy to really go big time.  At least every other month for three years our group appeared at Town East Mall, Valley View Mall and several other smaller malls in the Dallas Fort Worth area.  The group grew to over forty artists including some of Texas's famous ones.

I am the worst sales person in the world but my silly ceramics sold themselves.  By chance a couple of store owners showed up at some of our shows and I started selling to two stores.  We ended up buying a portable building for the backyard for me to work in as the ceramics were over running the house. When the malls stopped having craft shows due to the stores complaining about how much money the shows pulled out of the malls on the weekends I still had the retail stores for customers.  My first little home based business was a success, the extra money was nice, Wes was always with me and I made a lot of friends.

As far as the race car went the weekends were still busy.  We saw less and less of Lee J. so I spent even more time in the garage on the weekend.  Lee J's wife and I, to say it nicely, did not get along very well.  Sort of like mixing oil and water.  She liked to go out a lot on the weekends so Lee J was busy but still came over when he could. 

Racing became a little more difficult when it was just Dennis, Wes and I.  We tried having a kid named Kurt drive the car so Dennis could see what the engine was doing.  Kurt, his Dad and their monkey spent a lot of time at the house which was interesting.  Kurt was great at qualifying for a race and red lighting the first round or something broke in the engine. Dennis went back to driving which did not work out well. One night at Green Valley raceway we actually were winning rounds but in typical Green Valley fashion the races were running late and Dennis said he was tired and loaded up and we went home before we had the chance to try to win.  Back in those days you had to push the race car down the push road to start it and I was always the driver of the push car.  At Tulsa there was no return road for the push car so it followed the race car down the strip after the run.  Evidently the guys in the tower had been watching me go down the strip and they turned the timers on as I went down.  Dennis was not happy that I got the push car down the strip faster than he got the dragster.  I always felt like he needed to let me drive the car.

By this time in the racing world front motored cars were beginning to be a thing of the past.  Dennis decided we should get a back motored one so we had the famous (infamous) Ed Mabrey from Arlington build us a new one. Ed was a master craftsman, very intelligent but also a pretty wild and crazy guy. The front motor car got sold and racing stopped for a several months as we waited for the new car and to  build a new body.  In order to have something to do Dennis built a new trailer to haul the race car in.

Somehow Dennis got the brilliant idea that we should get a female wire-haired fox terrier for Herman and have puppies and sell them.  The female ended up being about the stupidest dog on the planet although she did have a litter of very cute puppies. Once the puppies were gone Dennis got rid of the female and then started taking his temper out on Herman. After he kicked Herman across the backyard one day I found a lady who adored him and gave him away. I loved Herman and needless to say Dennis got a big black star for that one.

Guess I have to explain about black stars.  Remember in grade school when the teacher had a chart on the board and would give you a gold star or a black star for your day's conduct in class.  Very early on in our marriage I conjured up an imaginary chart in my mind for Dennis's behavior.  When he did bad or hurtful things I just put up a black star on the chart.  I don't think he got too many, if any, gold stars.  Stupid as it sounds it did manage to take away most of the disappointment, hurt and anger.

Evidently Hertz stopped doing the rental car sales so we purchased a new 1972 Mercury station wagon with all the bling plus wood trim.  All we needed so I could be like Doris Day was an Old English Sheep dog but after Herman was gone a few months Dennis decided he wanted a boxer.  We planned a two week vacation to Colorado but when we drove to Durango, Colorado and found out that we should have made reservations a year in advance to ride the narrow gauge train he couldn't think of anything else to do.  After Dennis had read all of his latest Hot Rod magazine we came home in three days as he was bored.

So, we are now up to 1974 - eight years of marriage, moved 7 times, had 9 different vehicles, 2 different dragsters and trailers, 3 awful vacations, dog number 5 and baby boy number 1.  I have gotten pretty good at going with the flow but 1974 will get very interesting.