It seems like things never quite work out the way I envisioned them to be.  Bringing baby home from the hospital to rest and peace and quiet didn't happen.  Dennis had called his Mother before we left the house for the delivery and she was at the hospital when Wes was born.  Okay, I can understand her wanting to be there but.....

After three days in the hospital I arrived home shortly before lunch to find that not only was there no food in the house but no one had inquired what formula was needed for the baby.  So I got in the car and went to the grocery store while Dennis and Alpha took care of Wes.  That, plus throw in laundry, ironing and cleaning the house, was the scenario for the next three weeks. Need I mention that I was also the only one who got up during the night for the night time feedings?  In contrast my Mother came to visit for a couple of days after Alpha went home and by 9:00 in the morning she had done the wash, cleaned the house and had dinner planned so we could go shopping or out to lunch with Wes in tow. 

A few months after Wes was born Dennis started travelling for Ford Motor Company visiting dealerships in Texas and Oklahoma.  This meant he left on Monday morning and returned on Friday afternoon.  That was an interesting several years. Through all the years of Dennis working for a large company I did meet a lot of other company wives, only one or two that I had anything in common with.  I always said I could write a book about what the effect of being a single person all week and a married one on weekends did to many of the wives.  It was a very interesting study and perhaps hard in our case as we did not live close to family and when Dennis arrived home on Friday afternoon he never wanted to leave the driveway except when it came to racing.

In truth I was not resentful about the dragster or the amount of time and money we spent on it. I loved the sport as much as he did and it probably was the only thing we really had in common.  Being a stay at home Mom made it easy for me to have the house clean, the yard mowed, meals planned for the weekend when he arrived home on Friday night so there was time for working on our car, going racing or building bodies for other racers.  This created the situation where the only friends we had were other racers and no time for other activities.  

Living in a newly built neighborhood all the other women worked during the day and busy with their families at night.  For the first six months or so I stayed busy decorating the house to the point that Dennis came home one week and walked back out the door because he thought he was in the wrong house. My skill set at making drapes, painting and wallpapering got pretty good. It also caused me to become very independent as I had to take care of every little problem that arose.  One time the neighbor boy who was thirteen came home from school and stayed with Wes while he was napping so I could ride my bike to the auto parts store to get new water hoses for the car.  Chuck, the neighbor boy, learned that day not only how to watch a sleeping baby but also how to replace water hoses.

If the weekdays were a little lonely the weekends were certainly not.  Over the winter of '70-'71 Dennis and Lee J decided to build a bigger engine than the six-cylinder which was, of course, another Ford engine.
The dragster got a new paint job that looked a lot better than the old plain blue one.  Lee J had grown up in Gainesville and had two friends that also had a dragster who became regular fixtures at our house.  Ralph and Mark were both single, about my same age and came to Dallas on Saturday nights to do what ever two wild and crazy guys did on a Saturday night.  They would show up late in the evening on their way home which was usually about the time Dennis was losing his patience with car parts, pieces of aluminum or my inability to not hold something in the perfect position or Wes needing attention.  The whole tone of the evening changed to laughing and silliness.  I don't think either of them ever realized how much I loved having them show up even if they did keep me up until way past my bedtime.  Being around Ralph and Mark both at our house and when we travelled to races together kept racing fun.

My Mother had turned into a different person after her marriage to George...a much nicer person.   He was a great guy, a geologists with Halliburton in Oklahoma City, had a plane so they flew down several times to see us in Carrollton and a huge OU fan.  When a drag race popped up at a new track in Choctaw, Oklahoma we decided to go and not only race but spend the weekend with Mother and George. Wes had gone to the races with us from the time he was a couple of weeks old but it was nice that Mother offered to keep him for the day.  Actually it turned out to be great as it was hot and windy plus the new track was barely finished and there was a fine red dust that settled on everything.  That was George's first time at being a grandparent and he always had a special place in his heart for Wes.  He was very concerned that they did not have a baby bed for him to sleep in but Mother and I showed him how an empty large dresser drawer worked very well in a pinch.   

Once Wes learned to walk I discovered several church's that had Mother's Day Out programs.  For a dollar or two they would entertain your child so you had time to yourself.   There was one on a Tuesday morning and for the first several weeks he sat in the middle of the floor at the church and cried the entire time I was gone.  Guess he was not used to being away from mommy and he had never seen any other small children as none of the people we knew had any.  I signed up for a ceramics class and met some other stay-at-home moms.  It was interesting how one simple little class on Tuesday morning could create such a change in my life.