Last Job - Then Goodbyes

It would have been easy to feel sorry for myself, send the boys off to school each day and withdraw from the world in depression over the move. I will not deny there were not really times I thought about not even getting out of bed in the morning but I had people who depended on me, commitments I couldn't walk away from and a character flaw that always made me do the right thing.

Taking on the re-do for Gordon and Paula was much more than I had realized in the beginning.  They were in their fifties, no children and had been neighbors of Barney's when he was growing up. I was instantly taken by their home which was in my favorite neighborhood a few blocks from the Country Club Plaza and built in the 20's.  Plaster walls, wonderful woodwork and lots of character dazzled me into not noticing cracked plaster, walls covered in thirty years of cigarette smoke and decor that had gone untouched for thirty years.  Gordon was as gruff as a bear, scared me a bit but Paula was as sweet as an angel.

My need for a contractor who knew how to patch plaster and do a lot of the other things that were totally out of my realm caused me to call a guy named Randy that I had met on the previous wallpaper job. Actually he had assisted me in getting paid for that job.  The builder owed me about nine hundred dollars and would not pay.  Randy had told me I would be lucky to get my money and when I didn't I called him for some advice.  The next day Randy had my check and mumbled something about a gun and a threat but that was not something I needed to hear.  So, not knowing anyone else I called Randy to help me with Gordon's place.

Gordon would call every morning at seven to see what time I was going to arrive and the answer needed to be before eight-thirty when he left for work. We would have a short meeting as to what was going to get done for the day - usually wishful thinking - and he and Paula would go off to work.  I was lucky if Randy showed up by ten, if at all, with his usual bottle of Boone's farm in the truck.  His helper, Jack, was always waiting for me in his little beat-up yellow VW when I got there. 

Jack was in his mid-twenties, long blond hair, a vegetarian and a great worker.  Thank heavens!  Randy ended up being good at getting supplies Jack needed, finding someone to repair the leaded windows and removing them but not very good at actual work.  Until the walls and ceilings were repaired there not not much I could do so Jack taught me all about plaster and how to repair it and to walk on stilts so I could help him. Paula came home for lunch everyday and took a liking to Jack, perhaps the son they never had.  When he told her it was hard to go out to eat because of being vegetarian she started fixing us lunch everyday.
I rather liked that as it was always hard to go back to work after eating lunch out and she got pretty good at making vegetarian fare.

I have to admit that this was probably the most fun job I ever took on aside from all the things I learned from Jack. It was nice to learn the right way to do things instead of by trial and error. So much of what I learned would come in handy later.  Paula taught me how to handle Gordon when he got all puffy about things not going fast enough.  She told me to put both hands on my hips and just stare at him at which point he would all of a sudden apologize for being so gruff and impatient.  Barney also started popping by for lunch several days a week and Paula enjoyed feeding him vegetarian food and watching his face.

While Jack painted I wallpapered the kitchen and two bathrooms.  The last thing to do was 2200 square feet of carpet. The existing carpet had been there thirty years and was 100% wool.  To replace it would cost about $69.00 a square foot which Gordon was willing to pay.  We got into an argument over it because I could find no place where it was even worn so my suggestion was to have it cleaned at the cost of several hundreds of dollars and see what it looked like.  It took a lot of convincing to get Gordon to agree but I won.  When it was cleaned it actually looked better than what was currently on the market.  One of those things that they just didn't make like they used to.  I did suggest he could give me all the money I had saved him.  He just put his hands on his hips and glared back at me.

Spending almost every week day at Gordon's and Paula's from eight-thirty in the morning until three in the afternoon for four weeks kept me busy and my spirits up.  There was not a lot of time to fret about the move. When the job was finished Gordon invited Dennis, the boys and I to visit with them at their cabin on Table Rock Lake for a weekend.  Dennis was not too excited about going to say the least.  We finally came to an agreement on just spending a Saturday with them. It was a fun day for the boys and I, not so much for Dennis but he managed to behave decently.  Who could not be impressed with his 1950's wooden Chris Craft Cruiser that we rode all over the lake in.

The last three weeks in Kansas City was a swirl of goodbye lunches and dinners with all the friends I had made.  There were all my neighbors, the New Neighbors League and much to my surprise my decorating clients like Jim and Lisa and Gordon and Paula.  It did seem strange because in all the years I had lived in Dallas their were not any goodbye affairs but only two years in Kansas City created at last one everyday.

The house did not sell as no houses were selling due to the interest rate.  Ford came through and bought the house at the asking price so that we could go ahead with the purchase in New Jersey.  Dennis came home for the week before the move.  It was not a happy week.  He was hot to trot to get stuff packed up before the people arrived that were going to pack us up. No, that made no sense to me either.  He was after me to throw a lot of my stuff away - all my stuff from high school and college.  I do remember one day when he was pulling out my stuff and pointing out there was no reason to keep it that I picked up one of those ceramic Christmas trees with the little lights on it and smashed it on the floor.  Then I asked him what he was going to leave behind or throw away.  That ended all conversation on what I needed to get rid of.

The packers arrived on Oct 30th.  I made sure the garbage cans were empty and that kitchen things were in the kitchen, bathroom things in the bathroom plus the clothing we would need for four or five days was put aside.  Then I left Dennis in charge and went off to have a very sad and final lunch with Barney.   He assured me he would be in Philadelphia in six weeks for a seminar which sort of made us both feel better but saying goodbye that day was one of the hardest things I ever had to do.

The truck arrived the next day to load up.  We were pulling the race car with the our van but Dennis did not want nor was there room in the van for the fifty Mercury.  At the last minute the company had to send out a truck and a trailer to haul the Mercury on. I guess Dennis thought the Mercury should have had a covered trailer and spent the afternoon arguing with the moving company.  This was one of those times when I really wanted to run away and hide especially since the was Halloween Day. Two little boys arrived home from school in their costumes only to find out they were not going to get to go trick or treating with their friends that evening as Dennis had decided to leave as soon as the truck was loaded.  Tears and begging did nothing to change Dennis's mind.

By the time the truck was loaded not only were the boys crying but I joined in when I had to say the last goodbyes to everyone in the neighborhood who came to see us off.  What would the big deal be if we stayed the night in a motel there and let the boys trick or treat? There was no deadline on getting to New Jersey.  There was just someone wanting to be nothing but mean.


Somehow it did not feel like a good omen to start off to a new home with Wes, Wally and I sitting in the back of the van crying as no one wanted to be anywhere near Dennis.

Maybe I Can Survive

Going to the East Coast to visit could have been a really fun experience but getting back home to Kansas City was one of those really happy moments in life.  What ever excitement there was about finding the house was overshadowed by my thought that there was an Archie Bunker on every corner, I was leaving a large number of great friends and a lot of things I had worked very hard for.  Best not to think about it and just keeping moving forward.

Putting on the "happy face" about the move was really hard but I had to do it for Wes and Wally.  They were pretty devastated by the thought of moving.  Wes was playing soccer and in Cub Scouts along with having a small army of friends to play and ride bikes with. Wally was excited not only to be going to the same school Wes but I think he felt just a little grown-up. It was a good thing that neither of the boys knew that the name of their school meant "hello" or they would have renamed it " Au revoir". They were not impressed with the pictures of the new house and really didn't want to even discuss leaving their home in Kansas City.  Not an easy situation to deal with when I wasn't happy myself.

It took a day or two being back before I had the mental fortitude to call Barney and we met for lunch the next day. Thank heavens he decided a picnic would be good as I really did not think I wanted to have a moving discussion in front of a lot of other people.  It was interesting that in two years of meeting for lunch and doing his house that we had managed never to discuss our marriage situations.  I knew that was about to change when the first words he said to me that day was that he loved me and he did not want to make the same mistake he had thirteen years ago and have me disappear from his life.

I guess I knew this conversation had to come about at some time or another but it was never one I looked forward to having. I began by telling him that there was no way I was going to disappear again but just be a little further away.  For the last month I had tried to rationalize divorcing Dennis and staying in Kansas City but had not been able to find a logical plan.  I told him there was no doubt that I loved him but I had to think about the boys and how I could manage on my own.

From there I went into the fact that besides my Dad I had spent all my life with Dennis and Mother telling me I couldn't do this or that, that I was to stupid, didn't have any talent, my opinion didn't matter and on and on. When I went back to college and took fifty-two hours of math and science for a double major degree in Biology and Chemistry with great grades Dennis would tell people he always thought he would have to put his kids through college but not his wife and nothing about being proud of me.  I loved the one about how I could pick out the house when I made more money than he did and of course how it was my fault when he gained weight.

Years of all the put-downs had taken their toll.  But he, Barney, had begun to make me see that maybe I wasn't so stupid and had encouraged me in everything I wanted to do.  Maybe the timing was all bad for this move as I really had not developed the self confidence to really believe I could make it on my own with the boys. 

When I stopped talking he instantly asked why I was so worried about making it on my own. That I was one of the most talented people he had ever met except for my typing and spelling.  He had also known since the day I popped back into his life that I was the one he wanted to share his life with.  If I wasn't at the point where I could leave Dennis and not agonize taking the boys away from their Dad he understood.  But a move to anywhere was not going to change our relationship as he would always only be a phone call or a flight away. Then he added that he was already setting up some seminars on the East Coast and there were nine medical schools in close range for him to type applications to for me. In other words, do what you feel is right for now and we will be together in the end. 

That was an interesting afternoon and I have to say I felt better about moving if I could find no way to stay.  He talked a lot about his relationship with Lauren and how difficult it would be for him to leave.  We were both sort of in the same situation and not ready to face the turmoil.  He did make me realize after seeing pictures of the New Jersey house that I had won on getting a house I wanted even though it didn't have a picket fence.

I had a million things to do in the next six weeks. In addition to keeping the boys happy I had Gordon and Paula's house to do and I needed to hire a contractor pronto. This was going to prove very interesting as I was again in uncharted territory not knowing anything about contractors.  Just by chance I had met one while doing a huge wallpaper installation a few months before.  Maybe him teaching me how to walk across a board sixteen feet in the air to wallpaper a two story entry way was not a very good recommendation.

I Cried A Lot

September brought Wally and Wes both in school, the start of a job redoing a two-flat that is going to be much larger than I originally thought and Dennis gone to his new job for two weeks at a time.  I do have to admit that Dennis only being able to come home every other weekend was nice since the only turmoil was in short phone calls everyday.  He was not doing well looking for houses, not happy with much of anything on the East coast and definitely not happy being away from home.

Somehow I finally managed to tell Barney that we were moving.  I will never forget the look on his face or the length of time it took him to say something. We were having lunch at our favorite place and I just blurted it out.  When he finally spoke he asked if I was really going to go. How could I answer that?  I finally came up with not really wanting to go but what else could I do.  He said he needed to think about this and we would talk about it later because there was no way he wanted to lose me again. That was a good thing as I did not want to cry in the restaurant.

Ford had this very interesting deal for looking for a new home when an employee was transferred.  I got to fly to Philadelphia, stay for three days, find a house and fly home with all expenses paid. Sounds easy and like a little vacation, right?  Wrong! This was a nightmare due to the fact that Dennis was looking for the perfect junior executive home in a housing market almost triple what it was in Kansas City.  New construction to replace the Kansas house that we paid $75,000 for was in the neighborhood of $250,000 in New Jersey.  Remember this is a "have to move" with no salary increase.

I do have to admit that my first reaction to Philadelphia was this was the place that American Bandstand started and Rocky ran up the steps of the Art Museum.  The thought crossed my mind that maybe I should have paid more attention to American history but one of the first people who spoke to me in the airport sounded like he was speaking a foreign language.  I really could not understand what he was saying and I wanted to get back on the plane.

Dennis picked me up and had the real estate lady waiting for us to start looking at houses.  The language some people spoke in New Jersey was easier to understand but I did take an instant dislike to the real estate lady.  I could never get her name straight so I just called her Mona since she seemed to moan a lot when I refused to go look at houses Dennis had picked out because they were all unaffordable.  After two days of looking at houses that were perhaps in our price range with holes in the walls like someone had hit it with their fist, lots of purple paint, questionable neighborhoods and an Archie Bunker on every corner it was pretty easy for me to burst into tears every time Mona tried to talk me into a nightmare house. It was easy for me to act like a mental case since she was quickly driving me crazy.

After two days of Mona dragging me around I happen to pick up a little neighborhood paper.  By some sort of luck there was an ad for a house that sounded interesting and in our price range.  I called Mona and said I wanted to see this house the next day.  Well, that did not make her happy as she said she didn't know anything about the township and was sure it was not suitable.  I told her if she didn't want to show it to me I would call the realtor listed in the ad, sniffed a few times and in ten minutes she had made an appointment for the next morning to see the house.

On the way she had nothing good to say about the township the house was in - the old bad schools and no shopping mall routine.  The township was actually closer to Dennis's office than the junior executive areas he had been looking at since he did not want a forty mile commute again.  When we started approaching Riverton Township I noticed the houses were not new, there were tree lined sidewalks, quaint old buildings with cute little shops in them and a yacht club on the mile wide Delaware River. When we pulled up to the address of the house for sale we had just gotten out of the car when the local police showed up and wanted to know what we were doing.  When we told him were there to look at the house all was okay with him as he just kept an eye out for strangers in town.

All I remember looking at the house for the first time was that all it needed was a white picket fence to be perfect. It was a white Dutch colonial with hundred foot trees in the backyard and one block from the river.  Dennis was not happy to see the single car garage out back but.. ouch... life isn't perfect. The house had been built in 1915 and the builder lived in it for about fifteen years and then the Adam's family moved in.  Mr. and Mrs. Adam's were moving to their winter home in Florida permanently and leaving the house they had lived in for fifty years. 

It was love at first sight for me.  I had to fly back to Kansas City at noon the next day so we put a bid in on the house that afternoon, they countered, we agreed and signed the papers before I flew home. Dennis was not pleased at all but doing the math it was the best we had found.
The Adam's asked $75,000 for the house and agreed to replace some of the wood shake shingles.  Dennis could not have his junior executive house because all of them were way over the budget.  The Adam's house had property taxes of $6,000 a year and required a $500 a year flood insurance policy plus this was the interesting time when a home interest rate was 15%.  The property taxes on the same priced house in Kansas City were $600 a year, no flood insurance and a 5.5% interest rate.  Ouch.....the property taxes alone were going to add $500.00 a month onto the house payment not to mention the higher interest rate and the flood insurance. Moving to the East Coast in 1980 was not looking to be a positive move in a million ways.

On another sad note no one was buying houses in Kansas City.  We had put ours on the market for $95,000 with no lookers.  The one positive aspect of moving with Ford is that they would buy your house from you if it did not sell by the time you had to close on the new one.  That saved the day as the Kansas house did not sell for over a year. The Adams were not leaving for Florida until the end of October, I refused to go live in a motel for more than one night so I had time to finish the decorating jobs I had and try to reconcile myself to the move.

Even though I had found a house I liked in a neighborhood I liked it did not mean that there were not constant thoughts about not moving to New Jersey with Dennis.  The old adage that a house does not make a home and the problems in the marriage did not help.  I tried to imagine that I could make it on my own with the boys but I was scared I could not support them.  Years of being told I was stupid had taken their toll.

It was a good thing I had Gordon and Paula's place to do. It was what is called a two-flat which is a duplex on top of each other rather than side by side.  Gordon owned it and lived on the second floor.  It was only a few blocks from the Country Club Plaza Shopping Center and was built in the 1920's.  Plaster walls, leaded glass windows, original wool carpet and very much in need of not only paint but lots of plaster work, leaded window repairs and all new window coverings.  Lots of this was totally out of my realm of expertise so I called a contractor I had met on another job.  Learning experiences are good and this one was a doozey.

Not Happy News

Really?

The summer could not have been going better.  The house did not get blown away in the "almost" tornado on the 4th of July, there were lots of fun afternoons at the local pool with all the neighbors and trips to the zoo and other kid activities.  I was managing to do some small decorating jobs and check out some larger ones for fall.  Wally was really looking forward to going to Wes's school, for kindergarten in the fall. 

I managed to have a reasonably good time on the annual trek - called vacation - to Oklahoma for two weeks the first part of August.  The two year anniversary of the move to Kansas City was very much celebrated by the boys and I, not so much by Dennis.  It seemed like when things were not going so well with Dennis it was easy for me to sort of take a deep breath and think about all the good things I had going for me. After all I had two happy boys, a nice home, the start of a very good and fun business, great friends and the possibility of getting into medical school. Life was good.

Life was suddenly not so good when we came back from vacation. It seemed like a brief recession began in 1980 that affected housing, steel manufacturing and automobiles. There was high unemployment and rising interest rates all of which I had paid no attention to.  Those were not things on my list of what to worry about but when automobiles were involved I started to learn to pay attention.  Ford Motor Company figured out some cost savings methods one of which was to close the District Office in Kansas City. The District Office where Dennis worked.

In the world of large corporations you have two options when something like this happens. Number one is to keep your job and go where ever they decide to send you or hit the road and look for a new job. As much as Dennis complained about his job, only wanted to go back to Dallas, I don't think he ever contemplated on anything but going where Ford sent him.  We had to admit that the amenities with Ford were nice in that we had new cars to drive, health insurance, a nice retirement plan plus a decent salary for the Midwest.  A lateral move with no salary increase was not the best thing that could happen when the new job is in New Jersey.

Never having been any further east than St. Louis I had to look at a map to know exactly where New Jersey was.  Actually it could have been one state away and I would not have wanted to go there.  I had the silly thought that Kansas City would be my forever home as I loved the weather with snow in the winter, the people and the architecture with all the old houses.  My Dad and Uncle Tom had lived and worked there, my grandparents were buried there and I knew all about the history of the town listening to Uncle Tom talk about the speakeasies and the corruption of Pendergrast in the 1920's.  I loved driving down State Line Road in the middle of the city and realizing one side of the street was Kansas and the other side Missouri and the fact that the Royal's baseball and the Chief's football stadiums sat in the same parking lot together. I loved that hot air balloons floated by our back deck so close you could talk to the people in them. Kansas City actually has more fountains than Rome so what is not to love.

I was so upset with the news I couldn't talk about it.  Wes and Wally were not at all happy with the thought of moving.  Wally just wanted to go to the same school Wes did and there were tears from both of them.  I had to put on a happy face everyday for them but found it very hard to talk to friends about it once the boys went and told the whole neighborhood that we were moving.  There was no sympathy from the New Neighbors group as they had all moved there from some place else and thought it was fine. Not fine, more like the end of my world.

Dennis had to report to work in New Jersey the second week of September.  He could fly home every other weekend, he could meet some of the other people who worked there and start looking for a house.  It was actually the Philadelphia District Office but was located across the Delaware River in Pennsauken, New Jersey.  Most of the Ford people lived in New Jersey so they were showing him around and telling which were the best places to live.  Do I need to mention that I heard nothing positive from him about the area?  Phone calls and weekends home were constant complaining about the job, the people and the cost of housing. 

I have always been a "tomorrow" person in that somehow no matter how bad a day was, tomorrow would always be better.  It was hard to keep that thought going especially when Mother showed up.  She had been in Germany with her sister-in-law for most of the summer and stopped by on her way home from Wisconsin.  I sort of brought up the idea that maybe the boys and I would not follow Dennis to New Jersey but stay in Kansas City.  As much as she had always disliked Dennis she gave me no encouragement what so ever. The conversation went much like how did I expect to support myself and the boys, it was my duty to stay until they graduated from high school and were on their own and I was certainly not going to get any support of any kind from her.  Guess in her world that is what she did as far as leaving Dad was concerned and thought I should do the same.  It was nice when she left.


It was a stroke of luck for me that Barney was out of town when the news of the move came up.  Somehow I managed to act like my normal self during our phone calls and it gave me some time to try to sort things out.  Wanting to stay in Kansas City because of him was only a small part of my agony but telling him was going to be difficult. We had managed over the course of the last two years to maintain the relationship on a friendship basis and not ever discussing any problems in our respective marriages.  Do I just say so long it's been nice to know you or totally fall into a pitiful, tearful mess and tell him how much I don't want to go?

Wally is happily going to school with Wes, I have started the huge job of redoing a house for a friend of Barney's, the For Sale sign is planted in the front yard and I have to fly to Philadelphia to look for a house.
Looking for a house will be a much bigger deal than telling Barney I am leaving.