Sometime Down The Road

When I received the letter from Barney I imagined everything possible from surprise to relief to fear.  There was great hesitation in opening it because I had not heard from him in three and a half months. I had actually tried to call him a couple of months ago and his phone was no longer in service.  I had worried that something had happened to him
but then I noticed the postmark was two and a half months old. How does a letter take that long to arrive at it's destination?  I guess that was pretty typical of being, in effect, homeless and using General Delivery as your address.

When I finally got the courage to open the letter the first line said how much he missed me and how much he loved me.  He wrote almost a whole page on how it was hard to not talk to me every Tuesday  as we had done for over six years.  Then there were a lot of memories of all the places we had gone to and had done from meeting at the restaurant that had burned down to our day in Atlantic City.  Then he wrote that he was giving into Lauren and that they were going to move to California to be closer to her family.  With his business they could live anywhere and as much as Kansas City would always be home he was finding it difficult not to make the move. With the move he would be out of touch for awhile as they were going to stay with Lauren's parents until their house was completed. Sounded like he was in the same position I had been.

I read the letter so many times that day that I had it  memorized.  At first I took it as a it's been fun, so long, goodbye but that was only because I expected the letter to say that.  Over the course of the next few weeks I thought about the letter and our very complicated relationship. I had never really thought about how much we were alike before and began to see that we were both very non confrontational and did what we thought was expected of us.  We had talked endlessly about our childhoods, hopes, dreams, victories and failures.  Even though we did not talk about each of our marriages there were little comments dropped by both of us that said neither of us were very happy in them. Most of all I knew that my Dudley-Do-Right-Eagle-Scout would have said so long, kid, it's been nice to know you if that is what he meant.  I would miss him terribly until I would hear from him again but there were things I needed to attend to.

The boys and I skated a lot and they made friends with two brothers about their same ages.  Wes got interested in speed skating and Wally joined the Cub Scouts so they were happy and doing well.  I managed to get all the boxes unpacked and mini blinds on all the windows but not much of anything else as far as decorating the house went.  That fall my wallpaper business really picked up.  The first time I had to wallpaper a two story entryway was more than a little terrifying but I got very used to it since every house they were building had one.

Any football fan knows that the University of Michigan's mascot is the Wolverine.  Dennis came up with tickets for a Michigan/Colorado football game.  I am not much of a football fan but I do like halftime and people watching.  The Michigan Stadium sat 109,000 people and was full that day.  We sat amidst yelling fans with bills on ball caps that looked like the mouth of a Wolverine, teeth and all. I cheered for Michigan not because I was a fan or because I even knew what was going on in the game but just because I was afraid one of those hats might eat me if I did not cheer the team on.  

The two cats were happy to be in a house instead of a motel room.  French Fry, who we had since Kansas City, who loved to hunt managed to present us with a dead chipmunk on the steps outside the sliding glass door almost everyday....nice.  Sylvester, the black and white cat, had somehow learned to play fetch.  He really like to play with rabbits feet and if you threw it across the floor he would go get it and bring it back. For Christmas that year the boys bought him a bright pink new one.  A week or so before Christmas they wrapped it up and put it under the tree.  We came home one day and there were bits of wrapping paper all over the hallway floor.  Sylvester evidently was not a cat who wanted to wait for Christmas and he was proudly taking a nap with his new toy in the den.

Christmas came and went.  After Christmas we went skiing just like everyone else in the state of Michigan.  Mom had been on a purging spree at her house and rather than have a garage sale, which she despised, she sent three huge boxes to me.  Besides tons of clothes, not my style and two sets of china there were ski boots and skis.  We went UP North to Traverse City.  Now you need to understand Michigan terminology.  Anyplace north of the middle of the state is simply known as Up North.  However, if you cross the Mackinac Bridge you will still be in Michigan but it is called the U.P. or Upper Peninsula.  Actually you never tell someone you are going to Traverse City or anyplace north of the middle of the state.  You are merely going Up North.

When the ball dropped in Times Square that New Year's  I could have never fathomed what that year was going to bring.

Storm's A Comin'

Looks Like A Storm Is Coming

It wasn't easy after the disastrous reunion to make life go back to the old normal.  The helpful thing was that there lots of boxes to unpack and the boys did not start school until a few days after Labor Day. 

The subdivision was fairly new so there were not many families and we had empty lots all around us.  There was another Ford family but they were not very friendly so the only other kid Wes and Wally could play with was Bryce who was still living in the Holiday Inn waiting for their house to be done.  They could go back to the motel to swim but Bryce came over a lot as the boys just liked being in a house with all their belongings.

Wes turned fourteen right before school started and it was one of the few years that there was no birthday party.  Those are pretty impossible when you have no friends so I gave him the option of doing whatever he wanted to do.  First he ordered a chocolate cheesecake.  Hmm...I had never made a cheesecake before so I went out and got all the stuff including the special pan it called for and whipped one up.  Must say it was pretty good for my first attempt but the thing must have weighed ten pounds.  I don't think we were ever able to eat the whole cheesecake and I did discover later that it must have been a commercial type recipe as you do not normally make one in a twelve inch pan with three boxes of cream cheese.  He chose the fair that happened to be going on as his place to go and I must say we all had a pretty good time.

School finally started with Wes going into high school in the ninth grade while Wally went into the fourth grade.  Being new at the school from the start of the semester was a good thing since there were a lot of other kids that were new to Farmington and Farmington Hills.  Making friends was pretty easy for both of them, especially Wes.  Lucky for me as there was a school bus that came by to pick them up and bring them home.

The good thing about the bus was that Dennis decided after moving into the garage with the house attached I could get rid of the company lease car I had and drive our 1950 Mercury after the moving company repaired the hood. Now I loved the old Mercury and it was fun to drive but my so called auto expert husband had put a bigger engine in it, all by his little self, and I guess you could say it was not always dependable. One afternoon I left Wally at home and ran Wes to meet the bus for his soccer game.  Funny thing was that we got about halfway there and oil started pouring out of the top of the engine.  I pulled into a service station to survey the damage which did not look good. The mechanic said I could not drive it which was a no brainer as
there was oil all over the engine compartment.

Luckily I called Bryce's Mom, Cindy, she came and got Wes to take him to the bus then went by the house to pick up Wally so he would not be alone.  I had called Dennis and he said he would come by in an hour and a half and fix it when he got off work.  Swell.  Interesting as I looked over the engine mishap I noticed that the copper tubing oil line had broken at the connection point.  Hmm...my pretty sharp memory seemed to recall that we had bought a 1940 Ford Truck once, took it home and looked it over and Dennis took it back because it had copper tubing brake lines.  His point that you never used copper tubing because it doesn't last was suddenly well remembered. I did point that out to him for which I got a huge frown.  About a month later after another 1950 Mercury oops he ordered me a new lease car.

The boys and I started skating every Wednesday evening and then I started going on Tuesday and Thursday mornings.  Detroit is actually the city that never sleeps.  With the auto plants working three shifts a day there are always people out and looking for things to do.  That town has a bowling ally, a roller skating rink or in winter an ice rink on every corner. The Tuesday and Thursday morning skaters were retired people who skated for exercise instead of walking in the mall.  A lot of them went to some rink to skate every morning of the week. Along with skating there is also coffee drinking in the snack bar so it was very easy to make skating friends.

Skating friends came in handy for networking.  There was a gentleman who came every once in awhile who did insurance repair.  He went into homes that a minor fire or flood and fixed everything.  Since I was looking for a way to become a little more financially independent I told him I did hang wallpaper.  It did not take long for him to need some help so at least it was a start on getting back into the decorating business.  He was great to work for and there were some really interesting jobs and people.

One day he called and asked if I would be willing to work in a black family's home.  Actually I was really surprised by that but I was also beginning to learn some of Detroit's history.  I met several parents of the boy's friends and when I would talk about going to downtown Detroit to do this or that a lot of them were surprised.  Seems like there was a huge population of the outlying areas that had not been in the city limits of Detroit since race riots of 1964.or  White-flight from the city limits of Detroit began leaving a lot of neighborhoods empty and the beginning of decades of problems in the city itself. The house I ended up going to was in the University Park area and was a lovely two story brick with arches for doorway and cove ceilings.  The couple who lived there could not have been more gracious although they did look a little surprised when a Caucasian woman wallpaper hanger showed up.  

It did not take long before I began getting calls from homeowners themselves wanting me to do work for them. Business started - check.  I had not forgotten about medical school but needed some time to establish residency.  I also needed someone in Michigan in the medical 

field to be a reference so I decided to go to Ann Arbor just thirty five miles down the road and take the Graduate Record Exam.  There was logic in that decision since I did not think anyone from the medical school or a famous doctor would build a house next door I would go take a class or two at the place where the medical school was.  Dennis was furious but the test was really easy.  Step towards future goal - check.

Michigan did have it's positives the best being the weather. Every season was beautiful as the summers were mild, the falls were spectacular and winter was wonderful.  I have never thought there was such a thing as too much snow.  In Michigan it arrived in November and stayed until March or even April.  All the roads were cleared by 7:00 am and there was never any day that school was closed due to the beautiful white stuff. There was something quite exhilarating about going out before dawn to shovel the driveway.  The snow muffles all sound so it is amazingly quiet, beautiful and really great exercise.

Several months after we moved into the house a letter addressed to me and mailed to good old General Delivery, our address for the duration of the stay in the motel. That was not the only letter that arrived late or not at all but this one was from Barney.  

Words

Finally the day came when the house was officially done.  Goodbye to seven weeks of residence at the Holiday Inn, eating out three times a day and trying to think of things to do other than stare at the four walls of what had become a very tiny room.   As exciting as it was to be moving in it was also much more difficult than moving out.

Every move is hard on all your belongings.  Things do get broken, scratched, dented or lost and having to put things into storage counts as two moves - in the truck at the previous house, out of the truck into storage, into the truck to be delivered and out of the truck into the new house.  Dennis was not very happy that somehow in all the melee the hood of our 1950 black Mercury had a huge dent all the way across the hood. Did not make for a happy day.

I think while they were unloading the truck a multitude of landscaping companies began arriving at the door.  Each came with a detailed drawing of what our yard should look like all of which looked pretty similar to everyone else's.  We settled on one and in a day's time we had grass, trees, shrubs, lava rock filled flower beds and a few flowers.  Sorting out the house would take much longer but there really was no reason to hurry.  Besides there was something more pressing that needed to be taken care of first.

My class reunion was scheduled for two weeks after we moved into the house. Dennis had known about it since I had sent the money in for our reservations months before.  When I mentioned it a few days after we moved in he informed me we certainly could not go since we had just moved into the house. I actually said that "we" may not be going but I certainly was.  Silence.......for days.

For days I went from being so excited at the thought of getting to see all the people I grew up with after twenty years that it was hard to get anything done.  I bought a new dress for the banquet, a dress that I actually felt pretty in.  Somehow I had gotten in contact with my only girl friend besides Lisa, my next door neighbor, Pat.  She only went to Muskogee Central her junior and senior years and did not really feel like it was her class but agreed to come. She was going to stay with me at Dennis's parents house so we could gossip and giggle.

Then on other days I wondered why I was making such a big deal of this.  No one would even remember who I was as I was not one of the so called popular girls.  Would everyone have changed and I would not even recognize anyone?  Maybe it would be better for everyone if I just stayed home as I had the feeling I was setting myself up for another huge disappointment. But going to the reunion was important to me.  All the moving around the country, making friends and the losing contact with them as your life changes takes it's toll.  I had the need to go "home" to see people I had spent eighteen years with and shared the growing up years with.

We left Michigan on a Thursday for the reunion.  Dennis was not happy about it but I had planned, organized and executed his reunion a few years before all by myself so I figured he owed me this one. I poured over my high school yearbook to study up on all the people I would try to recognize. Lisa had said I should come to help decorate on Friday afternoon and I had to meet Pat in Muskogee so I was looking forward to seeing a small group of people first.

The reunion that year consisted of a get together around the indoor pool at  - of all things - a Holiday Inn on Friday night.  Saturday afternoon was a family get together at Honor Heights Park and Saturday night was a dance at the Muskogee Country Club. It was a very nervous drive into Muskogee around noon to meet Pat and to help decorate. Anyone who grew up in Muskogee can't go back without going to Chet's for a chili dog.  Dennis would never go to Chet's so that was my first stop and there were three of my classmates there all whom recognized me when I walked in the door. What ever doubts I had about coming home for the reunion vanished as I ate my chili dog and laughed with friends I had not seen in twenty years.

I was overwhelmed by everyone that was there to decorate in that they all remembered me, thought I had lost weight and that I looked okay after twenty years.  By the time Pat arrived and we headed back to Warner I was on cloud nine although I knew to temper it down for Dennis to just the decorating went fine.  I could tell when we left to go to the get together he was not happy but having Pat with us he really could not say much. I know it is hard for spouse's who are not a member of the class to feel comfortable and I did try to include him in conversations but it was difficult. It was fun for me because I could easily recognize almost every one.  There was so much laughter over all the silly things we did back then. Pat and I shared a room at Dennis's house so we spent a lot of the night remembering silly things about those school years.

Saturday afternoon we took the boys to the gathering at the park.  It was fun to see everyone with their children.  Wes and Wally had plenty of room to run and play and I did manage to get Dennis to go to Chet's so the boys were introduced to their first Chet's chili dog - with cheese, of course. They were hooked on their first bite. On the way back to Warner I was noticing how quiet Dennis had become and did begin to worry some, but thank heavens for Pat being with us.

By the time we left to go to the Country Club I could tell Dennis was about to explode over the all reunion stuff.  All I could get were one word answers, if that and did worry about what time he would pick to explode even having Pat with us.  We managed to make it to the club and in the door okay.  There were a lot more classmates at the dance that I had not seen so there were more smiles and hugs.  We found a table to sit at with some of my favorite classmates.  I will say here that Dennis does not dance.  Ford Motor Company had dinner and dance things all the time and he still was cordial.  I was not so lucky this time.

Perhaps it was my mistake that when someone asked me to dance and I jumped at the chance.  Maybe I should have just sat at that table and not talked to anyone.  At some point in the evening Dennis suggested we go outside for a minute.  I should have refused but I was still trying hard to get through the evening.  I can not repeat what he said to me outside since I try not to use words like that but somehow I managed to not say anything back to him, as usual, and hold it together long enough to get to the backroom where I sat and cried for thirty minutes.

A couple of things about crying that night.  One is that when I cry my eyes swell up sometimes to the point where I can hardly see.  Not a good thing.  In the bathroom I was trying very hard not to cry but a ladies bathroom is a pretty busy place.  Pat and Lisa were trying to console me and every time someone else came in and asked what was wrong I burst into tears. Lisa tried to get me to be mad and in her infinite way used all those words I don't write here to describe Dennis. I would laugh for a minute and then burst into tears.  Needless to say that was the end of my evening. I went out of the bathroom, picked up my purse and headed out the door.  Dennis followed and the three of us headed back to Warner in total silence. There have been many times through the years I have cringed at the thought of the scene I made in the bathroom. Could I ever go back to another reunion after that one?

Maybe I should have known Dennis would behave the way he did.  It was pretty typical of how he behaved for twenty years but I never pushed him to the breaking point. There were countless times that I wanted to do something but would back down to keep the waters calm.
I stopped skating except with the boys, I moved around the country without really complaining, I dropped friends he did not like, did not see my family as much as I wanted or should have, gone to countless company affairs I hated with people I did not want to be around and he could not let me have one weekend with all the people I grew up with.
That weekend goes down as one of the best from the aspect of all my classmates and also the absolute worst weekend of my life because of Dennis.

We headed back to Michigan the next morning. Dennis was all of a sudden being normal. I did my best to refrain from crying again.  The really interesting thing is that he never mentioned anything about the entire weekend.  Nothing.  It was like those three days never existed or that nothing happened at all.  I wanted to tell him how hurt, angry and disappointed I was with him.  Why did he have to ruin everything I wanted to do?  But I did not know how since every time I tried to tell him he was wrong he had always turned it around to make me out the bad person. I also did know that not standing my ground all those years added to his behavior towards me.

Remember the old phrase you learned when you were growing up that said "Sticks and stones can hurt my bones but words can never harm me"?  Well that is totally wrong.  Bones can heal but words hang in the little folds of your brain forever.  Words can never be taken back or forgotten.

When we arrived home I did my usual thing and reverted back into the lady who did the wash, the ironing, cleaned the house and had dinner on the table at 5:15.  The yard was always mowed by Friday afternoon and the cars were washed.  I took the dress I bought for the reunion to Goodwill as every time I saw it in the closet I started to cry.  But I also made some changes that were not very noticeable in the beginning.

Is The Worm Slowly Beginning To Turn?

The trip to Oklahoma was a nice break from the motel.  Wes and Wally had a good time being able to run around, go fishing and not having to be couped up in one room or on the endless sight seeing trips. I enjoyed it myself in that I did not have to come up with things to do every day and had a break from not being responsible for everyone else's happiness. It is anyone's guess if or when Dennis was ever happy. 

The rather awful part of returning to the motel after the trip to Oklahoma was the feeling that we were "home"!  That was a pretty sad thought but we had been living there for six weeks and by the looks of the house it would be at least another four weeks before we could move in.  School was to start a few days after Labor Day and hopefully we could be living in the house by then.

There is some truth in the old saying "misery loves company"  as it was nice to have Cindy, Jerry and their son, Bryce, join us as extended stay guests at the motel.  Ford had transferred Jerry into the home office and they had decided to build a home in the same subdivision as ours.  We had first met them in Dallas and they spent a day with us when we rented the beach house in New Jersey so we were not great friends but at least Cindy and I had each other to talk to and the boys had Bryce to hang out with.

Picking out all the options for the house was not as much fun as it sounded like.  This was the third house we had built and the other two things like the flooring, lighting, landscaping etc. were included in the price on the contract you signed.  Of course you could pay a little extra and upgrade somethings but in Michigan all of that could be added to the contract or you could pay for them yourself.  Dennis had decided to pay for the options out of our pocket and keep the balance of the mortgage from not getting any larger.  Perhaps if he had ever shopped for the things he would have done this a little differently.

The lights needed to be first and there were two stores that Mr. Rossi recommended.  I by passed the first one with the valet parking and the free wine while you shopped and went to the one that had be in business for fifty-seven years with no frills. If the economy depended on me to go shopping it would be out of luck.  I only go shopping when I desperately need something and then I have to think about what I am going to buy for a few days.  Getting things for the house did not leave me time to think so much as it an was an impulse buy - for better or for worse. As they loaded all the boxes in the car I knew Dennis would not be happy with the bill which he wasn't.

Lucky for me Cindy volunteered to entertain the boys on my second day out shopping.  Paint was easy since Dennis informed me we would probably only live in the house for about two years and then get transferred so I just had them paint in some off-white color.  I could always redo it later.  Flooring was pretty eas, tile in the bathrooms, entry, kitchen and breakfast area, wood parquet for the library, and 
nondescript beige carpet in the rest of the house except the family room. The family room was my big mistake. Wool Berber carpet was suddenly very popular. I had redone a house in Kansas City that had thirty year old wool carpet and upon cleaning it looked brand new.  So in my infinite wisdom I picked a wool Berber for the most used room in the house.  Somehow in all the hullaboo about how wonderful the carpet was they forgot to mention that because the Berber was a looped carpet, not a straight cut carpet, it pills much like a wool sweater. I cursed that carpet every time I had to crawl around the floor getting rid of the little balls of wool.  Dennis cursed me, Michigan, the builder and anyone else he could think about when I presented that bill to him.  

Ever since we had moved into the motel and would drive over to see the construction of the house we would pass the Bonadventure Skating Rink.  If you missed some of my blogs from several years ago I told how much I loved to roller skate.  Lessons when I was twelve, two roller skating shows the next two years and skating every Sunday afternoon at the Stardust Skating Rink in Muskogee.  It was my most favorite place in the world and I would rather skate (or Dance) than do anything else.  When I married Dennis we went skating one night at an outdoor rink in Fort Worth and after I skated circles around him, did a few turns and could skate backwards he said never to ask him to go skating again (he could hardly stand up on skates).  So I only got to go if the boys had a skating party to attend or when Wes's Mother's Day Out place went on Friday afternoons. 

You can't imagine how hard it was to drive by the rink but one morning we noticed a lot of cars at the rink and I decided to go in and take a look. Wow! It looked a lot different then Stardust.  It was fairly new, a beautiful wood floor and huge.  One whole wall was glass with chaser lights behind it and there was a huge video screen that would play music videos. Do I need to say it was love at first sight?   That morning when we stopped in was an adults only session that they had from 10:00 to 12:00 each Tuesday and Thursday mornings.  The schedule was amazing in that Wednesday night was family night, Thursday was adults only, Friday and Saturday night was everyone and there were Saturday and Sunday afternoon skate times.

Wes and Wally had both been skating since they turned four years old.  I taught them early as they were my excuse to go.  As a rule I never skate on rented skates but mine were somewhere packed in a box in storage at the moving company.  Bonadventure was so tempting that I broke my rule and one Wednesday night I took the boys skating, even invited Dennis to go along.  He declined and off we went. Everyone at the rink was very friendly, even the young man who owned the rink.  I have to say I thought I had died and gone to heaven.  There was something about  rolling around to the music of Prince, Wham, Cindy Lauper, Huey Lewis and others that you forgot everything in the world.  Sort of like great therapy along with exercise as there was never anything else that could make me forget every care in the world than a few circles around a skating rink.

That first night of going back to skating had not only the boys but me hooked.  It is interesting how one night can be so life changing as that one night was.  Life was about to get very interesting.

Note:  This blog/story is number 200 that I haven written since I took the suggestion of a dear friend who suggested I write a travel blog about a trip I went on.  After the trip I decided it was rather fun and looked for else to write about.  Did a few on renovating two buildings and for lack of anything else to write about I settled on the story about me.  Life has it's ups and downs, good and bad but that is what makes it fascinating and fun.  I am thankful for all my readers and appreciate your comments.  Hopefully you learn something about your own life and that we all make mistakes and have winning moments. 

Maybe Detroit Wasn't So Bad

 The Henry Ford Museum

By the middle of July we had reached the end of Ford paying for two rooms at the Holiday Inn.  One small room with two adults, two boys, two cats, piles of toys, my bicycle and clothes  was suddenly not so much fun. The house construction may have been going faster than under normal circumstances but not fast enough. It was beginning to get a little more difficult to keep up a happy face and a calm disposition.

It became more important to keep up the exploration of the Detroit area so as not to spend much time in our little room.  We spent a lot of time at the Detroit Zoo and were some of the few people to visit Six Flags Over AutoWorld.  AutoWorld opened on July 4th of 1984 as a way to attract tourists to the slowly dying town of Flint. Billed as the largest indoor theme park in the world the attendance was good for the first month but in six months financiers moved to close the park down. There were several attempts through the years to reopen it but itwas never successful. It had a lot of history of the automobile and a few rides but the only thing I can remember about it was a huge engine block hanging from the ceiling.

When we could not think of any other place to visit a trip to Greenfield Village and the Henry Ford Museum was always a good bet.  Dennis had purchased a year long pass for the family the first time we went there and it was the best $70.00 ever spent. Built in 1939 it is the largest indoor-outdoor museum in the world.  Henry Ford, being the founder, built it to preserve historical items and portray the Industrial Revolution. Reading descriptions of the Museum it says Ford wanted to save all the historical things.  Not written in bios of the Museum is that it all started with Ford being mad because Philadelphia would not sell Independence Hall, Old City Hall or Congress Hall to him.  So he built exact replicas of the three buildings in Dearborn as the beginning of Greenfield Village and the Museum.

 The Henry Ford Museum

The Museum has planes, trains and automobiles such as Rosa Parks' Bus, Presidential Limos, the first production Mustang, the 1926 Fokker flown over the North Pole by Byrd and Charles Lindbergh's camping trailer.  You can look at the complete evolution of every household item such as waffle irons, stoves, typewriters and on and on. There is a lot to see in the twelve acre building which also houses the Edison Museum to honor Thomas Edison who was Ford's longtime friend.

If it is a nice day you can step outside the Museum to the ninety acre Greenfield Village. The Village was Ford's idea of a living history museum.  Nearly one hundred buildings were moved to the property and arranged in a village like setting to show how Americans worked and lived.  The Village contains Thomas Edison's Menlo Park Laboratory, the Wright Brother's home and bicycle shop, Noah Webster's home where he complied the dictionary, Harvey Firestone's farm, a 1633 Cape Cod Windmill, a covered bridge, a printing shop, buildings such as a grist mill, a saw mill and a train station for the steam engine train that circles the Village. There is no way you can see all the displays even if you went everyday for a week.  They also set up special displays.  One time they honored each decade for a month and the Museum was filled with items and music from each decade. There are sleigh rides at Christmas and the steam engine train was a favorite of Wes and Wally's.

The second week of being squished in the motel room that grew smaller by the moment and the fact that Dennis had taken a week off thinking it would be time to move into the house it was necessary to do something different.  Murder was foremost in the picture if we did not do something.  Since we really did not take family vacations and living in a motel for five months and sight seeing everyday made it sound like a vacation just what do you do?  Naturally the only thing we could think of was to load two boys, two cats, many toys and clothes and head to the old home place in Oklahoma. At least the boys could play outside, Dennis's Mom could make grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup and we could all have a little much needed space.

Unlike some of our other trips to Warner, Oklahoma, the capital of nothing to do but to go fishing or play cards, no one seemed to mind when I went off on my own to visit the only two high school friends I had kept in contact with.  Robert was always easy to find at his drugstore.  I think it was one of the stops all my classmates did when they came back to Muskogee to visit.  He was always up to date on how everyone was doing and the big topic of conversation was the up coming twentieth reunion. I assured him I would be coming as I had already sent in the money for the reservation.

Next stop would be to see  Lisa.  On one of our trips home Robert had told me she was working at her husband's loan company in Checotah which was only a few miles from Warner and I had been going by to see her when we were in Oklahoma and there were lots of letters back and forth through the last few years.  Spending time with her could lift anyone's spirit as she was one of those people who would do or say anything.  There was no way you could do anything but laugh when you were around her.  Of course the big topic of conversation was the reunion.  Even though I had made a reservation I was terrified that Dennis would refuse to go.  I had tried to go to the tenth reunion but he refused and I was not hopeful I could pull off the twentieth.  I will never forget the words Lisa used that I cannot repeat here when I told her how uncertain I was that Dennis would not let me come. You can not imagine the immense amount of laughter but I was not sure I could repeat what she told me to tell him.

Towards the end of the week Mr. Rossi, our builder, called and said it was time for us to pick out all those options like the flooring, paint, appliances and everything else that were add-ons to the basic house. That sounded hopeful! Time to loaded em up and head em out.  

Arriving back in Michigan and looking at the almost completed exterior I noticed that when Dennis added a third garage onto the plan and demanded that the garage be three or four feet longer than normal it looked a little like a garage with a house attached to it. Unlike other houses in the neighborhood the garage stuck out from the front of the house and gave it the look of just a garage with a house attached to it. Wasn't that the opposite of what is usual?

The other news on our arrival back is that a family we knew from our days in Dallas who also worked for Ford had arrived at the motel and were building a house in the same neighborhood. They had a little boy somewhere in age between Wes and Wally.  Maybe being homeless with someone else would make the days a little easier.....maybe. Would anything help ease the uncertainty of not hearing anything fro Barney for six weeks?

Heart of Rock and Roll

Reflecting back on being in residence at the Holiday Inn in Farmington Hills did have some pretty cool aspects. The move to Michigan does not seem as bad as I thought it was at the time. There is some saying about how people only remember the good parts of some aspects of their lives. 

That first month it was a very pleasant break not to have to cook, clean, grocery shop and do yard work. I did get to do laundry and ironing.  It is hard to break the habit of ironing Dennis's shirts as sending them out always seemed an incredible waste of money.  Perhaps it might have been nice to have a microwave or a refrigerator in the rooms as eating out all the time grew tiresome pretty fast.  It was always difficult to get four people to agree on what to eat.  The boys and I wished we could find a place that sold grilled cheese sandwiches and bowls of tomato soup for lunch. Best yet would be a restaurant that had no kitchen but served every kind of food you could want.  All you did was to order something like tacos, hamburgers, fried chicken or pizza and runners from the restaurant would go fetch it from places that sold it. We also wondered if a place advertised "Home Cooking" did they cook it at home as rush it to the restaurant?

By the time Dennis got home from work everyday and we went to check on the progress of the house and found someplace to eat the evening was gone.  Weekends Dennis could not stand to stay in the motel so we explored everything that the Detroit area had to offer.  It was a really fascinating area with a history pretty well centered around the automobile.  The twenty-four hour a day traffic was due to the auto plants working twenty-four hour shifts with people coming and going at all hours.  The plethora of bowling alleys, skating rinks and all night venues were due not only to the work schedules but also to offer indoor entertainment during the long winters.

There was never a place where we lived that there was no drag racing.  Of course we were still dragging a trailer around with an unfinished race car on it when we made the move to Michigan.  One of the first weekends we lived in Michigan there was to be a national event drag race in Milan, Michigan.  At that time Ford was sponsoring race cars and on the Thursday morning before the event all the Ford sponsored cars were on display on the Ford Rotunda (there is that word Rotunda again). Taking the boys down to see them we heard an interesting ad on the radio.  It seemed like Huey Lewis and the News were going to play a baseball game that afternoon against the radio disc jockeys.  It was at the Fairgrounds, free to attend and free pizza and drinks. Hmm.

The strange paved circle in front of the Ford World Headquarters was filled with seven or eight race cars including Bob Glidden, Ricky Smith, Billy Meyers and of course, Kenny Bernstein. Most of them we knew from our racing days in Texas so it was fun to walk around, look at the cars and talk to the drivers. When we were done I told Dennis that I thought I would take the boys to the Fairgrounds to see Huey Lewis.  That was not well received.  I remember him telling me I could not go to the Fairgrounds as it was in a bad part of town. Off we went to the Fairgrounds.

Wow!  That was an afternoon the boys...and I...have never forgotten.  There were not a lot of people there but it was so much fun as we could almost just reach out and touch the band when we stood at the fence.  That was just after they had released the "Sport" album and were the hottest band in the country. The baseball game was just pure fun with both the band and the disc jockeys just having a great time.  To add to the fun they were selling tickets to a concert that night at some place called Pine Knob. I could not whip out sixty dollars for three tickets fast enough. It was just one of those impulses to only buy three tickets and not one for Dennis.  He didn't even know who Huey Lewis was and had not been to a concert since Willy Nelson's wild night at Love Field in Dallas. Needless to say my announcement to him that evening was not met with enthusiasm for the boys and I.  Not that he wanted to go, he just didn't want us to go.  Oh well.

Searching all my tourist information when we got back to the motel I found out where Pine Knob was located.  Interesting place!  In 1927 Colonel Stanley Walden, an executive with Packard Motor Company, bought 840 acres in Independence Township and built a nineteen room mansion on the highest peak (1,201 feet) in Southeast Michigan.  In 1972 the Pine Knob Music Theater with 7,000 seats in a pavilion and 8,000 on the lawn opened.  Pine Knob transformed each winter into a ski resort.  Only forty miles from downtown Detroit made it a great place to spend a day skiing.

What an amazing evening that night at Pine Knob was.  Not just for me but for Wes and Wally.  Most nine and thirteen year old kiddos don't get dragged to rock and roll concerts but I learned early on that the boys were a good buffer for me to get to go places Dennis did not want me to go.  But more than that the boys got to experience a lot of things other kids their age did not.  Wes probably felt like a "rock concert pro" since he had gotten to see Billy Joel at the age of ten.  For Wally there was a look of sheer wonder in his little eyes as he realized those guys he had watched playing baseball a few hours before were now wowing an audience of thousands with music you could not sit still to. Was that the night his heart started beating to the beat of rock and roll?

The rest of that weekend went better than I expected at the drag races.
Under normal circumstances Dennis would have been in one of his not talking to me modes since I had broken the rules and done an unapproved thing.  But living in two small rooms and seeing a lot of old racing friends made that a little too difficult. He actually never mentioned the baseball game or the concert only how dangerous the streets of Detroit were. 

I had made sure my bicycle made the trip to Detroit with us as I had gotten into the habit of going for a ride in the mornings before the kids got up.  In the motel I would leave on my bike shortly after Dennis went to worked in the morning and ride a couple of miles.  It was good exercise which I needed due to all the eating out and it gave me a chance to spend some "alone time" which I was in the habit of having every morning.  Some mornings I would get a box of donuts or sweets of some kind and take them to the guys working on our house.  It was a good way to try and bribe them to work a little faster, do a better job and maybe not put obscene things into the walls. The worst thing a person building a house can do is to complain about their speed or the two by fours not being perfectly straight.  Thankfully Dennis never saw any of the construction workers and only complained to Mr. Rossi, the builder.

The weeks seemed to pass pretty slowly even with all the places we went and visited.  The first mail did not arrive to our General Delivery address until three weeks after moving into the motel and then they were only final bills from the power companies in New Jersey.  I had written a note to Barney telling him where we were but just like letters to friends nothing arrived.  Long distance phone calls could not appear on the motel bill so it was rather difficult not being in contact with the rest of the world.

The house was not anywhere near being done as we approached our fourth week in the motel.  What was the excuse Dennis used to get us to Michigan so fast......I needed to pick out flooring and all that? I guess I could have done that but it might be a little easier if the drywall was up.  Things got a little more testy at the end of the first month.  Ford would no longer pay for two rooms at the Holiday Inn so now two adults, two boys, two cats and all of our belongings were stuff into one room.
Now I remember why when looking back on that summer the memories were not all that wonderful.

Hello Michigan

The House On Our Arrival

It was a fact of life that if you worked for Ford Motor Company that at some time in your career you would spend some time in the home office in Dearborn, Michigan.  Dennis had gotten by for over fifteen years before he got the call to go to the Motor City.  Truthfully I knew very little about Dearborn, Detroit or Michigan itself except maybe that I did not want to be there.  Of course, Dennis did not want to be there either so that made for an interesting situation.

The hardest part about moving around the country were the two little faces of Wes and Wally.  I had managed to sound happy about the move to them for several months.  Wes was "Car Crazy" due to all the years of hanging out with drag racing and car talk and being quite the artist when it came to drawing cars and designing drag strips it made the move very exciting to him.  Wally looked at the move as an adventure since in his nine years he had moved twice and actually just thought that everyone did the same thing. Keeping the boys happy and positive was part of my possible Oscar winning performance.

We arrived in Farmington Hills, Michigan well after dark and everyone was really ready to check into to the Holiday Inn.  Farmington Hills was a fairly new suburb located due north of Dearborn and northwest of Detroit itself.  It was the corporate mentality in moving around to build a new house in the suburbs so that when your time was up in Dearborn you could get the maximum appreciation on the house. There were quite a few Ford families in the neighborhood and the boys would go to school in Farmington itself. The Holiday Inn was fairly new with both indoor and outdoor swimming pools, a video game room and a laundry.  Fast food restaurants lined the highway.

Ford would pay for two adjoining rooms at the motel and all of our living expenses for a month.  Had we been on vacation that would have been heaven.  What more could you ask for?  We had time to explore our new surroundings, see all the sights and eat out three times a day on Ford's dime. So we unloaded the boys, the cats, my bicycle, the ironing board and iron and settled in to have some tourist fun for the next month.  The only rather bad part is that since the house did not have a mailbox our mail was forwarded to General Delivery. That little aspect sort of took the vacation part out of the equation and made it sound more like homeless.  Oh well, it should only be a month or so.

It was a Friday when we arrived in Michigan so the next morning Dennis took us over to see the house. Somehow I thought it was a little further along than just studs.  Mr. Rossi, our very Italian builder, was always easy to find as he spent most of his time on a bulldozer moving dirt around.  All that dirt from digging basements has to go somewhere.
Since we had purchased one of the cheaper lots that backed up to a business parking lot he was building a berm on the back of the lot to hide the lot behind us.

Building a house in Michigan was like ordering an automobile. Not sure Dennis understood this from the get go and needless to say  I was not paying attention when we signed the contract on a house I did not want. The basic price of the house included the basement, the walls themselves and some paint.  Options included all the flooring, lights, appliances, wallpaper, air conditioning and landscaping. Seems like in the contract the only option we had added was air conditioning. Mr. Rossi was glad to see me as it would soon be time for me to pick out all the options so they could finish the house.  He was a little vague on the timing but did his best to make it sound like it would be done in a few weeks.  I was not too sure that much would happen in a month but I tried to remain positive.

Part of the reason I was so distressed about the thought of living in a motel came from our previous move six years before to Kansas City.  That was not a pleasant memory as the boys were six years younger with not much interest in exploring the new city unless we went to the zoo everyday.  Jumping on the beds and fighting with each other loomed large in my memories.  The six years, especially living close to Philadelphia with all it's history, had given them a new level of maturity and inquisitiveness about their new home.  Plus with two rooms they slept much later than six in the morning. They also were big enough to just walk out the door of their room and jump in the pool or wander to the video room to play on the machines by themselves.

In our short house hunting trip months before the boys and I spent most of our time riding around with a realtor to various suburbs or spending a whole day deciding on a floor plan and lot for the house we ended up buying. There had not been any spare time to explore the city of Detroit that I knew very little about except that they made cars. Even though Dennis had been in Detroit for three months he knew less about the city than I did.  

That first weekend we had explored Farmington Hills and Farmington on Saturday.  Somehow we managed to find the schools where the boys would go, places to eat, grocery stores and was there really a rather new looking skating rink only blocks from the house?  We drove to Dearborn to see where Dennis worked which was a huge rather nondescript building.  The building sat on a large area of vacant land with a huge circle of pavement in front of it that looked really out of place.  Why was the Ford office often referred to as the Rotunda?  Then there was a place called Greenfield Village with the main building that looked an awful lot like Independence Hall in Philadelphia and Henry Ford's home. Driving around Dearborn there appeared to be some interesting places for the boys and I to explore.

On Sunday we did the drive tour into Detroit.  I love big cities and have since I was quite small and wanted to grow up and live in New York City.  Through the years I never lost my love of large cities so getting to drive into Detroit from the burbs was exciting. That first look at downtown Detroit was fascinating with all the old buildings even though most were empty.  There was, of course, the new GM Renaissance Center right on the river, the empty and forlorn looking Fox Theater which was known as the home of Motown, the Fisher Building, the second Ford Motor Company Highland Park Plant, the Art Museum and on and on. Driving across the bridge in downtown Detroit was the entrance into Windsor, Canada. 

In the Dennis usual fashion there was no stopping so my eyes had to behold all the sights and my mind had to make mental notes of all there was to see and do.  I discovered that the Detroit Zoo was at 10 Mile and Woodward Avenue.  10 Mile Road meant that it was 10 miles from downtown and the Detroit River.  The grid for Detroit itself looked pretty simple as all east-west main roads were mile roads  and the main north-south roads had names like Woodward Avenue. So directions to the zoo from a Detroit person went something like it was on the northwest corner of Woodward and 10 Mile.  All directions to something were given on mile square quadrants.  That made getting around really easy.

Stopping to eat lunch that day was our first introduction to different food.  We stopped at a Coney Island.  You can't go wrong with hot dogs which is what people from the south call them.  I noticed on the menu that they had something called a loose dog. My tendency is to usually order something different than the norm on a menu so I asked what a loose dog was.  I would never have guessed that it was actually hamburger meat just fried up loose and put in a hot dog bun with onions and cheese.  Wow! That was good so from then on Coney Islands became more fun to stop at. In the weeks to come there were stops at Jewish Deli's, Greek Town and something very different, Pasties.

On the first few days when Dennis went back to work, other than to go eat someplace three times a day, the boys did not want to get into the car for any other reason. That was alright with me as I was a little tired of being locked up in the car myself. They swam, played in the arcade, watched television and did much the same thing kids would do at home. I gathered all the brochures from the rack in the hotel and every tourist guide I could find to see what I could learn about this place I was to live in. The phone book always gives a wealth on information you can't find from the tourist info.  How can a city have thirty bowling alleys, twelve roller skating rinks, an ice rink in every little burb and even in a bowling alley open twenty-four hours a day with an ice skating rink inside? 

The sadness of having to move from wonderful little Riverton or the ability to dash into Philadelphia or hop on the turnpike to New York, the beauty of the shore or the loss of all my friends on the East Coast did not just disappear. I felt the loss everyday and the wish to go back never went away.  But there was something very different and very intriguing about this new city. 

Happy Birthday?

I have always believed that Birthdays are really special.  Maybe better than Christmas since your birthday is centered around just you.  Growing up Mother and Dad always went out of their way to make that day very special for my two brothers and I.  When we were little there were always parties in the backyard with all our friends in attendance and as we got older Mom planned some place special for dinner.  Dad's favorite pastime was shopping for gifts which he was really fantastic at.

I can remember a lot of birthdays like when I was eleven and Mom had a special dinner planned and a beautiful cake baked.  She was working at Brockway Glass, shift work and going to business college.  That day a monsoon rain hit Muskogee and all the streets were flooded by the time she got off at 4:00. It was well after dark before she made it home.  Dad had finished fixing the dinner she had started before she went to work and I had to stare at my presents wondering if I would ever get to open them. It turned out well in the end as I got a Kodak Hawkeye camera that year complete with the flash attachment.

The year I turned twelve we were on vacation in Colorado way up in the mountains at a place with cabins along the Platte River. On my birthday Dad took me to Denver to go shop for a present.  At that time I was an avid reader of Seventeen magazine and noticed that May D & F had a store in Denver so that is where we went so I could be like those girls in Seventeen magazine.  I think I got a bathing suit but that was only half the story of the day.  The couple who owned the cabins were vegan and they cooked us dinner complete with a cake.  Their son, who was close to my age, gave me a necklace which I still have.

At fourteen I felt so grown up that I decided I wanted my birthday party to be on television.  Tulsa had a dance party on every Saturday afternoon.  Mom made the arrangements and I invited friends.  To me it was almost as great as being on American Bandstand. Of course I was so mature I asked one of my brother Paul's friends, two years older to go as my "date".  The very cute guy actually said yes until the morning of the event at which time he called with some feeble excuse about hurting his foot.  Oh, the buckets of tears that flowed and the swollen eyes.  I thought my life was ruined until all of a sudden he showed up to go.  Did my brother Paul and his friend George Highfill actually threaten to break his leg if he did not show up? It was fun even though my eyes were so swollen from crying I could hardly see and on my very first date when we got to my house he told me I was a girl every boy would want for a sister. Not quite what I wanted to hear!

On my sixteenth birthday everyone went to work leaving no trace of a cake or presents.  I felt so sorry for myself I rode my bike to the store and made my own cake.  About the time the cake was done Pat Mackey next door showed up with a cake for me and Mom arrived home with one from the bakery.  Wow! Three birthday cakes.  Dad arrived home driving a 1954 red Chevy convertible for me.  The day that started out as the worst birthday ever turned into the best.

At seventeen there was the presentation of the guitar I had been dreaming about and at eighteen new luggage to take to college. So why all the discussion about great birthdays? Probably because I was so "birthday spoiled" by my parents it was always hard getting married to find out other people, Dennis, believed it was just another day.  Presents were not important. Did no one realize that I thought I should really be allowed to celebrate the entire month of June for my birthday and not hear someone say they did not have time to get a card?

Fast forward to June 15, 1984. My thirty-eighth birthday.  The moving truck came early and I cleaned as they emptied the house that I never wanted to leave.  Neighbors dropped by to say goodbye and somehow I held back the tears so my eyes did not swell up the way they did at fourteen. The Ford van we had was loaded with the two cats in their cage and all the things I thought we would need for a few weeks in the hotel.  Did anyone pay attention to the fact that it was my birthday?  No, it was just moving day again.  Funny that moving from Kansas City to New Jersey was on Halloween night with two kids crying because they could not go trick or treating. I figured that the next time we moved Dennis would pick Christmas Day.

Driving along the endless Pennsylvania turnpike the subject up my birthday came up.  Somewhere we pulled off for my birthday dinner at a Red Lobster.  The reason I remember that so well is because when I was eating my baked potato I found a huge clot of dirt right in the middle of it. I must say that that was rather interesting as to how the dirt managed to be in the middle of the potato.  Perhaps it was a sign.
Perhaps it just added to the worst birthday ever.....or would that really be the worst birthday ever?

We arrived in Detroit or actually Farmington Hills sometime in the middle of the night.  Travelling with Dennis you never stopped for the night at a hotel - that was too much trouble - just drive all night to get to where you need to get to. At least Ford was going to pay for two rooms so all four of us, two cats, my bicycle and clothes for a few weeks were not all stuffed into one room. 

On the 584 mile trip from Riverton New Jersey there was a lot of time for me to be angry about my situation and a lot of time to think about how I managed to get myself into not being part of the decision making on anything except how a house was decorated.  I know that Paul, Kenny and I all took after our Dad in being the best in the world at being non confrontational.  I had learned within the first few days of being married to Dennis that there was never going to be a way for me to win an argument.  That disagreeing with him on anything only resulted in me being stupid.  This behavior on my part only gave him more power over me. The worse part is that I only became more unhappy as I tried to keep him happy.

Somewhere along those 584 miles my little brain clicked and I realized I was doing a lot to create my own misery and perhaps it was time to change course.  The light bulb really clicked on bright when we drove over to see the new house and the stage of construction it was in.

If Walls Could Talk

204 Howard Street in 1984

As moving day approached there was a great deal of sadness on my part as I had come to love living on the East Coast, had made many friends and could have easily stayed there forever as it really had become home.  That in itself was surprising after how much I did not want to move there in the first place. I can think of a lot of reasons I grew to love it there but I really feel most of it was due to us buying the "Adams" house.  That was what the brass door knocker said and how everyone in town referred to it.

Back when I was a senior in high school my Mother got on one of her usual tangents and thought she would like to become a writer. She dragged me off to a writer's conference in Tahlequah one weekend to explore the possibilities.  I don't remember much about the weekend except I came home with a book that told the story of an old house from the perspective of the house. It was as if the walls could talk.

For centuries some cultures believe that you truly do leave an aura on things that you touch and places you live. Too often the use of the word ghost only conjures up bad images.  Ever hear people say you shouldn't by a house in which the previous owners got a divorce  or went broke?
I had heard those stories through the years but except for a few rent houses all the others had been brand new when I moved in. Do you remember or notice a house that when you walked in the door you had the feeling you could kick your shoes off a stay forever?  Could that be the walls talking or the aura the house had from previous owners?

When I had gone to New Jersey for my three days to find a house I got the typical realtor who showed me houses we could not afford, ones close to great shopping or great schools or in uppity neighborhoods or Archie Bunker neighborhoods.  I found an ad for the one in Riverton which I demanded to see very much against her wishes. It was strange but the moment I stepped in the front door it was like all the anger and frustration over the last few days melted away.  Was the house talking to me?

The Adams were pillars of the community.  He was a past Governor of The New Jersey Rotary Club and owned a business in Philadelphia.  She was a member of the Porch Club, gardened in a denim shirt, hat and gloves.  Both were very active in all the communities affairs and very well respected. There was no wrangling on the price of the house as they listed the items that needed to be repaired and said they would hire a Quaker to fix them as they were honest and did the best work. Hmm...these might be big shoes to fill.

When we arrived at the house on moving in day it was immaculate although the decor looked a little faded on a cold rainy day.  Wally knew that there were ghosts in the house and Dennis lamented about how small the vintage one car garage was.  What I felt that day and for the rest of the time we lived in the house was a big difference in how I felt about things and did things.  It seemed for the first couple of years that I sort of lost the desire to go into another business and all of a sudden I became very good at volunteering for things. I spent much more time with the boys not being so busy.

Once the neighbors checked us out and decided we were going to be around for awhile they became more friendly.  I had always heard that people in the North or East were not very friendly but that really isn't true.  It takes them longer to warm up to warm up to newcomers but are just as nice as people anywhere else in the country.


On the day we moved out, after the house was empty, I wandered through the house and checked out each room.  What was my double checking to make sure it was as immaculate for the new owners as Mrs. Adams had left it for me turned  into a flood of memories over the last four years of living in that wonderful house. There was the cozy first remolded kitchen in town with cabinets by the Murphy Door Bed Co. and the old Chambers stove with it's particular squeaky door.  There was the time our new kitten Sylvester ran up the leg of my jeans and stuck his head over the burner the same time I turned it on.  He did look funny with his whiskers singed off.  How Sis down the street could tell I was up by the light in the kitchen window so we could plan our day.  The fuse box with the old fashioned screw in fuses we blew quite often.

There was a swinging door between the kitchen and the dining room. That room had had the extra vintage upright piano that I gave to the young couple behind us.  I had to laugh when I thought about how the piano got moved to it's new home.  I stood on the curb at 6:00 in the morning with homemade chocolate chip cookies and the garbage men gladly rolled it down the street and around the corner to their house. Also had to laugh about the Thanksgiving dinner we ate in the dining room that I was sure had a lot of plaster in it since while I was cooking Dennis was putting up the tin ceiling with dust flying every where.

How many panes of glass did I have to replace in the panels on each side of the front door.  Wes and Wally always swore they got broken on accident or the newspaper boy just delighted in throwing the paper through one of them. Fall always brought a parade of mice looking for a place to live through the winter.  French Fry, the king of the hunter cats, would chase them to death and present them to Wes.  Sometimes in his bed at night or just bring them to him as we watched television. He was the same cat that caught squirrels and deposited them in the basement window wells and ate the neighbors prized nest of baby cardinals.

The house was always alive with Wes, Wally and all their friends.  Wes had all his buddies over for lunch a lot of days, there were birthday parties and the television went non stop as well as a roaring fire in the fireplace all winter.  The kids had free range all over town on their bicycles and sledding up at the Country Club in the winter. I learned hardwood floors were a lot easier to keep clean than carpet with all the leaves and mud that got tracked in everyday.  Wes got into the first and only fist fight that I knew he had.  He would have been unscaved if he hadn't fallen down on the ice and broken his nose.  The mean lady next door came charging over to our house one day wanting to know who fell onto one of her scraggly shrubs.  Little Wally was hanging his head and he confessed to doing it.  A little while later we found out his friend Jimmy was the one who fell on the shrub.  When we asked him why he said he did it he just said he didn't want Jimmy to get into trouble.  My proudest moment had to be at a school dance when Wes asked a girl to dance who could only walk with braces and crutches.   

There were not only happy times that embedded themselves into the walls of the house.  Life is filled with the bad as well as the good but my hope is that those times were very small in comparison to the happy ones.   My hope for all the future owners was that they can will add many more layers of happiness and love to to the walls of that house.  

204 Howard Street in 2015