I'd Have to Have been Crazy

It is interesting to look back an realize how some events change and shape our lives.  For some it may be one huge moment or event.  For me it was a quite subtle series of things.

Arriving home from the hospital with a new baby I not only had a husband and a four year old but also Dennis's Mother and Father. Dennis had taken some time off from work not to entertain his parents or help with four year old Wes but because he had stuff to do in the garage.  Dr. Herndon always saw his patients each week for four weeks after the delivery of a baby and it was not a great visit the week after Wally was born. Seems like my blood pressure was really high when I went in for the first checkup.  He instructed me to go home and tell Dennis's parents to go home when I explained the scenario at home.  He wanted me back in his office in four days and if the blood pressure was not down I would be back in the hospital.  That certainly did not go over well with Dennis but they did disappear the same afternoon.  Blood pressure was back to normal on Friday.

Wally was a newborn that people dream about having.  He slept through the night very early and just a sweet little guy.  At about five weeks of age he suddenly began having what is called projectile vomiting.  Hours after he ate he would throw up formula that seemed like it just came from the bottle instead of being sour smelling and it came up with such force that it flew across the room.  That was a little scary so off the see our pediatrician.

Dr. Pharo was a very soft spoken and very conscientious as I had learned with Wes.  He explained to me that it sounded like pyloric stenosis which causes the muscle at the bottom of the stomach to slowly close prohibiting the digestion of food.  Since it was a Friday he sent us home with instructions to give Wally Benadryl over the weekend to see if it helped.  When Dr. Pharo called on Sunday night I told him Wally was actually a little worse.  So he told me to take Wally to Children's hospital on Monday morning.  By a stroke of luck we got the best pediatric surgeon in the state of Texas.  Wally and I spent the night at the hospital, surgery the next morning, first feeding at 11:00 AM and sent home at 2:00 in the afternoon when the formula stayed down.  No more problems so it was pretty simple.

Dennis decided that the dragster would not run well because the chassis was no good.  Good old me did not argue even though there were a lot of very good running cars with the same chassis.  He sold the chassis and immediately ordered a new one from a local chassis builder and friend, Paul Peyton.  That made for a relatively quiet winter except 
that he found an English Bulldog puppy born on the same day as Wally so it became the Christmas puppy and dog number dog six. He also did replace the flathead engine in the 1950 Mercury with a Ford V-eight.

This was 1975 and the days of the dare devil motorcycle guy named Evel Knieval.  Wes had an Evel Knieval toy, we had actually gone to see him jump over many semi-trucks at Green Valley Raceway and all the kids in the neighborhood were crazy about him. I have to admit that I thought he was really pretty cool in that bad boy sort of persona.  The neighbor kids built a jump ramp on the sidewalk and one weekend while working in the garage I watched the kids, including four and a half year old Wes going up the ramp and flying through the air.  Sure looked like fun.  Looked like lots more fun than building somebodies's race car body.

Have you guessed yet what my next move was?  I borrowed one of the kid's bikes and decided to fly through the air myself.  It looked pretty easy and if Wes could do it I certainly could.  Well, I guess I did not fully get the idea that you should keep pedaling and keep the speed up as you were going up the ramp.  At the top of the ramp the front wheel dropped off the end due to lack of speed and I did fly through the air without the bike with the greatest of ease.  I splatted on the sidewalk on my face. All I can remember after landing was my neighbor calling the ambulance and Dennis asking me where my insurance card was. The ambulance ride is a total blur.

One look at me in the emergency room and they called a plastic surgeon as no other doctor wanted to touch the mess I had made of my face. I did get up off the gurney a couple of hours into the wait for the plastic surgeon to go to the bathroom.  I looked in the mirror and thought "Boy, you have really done it this time" as my whole face was skinned up and my upper lip was split from the center of my lip to the left corner of my nose.  Not a pretty sight.

The plastic surgeon arrived after about a three hour wait.  He looked at me and asked how in the hell did I do that.  When I told him I tried to do an Evel Knieval stunt he rolled in laughter and asked me how old I was.  Proudly I told him I was a twenty-eight year old mother of two.  He then told me I should have paid more attention to how many times Evel had crash landed so I came back at him with how sexy I thought Evel was.  We got off to a good start and I think he delighted in sticking the needles in to deaden the lip for a multitude of stitches. Evidently I had run one of my upper front teeth through my bottom lip and just to prove to me how stupid I was he did not deaden it when he stitched the inside of my bottom lip up. That Hurt! The really hard part before the lip healed up was laughing. I guess I was the only person who thought the stunt was funny and I would have to hold my lip together to laugh with no pain.

Mom and Dad had been after me to go back to school.  Dad and I spent many hours when I was growing up talking about doctors and medicine. He really always wanted me to go to medical school.  My SAT scores showed I should avoid math and science at all costs and study something a little less intellectual. I had managed to garner eighty-seven hours in college without those two subjects before I quit the third time. Due to their wanting me to finish and a couple of doctors that really inspired me I decided to go back to college.  

It was a little daunting to find out to graduate with a pre-med degree that I only needed fifty-two hours of math and science. I chose to go and was accepted at Texas Women's University in Denton rather than North Texas University as I felt I would do better not competing against guys in math and science. All my female friends thought I was crazy, my parents were overjoyed and Dennis was laughing figuring I would flunk out the first semester. I also kept selling ceramic items to Margaret's Bed and Bath shop on Greenville Avenue in Dallas to pay for my tuition even though Dennis moaned for three years that he never thought he would have to put his wife through college. Everyone in Dallas County must have had a little ceramic bathtub soap dish.

Dr. Chandler, the plastic surgeon, and Dr. Herndon both were inspiration and both became my cheerleaders for the next three years. Dr. Chandler did boob jobs for several of my friends, My Mom came down and had her eyes done later a facelift so he and I stayed in contact even though I did not do any more Evel Knieval stunts.  He was interesting from the fact that he got a lot of his training serving on a medical ship during the Vietnam War taking care of injured soldiers.  He also had Insurance Only written across my chart in big red letters.  Of course I had insurance but his policy was if insurance did not cover an accident that needed plastic surgery then he would never send out a bill.  He always said he made enough money from insurance and cosmetic surgeries to do just fine. He also looked over my past college transcripts and told me if I was really intending to try for medical school I needed a 4.0 average in the rest of my classes.  Nothing like a little pressure before you even get started.

Luckily I had used a babysitting service on some weekends when we traveled with the race car.  They were older ladies that came to your house and stayed for a couple of hours or for an entire weekend.  The great thing was that they charged a dollar an hour and the house was always cleaner than when I left it and the boys were happy.  Wally could not go to the TWU Child Care Center until he was potty trained and Wes would be in kindergarten the following September.  Knowing that the first class I had to take was Algebra I enrolled only in it for the summer school session in June of 1975.

Needless to say after I enrolled I became terrified.  I was ten years older than anyone else in the class, hadn't studied anything except a cookbook or car parts for six or seven years and the instructor was none other than the Dean of the Math Department. Just what was I thinking!

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Put On A Happy Face

Mother and George

There is an old adage that most girls marry guys like their fathers.  I guess that stems from the fact that the father is the first male roll model and it feels familiar and comfortable.  My Dad was quiet, easy going on the outside, always listened and in his eyes I could do no wrong.  Mother on the other hand was loving one minute and totally 
unpredictable the next.  I always tried to be good, wear clothes she wanted me to wear, make good grades and do everything she wanted me to do. But the rules would change and I was always a disappointment to her.  After being married to Dennis for eight years I began to realize that I had married the personality traits of my Mother.

The year of 1974 started out pretty good.  We had the new Ed Mabry chassis, a new body and a new trailer.  I also found out I was pregnant with a due date sometime in October.  After being off two months on Wes's birth there was no need to set a real date this early.

Although I was not crazy about getting a boxer puppy she turned out to be a pretty sweet dog.  Her name was Dandy and she seemed quite alright with Wes poking at her eyes and pulling on her ears.  Since Dennis was still travelling every week and I was the one feeding her she quickly became my dog.  Dandy slept by my side of the bed at night, followed me to my ceramic workshop in the back yard to curl up in the boxes of shredded paper while I worked and was by my side all the time.

Wes and Dandy

The new dragster chassis got the 302 Ford engine installed and several attempts to get it to run consistently did not happen.  One night before the lettering and pin stripping was done on the car Dennis lost his temper when I offered a suggestion about what to do to the engine.  After all I had been around long enough to know something about them.  He flew into a rage and yelled at me that he felt like he was whipping a dead horse.  Anyone should know you should not yell at a pregnant woman.  Thank heavens Ralph and Mark popped in at that moment.  I was on the verge of tears but they thought the dead horse thing was the funniest thing they had heard in a long time and brought me to laughter.  When the ace painter, Zero Wasson, came to finish the car he painted a cartoon of a horse laying on it's back with all four hooves in the air.  The car was known from then on as the Dead Horse.

Town East Craft Show

Wes was growing like a weed, had a vivid imagination, never stopped talking or moving. At four years of age he was actually a lot of fun although there were times when I wanted to choke him. One time at a craft show at Town East Mall Wes and a fellow artist's little girl were playing behind us and then they were gone. Anne was panic stricken while I was not too concerned.  Anyone who took Wes would bring him back in ten minutes.  After about thirty minutes with Mall Security looking for them they were found eating ice cream cones in the mall office. It looked like my craft show days were numbered if I had to have a four year old with me all day.

                                                        Wes

The only friends I kept in contact with were Cathie and Pam from Stephens.  Pam had graduated from college in Arizona and went back to L.A. to work in banking.  I have stacks of letters and postcards from all around the world from her travels.  Cathie went to Texas Tech, met a great guy named Terry, got married and graduated with a mathematics teaching degree.  I always found it funny that she married an accountant and got a degree in math when she taught me to use red ink in my checkbook when I was overdrawn.

One day Cathie appeared on my doorstep.  That would be the first of many fun surprise visits through the years.  Wes fell instantly in love her with and said that when he grew up he was going to marry her.  Of course Cathie loved that.  Dennis and I took her out to dinner to the Old San Francisco Steakhouse where there was a waiting line.  Some bubba in line behind us started making remarks to her which were not very nice.  She turned around, stared at him with those huge blue eyes and told him in a very loud voice exactly where and what he could do with his male appendage.  Everyone in the line gasped and I thought Dennis was going to faint.  The bubba went silent for a few minutes and then apologized to her. That was typical Cathie and I loved every visit.  Dennis did not.

Sometime that spring or summer Dennis got a promotion from service rep to Owner's Relations Manager and the travelling slowed down.  After four years of him being gone all week he was suddenly home for dinner at 5:05 every afternoon.  He brought work home almost every night and it was not an easy adjustment to say the least.  Two things stand out in my mind.  One night Wes was running though the house playing and Dennis shouted for me to shut that screaming brat up.  The other was his statement that if he ever had a handicapped child he would put it in some institution.  Neither comment set very well with me as I had always thought I wanted to have six boys and I was pregnant at that time.  Time to rethink having any more children.

Although I had not kept in contact with any of my high school friends or even seen any of them on trips to Muskogee to see family I got a letter about our ten year reunion.  I really wanted to go.  After all I had spent all of my school years with these friends.  A year before I had organized and got all of Dennis's class together for a reunion so I assumed we would go to mine. Oh, how wrong could I be? There was some excuse about me being six months pregnant - so?  All I know is that I did not get to go and spent that entire weekend crying.   I ran out of imaginary black stars for awhile over that one.

October rolled around .  The dragster was still behaving like a dead horse making that part of my life difficult.  Dandy, the boxer, had developed Demodectic mange when she was about four months old.  Many trips to several vets and hundreds of dollars did not cure it.  She could no longer come in the house and it was getting cold outside.  It broke my heart but on the advice of the vet I had to put her down.

George had gone fishing one weekend at Beaver's Bend and came home on Sunday night telling Mom he thought he had gotten a cold.  Mom was going to school to become a nurse since George did not want her to work.  She had gotten a job when they first got married but he told her she was ruining his tax bracket so he gave her a couple of gas wells and an allowance to stay home.  When she came home from class on Monday morning she could not understand anything George said.  In the emergency room it was determined he had gotten stung by a wasp,  had viral encephalitis and lapsed into a coma that night.  He passed away on Thursday at the age of 57. They had only been married for four years during which Mother was the happiest I had ever seen her.

After a quick visit with Dr. Herndon on Friday he gave me a thumbs down on going to Oklahoma City to George's memorial service on Saturday.  Dennis attended the service which was probably not very comforting for Mother as they never got along well.

                                                                          Wally

I messed up Dr. Herndon's office hours on Monday by giving birth to Walter William Tarkington that afternoon.  Another healthy eight pound baby boy. One might think "What else could possibly happen?".  Well, life-changing events always seemed to pop up out of nowhere and grab you.  Seemed to happen often in our household and I was becoming very adept at putting on the happy face.

Black Stars?

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

Back to the story......

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

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

Wes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What Do The Simple Folk Do

It may seem strange that drag racing became the center of my life from the beginning of my marriage to Dennis. Actually I came by it quite naturally having two car crazy brothers, started going to the drag races when I was fourteen and it was how I met Dennis in the first place.  There were times when I did wonder what the normal folk did to pass their time but there really wasn't much time to think about other things.

When Dennis went to work for Lincoln/Mercury we had a completed chassis and it did not take long for a racing enthusiast at his office to appear in our garage.  Robert E. Lee Capps, Jr. better known as Lee J came by to visit.  He was single, very smart, very funny and ready to go racing.  Since we had the chassis Lee J. wanted to build an engine and both a partnership and a friendship was formed.  Where the idea to build a six-cylinder Ford engine came from I really don't remember but that was the plan.

Dennis and I were building the aluminum bodies for other racers.  About the same time the company I worked for got the idea to make Spanish style wrought iron bar stools.  Quite by coincidence we had made friends with a racer who did car upholstery so naturally I said I could make the cushions for the bar stools. In reality I had no idea how to make them but learned pretty fast how to cut out the fabric, foam and wood it took to make them.  Between my friend and I we made about two hundred of the tops.  Should note here that as ugly as they look now they were the hot ticket in the year of Spanish houses and shag carpet.

Between the dragster, our side businesses of bar stool tops and aluminum bodies the little single car garage was a little difficult to deal with.  It was time to purchase a garage - I mean house.  Since Dennis thought he should only have to drive ten minutes to work we decided to build one of the starter tract homes in Carrollton.  It was Spanish style, of course and was on the very edge of civilization just north of Trinity Mills road. I got to drive to Arlington everyday to work but the good thing about it was that it was going to be much harder to move if someone did not like the house, the garage or the neighbors. Did I really buy red shag carpet and Spanish furniture?

Hertz had another sale of Ford rental cars and we purchased a '69 

Mercury Convertible and said goodbye to the lovely Mercury Marauder.

It also seemed stupid to keep making car payments on the '68 Chevy pick up since it could not be seen on the Ford parking lot. Since a guy can't live without a pick up Dennis found a '51 Ford to replace it.  It was a cool truck and became the tow truck for the dragster and trailer.  We put an oak bed in it and the only little problem it had was a vacuum leak that caused an interesting whistle when you drove down the street.  I

was always curious how someone who told other mechanics how to fix cars could not fix a leaky radiator, a transmission that didn't quite line up with the engine causing sheared clutch discs or a vacuum leak.  It still remains a mystery of life.

Shortly after we moved into the house the dragster had an engine and was ready to go to the Green valley Raceway.  That should have been an exciting day but was a penchant of things to come.  Somehow when we were loading the car on the trailer Dennis had me stand at the back of the trailer and it landed on my toes. My tennis shoe turned instantly red with blood and rather than be concerned about me Dennis was upset that I was so stupid to have my foot there in the first place.  I hobbled into the house, bandaged my toes, put on my saddle shoes in hopes the bleeding would stop and went off to the race track. Wow, my foot hurt a lot as I pushed the race car around.  The car did not run well, Dennis was grumpy and I ended up in the emergency room at 2:00 in the morning.  Nothing broken, big toe just smashed. Not a great evening.

Just to make sure there was never a dull moment around the Tarkington house Dennis and Lee J decided to paint the race car in the garage.  No one thought anything about the fact that the fan for the heat and air was in the garage.  It was magical how the entire interior of the house had a lovely blue dust all over everything. My dear Mother had met a man from Oklahoma City and got married.  We sort of missed the wedding due to some big race we had to attend.  Not a great way to create pleasant family relationships.  Lee J. got married to a gal named Peggy and they moved a few blocks from us. We did attend that wedding.

It was a very good thing the land in front of the house was designated for a future freeway.  Most of the neighbors were pretty good about the number of vehicles and the trailers that would show up on the weekend. Somewhere there had to be a secret map that showed all the want-to-be-racers and fans where the action was. If someone like Benny Osborn or Kenny Bernstein had us building a body for them the traffic got even worse.  Then there was the slight noise when we would start the car in the street to see how it sounded.

At the end of the fourth year of marriage we had now moved seven times, had eight different vehicles, had a running dragster (sometimes),

bought a house and I found out I was pregnant. But we did have the same dog, Herman, who had learned to speak English and stopped eating tacos and enchiladas. Now we can take the time to figure out what the simple folk do..........maybe.