Turning Thirty Was Great

Watching a program the other day I learned that it was forty years ago that the movie Saturday Night Fever made it's debut. Gads where did all the years fly by to?  It did make me curious about the 70's since I am writing about that period of time so I did a little research to jog the old memory as to the events.  I turned thirty in 1976 and a friend much older than I told me I would have more fun in my thirties than any other decade.  She was wrong as I have had more fun each decade since.  

Way back when I started writing these stories for lack of anything else to write about at the time I did a story on the fact that I have horrible hair.  With the advent of going back to college, the kids, the race car, and all the other things I crammed into a day I resorted to an Afro Style of stupid curls.  I have avoided posting any pictures as I looked so bad a cat would have not dragged me home. Okay, if you really want a laugh it is in a story from 7/24/15.  But two things happened in the mid-seventies to save the world from looking at it.  One - Farah Fawcett was quite popular with her Shag haircut and Two - I spent less time with racing so there was time to fool with blow dryers and hot rollers. I did not end up looking like Farah but it was an improvement.

So, what did we do when all of a sudden the race car was gone that we had poured every thought, every extra penny, every vacation and was the center of all of our friends for ten years?   Must say that for me, although I resented the reasons and the way it happened, it took one form of stress out of my life. I had plenty to do with college, the boys and my little business.  Not so true for Dennis.

A few months after school started in the fall of 1976 Dennis decided we needed a bigger house.  More fitting I guess to him feeling like a Junior Executive with Ford Motor Company. When we bought the "starter" home in Carrollton in 1970 it was twenty thousand dollars and it was your basic three bedroom, bath and a half, living room and family room house. It was also five minutes for Dennis to get to work.  I had no problems with the house and Wes was happy in the first grade at a school two blocks away plus the field in front of our house was where Wes played soccer.  After months of looking at fifty thousand dollar houses that were not much bigger, farther from work and school and only offered few more amenities we decided to stay where we were.

Mother had a pretty bad couple of years after George passed away and I didn't really have much time to spend with her in the racing days.  She had come down to visit once and had Dr. Chandler get rid of the extra tissue (called bags) around her eyes right after I had met him.  In the spring of 77' she came down to get a facelift.  That was pretty interesting as she was really a pretty woman but no one argued with Mother.  Then she started jogging much to my dismay.  I hate jogging but every time she arrived I had to purchase new running shoes as I always managed to get paint or something on the previous ones.  I had to have been the perfect daughter as I did go out and run three miles every morning with her on her visits.  It was a blessing that after all the cosmetic surgery and the fitness craze that she had gained lots of boyfriends and was too busy to visit very often especially since Dennis and Mother were like putting a match to a puddle of gasoline. 

My brother, Kenny, and his wife and girls came down in the spring for a classic car show in Arlington.  Kenny had been building old cars since he was twelve and had a really cool old truck to put in the show.  What a fun weekend that was.  There were lots of neat old cars and lots of contests for the people who came like races for the kids and silly things for the adults.  I entered a spark plug changing contest where they provided wrenches but Kenny had a speed wrench in his truck that I used instead of the ones provided.  An old drag racing trick won the contest for me.

Two things happened after Kenny's visit.  The light bulb went off in Dennis's head and he decided we needed a street rod. Working for Ford and going to a lot of dealerships he came across a lot of old cars in old dealerships and pastures.  One weekend we borrowed a trailer and went to Vernon, Texas to drag home a real "project" car in the form of a 1937 Ford. The kids and I thought it was pretty cool and it would definetly give Dennis something to do.

The second idea came when Kenny took a dip in our pool.  Kinda small.

Since the pool was a little small we decided to build a bigger one.  I vetoed going to summer school that summer because summer school was really tough going everyday and I needed to be home to watch over the construction.  It seemed like it took the entire summer to get finished but the kids were about as happy with the piles of sand as they were when the pool was finally done.

Wes took swimming lessons and we bought Wally a ski vest that we kept by the backdoor.  He learned he had to put it on every time he went out the door even if it was just to play in the yard.  The dog, Boodles, which was the longest resident dog we had, was a problem.  She was an English Bulldog, Dennis's choice and certainly not mine, and sunk like a rock every time she fell in the pool.  If I had been able to be cruel to an animal I would not have jumped into the pool fully dressed on a regular basis to save that dog. Must admit there were times I thought about it.

When school started in the fall I found out that if I took an extra class each semester that I would be able to graduate in the spring of 1978.
That sounded great as I was ready to get all that over with.  Since we no longer needed a nine passenger van to tow a race car with I got a 78' black Mustang 5-speed with T-tops to drive back and forth to school.
Now that was a cool car to drive while the radio blasted with the Bees Gees, Elton John or the one the kids hated, Barry Manilow. Poor Wally learned to hate Disco and Barry Manilow at the age of three.

The pool got finished in time for Wes's seventh birthday party and I must say I loved having the pool. The last two semesters started off quite nicely and as I look back now I can see that at turning thirty a change in attitude began to happen.  Was it going back to college, rocking out to the disco music, having more fun with the cute little boys or actually gaining a little maturity?  Perhaps it was a combination of all of those things. Whatever it was helped prepare me to handle all the events of the coming year.

Back To School

If I was terrified going to the first day of Algebra class the first day of summer school at Texas Women's University the trip home was even worse. The decision to take the class in summer school sounded very logical in my pea size brain as that was the class I was most worried about.  A concentrated class everyday with nothing else to have to study sounded logical.

Visions of Mrs. Sharp with her comfortable shoes, silky flowery dresses and blue lips and tongue (Dad said that was from medicine she took) flashed through my mind.  I was fourteen and in the ninth grade when she became my teacher for the first year of what was termed "New Math".  The poor woman had no idea of what she was teaching or at least that was my excuse.  Then there was Mr. Grant in the tenth grade who let me come in early everyday to try to make sense of all the silly little scribbles involved in Algebra. He was kind, always cheerful and tried hard to etch some of it in my brain to no avail.  I actually dropped out of accelerated classes in the eleventh grade using mononucleosis as an excuse when it was really a phobia about MATH. 

To make matters even worse Dr. Smith, head of the math department, looked younger than my twenty-eight years and the other seven students were giggling eighteen year old girls.  Nothing that first day of class made any sense at all and maybe it would be best just to never return to that place.  There were probably some tears that day as I only had a thirty mile drive home to decided whether to tell the babysitter to return the next day or not. Maybe I should just not go back to college, stay home and be a good Mom, a good corporate wife and drag racer.

When I got home Wes and Wally were happy, the babysitter was happy
and everything was just fine.  As the baby sitter walked out the door she said she would see me tomorrow at the same time.  Out of my mouth came the word "great".  Guess I had made up my mind to not give up. Those were the days long before the term multi-tasking was used for women but it was certainly the beginning of mine.

It was a struggle to find time to do homework or at least attempt to do homework.  Wes was a very active five year old and Wally was only nine months old.  Dinner needed to be on the table at 5:05 and evenings were always busy especially since I had spoiled Dennis and he was not enthralled with my going back to school.  That was when my habit of getting up during the wee hours of the morning began.  There is something about having the absolute quiet at two or three o'clock in the morning when no one wants anything and you can't do anything except sit quietly so as not to awake anyone that made studying easy and actually fun.

The second day of class was the real shocker.  Maybe Dr. Smith did not want to spend his summer grading homework papers as he called on each student to put a homework problem on the board.  He would then go through each of the algebra problems and show what was right and what was wrong.  Needless to say the first few weeks mine were completely wrong. Once I got over being embarrassed about not getting the problems right and I realized there was no crying in math something clicked.  All of a sudden the funny squiggles, infinity and the angle of the dangle made sense.  First semester I managed of B and the second semester, which was Trig, was actually a pretty easy A. Wow, maybe I wasn't so stupid after all.

While I was busy juggling children, college and house hold duties the new Paul Peyton chassis arrived.  Weekends were busy building a body for it as well as for other racers.  No vacations for the weary except the annual trip to Indianapolis for the big NHRA race of the year which had become our only vacation. One thing about drag racing is that they were always scheduled to end on a night before one had to go back to work the next day.  I lost count of the number of times through the years that we arrived home from some distance place around dawn when Dennis had to be at work that morning and the children had to be in school. I probably passed a lot of interesting sights to see but missed them due to total darkness.

When school started in the fall Wally was only ten months old and needless to say not potty trained yet so I kept the babysitting service at home.  It actually worked out well since Wes started half-day kindergarten and could walk the block home when I was not there. That he could walk home is probably not the approved thing to do these days but was quite normal then as well as no car seats and such. The other advantage to the baby sitting service was that if one sitter could not come it was the job of the service to find another one. That saved a lot of headaches.

Wes, Wally and a neighbor at Wes' 5th Birthday Party

Sometime that summer a guy came by the garage one day with a very interesting proposition concerning the dragster.  Dennis was dubious of strangers bearing gifts.  I was awestruck at the thought of it as it would change the entire direction of what we were doing in racing.

                                        Oreo Cookies, anyone?

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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