Friends and Wine Helped Me Survive

There were many doubts in my mind before I met Barney for lunch.  Once the question that would he even remember who I was got easily answered then I began to worry about just what I was doing having lunch with him.  Somehow having lunch with an old boy friend did not quite fit in my realm of the right thing to be doing.  All that went away from the moment I saw him.

Living in one small room with Wes who was eight and Wally who four was not the ideal way to spent the summer.  They did not have their bikes or Big Wheels to ride or their friends to play with,  eating out had ceased to be fun after the first week and it was very difficult to keep them happy and positive about this move to a new place. Dennis had constant complaints about everything from the construction of the house to the long drive to work and to work itself.  Staying positive in any way had become difficult.  Having Barney as a friend and spending time with him laughing made the whole process easier.

Many hours spent picking out paint, wallpaper, flooring and all the other decisions that had to be made in building the house finally ended four weeks after we had moved into the motel.  The house was done and ready for us to move into.  Somehow I talked Dennis into us taking the boys to his Mother's house in Oklahoma for a week so that I could move into the house without little ones under my feet. That was a very wise decision considering the problems moving into the house.

It had been very nice to find out that when Ford moved us from Carrollton, Texas to Kansas City that they would send packers to box up all of our stuff.  Previous moves we had done ourselves by taking a load in the car and putting it in it's new proper place.  That always seemed to be an endless task and then there were those final things that you simply did not know what to do with. The moving company packers just swooped in, pushed you out of the way and boxed everything up then marked the boxes with what room they came out of. In theory the unpackers could simply unpack the kitchen box in the kitchen, living room in the living room, etc.  Perhaps the theory was a good one since at the end of the day, everything was in its place and they took all the empty boxes away. 

So much for theory!  I didn't know that if you left trash in the kitchen garbage can or a Pathophysiology book on the washstand in the kitchen both would be placed in your new cupboards.  Boys Room boxes were a problem since there were two of them and since there were no shelves for toys they just dumped them out in a pryamid in the middle of the floor. Was the living room in the old house the family room in the new house or the family room in the old house the unfinished basement in the new house?  The washer and dryer in the old house was in the garage but in the new house it needed to go to the utility closet up two flights of stairs by the bedrooms.


Dennis had taken the day off for the event but he was busy having every thing in the garage put in its proper place. Naturally there were things stored in the old garage that he didn't want in the new one so Christmas decorations and my kiln plus all the ceramic supplies came in the house.  I was surprised that he did not send the bicycles and Big Wheels in also. By lunchtime I was looking for a closet to hide in and even thinking about jumping off the back deck.  Only problem was that the back deck was only eight feet off the ground which meant I would not die but only injure myself and never get the mess in the house straightened out.

Just when things were their darkest the neighbors started showing up to welcome us to our new home. The great thing was that some brought cookies and some brought wine. Dennis headed off to get lunch after I announced in the middle of a kitchen disaster, with no food in the house, that I was not cooking with six people in my way and the frying pan laying on top of some plates in a cupboard.  While he was gone I enjoyed some cookies and wine straight out of the bottle as who knew where a glass was. By the time he got back I was  all mellowed out from a half of a bottle of wine and could have cared less if they put the five week old kitchen trash under the sink.  I also decided that we had moved into a neighborhood with pretty nice neighbors.

The next morning I think Dennis decided to go to work and let me try to straighten out the mess.  As I started unloading all the cupboards in the kitchen onto the floor the gal from across the street came over.  She reminded me of Mrs. Santa Claus when I had seen her the day before.  Karen was short and round, had very curly hair, little wire-rimmed glasses and a smile that just drew you in.  She looked at my dilemma and jumped right in to help.  By lunchtime the kitchen was fully functional with everything put in its proper place.  I had learned all about all the neighbors, all the fun things there were to do and that she would turn my name into some group called New Neighbors.  She took me to her house for lunch, put a bunch of stuff in a crock pot to cook for us for dinner.  After lunch she had me gather up school information for Wes and we went and enrolled him in school since she was a teacher and knew just what to do.  From that day on there was never a morning without a phone call between the two of us checking on each other or making plans for the day. 

Dennis's Mom called that evening to let us know that the slobbering English Bulldog had bitten a little girl who came to play with Wes and Wally on the cheek and it had required stitches. Wes assured us that no one was provoking the dog but with words from an eight year old  who could know for sure.  It was a good thing that Warner, Oklahoma did not have an abundance of lawyers to jump in and sue us but we did pay for all the medical bills just in case. The dog had never shown any aggression in the three years we had her so it was an interesting development.

Perhaps all the events that occurred during the move to Kansas City and into the house were really good character building times.  Even though I did not get the house I wanted I did love the house - all five levels of it - that I got.  The neighborhood was the perfect place for the kids and I with lots of friends and many fun things to do. Kansas City was the first place I ever lived where there was actually a change of seasons.  Leaves turned beautiful colors in the fall, there was a lot of snow in the winter and the hot summers I was already used to.  There would be many more, shall we say, interesting developments in the next few years but my coping skills had certainly kicked into high gear.

I had not talked to Barney since I left the restaurant last Thursday.  When Thursday rolled around again I wondered if he would be there but I decided to take the chance and just go see. After the week I had moving into the house I needed to just get away from it all for awhile.
When I walked in the door the maitre d' said "Right this way, Miss Donna". Guess that was my first clue that Barney was indeed there.
He told me that he was not really sure that I would actually show up and he had called the motel to find out we were no longer there. Maybe it was more fun that we just surprised each other.

The Phone Call

It took a lot of courage to finally pick up the phone and call Barney after twelve years.  When I finally did dial the number and hear his voice all I could say was "Hey".  When there was a pause that seemed like an eternity all the reasons why I had put off making the call flashed through my mind.  He didn't remember me, what nut says "hey" instead of hello this is.... or he simply did not want to hear from me.  Just as I was about to hang up and forget the whole thing I heard "Hey, yourself.  Where have you been for the last eleven years, seven months and six days?". Somehow I managed to mumble something about being in the process of moving to Kansas City.  He stopped me in the middle of my rambling and said he wanted to see me.  Could I meet him for lunch tomorrow? Without any hesitation I said yes and he gave me the name and address of a restaurant and then added he could not wait to see me.

Even though a sense of relief swept over me after the phone call there were some serious doubts about my having called him. The best thing to do was to stay busy for the next twenty-four hours so I made arrangements for a babysitter and took the boys to the zoo for the afternoon.  I did drive by the restaurant that afternoon so I could be sure to find it the next day.  When Dennis came back to the motel that evening I told him I was going to have lunch the next day with an old Stephens friend and he just said that was nice.

I surprised myself by not really being very nervous getting ready or driving to the restaurant. Barney had always been easy to talk to and of all of the people in my life I had been more open and honest with him than anyone else. There was perhaps a little apprehension when I walked into the restaurant and the maitre d' asked if he could be of service.  I told him I was meeting someone, he smiled and said "right this way". As we made our way through the restaurant I saw Barney stand as we approached the table. There was that same smile, that same lock of hair that fell across his eyes and he had not changed a bit.
He came around the table gave me a big hug, said how glad he was to see me.  When I asked him how the maitre d' knew I was meeting him he said he showed him a picture of me.  He pulled a slightly worn photograph out of his wallet taken back in the Stephens days.  Wow and I thought I was the only one that kept all that stuff.

It is difficult to explain the feeling that crept over me the moment I saw him.  There is a lot to be said for staying in touch with family and old friends.  Ever since I had married Dennis I actually spent very little time with my family and had not seen or heard from any of my childhood friends except Pam and Cathie.  There is something special about people you grew up with even if you weren't best friends.  For some reason it always seems like you just saw them yesterday. The years, the disappointments and the bad times seem to just melt away.

We spent the next three hours talking.  I was afraid several times when he asked about a bottle of red or a bottle of white or said he couldn't believe I looked so good after all this time that he was going to burst into song like he used to do. When I teased him about it he just laughed and said it was rather like the scene from an Italian Restaurant by Billy Joel.  Instead of talking about Brenda and Eddy we discussed Pam and Cathie.  I told him Pam was in the L.A. area working at a bank and travelling around the world.  That I had pictures and postcards from all sorts of fascinating places.  Cathie, on the other hand, had married a super nice guy but they had split because he wanted children and she did not. Besides she was busy protesting pigs raised in cages and doing women's marches.

When the subject changed to he and I he said he had married Sarah six months after I had gotten married.  The marriage did not last even a year (I did not say "I told you so") and he did get his MBA from Northwestern.  For several years he worked in New York on Wall Street but finally came back to Kansas City and had a real estate company and did investments.  Six months ago he married a gal named Lauren who was going to law school. He seemed happy with his life which was really all I cared about.

I filled him in on the last eleven years, seven months and seven days as best I could.  He liked that I had two boys and that I had finally graduated from college. My big question for him was why the stupid telegram on the day I got married. He laughed and asked if it got to me.
He said he meant every word that it said, he did want me to be happy and wished me all the best but at the same time why would he stop loving me.  He asked if I had stopped loving him and I said no that I always believed you could and did love many people at the same time but maybe in different ways.  He actually said he went to Muskogee a few years ago to try to find me but someone else lived in the house and Dad's pharmacy shop was closed. 

He walked me out to my car when it was time to get back to the boys. That was when he sang "I'll meet you any time you want at our Italian Restaurant.  How about next Thursday?".  How could I say no to that?


 

Goin' To Kansas City

My recovery from the heart stopping moment after reading the phone book in the motel had to be quick as Dennis and the non-stop talking horrible real estate person showed up.  Since my three day trip to Kansas City was up in the morning there had to be a decision made on a new home before I flew back to Dallas. 

Why I was even in Kansas City looking at houses was the real question.  I wanted the old house with character, flowers and the white picket fence but was told by dear Dennis that when I made as much money as he did then I could pick out the house. So what did it matter what we bought especially on that day. Especially on that afternoon when I could hardly think or remember my own name. We ended up signing papers on a new house in the southern suburb of Lenexa, Kansas.  Actually it was a new house under construction. This would prove to be interesting as it was the end of June and the builder assured us would it be done before school started in September.  I never figured out why Dennis picked Lenexa as the Ford office was forty miles away in Missouri.

It was a pretty sleepless night that night.  I should have been happy we found a house, a pretty cool looking house, if it ever gets completed. I was not thinking about whether we could qualify for the loan of $75,000, the physical move itself or anything else of importance.  I was only wishing one moment I had not come across a name in the phone book I had long tried to put out of my mind and the next moment glad I did. It was logical that I would look for last names of people I knew that might live there but what idiot looks for last names that start with a Z? How many last names are there that even start with the letter Z? But there it was or there his name was in black and white with a phone number. It was Barney, my college love.

It had been twelve years, the day I married Dennis, since I had heard from him. He sent me a telegram that day wishing me happiness and saying that he would always love me.  The telegram was about as heart-stopping as finding out that he was living in Kansas City.  I was furious with him at the time thinking that he sent the telegram to get back at me for marrying Dennis but then I would think that it was really rather sweet of him.  Maybe it would have been better if we had argued, said horrible things to each other instead of just going our separate ways due to family, bad luck or just bad timing. Now what do I do?
How would I feel if I picked up the phone and called him and he said "Donna who"?  

Back in Dallas there was a lot to do in getting ready to move by the end of the summer.  Dennis would call everyday with a list of things for me to take care of - like I needed a list.  Towards the middle of July he decided we should go ahead and move even though the house wasn't done.  Ford would pay for a month's stay at the motel and all of our food.  The couple buying our house was living in an apartment and would be glad to get into the house the first of August. What sounded like a pretty neat idea at the time turned into a nightmare.

The packers from the moving company came one day and packed everything except what I thought the boys and I would need for the next month.  Not having to pack up, rent a truck and move ourselves was different from the seven moves we had made before. This was move number eight in twelve years. The truck came the next day and once it was loaded we packed the car which was a trick since it was the Mustang without a lot of extra room.  Somehow we all got in the car with Boodles, the slobbery English Bulldog, clothes for a month and of course, lots of toys and headed off.  About the time we got to McKinney Wes asked where the cat was. Back to Carrollton to find the cat sitting on the front porch. Second goodbyes to the house and off to Warner to drop the dog and the cat at Dennis's parents house for the duration of the motel stay.

After the first few days at the Holiday Inn I was beginning to see that this was not a real pleasant experience with a four and an eight year old. They would go out and swim for ten minutes and then spend the rest of the day jumping on the beds or fighting.  Going out to eat three meals a day got old pretty fast and I can remember how disappointed they were that no restaurant served peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and tomato soup for lunch.  Anyone remember the motel days before microwaves and little refrigerators?  So I finally resorted to loading them in the car at eight o'clock in the morning for breakfast and then driving around Kansas City until five o'clock in the afternoon when Dennis came back to the motel.

Actually the tours of the area were pretty neat.  There was something about Kansas City that made it fun be to moving there.  Maybe it was all the stories I had heard from Dad and Uncle Tom or maybe just the city itself.  The boys and I did all the museums, the zoo several times, found my grandparents graves in the old cemetery on the Paseo and strolled around The Plaza which was the first suburban shopping center built in the United States.  Kansas City is known as the city of fountains and we saw everyone of them. By the time the house was done I had driven on every street in both Kansas City, Ks. and Kansas City, Mo. and had quickly developed a love for the city and the people.

The house construction surprised me in that it seemed to progress very quickly.  The only problem I can remember was that one day I noticed they had put a sliding glass door in the kitchen.  We had made that one change in the house when we signed the contract.  With children and pets sliding glass doors were at the top of the list of things I hated.  The builder was very nice to work with and in a couple of days the door was gone and replaced by a French door with a window panel on each side.
The house was actually five different levels which I had wondered about in the beginning but as it neared completion I loved it. Going by to check on the house we noticed a lot of children in the neighborhood.
That was something that made both Wes and Wally excited about moving to a new place.

I had written Cathie, my roomie from Stephens, before I left Dallas and told her about finding Barney in the phone book and that I was not sure I should try to contact him.  She picked up the phone the moment she read the letter and asked if I had his number since she wanted to call him to say hi.  No, I did not write his number down at which point she called me a schmuck (one of her favorite words) and how could I be so stupid not to call him. I gave her all my excuses like he would not remember me or be rude or some other bad thing.  When she started calling me "Hansen" and throwing in more "schmucks" at me I knew she was losing patience. She reminded me that it had been over a month since I found his phone number and by now I would have stopped even thinking about calling him if I really didn't want to.  She had a point.

So I looked up his number in the phone book again - it was still there.
I dialed the number thinking I would get an answering machine or maybe a female voice and I would just pretend it was a wrong number and hang up.  That sounded easy enough.   The phone rang and a voice I had not heard in twelve years said hello.  All I said was "hey" and then there was an extremely long silence........

Too Many Eggs in the Basket

The Goats in Spain did not stay mainly on the plain

                   
I don't know how many people have told me that as you go through life you tend to only remember the good parts.  Somehow you are supposed to forget the struggles, the disappointments and all the problems and only remember the happy times.  When school started in the fall of 1977 it seemed like smooth sailing to my graduation from college but there were a lot of stumbling blocks along the way.

By October the Boys and I were settled back into school.  Enrolled in eighteen hours of some really tough classes like pathophysiology, cell biology, zoology and quantitative analysis meant my sleeping time was reduced to three to five hours a night. No problem with that as I had always thought that sleep was a waste of time and going to class everyday was a requirement.  The problem arose when Dennis announced we had to go to Spain in a Ford trip. There was no "not going" because of school and in reality how could someone pass up a trip to Spain for seven days.

The view from our hotel

                                      
                   

Dennis's Mother came down to take care of the boys and off we went to the sun-soaked Costa del Sol.  Too bad it was a tinge off season and the weather was slightly cool and sometimes rainy. There were five hundred people on the trip that Dennis, as a host, had to make sure had a good time.  It was an interesting feat to try to take care of some of these people.  One man from Tulsa filled his suitcase with food as he was afraid to eat anything in Spain while another man brought his wife who was dying of cancer and then there was the assortment of people who were never happy anywhere at any time. Need I say there was never a dull moment.

                   
Actually I had a great time touring Granada, the Alhambra, loved all the Moorish architecture, the Cathedrals and the food.  One day we took the ferry to Morocco across the Strait of Gibraltar which was an interesting trip complete with me getting to ride a camel. It was really a fun trip until it came time for us to leave.  Seems like there was a strike at the airport and no planes could take off.  That was a huge problem as we had to vacate the hotel since another group of Ford people were on their way.  

Granada

                                                    

Somehow the tour company came up with an interesting solution.  Four Hundred and ninety-eight people were loaded onto buses and two into an ambulance for a trip across Spain.  There was something very nice about going through the countryside filled with olive orchards and beautiful scenery to the Portuguese border.  The border was a small river that we crossed on a wooden flat-bottomed platform a few people at a time.  Then it was back on more buses and off to Faro, Portugal where we met the Ford group that was just arriving.  We got on their plane only to be taken to Lisbon for twelve hours since the flight crew was out of flying hours.  We finally arrived home after a fourteen hour flight and two days late. The trip was fun, at least for me, not so much for Dennis as usual.  Since I had filled my suitcase with a couple of text books the extra travel time created some study time.

                                                   Touring the Spanish countryside

Christmas came and went.  Wes always hated the artificial tree decorated with red velvet bows and apples.  But in the picture I can't seem to remember if they were amazed at the amount of presents or disappointed. When the semester, hopefully my last, started I found out they were not offering the Botany class I needed to take. My adviser let me take three hours of graduate research instead.  This actually was his master plan to get out of teaching Zoology labs himself and have me do biological research by ripping the sciatic nerves out of live mice resulting in their death. Nice that I had just taken Zoology the semester before so it was fresh in my mind - not so nice killing the little mice.

As if trying to finish my last semester of school wasn't a chore in itself with the extra hours added on from teaching and research the home front got more complicated.  Dennis spent a couple of days in the hospital when his blood pressure went to 240/140, he decided he did not like the 37' Ford he dragged home and traded it for a table saw, another Ford trip popped for the month of June and he found out that he was being transferred to Kansas City.  Even though Dennis thought I could snap my fingers and make everything perfect I had to take one event at a time.

I finished up the semester in great shape.  Somehow I managed a composite average of 3.65 for the fifty-tw0 hours of math and science which was pretty unbelievable to me.  I graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree with a double major in Biology and Chemistry.  With all the college classes I had taken at the three previous schools I could have also had a degree in Liberal Arts with only three more hours in art but I just wanted to be done.  Graduation Night was a pretty proud moment and I no longer had to hear how Dennis never thought he would have to put his wife through college.

After graduation I spent two weeks getting the house looking spectacular, put it on the market For Sale By Owner and held an open house on Memorial Day. It was an absolutely beautiful day and I guess people don't have anything to do on that day so we were flooded with lookers all day.  I don't know if it was the smell of the fresh baked cookies in the house or the sparkling pool in the backyard but I had nine people on a list that wanted to purchase the house.  I kept a list just in case a potential buyer backed out or could not qualify.  Remember how a year before I balked at buying a house for $50.000.00?  Well, I sold the eight year old house we paid $20,000.00 for with an added $8,000.00 swimming pool for $45,000.00.  Plus because I sold it myself Ford gave us 10% of the selling price as a bonus for not having to fool with it.  Not too bad.

In between selling the house and the trip to Freeport in the Bahamas it was time to find a place to live in Kansas City. Dennis had been looking since he went to work there the first of June and I had to fly up to see what he had found.  Actually I was ecstatic to be moving.  I was sad to be leaving the pool since we had not even had a full summer to enjoy it but the thought of leaving the Dallas/Fort Worth area and all the unpleasant memories that the area brought to mind was sheer happiness. My Dad had grown up in Kansas, went to the University in Lawrence and worked in downtown Kansas City when he graduated from college in the 1920's. Uncle Tom had grown up there and told me many stories.

The actual looking for a house was a nightmare.  The real estate agent kept driving me by shopping centers in the suburbs and possible schools in areas where they were building new houses. If the economy depended on me spending time at shopping centers it was out of luck and who says the shiny new school is the best.  Dennis was looking for the palace befitting a company junior executive while I was looking for the old house with the flowers and white picket fence. All was becoming pretty bleak and I began to wonder why I was even included in the house hunt.

While sitting in the motel room one day waiting for Dennis or the real estate agent I used the time to read the telephone book.  Reading the telephone book had become a habit of mine in travelling as you can learn a lot about a place and the people who live there.  Just by chance I came across something that took my breathe away and maybe my heart even stopped beating.  Suddenly Kansas City and any old house would do.

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.

One of the Best and the Worst Years

There are times when writing these stories that it is difficult not only to remember everything but also to convey how hard it was to juggle the boys, college, the house, the race car and a husband who nothing seemed to make him happy.  It was an odd coincidence last Sunday while attending a concert of the SWOSU Music Department that sort of brought it all back. There was a girl somewhere in her twenties playing a flute while a small child slept on her chest in one of those papoose carriers.  I was extremely proud of that girl even though many probably did not feel the same way.

I can remember back then telling friends who questioned how I went back to college, ran a small business, took care of the boys and tried to be the perfect wife that I wished I was the kind of mother who enjoyed staying and baking bread.  Life would have been a lot easier although I knew that just wasn't me. In truth, looking back now, I wonder how I survived 1976.

When racing season started in the spring Wes was a very active 5 1/2 year old. He operated at high speed from morning until night, racing up and down the street on a Big Wheel or bicycle with a vivid imagination and non-stop talking.  Wally was 2 1/2 always happy and I think rather quiet trying to take in all the commotion around him.  We spent a lot of time together on the drive to Denton to college everyday and I think he enjoyed the quiet without his brother and the children his same age at the TWU Child Care Center.

I loved going to school but I think I loved going to school from the age of six. Something in my personality requires me to never go to class without being prepared as I never wanted  to appear stupid.  That probably comes from being told too many times that I was stupid and maybe that wasn't such a bad thing. When Dr. Chandler, the plastic surgeon and my cheerleader on going back to college, would demand to see my grades at the end of each semester it was fun to show them off.
At the end of three semesters of Chemistry, Math and Biology I had managed not the 4.0 he said I needed but a 3.5 grade average I was really proud of.

The weekends leading up to the first drag race in March were a flurry of activity in getting the car painted and ready to go. Watus, his girlfriend Sam, Jimmy Parker and Dennis and I all got along well together but privately I had to put up with constant complaints from Dennis about this or that.  The first race at La Place in New Orleans I could not go due to an art show and it ended up with Jimmy Parker departing from the team.  Watus bought Jimmy's engine and a friend of Watus's, Bill Burns started helping on the car. Bill and his wife, Pam, were a great help and fun to be around.  Since Dennis knew very little about blown Chrysler engines and Watus was driving we needed Bill and his expertise.

My Ford lease vehicle for that year was a nine passenger van which doubled as a tow vehicle for the race car.  Many weekends all six adults and sometimes my two boys ran down the highway going to places like Carlise, Arkansas, Jackson, Mississippi, Houma, Louisiana, Houston, Tulsa or Amarillo.  Every race had it's funny stories and memorable events.  It must have been bad luck to make reservations at motels in advance but it was at times difficult to find rooms at midnight after driving half the night and racing all day. Then there was the time Dennis backed the van over the front of a Corvette.  Or the night Dennis and I left Dallas after a company party we had to attend and drove all night to meet Watus and Bill at the track in Amarillo. The fun part was that the car came close to winning or won every race we entered.  This was drag racing at it's best for me.

As the summer flew past Dennis became increasingly unhappy with situation with the race car.  I used all my positive powers to try to keep the waters smooth but when it was decided that the car should move out of our garage and down to Reeder Row in Dallas where all the top area racers were Dennis was very unhappy.  It only made sense to me as everyone who had cars on Reeder Row also had the knowledge to make the car a consistent winner. Besides the knowledge there was a lot of parts trading and fine tuning that went on that kept us winning races. In truth the car moved to keep Dennis from tinkering on it as he made no great effort to learn or understand the workings of the Chrysler engine.  It was then that I realized that Dennis did not care as much about winning as he did about simply owning a car that he could spend his time just tinkering on, bragging to his friends about and just sitting in the garage so he could look at it.

As with all racing engines which are just waiting for a chance to blow up ours did right at the end of the racing season.  It was good timing from the aspect that it happened before Dennis, Watus and Bill came to words about the partnership that would not have been pleasant.  We had entered the National race in Indianapolis a couple of weeks after the engine went kaput and no time to repair it. We already had tickets and even motel reservations for the six of us and we all went together but it was not a very pleasant weekend. After that weekend Dennis ended up selling the entire car to Watus and was quitting racing forever.  Needless to say I was not a happy camper.  Racing Top Alcohol with Watus and Bill was really fun even with all the ups and downs.  It was worth all the time and effort, worth all the extra hours of no sleep to stay caught up in school, worth all the money and things we had given up through the years to go racing.  I probably tried to get him not to sell the car but I had never learned how to argue with anyone and successfully make a point.  Instead I just added black stars on my imaginary chart every time I thought about it for years.

So, now what?  

Alcohol and Chemistry Formulas

I never did figure out why this tall, skinny guy named Jimmy Parker wondered into our garage one late summer day in 1975 with an interesting proposition.  He was not someone we knew and why he came to us will always remain unknown.  But he had an engine and we had a car so he offered us the chance to go racing in the fairly new class of Top Alcohol Dragster.

Maybe a few facts very brief facts about drag racing might be in order here.  Drag racing had evolved from the early fifties from guys meeting on Saturday night on out of the way roads (like the road by Davis Airfield in Muskogee where I grew up) to little drag strips out in the country, to multi-million race tracks. The types of cars had progressed from cars people drove to work or school everyday to ones that were especially built for the sport.  Much like the evolution that happened from stock car racing to NASCAR.

There are classes for the basic stock cars and classes, depending on engine size and the type of fuel used, for the dragster, funny cars and altereds. Dennis and I had been running in what was called competition eliminator with a six cylinder Ford engine and then a small block V-8 Ford engine.  Those classes were way down on the list as to how fast they ran, how expensive they were and how much time and energy it took to keep them running. In everyday life you could compare this to driving a beat up 1971 Fiat versus a brand new Mustang.

So what do you do when someone wonders up and offers you the chance to go race with the "big boys"?  Top Alcohol Dragster was the second category down from the fastest cars, Top Fuel Dragster, the only difference being the car ran on methane or alcohol instead of nitromethane.  Dennis was doubtful, I was ecstatic.  Dennis's big question was who was going to drive the car as he did not seem to want to (driving was not his thing).  Jimmy Parker had an idea.

                                           Watus Simpson



The next Saturday Jimmy showed up with an ex-top fuel racer named Watus Simpson. Watus was well known as one of the very good drivers and an all around nice guy.  Somehow that Saturday afternoon everyone agreed to give the partnership a chance.  A flurry of activity began and in a matter of a couple of weeks the dragster was together with Parker's blown Hemi engine.  With no paint on the race car, no fooling around with testing and tuning for weeks on end we were off to the last race of the season in El Paso, Tx. The dragster ran very well, we won a few rounds, learned a lot and everyone got along well. This was "fun" drag racing!  Now we had the winter to get our act together.

            Watus's Sons and friend Sam waiting to make a run

Another interesting fact about drag racing.  Except for some of the National Events drag races were scheduled on a Saturday and Sunday.
When Dennis and I raced the C and D gas dragster we did not travel very far to race, maybe Tulsa and Houston were the furthest.  Switching to the alcohol car the races were a little further away and everyone worked so the final preparations on the car usually occurred on Friday evening.  It always seemed like we did not get on the road until 2:00 or 3:00 o'clock in the morning. The goal was always to get to the race track about 8:00 in the morning.  Since I was the only one who did not work guess who got to tow the trailer down the highway in the middle of the night. Somehow I always managed to get us there and back home on Monday morning in time for everyone to go to work and I to school.  A few bottles of Pepsi and chatter on the CB radio and I could have driven to Canada.

Of course I was back in school juggling studying, the house, the boys and the race car.  That fall I jumped into Calculus, Biology and Chemistry.  I guess I figured if I took what looked to be the hardest for me first I would know if I was smart enough to make it.  I was terrified of the Calculus class but it turned out to be one of the easiest classes I ever took.  The Chemistry was a challenge but Biology was fun.  With taking twelve hours including labs it wasn't easy and my sleeping time on test days was severely cut back.  I can remember going to bed at 9:00 and getting up at midnight to study. Also probably guilty of distracted driving as I would make index cards of formulas and stuff and study them on the thirty mile drive to Denton.


That semester I met another gal a few years older than I was trying to get her degree.  We ended up in a lot of the same classes and it felt very good to not be the only "old Lady" in school.  Actually all the teeny boppers came to hate us as we always managed to set the grading curve pretty high.  The other nice thing about being an older student was that all of the professors understood the balancing act we were doing to come back to college.  After Wally started going to the child care center at TWU they would send me a note to class if he was sick. I then had to go get him and there were many times he sat in my lap for some lecture or sat on a stool in some biology or chemistry lab.  Missing a class was definitely not in my playbook.

Have to admit that one occasion occurred that I did miss a few days of class.  Ford Motor Company did annual trips to honor dealerships and guys in the service departments that met quotas or whatever.  In the spring of 1976,  Dennis as Owner Relations Manager, we got to go on one to St. Maarten Island in the Caribbean.  Was I, who had never seen the ocean or been out of the country, going to turn that trip down for Chemistry class?  Not Hardly.  Of all the future Ford trips I got to go on that was my very favorite.  It was the most beautiful place, the nicest people and the only one when Dennis did not get sick or lose his luggage or throw a "fat fit" or end up not talking to me for two weeks after we got home.

                                  Wally and Wes on Wally's 1st Birthday

Spring also meant the beginning of racing season after working on the car and trailer all winter.  What a season it was!