Welcome to my Middle Years!

We lived in the fixed up, burned house all through my school life.  It ended up being my parent’s final house (plus it stayed in my family for an additional 20 years).  They talked about moving to Texas or Ohio a couple of times, once pretty seriously, but never moved.  While I was in the 11^th grade of high school, I met a 10^th grade girl in a small, neighboring town.  My female cousin introduced me to her.  The first time I met her, she spotted a metal ring in my car’s glove compartment which was actually a car part that fell off the front fender of my junky 1962 Ford Fairlane.  She took the ring and said that we were now “going steady”, which made me very happy.  This was a very hectic time in my life…going to school (when I went), working long hours in a gas station after school and on weekends and finding time to drive the seven miles to see my new girl friend (who I’ll call Queen).  I was very happy during this time, but also very tired.  This was back at the age when it seemed like life goes on forever and nothing will ever change.  I remember thinking that I wished I was older (for some strange reason).  I wanted to be an adult and I got tired of hearing that I/we was the youngest of the group, and how young I/we looked.  I also always wanted to be bigger and heavier.  At the time, I couldn’t walk in the wind without blowing back and forth.  You seem to worry about the dumbest things at that age.

Those days seemed rather nice, and fun.  When I look back, it seemed like time passed very slowly.  We kept busy during our time away from school and work.  A week seemed like forever, waiting for the next Friday night or Saturday, to go to a drive in movie; or a shopping trip to Shopper’s Fair (no Wal*Marts or Meijers at the time) to buy my new girlfriend a couple of clothing items.  It made me feel good to be taking care of her and buying her little things that she wanted.  However, my mother (at the time) had mixed feelings about “me spending money on a girl”.  She once told me that I shouldn’t be spending my hard earned money on somebody who would probably get rid of me as soon as she got everything she needed or wanted.  I didn’t believe this was true (although I did think about it for a few minutes).  The first real ring I bought for the Queen was a twenty dollar pearl ring, from K-Mart.  She still has the pearl ring but I don’t know where the car part ring went to. 

It was very hard to not drive the seven miles to see the young Queen, every day of the week.  I had to hold off for a few days during the week because I had a limited income, trying to keep my junky car running and buy gasoline which was around twenty eight cents a gallon back then.  I remember one weekend when I was pulling up towards her dad’s garage doors for a long awaited visit, when I noticed her standing in the garage with her dad, who was working on one of his many cabinet projects.  I was so glad to see her that I forgot exactly what I was doing and crashed my car right through her dad’s garage doors.  It smashed up the doors kind of bad but didn’t hurt my old car any.  My real reason seemed too silly, so I told him my brakes didn’t work.  He spent over an hour trying to find my brake problem, which made me feel kind of bad, but I didn’t want to tell him the truth. 

There were school weeks when I couldn’t wait a whole week to see her, so a few times I would skip school in my town to attend her school.  I got by doing this a few times before anybody (teachers) realized I wasn’t a student in their school (and asked to leave).  I always got my absent excuses from a girl in my homeroom class who wrote exactly like my mother.  Missing a little school was never a problem; as long as I went to a school, I didn’t think it mattered much which one I went to.  After a long junior year of school, we celebrated a three month reprieve by shopping, walking, driving around, and swimming in gravel pit ponds.  After a short summer vacation, I found myself entering the twelfth and final year of high school.  It seemed very depressing returning to school full time, after such a nice, short summer of playing (except for some long days working at the gas station).  I seemed to get in trouble in school at lot (for rather little things) during the last (2) years.  I was excited about getting out of school for good after graduation, and the Queen and I were beginning to make plans to get married, soon after graduating.  I remember the night when I had to ask her dad if it was OK with him if we went ahead and got married on June 26, 1969 (I was to graduate on June 5, 1969).  I expected him to not like the idea, because of our ages, but he seemed to like the idea, probably because they had four other kids at home anyway.  We hadn’t even discussed the matter with my parents yet, but figured that would be the easy part.

After another long nine months of very boring school life, June 5^th finally arrived.  The graduation ceremony was something that I didn’t really want to participate in but figured it would be kind of fun since I was actually celebrating what seemed like an extremely long thirteen years of something that I didn’t ever really enjoy.  A couple of hours later, I walked out of the high school auditorium one last time.  Now that I think about it, school never was really that bad.  After working for the last thirty six years, I think going to school for a mere thirteen years would be a piece of cake.  It was now time to finalize our plans to get married.  Since time was really dragging in those days, we decided to push our wedding date ahead by one month, making it June 18, 1969.  Since our wedding plans only included our immediate families, the date was unimportant, although we did have napkins made up that indicated a July 19 date.  Our date was only two weeks away and I just got out of high school, what excitement.  Finally, the big day arrives.  We all meet at the small church in the Queen’s home town.  We somehow got through the nerve wracking (because everybody was looking) ceremony, exchanged rings and stood by for a few minutes for the Polaroid photography to be completed.  Outside the church, I asked the preacher how much he was getting for weddings at that time.  He quietly said “I usually get fifteen dollars, but it is up to you”.  I handed him a twenty dollar bill and told him to keep the change, I was feeling kind of ritzy.  We all left the church after a few minutes of handshakes and headed for the Holiday Inn restaurant, located about twenty miles away, for our little “reception” (again, only family members present).  We all ate a simple meal (can’t remember what I actually had, probably a cheeseburger).  The waitress then brought a small cake with one candle.  She asked whose birthday it was (mine or Queen’s).  Somebody in the group said it was our wedding party, which sounded rather strange.  Since we both looked very young; I was seventeen and Queen was sixteen, nobody seemed to believe that we just got married.  It was kind of hard to believe.  We then left the Holiday Inn and headed for Detroit to spend one night at my grandmother’s house (whom I really didn’t know very well).  We met a few relatives down their street, went to bed and got up and drove to a small town in Ontario Canada to spend a few days with my new wife’s grandparents.  Our first trip across the border was fun.  I don’t think we had any signs or cans on the back of our car but, somehow, all the truckers knew we were just married (maybe from the white jacket hanging in the back window, and the Michigan plates heading towards Canada).  Many of them tooted their horns, flashed their lights and waved.  I felt kind of like a celebrity.  Our week away ended real fast and it was back home to our new, three room, upstairs, forty dollar per month apartment.  After settling in, I was back to work at the gas station.  The Queen stayed home these days and put away “all” our stuff.  We now had to get used to cooking our little meals in our little oven and sitting down at our little table, to eat our little suppers.  I remember, once baking some little shrimps in our little oven.  Once in a while, we would fix ourselves little cups of coffee.  We didn’t really like coffee at the time but we felt like we were supposed to have cups of coffee in our little kitchen.

On Sept 11, 1969, I turned eighteen years old and was able to leave my hard working job at the local gas station and move into another hard working, dirty job in a factory.  I would now receive more pay for less hours and also get insurance, which I really needed now.  I only ended up working in that factory for about three years, as I applied for and landed a better job, working for the U.S. Government as a civilian, when I was twenty years old.   I am still working for the government, 32+ years later.

Our new apartment was very small, with a large living room that contained a small oil burning heater.  I remember carrying in five gallons of fuel oil each day, to keep us warm.  Life was very simple during those days, and it was also inexpensive.  We were getting by rather nicely for the seventy to eighty dollars per week that I was making at work.  Before the end of our first year, our son was born.  I wasn’t used to babies so it was a little nerve wracking having one of our own, for a while anyway.  I was afraid of dropping him or breaking him, whenever I had a hold of him.  He remained rather quiet for the first few months, sleeping most of the time.  Later on, he started waking up and yelling some.  The Queen was the one who took care of his baby needs.  She was the one who got up during the night to feed and change him as I was too tired/lazy to get up, but I do remember getting up a “few” times to see what he wanted and if I could handle it.

We eventually moved into other rental housing a couple of times in the next few years.  Our first real house wasn’t bad for the eight thousand dollars we paid for it.  It was livable but did need some work to update a few things.  It got the updating unexpectedly after an early January house fire which ruined most of the insides.  I well remember the sad feeling that I got from looking at the blackened, smelly toys all water soaked, lying around the dark house, just after the fire department left.  Most of the stuff was new because it happened about two weeks after Christmas.  Relatives and friends of relatives worked day and night repairing the damage after we received our insurance money.  In no time, we were back, living in our newly updated home. 

In the summer of 1973, our second child was born.  I was really expecting to have another boy as I had two brothers and no sisters, and figured my chance of having a girl was very low.  Turned out I was wrong.  Now, we had one girl and one boy and decided to limit our family to just us four.  It seemed a little strange having a girl.  We had to buy new girl clothes.  We had to start buying new girl toys.  There weren’t too many things you could hand down from a boy to a girl.  Things were going good (except I didn’t always know it at the time).  We tried to do things together as much as possible, which worked pretty well for a while.  As our kids got older, it seemed like our daughter was around and available more than our son was (except for her sneaking out in the middle of the night to run around the country).  He seemed to get many interests that involved his friends; and in matters that we weren’t familiar with (BMX, skateboards, painting school buses, etc) so he wasn’t around as much later on.  Girls hang around more (during the day), but tend to do more visiting at 3:00 a.m. when everybody is sleeping.  As I think about it, I don’t think I did as much with our kids as I could/should have.  Seemed like I never had enough energy to come home from work and play ball or some of the other things that kids enjoy doing.  We did do what we could, including camping, vacations, TV watching, naps and other easy family stuff.  I think our daughter accepted our relaxed forms of entertainment more than our son did.  He seemed to be more into anything with a lot of action involved.  I always wanted to see who could sleep the longest and he wanted to run around and do stuff.

I know that I was never the best when it came to being a dad.  I was born with a very severe defect that prevented me from being around (any) crying kids.  When either of our kids had an issue which caused them to cry, I would get in the car and go to a bar or just drive around the country until I was pretty sure that the one crying was now asleep or simply feeling better.  I know that this behavior was not right, but it usually worked as intended.  I think the Queen probably thought that I was just using it as an excuse to just get away, but that was not the case.  I actually have a less severe version of that same problem today (once in a great while), but I try to deal with it; I don’t get in the car and drive off.  Another dad duty that I was absolutely unable to perform was being anywhere near a dirty diaper (if it was still being worn).  I remember once leaving our son sitting in his little plastic covered rocking chair until his mom got home because he badly needed a change.  It wasn’t for hours, but long enough that I felt bad doing it.  If I could go back thirty four years or so, I would definitely try very hard doing things differently (although I don’t know if I actually could).  I didn’t try to be a rotten dad, I just was one, but our kids were the most important thing in the world.  I don’t think they believe that I ignored them, or that I was exceptionally mean to them (at any time).  I do know that I could have been around a little more than I was, at times.