After Julie’s mom’s funeral we found that Christmas was a sad time, but to perk things up we went to my parent’s for Christmas. A funny thing happened as soon as we walked in the door. Tad was only about three or so years old, I believe. He was so excited to see us when we came in that he asked mom could he give us the popcorn popper that was wrapped up under the tree. Mom put her hand over her mouth and peeped through her fingers and said at least we would have to unwrap it or something like that. The day was well spent and took our minds off the previous few weeks.
New Year’s Day was something to remember. I had gotten my stereo system working. There’s a funny story behind that too. The day I took it up to Radio Shack the guy worked on it and said he couldn’t get the AM/FM tuner amp to work, so he didn’t charge me for looking at it. So I took it back home and set everything up in the bedroom and left it. I guess after a couple of weeks or so I had a dream one night that it worked and all I had to do was plug it in and turn it on. I got up that morning with that dream on my mind, so the first thing I did was plug it in and turned it on. It’s worked till this day (2009). Dreams are real. That’s all I can say about that. I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions. It wasn’t the only time I had that happen.
Well, I killed a rabbit with that story, so let me get back to my point. New Years. Julie and I both got sick with bad colds and weren’t able to stand the thought of going outside and celebrating our first New Year’s together. So I had bought a timer to put on my stereo system and set it to run the reel-to-reel tape deck to record the hits of the year countdown on the FM station through midnight, so we could play it back the next day. Wooo Hoo! What a celebration!
It was back to work in the cold weather on the second of January and if I didn’t work, I didn’t get paid. By this time I had become a surveyor party chief. I had two guys working for me and was doing piling layout to steel setting on a new addition to the manufacturing plant. Dad stayed at the DMT plant.
He was witness to the only construction death on the site. You must know that construction working was a very hazardous job. Death was common on these sites. A guy was walking down the dirt road next to a building and a fork lift backed out over him and crushed him to death. Dad said he yelled to the driver to stop, but it was too late. When dad got to the man he said he moved his finger just a bit and stopped. He was gone.
My two guys were Johnny and Bennie Barber. I can’t remember Johnny’s last name. He was an avid horseman. He had Appaloosas and Quarter Horses. I remember his bright Orange Ford pickup truck. Bennie drove whatever was available. He married a girl from Columbia, South America and she could barely speak English. Bennie was a true citified redneck. There was a drive up greasy spoon on Oleander at the time called Miljo’s. There was another one on the other side of town called the Chic Chic Drive In. It had a nickname that I dare to mention called the Sh*tty Bitty. Anyway, Bennie was the flagman for the drag races out on Oleander on the weekends in front of Miljo’s.
Bennie was my man. He always had something funny to say and was always into something. Julie knew him and tried to keep us apart, or at least wished we would be so. Bennie’s funniest incident was when his wife’s sister came to visit and he mistook her for his wife one morning when he walked into the bathroom and the sister was bent over the bathtub and he did something only a guy and his wife should do. He had some tall talking to do to get out of that one. He said the two looked so much alike from behind. . .
Anyway, it was so cold that winter. It was January and it seemed every morning was a challenge. The speedometer on my car broke and I was hitting down Wooster Street one morning with frost on my windows and just enough to see through the windshield when all that frost turned a beautiful shade of blue. I’d been pulled over. The policeman came to my car and asked me if I knew how fast I was going. Admittedly, I said no, since the speedometer was broke, but I figured I was okay and going with the flow of the traffic. Well, that didn’t go over well. He said I was doing sixty in a thirty five. Whoa! But he was kind enough to give me a ticket for exceeding safe speed. So, I paid the ticket before the court date and forgot about it. Nothing ever happened so far as my insurance. I guess it never got reported to my insurance company, thank goodness.
Well, back to work. Every survey crew had a field desk. It was a big desk about five or so feet wide with a top built over it. Johnny, Bennie and myself found some more plywood and enclosed the back of the desk big enough for the three of us to get inside of out of the cold and wind. We draped a tarp over the front on it to completely shut the outside out from us and over our doorway. On the coldest days when we were caught up we’d go in there and huddle up and just shoot the breeze, until a carpenter foreman or iron worked would come get us to check a form or help plumb some steel.
About the end of January we had a big snow. It snowed for a couple of days actually. I’d get up in the morning and get dressed and Julie would get up and look outside and tell me I was foolish to get out there in the snow. Hah, having lived in Germany for over a year and at least half of that in the snow gave me a little more sense on how to contend with it. But at her insistence I stayed home. We had close to six inches of snow on the ground by daylight. So it was probably the best thing to do when I realized that in Germany the people there know how to get around in it better than us North Carolina folks.
We had the heat going strong that morning and stayed inside and watched TV on the little 19” Admiral. About mid morning we got tired of TV and groceries were low anyway, so we decided to walk up to the Wilson’s Supermarket and get some stuff. We were only a block over from Market Street so we bundled up and struck out walking. We got Pepsi’s and bread and stuff, but I remember we bought a half gallon of Bryer’s ice cream. Of all things it’s freezing outside and we bought that. At least we didn’t have to worry about it melting on the walk back.
I was out of work two days during that snow. The problem with construction work was that if you didn’t work you didn’t get paid, which was the down side, but Julie could walk the block over and about a half block up to the store or I could drive her out and pick her up after work.
Somewhere about this time I was walking through the baling area of the manufacturing plant one day and I stepped on the scales and tipped almost two hundred pounds. It must have been that Bryer’s ice cream. I couldn’t imagine it. Of course Julie could cook like her mom, so that right there was enough. Also most every weekend we went to eat somewhere. Our favorite place was The Golden Crust. It was an Italian restaurant over on 17th and Dawson. It wasn’t big, but it was the beginning of my liking cheese. I’d had a bad experience when I was you when my dad tried to force me to eat sharp cheddar. I didn’t like it and refused to eat any kind of cheese after that. Well, lasagna cured me of that. The stuff was good and apparently it was beginning to show.
One day I wasn’t feeling well and Julie got this idea I needed a laxative. For those faint of heart look away at this part or just skip it. She figured that Correctol was just what I needed. Well, she comes out of the bathroom with two of those little pills and gives them to me and not knowing what I was up against, took them. Once those little pills started working I thought I was going to die. I spent half my time in the bathroom. When I wasn’t in the bathroom I was lying across the bed because I couldn’t sit down. I wasn’t real happy with the situation to say the least. She’s come into the bedroom and looked at me and asked me was I alright. Heck no! I wasn’t alright! I couldn’t sit down for crying out loud. I swore I was never taking another one of those things ever again. Famous last words, they were.
Well, February was coming on now. The snow was over with. Even though we were in a very nice apartment it was small and we now had a kitten, which was against the rules, since we had not signed anything with the apartment complex to have a pet or paid the pet deposit. What made things hard is the darn cat seemed to hone in on me. No matter what she would always be sitting in the front window of our corner apartment when I came home like she knew it was time for me to be there. I would see her sitting there and as I rounded the building on the end heading towards the stairwell I would look up and see that see had moved from the front window to the side window and would watch me disappear into the building. When I got to the door and entered, she be sitting there just inside the door looking at me when I came in. It was kind of sweet to have a cat that attached to me. We had many cats during the following years, but this one was the most cognitive of me.
When Julie was off of work she said she could tell I was home by watching the cat. She would run from one window to the other and then to the door. She was simply a most amazing cat.
There was one Saturday evening about this time I found myself about to experience something I’d never thought about before. Mind you this was 1973. I was watching Wide World of Sports with Howard Cosell and Jim McKay. Snow skiing was on and not much else. Mostly boring TV was the fare. We had only two channels. Then came the knock at the door. I went to see who might this be and there stood this older gentleman with clipboard in hand. I asked him what I could do for him. His answer was a question. He asked me did I want cable TV. To that I responded, what is cable TV. He explained it to me and to my surprise he also explained to me that the funny looking jack in the wall in my living room was for this new TV service. I asked how much. He said $4.95 a month payable ever two months for $9.90. I said, why not. I asked how long till I could get this cable TV. He said give him about ten minutes. He disappeared and sure enough he was back in ten minutes and I let him in and he put this conversion thing on the back of my TV and screwed this cable into the wall and my TV. I paid him for the first installment and he thanked me for subscribing and he left. I sat there in amazement at all those channels I now had to surf through.
Even though I thoroughly enjoyed the advancement of channel surfing I still refused to have a phone in the house. I didn’t think we needed one. Julie had other ideas. If I could have cable TV she felt she could have a phone. So one day I came home to this old fashioned black phone sitting on our end table. We had finally moved into the world of instant communication.
Up till this time my idea of turning wrenches was somewhat limited. I could change tires, put on a muffler or something simple like that. But one day I went out to crank my car and it would only spit and sputter. It wouldn’t run. Apparently I had gotten some bad gas somewhere. I called Ronald, but he was busy. He could have fixed it quickly, but there I was left sitting at home, needing to be at work. I couldn’t stand it. So I walked up to the corner on Market Street to the car parts store and bought a carburetor kit and walked back to my car. I got an old paint roller pan and some gasoline and what tools I had and took the carburetor off the car and took it apart in that pan and blew it out with as much breath as I could muster. Then I put everything back together and put it back into the car and hooked everything up and to my surprise it cranked. I put everything away and drove on to work. I had successfully strode into the realm of being a mechanic. This opened up a whole new world for me to experiment with.
