Let’s get to something with that I loved for a bit here. I believe I have mentioned when I got out of the Army I was coerced into getting a “family” car. I saw that ’69 Chevelle two door hardtop on the lot, but being steered away probably kept me from committing some unspeakable speed on the highway. So there we were with a family car. It was that four door Dodge Polara. It would run pretty good though. It had some type of Chrysler wedge motor that to this day I haven’t been able to determine. Someone told me it was a 318 cu in, but all the 318’s I had seen didn’t have the distributor in the back like this engine did. Some even contended it was possibly a 383, but still, I don’t know. I wasn’t much of a Chrysler fan other than I wanted a Charger. Now that would have kept me in the Chrysler stable, but Chevy was winning me over solidly. My first “second” car was that little Honda. Now that car had not been unusual I would not have bought it. Another reason was that it was a gas sipper. I liked unusual cars and it fit the bill.
Sometime while I was working at Reigelwood I had a problem creep up with the clutch on the Honda and knowing the rarity of the car and probably parts for it too, I decided to dump it for something more American. I took the little car back to the lot where I bought it and traded title for title on a 1958 Chevy Biscayne. It was a doosey. There was no ignition key. Only a trunk key that also unlocked the doors, so I could at least know it was safe from theft. All I had to do was turn the switch on the dash and it would crank without the key. The gas gauge didn’t work, so I always carried a two gallon gas can of gas in the trunk. I had to use it a couple of times. Oh well. I never knew when I’d run out. I remember it running out on me along Oleander Drive one evening on my way home from work. It spit and sputtered so I just pulled over to the curb and put the gas in the tank and stopped at the next station and refilled both my tank and can. I never was a Scout, but I knew how to be prepared. The ole Biscayne had a 283 cu in motor and a Powerglide two speed automatic. It drove pretty good to. It’s only drawback from keeping it was it was a four door. I seemed to have been cursed with four door cars.
But then the day came the day when it happened. The curse was broken. Julie had been over to her Becky’s and Ron had bought a car. It was a 1955 Chevy BelAir. It had a freshly installed interior down to the dash. New headliner, bucket seats with roll and pleat right on up and over the rear window deck. New carpet and door panels, just plain out everything had been redone. And the body had a new coat of Ginger Bronze paint on it. The motor was a 327 Corvette motor with a Munice four speed, 12 bolt rear end and ran like a woman screaming from a house fire. And it could all be had for $800. What do you think I did?
It didn’t take a whole day and that car was parked in my yard. I was the proudest man on the face of the earth. It also had chrome reverse wheels and baby moon hub caps and I put white letter tires on it. It was my dream car.
Of course the purchase of this car didn’t come without a price. We had been in the possession of a fridge we bought for $35 when we moved into our house. If we wanted ice cream back then we had to eat it all at once or throw whatever was left away. The freezer didn’t freeze. Don’t ask about meats and stuff. We just made do with what we had. The order was in. We went to Sears and bought a brand new 19 cu something or other fridge with ice maker. I installed the ice maker water line and we were making ice and keeping ice cream, too. Prior to these two purchases we had gotten completely out of debt from purchases. The only thing we owed at the time was necessities. You know, power bill, mortgage, trash, etc.
Anyway it was a win/win situation. Everyone was happy on the home front. All this came to pass about the time when Matthew came onto the scene. In 1976 around March we found we were going to have a second child. Matt was born October 4th 1976. The summer was miserable for Julie. The house had A/C, but barely. That little 5000 BTU window unit was cranking hard during that summer. It was a 110 volt unit and it would heat up a wall plug, but not enough to trip a breaker. We just kept an eye on it. You do what you have to do.
I was working under Bill Vandergrift at DuPont at the time and he knew I was approaching fatherhood a second time so to keep me out of the production line he assigned me the utility operator job most of the time. I could get out of work easier without upsetting the production crew on the machines. And of course the day came when Julie called me at work and told me her doctor visit had been good. She was dilating and they wanted her to go to the hospital and check in. So I told my supervisor and I was off to the hospital. It was just after lunch. I got there and Julie’s Aunt Florie was just coming on for the evening. She worked as a nursing assistant in the L&D. I was set for the evening. Back during this time, dad’s were still not allowed in during delivery. Being a farm boy still didn’t make me feel qualified to be in for a human delivery. I was grateful. Matt was born just a few short minutes after ten that evening. I got to see him and he was so much different than Erick when he was born. Erick looked like he just came from the beach. Matt was blue and ruddy at the same time. But he wasn’t a cone head. He didn’t hang around waiting shyly to come into the world.
But then the same thing happened again with Julie. She had problems with bleeding, but they thought they had all of it under control. The next day I went to see her and she seemed fine, but she still looked quite pregnant. I was concerned, but the doctor said she was doing fine. Matt was doing well, so I was placated for the moment.
In a couple of days I was able to bring them home. It was uneventful thus far, but I was still concerned about her swollen look. My mom and dad had been down for the birth and had seen the fine young man and had gone home over that weekend. I was working four to twelve shift now.
Then it happened. I came home one evening from work and it was around a quarter to one in the morning and I found Julie lying in the bed awake. She wasn’t able to get up. She was bleeding. She had been this way for a while and at first she had gotten up and changed her pads till she had hardly any left. Now this is from coming home from the hospital and they give women scads of pads when they are discharged for home. At this point she was unable to even reach for the phone on the night stand next to the bed. She simply laid there till I got home. I called Dr. Ficklen, who was on-call for the practice and he told me what to do and to call back in about an hour to see if she had stopped bleeding. By the end of the hour we had run completely out of pads and she was still bleeding. I also found clots as big as my fist in the pads. It was not looking good, so I called Dr. Ficklen and told him what we were up against and he said get her to the emergency room immediately. Well, here we were with a two and a half year old and a new baby, so I called Aunt Florie who live just a few miles away and she came posthaste. We took off to the emergency room and Julie kept saying just drive carefully, she was okay up until I got to within a few blocks of the hospital on 17th Street. She started getting woozy and feeling like she was going to pass out. I sped up and got the ER entrance. I ran inside and told the first person I saw my wife was in the car and needed attention immediately.
Now here’s where some confusion started. The nurse came to the car with a wheel chair and saw Julie, who was still swollen tummy and asked her how she was doing. Julie told her she’d just had a baby, not explaining it was more like a few days ago. The nurse thought she meant just now and asked where the baby was. She replied that the baby was at home. The nurse went ape and was calling for an ambulance to go to my home. I had to break into the conversation and explain that she’d had a successful delivery there at the hospital just days prior and someone was at home with the baby. Whew! We had them going for a bit.
Dr. Ficklen had beaten us to the hospital, since he lived nearby. They took Julie right in and he ordered five units of O negative blood and sent her straight up to the delivery room, because no OR’s were open. He performed a D&C while I went to the Father’s Waiting room and fell asleep on the couch.
Sometime around five or so, Dr. Ficklen came to where I was sleeping and sat down on the couch beside me and woke me up to tell me she was okay. He had stopped the bleeders in her womb and she was in recovery and would be there for a while under watchful care by his orders. You see, Dr. Ficklen was a very good doctor. A very feared doctor by the hospital staff. What he said, they did it without question. Yet, though he was what I considered such, he was a very fatherly man. He treated me very kindly.
I had slept enough now to be able to drive myself home and relieve Aunt Florie. She had to work again that night, although she had slept some while we were gone. I called my mom and dad and mom came down and stayed to help with the kids until Julie got out of the hospital. It was the only time my mom was able to do something like that. She had her hands full back up home.
When Julie came home she was to be on bed rest and this left me to take care of the boys and work too, so she did what she could during my work hours and I did the rest when I got home. I did the cooking and cleaning and feeding as much as I could.
I remember the first day I got home from work after she got home and she hadn’t eaten anything all day. When I came in she followed me around the house like a puppy telling me she was so hungry and would I fix something to eat. I kept telling her to let me wash up and get into something clean and I would. It seemed like every time I turned around there she was telling me she was hungry.
Well, I did get to making something for dinner. She ate like it was so good. I was beat.
