I'm now 61 years old. Like most people, I still think I'm a kid. In some ways I am. For instance I still agonize over things that happened to me or that I caused to happen to me when I was little more than a kid. Sometimes it almost seems like if I tried hard enough I could go back and correct things. I don't know if I think I could do it with my mind or by talking about it, but I think I've figured out that I can't really go back there and do anything over.
As teenager I was as confused as any teenager but I had my life ahead of me and I imagined it would be pleasant. I suppose I assumed it would be sort of like my parents' life but I'd be a lot smarter and more interesting than them. My sister and I lay in bed before going to sleep and told each other what our kids would be like. I can't remember ever thinking seriously that I'd have any career or job. I was a bookish kid. I read some pretty serious novels and that gave me thoughts and ideas that I know were not usual for a small town teen. I started out in junior high reading all of Pearl Buck's novels and was fascinated by China, then moved to Charles Dickens, then anything else I could find. In high school I was into Russian novels. I loved Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. It was a private, introverted interest because there was no one to talk to about what I was reading or thinking about. I have just realized that as I write this. I never, ever mentioned what I was reading to anyone. My parents thought I was a strange child for reading books at all. They said so. None of the friends I had (very few) read books that I knew of. Now that just seems odd and lonely to me.
I guess that makes me sound like I was a smart kid but I didn't do well in school. Well, I did until maybe junior high. After that I barely squeaked by. I got good grades in English and not too bad in Social Studies but did horribly in anything else. Phys. Ed was a nightmare for me. I just knew my Phys. Ed. teacher hated me.
I was a skinny, pimply girl with naturally curly hair in a weird style and glasses. So let's just say I wasn't very popular.
I had a couple of close girl friends in junior high and high school. One had had polio so one leg was in a brace. She was pretty and boys liked her in high school. We had lived near each other from 6th grade on so became friends then and continued throughout high school. The other one was quite an outcast among other girls - sort of ugly and gawky and goofy. Somehow I found her interesting. Maybe it was just that she liked me.
How I met my first husband: In study hall I was seated in the back of the room and across the aisle from a girl named Pat Powell. I didn't really know her but in study hall we weren't watched much so we started talking and giggling about things. I threw a few small paperwads at some boys sitting in front and they kept trying to figure who did it. She thought it was funny and did it too. The boys never thought it was us 2 very nice girls which made it even funnier. As a result we started talking and it turned out she had a fiance. She was 17, one year older than me. Her fiance's brother, Don, was in the Air Force and was going to be in town for the weekend and she wanted to fix him up with a date - that would be me. I was so excited because I never had dates. I had had one or two dates where one parent or other drove us somewhere. This would be a real date and I wanted to do it. He was 20 years old, which was very exciting. But I didn't know if my very conservative parents would let me. I asked them and explained how it would be a double date with this other couple and somehow they let me do it. I do know I had to do some very fancy talking.
So I was his date whenever he came to town and we wrote letters back and forth. I was in love, of course. I don't know if he was or not but I thought so at the time. My father became very concerned about this at some point and tried to stop it but it was too late. I became very rebellious and difficult by then and he was smart enough, I think, to know it could go one of two ways and he most likely decided to take a chance that it would end on its own. But it didn't. I got pregnant at 17 from Don. I don’t know now if he wanted to marry me or not but at the time I thought he did and we got married. In those days that’s what you did. I don't think I need to go into the uproar with my parents. Oh, and Pat Powell ended up marrying Don's brother. Years later I heard they were divorced.
For a while we lived in an upstairs apartment in Tipp City on Plum St. I guess people gave us furniture and we sort of “played house” there for awhile. I had no idea how to be married but tried to do what my parents had done. I bought food and cooked meals but most of the time Don didn’t come for dinner. I found out he went to his mother’s to eat which hurt my feelings. Once I bought a box of frozen fish that had the heads on them and I was terrified to look at them. I put them in the refrigerator and showed Don when he came home. He laughed and thought it was ridiculous that I was afraid of those fish. I don’t remember what we did with them. I remember episodes when he invited friends over for drinks and the guys tried to get me to drink various whiskeys to see my reaction. For example I said I thought Scotch sounded like it would taste like butterscotch so they had to get me to drink some. There was lots of laughing at my reaction, of course. I suppose I liked the attention.
I remember being sprawled on the couch in my living room and bawling loudly from misery. I was always there alone and no one came to visit and we had no phone. Later I bought 2 or 3 magazine subscriptions from a door to door salesman and he was upset about that. Asked how much they cost. We had to make monthly payments on them. It was really dumb since we had no money and weren’t even going to be living there very long. But I know my motivation was to feel like I had a real home like my parents with magazines coming to the house. I guess when we left there the magazines kept coming.
He was in the Navy and stationed in Jacksonville, Florida. Before going to Jacksonville we left the apartment and stayed with his parents for a couple of weeks. Then he left for his assignment and found us an apartment near the base. I was about 8 months pregnant by the time I went down there. Don’s parents took me to the airport to fly to Florida and we waited for my parents to meet us there to say good bye. But they didn’t arrive before I had to get on the plane. Later my mother told me they had arrived before the plane took off and waved at the plane hoping I would see. I didn’t. I saw hands waving and assumed it was Don’s parents. She said my dad was upset at having to pay for parking so kept driving all around trying to find a place with free parking. Finally he gave up and paid for parking and was very angry. What a nit wit!
When I got to Jacksonville I had to quickly get to the base hospital for prenatal exams so I could have the baby on base. I spent all day going from one doctor to the next and some seemed irritated that I had shown up so close to delivery.
We lived in a small cottage without (I don’t think) heat. It was in something like a trailer park with cottages and trailers all over. Most people there seemed to be poor military families. I made a few friends there so had women to visit while he was at work. One woman I especially liked and she offered to take me to the hospital if my husband wasn’t available. She actually ended up taking me to the hospital. I don’t remember why Don wasn’t available but he was in the Navy so not always reachable. Tom was born a cute, normal baby (pictures to prove it) and I took care of him in a small, nasty, roach infested cottage. I tried to learn how to cook a few things. I remember buying a bag of dry beans and thinking I would cook them up for dinner in an hour or so. Don informed me it would take hours. I knew nothing. I don’t see how we survived. I must have bought a lot of convenience foods. He came home very late a lot of the time so I usually only had to feed myself. I’m guessing now he didn’t want to risk my cooking. I did learn how to iron his Navy uniforms properly, the regulation way. I always had them ready when he needed them. I didn’t have a baby crib so I took a drawer out of a chest and put blankets in it and Tom slept in that while we were there. Once I had laid him on my bed and he was crying and I let him cry. He was on his stomach and working his legs and suddenly I heard a thump and then some real screaming and ran in the bedroom. He had landed on the hard floor. I had no idea a baby so young could move like that so I didn’t put him on the bed again. I worried a lot that he would be seriously damaged from that.
When Tom was about 3 mo.old I took a train back to Ohio where we stayed with Don’s parents a couple of weeks till his next assignment, which was New Mexico. They seemed to accept the situation and were always nice to me. Both of his parents drank a lot but managed to hold jobs. His father worked at NCR and mostly stayed drunk on weekends. I never knew what he did there. I was too young and naïve to even think of asking a grown up question like that. His mother worked somewhere but I can’t remember where. Later I know she worked in a restaurant in the kitchen. I remember she cooked big country meals at home. When we were there she made big pots of cabbage rolls because they were Don’s favorite. She would leave the pot on back of the stove all the time and whoever wanted would get some. I felt a little jealous of her because she always seemed to know what he liked and took good care of him. She would say things about how close they were. And of course, that would be true. He was her baby. I felt like we were in competition but really there was no competition. He really was tied to his mother and not me. At 18 I was full of ideas from the movies about our relationship. By that time I was pregnant again.
So we drove out to Albuquerque and got an apartment. He must have found the apartment because I don’t remember looking for an apartment at all. Actually, now that I think more about it I don’t remember riding in a car to Albuquerque. Maybe he went ahead and I flew down later. Anyway the apartment was in a row of brick apartments, like a long motel with two motels facing each other with a sidewalk in front of each row. There was a fenced in area in the middle but I don’t know what it was for, maybe dogs. It was nice there – you could see the Sandia mountains in the background. I have a few photos of us at that apartment. Occasionally there would be a huge dust storm that left dust all over and in everything. It even got under our closed windows.I learned to put barriers around the windows and doors when a dust storm was predicted. I made some friends in the apartment complex and Tom learned to talk there. He was a little late talking so I would walk around saying “car”, “car” when I saw a car or “tree”, etc to get him to talk. His first word at 17 months was “car”.
When Tom was 11 months old I had Tina at the Sandia AFB hospital. I cried and cried at having to leave Tom with his father because I didn’t think he knew how to take care of him. I knew a neighbor woman would help him some. I was depressed in the hospital worrying about Tom. I think it was post partum depression. Also the nurses wold hand me the sheets for my bed and tell me to change my own sheets. I had never heard of a hospital doing that before or since and I was very tired the first day after giving birth, but it seemed I had to do it. The nurses were very unpleasant and unhelpful. Now I think they were probably very understaffed and didn't have staff to change bed sheets. I was mostly over the depression the time I went home, though. Don never came to visit me in the hospital and when it was time to pick me up to go home picked me up 2 hours after the time I was told I could leave, so I sat on the edge of the bed nervously waiting. I saw the nurses looking in my room and I thought they looked like they felt sorry for me. It was embarrassing. When he arrived he said he had been looking at new cars with a friend. I was 18 then and too wimpy to complain. He was 23. Both of us kids, really. I have a photo of Don holding Tina and he looked at her very lovingly so I do think he cared about the babies. Although he rarely paid any attention to them.
I was too young to have 2 babies and probably screwed it all up. I was alone most of the time and couldn’t drive. I let Tina cry too long because I thought I was supposed to wait till the right time to feed her. Also we were very poor and I had a hard time coming up with baby food and milk for the babies but did the best I could with what I had. Sometimes it was mashed potatoes and gravy. I now think it’s a miracle we all survived as inexperienced as I was. Once I woke up in horror at a dream I had had. I dreamed that I opened a closet in my house and found 2 babies in there almost dead from starvation and neglect. They were shrivelled and weak. I cried about that dream and wondered what it meant. Now I think it expressed my fear of failure with the babies. That something horrible would happen to them and it would be my fault.
I wanted to earn some money so I put an ad in the paper saying I would babysit during the day and got a babysitting job. A woman dropped her baby girl off every day on her way to work and picked her up after work. That money helped out. I have a photo of her and Tom playing on the couch. Tom played with some little kids and toddlers in the complex. I got a dog. Probably at the animal shelter – I don’t remember. Later I had a different dog but I don’t remember what happened to the first one – I think he ran off and never came back. Once we went horseback riding on Sandia mountains with the neighbors. That was fun. But I mostly read books to escape. I remember reading Tin Drum by Gunter Grass during that period. I only remember because I remember telling a woman who lived near me about it. She seemed intelligent and I liked talking to her.
Then Don was assigned to Hanford AFB in California. We went there in the car with the 2 babies and a bunch of Dalmatian puppies with their mother and I don’t remember how we got the dogs. I know Don wanted to take them with us and the puppies all died in the back of the un-air conditioned car going thru the desert on the way to Ca. Very depressing. He had built some kind of container for them but I don’t remember much about it. I do remember his friends telling him it wasn’t a good idea to take the dogs across the desert. I don't remember either what happened to the puppies that died. We must have done something with them.
We first lived in an apartment complex in Visalia while we waited for an apartment in base housing to open up for us. We were there about a year, I think. There were peach trees all over among the apartments. I made friends in the apartment area and we got together a lot and talked. We had the mother Dalmatian dog there – the only dog that survived the trip.
Once Tom and Tina, in separate cribs smeared shit all over the walls of their bedroom, on both sides. Only Tina had a dirty diaper so she had to have thrown some to Tom. And he made use of it. That was one time they really cooperated. What a mess to clean up! I potty trained Tina in that apartment. I used a little toy TV-like thing that played music while pictures moved across the screen. I had her watch that while on the potty so she’d sit there longer. She liked it.
Finally we sold the dog. It was too hard to take care of it in the apartment complex and we couldn’t have a dog in base housing.
After about a year we could move into base housing. I have a lot of photos of us in base housing. I liked it there. Don was sent to Viet Nam on an aircraft carrier while I stayed there. I made a few friends while he was gone, mostly other women whose husbands were in Viet Nam. I remember Juanita Kelty and her husband Chuck and another neighbor Kathy something. A few others whose names I forget. Quanita and Chuck were Pentacostals and he was working on becoming a Pentecostal minister. She kept trying to talk me into coming to their church but I kept avoiding it. Once I did go and it was very odd. People were yelling and jumping around. Chuck was in VN too and came back before my husband.
I felt I had to learn to drive if I was going to be alone for so long so I got a driver’s permit and Had various friends ride with me while I practiced. We just drove around in parking lots and some roads on the base. I took the driver's test and failed 4 times. Finally Chuck Kelty offered to teach me to drive a car while Juanita watched my kids. He took me into roads with real traffic and stop lights. I took the test again and still failed it. I finally decided to go driving around the base with no one in the car so I could practice more often and get confidence. I got a lot more practice that way and passed the next time I took the test. We had a red Dodge Charger.
Tom and Tina played with other little kids in our cul-de-sac. We had a white kitten. I have lots of photos of the kids in that apartment and playing outside. The year Don was in VN I held off on Christmas till he was home so we had Christmas in February that year. Tom and Tina were too young to know when Christmas was so I felt it would be better if their daddy could see them open presents. He seemed uncomfortable that I had done that. I know he said something about it not being right. I guess he was more traditional than me. To me the day didn’t matter. When Don was home from VN he was out drinking with his friends frequently and didn’t have much to do with me or the kids. He would get up from watching TV and say he needed to get a TV Guide then leave and not come back till early morning, smashed. I got mad about that. We had a lot of arguments about his drinking. Somewhere in there he bought a new red Mustang. I was always scared he’d have a crash driving around drunk screeching tires. We didn’t get along and I think he didn’t really wanted me any more. I was very stressed out during that time and don’t feel I was a good mother. I yelled too much spanked too much. I have always felt bad about that.
Then Don was stationed in VN again. Also I was pregnant again. I didn’t want to be alone when having the baby so I said I wanted to go back to Ohio to be near my family. So that’s what we did.
We drove to Ohio and found an apartment for me and the kids. Don was on leave but mostly left me and the kids alone during that time. I was very upset about that and tried to get him to stay home with us or show interest but he never did. He just hung around with his buddies. Sometimes he stayed out all night. I assumed he was at his parents’ house. Then he left for his cruise.
So we were in Tipp City living in an upstairs apartment on Main St. next door to the Vanderhorst family who had about 8 kids. All were very cute, curly-headed kids and some were my kids age and they played together outside. Sometimes they played with the kids who lived downstairs also but they were older. I was driving the red Mustang then but at one point couldn’t afford to make the payments so I sold it to my sister and bought a ‘56 Chevy. I had been telling Don in letters that I didn’t have enough money in my allotment check to make the payments but nothing was done about it so I sold it. I had power of attorney so was I able to do it. I hated to sell it but it would have been repossessed. Linda loved that car.
I think the kids were pretty happy there with kids to play with and sometimes the Vanderhorsts asked me to babysit their smaller kids when they went out, so I made some money that way. I have a few photos of us in that apartment.
When I had the next baby (Scott) I had to go to Stouder hospital in Troy. My dad said he wouldn’t take me to the hospital and told me he had taken his own wife to the hospital so he didn’t think he should have to take me also. So my mother called an ambulance and rode to the hospital with me. That was very nice of her. We should have discussed that in advance but I had assumed he would take me. Tom and Tina stayed with my parents while I was in the hospital, then they took me home from the hospital with Scott. I don’t think Tom and Tina were too happy to have a new baby but got used to him. In one photo where Scott was on their laps Tina is looking at him as if he was a yucky worm. And Tom just looks unhappy. One day the kids had been playing outside with the neighbor kids and I got a call from my mother saying “ Do you know where Tom is?” I said he’s out in the yard. She chuckled and said no he’s in my kitchen eating ice cream. He just came walking up to the door. So she said she brought him inside and asked him why he came and he said he wanted to visit. So she gave him a bowl of ice cream. She thought it was cute. I went over there and brought him home and told him to never do that again. He never did. We were both very surprised that a kid that age would remember how to get there. But it was just straight down 4th street with no turns.
Tom stepped on a bee in front of our house and his foot swelled up. It looked very bad so I called the doctor's emergency number and he came to the office and did something to his foot. I think he gave Tom a shot. I don't really remember what he did but the swelling went down and Tom was OK. We knew to watch out for bees after that.
When Scott was maybe 10-11 mo. old his dad came home from VN. He was then stationed in Corpus Christi, TX so we were all going down there. I guess he looked at the new baby and played with him and all that but I can’t remember that period for some reason. Probably Tom and Tina were glad to see their daddy.
We piled in the car and headed down there even though we had heard a hurricane (Celia) was headed toward CC. We didn’t realize it would be that bad. When we got there we saw everyone was scurrying around putting boards on windows and buying lots of food in grocery stores. It looked scary. We got a motel room with a ktchenette and I went to a grocery store and saw the shelves were almost bare and people running around in a panic. I had an odd reaction. I remember becoming very numb and couldn’t think. I couldn’t make a decision about what to do. I just wandered around the store. Finally I forced myself to get what food I could find and put it in my cart. I had a few canned items. Don had to go check into his job so left us at the motel. Then the hurricane hit and windows broke and I hid the kids and me in the closet till glass stopped flying around. Finally it stopped and we went outside and saw all the damage. People were outside and offering to share food from their refrigerators and people were cooking outside on grills so food wouldn’t spoil. We saw peacocks walking around loose. After the hurricane I was actually so dumb as to call about apartments to find a place to rent.
The upshot is we had to go back to Ohio since there was no place for us to live. Don drove us back and we searched for a place to stay. We had a hard time finding an apartment we could afford but we found a cabin at Silver Lake resort in New Carlisle which was cheaper since it was off-season and we stayed there while Don went back to TX. I had no car and no way to get to the store so my brother, Keith, loaned me an old car of his. It had a hole in the radiator that even bars-leak couldn’t help so I drove around with a jug of water. I signed Tom up for kindergarten there and he rode with some other kids every day. We all went down the hill to the lake occasionally and that was fun. I sat in the sand and watched the kids play in the water. I was very miserable because Don never wrote me a letter while I was there. I walked down the road to the mailbox every day and there was never any mail. I didn’t have a phone. My father visited me once on his way home from work. Don’s mother and her boyfriend visited several times and finally asked me to live with them till we went to Texas. The cabin had no heat and we couldn’t stay there much longer. Plus it was full of mice trying to get in as the weather changed. We had mouse traps all over.
They came and picked us up with all our stuff and we went to live with them in an upstairs apartment on Eldean Rd in Troy. I slept on the couch and Scott slept in his playpen. I don’t remember where Tom and Tina slept. They didn’t have a bathtub or shower so we had to fill a galvanized tub with water from the sink to take a bath in the kitchen. They had a scruffy Pekingese dog that was disgusting. They loved it like it was their baby. They lived next to a trash pile that the kids weren’t supposed to play on but they kept doing it. One night I woke up hearing Don’s mother and her boyfriend arguing about having us there. He was angry that we had been there so long and said they couldn’t afford it. I felt so bad. He was always very nice to us, though. They drank a lot so I think he had had too much to drink and forgot we could hear. Finally Don’s mother called Don and got mad at him for ignoring his family. I heard her giving him hell. She told him he needed to make some arrangements and send plane tickets quickly.
So he soon sent tickets and we flew down there. Don met us at the airport and took us to a woman’s house to stay. I didn’t know who the woman was or why we had to stay there but he said it was just for awhile. He probably didn’t have money for an apartment yet and his mom had forced him to bring us down there. The woman (her name was Ann) worked as a barmaid and had 5 kids so mine had kids to play with. Sometimes we took all the kids to the park. I felt awkward living with her and I started to suspect Don was having an affair with the woman but I never knew for sure. I did kind of like her, though. For along time I had a photo of her kids and my kids and me at a park all sitting at a picnic table. Ann must have taken the picture.
Finally he found us an apartment in an apartment complex to live in but we were planning to buy a house in Corpus Christi so the apartment was temporary. Scott had his first birthday in that apartment. I have photos of his B day and also of Tom and Tina playing with Weebles in that place.
Then we bought a house on Waldron Rd (I think) in Corpus Christi. We lived next door to the Rodriguez family. My kids played with their kids - one boy and one girl, a little older than Tom and Tina, but not by much. We had a black dog and a white cat. Tom started school while we lived there and got on the bus every morning. Tina hated to see him go and begged to go to school too. They didn’t have kindergarten in Texas at that time so I kept telling her she had to wait just a little longer. She never stopped begging so I mentioned it to a neighbor and she said there was something for kids her age if she passed some tests. So I called the school and asked about it. I found out she would have to be able to tie her own shoes and know her name and address, things like that. I knew she could pass all the tests so I took her to the place to prove she could do those things and they signed her up. Then she got on the morning bus and the bus brought her home in the middle of the day. She was happy with that.
What can I remember about living there? I remember tree frogs walking up the bathroom window. I remember the bathroom walls were made of particle board and they were getting wet and I was trying to figure out what to do about it. I wasn’t very knowledgeable about home repair then. I looked in catalogs for ideas. I don't think I ever came up with a solution so it stayed that way. I would know what to do today. I bought some nice gold colored sheer criss-cross curtains for the front window. I had always wanted that kind of curtain. I remember the baseboard space heater caught fire early one morning and Tina saw the fire and was screaming. Don and I kept telling her to be quiet – it was too early. She wouldn’t stop so we got up to deal with her and saw the fire. We ran next door to the Rodriguez house next door and called the fire department. They got it out, of course and Don said he had a friend who could fix the damage. We got an insurance quote and hired him to do the repairs and it was good as new. I had to repaint the kitchen.
Don was out drinking whenever he wasn’t at work. He was working evenings as a bartender at the Fleet Reserve Club. After work he often didn’t come home at all. I was 24 years old and very unhappy. I made friends with 2 Mexican sisters who lived down the street – Alicia and Yolanda Ramirez. They were funny and really made me feel better. They gave me advice on how to get out more and have fun. I never did but they convinced me to buy hot pants and sexy clothes and go to the Fleet Reserve Club where my husband worked in the evenings to see if he’d like me better. I thought that was worth a try. One night there was a party at the bar so I decided to go to the party. I asked Don to take me to the party so he came home and got me. He seemed surprised that I wanted to go. He was the bartender but was able to dance so he danced with me once. Lots of men wanted to dance with me which was very flattering since my husband seemed uninterested in me. Unfortunately I met Zipp (Warren Harold Zipp) that night. He was older and was a cook at the place. We sat at the bar and talked and he seemed intelligent and funny. I liked him. He seemed very interested in me. I was very flattered by his attention. He contacted me later but I don’t remember how. I don’t know if I gave him my phone number but I most likely did. At that time he was 42 and I was 24.
So that was the beginning of a huge mistake. He was kind, thoughtful and helpful to me and the kids for a while so I thought I saw a way out of this bad marriage. The first time I saw him drunk I was shocked but decided it was an anomaly. He also said very mean things to me the time I saw him drunk so I should have run the other way but I think I just couldn’t give up the fantasy that he was going to be my savior.
Somewhere in here I got a part-time job at a Dairy Queen since I needed money as I wouldn't have a husband any more. But Don started coming by and harassing me. He would get "likkered up" and drive around screeching tires in the parking lot. Or he'd come through the drive through when I was working there and try to talk to me. My boss gave me dire looks and would shake his head. I knew he would fire me if it kept up so I quit that job. The boss didn't seem at all unhappy when I said I as leaving.
Zipp paid for my divorce from Don and found us an apartment and was nice for a short while then he started yanking Tom around and calling him sissy and other mean names. I pleaded with him to stop and he did stop for a while then would start in again. I started feeling afraid of him because he would be mean when he drank. He wanted to get married and I had said yes but later I said I didn’t want to marry him. He slammed me into a wall and yelled at me. I had no place to go and no way to get away that I could think of so I married him. We went to the Justice of the Peace in Corpus Christi to arrange the wedding. The JP’s name was Sherman Hawley. He asked me to go to a room in back with him then he asked me if I really wanted to marry this man. I quickly considered whether he could help me in some way but realized if I answered “no” I would be in real trouble after I left that room. I couldn’t see how that JP was going to do anything other than refuse to marry us then we’d just find someone else. So we got married.
While we lived there I sometimes took the kids to a Baptist church down the street and sent them to Bible school in the summer since I felt they should have some religious education. I also put them on a church bus that came around and picked up the kids in the neighborhood and took them to church. The kids soon didn’t want to go any more but I tried to talk them into it. Partly I thought it was good for them but it was also nice to have a few hours to myself once a week. At some point they refused to go so that ended.
Later we moved to another apartment that I don't remember much about for some reason. I do remember I had gotten another part-time job at a different Dairy Queen. Zipp soon started complaining about how I didn't have time to take care of the house and kids and he wanted me to quit. He made things so unpleasant that I finally did quit. But Zipp insisted that I get my GED so I went to a place in Corpus Christi and took the tests and passed them and got my GED. That was one good thing he did. I don't know if I would have ever done that on my own.
We went to the beach at Padre Island frequently and most of those times were fun. We caught crabs in nets and took them home and cleaned them and cooked them. I eventually thought it was too much work to clean crabs. We also sometimes went to a trailer in the woods with his truck driver friend Dale Goodwill and worked on building a porch on the trailer. Someone had paid them to build the porch. The kids loved going there – they ran around like wild kids. I have some photos of us out there. Dale often visited our home and had a girlfriend named Martha Hawkins who sometimes came with him. She had a son named George. We hung around with them quite a lot and I liked Martha and my kids played with George. Dale was really funny but irresponsible and Martha and he had lots of arguments, although she seemed crazy about him. Martha and Dale were both Native Americans with very black hair and black eyes.
We later moved to San Antonio for some reason. We lived in a fairly nice house at 211 Lark St. We didn’t have any appliances at first so I used an ice chest and portable cooker to cook. Zipp had a job as a cook in a restaurant and also had his Navy retirement check each month. We did finally get a refrigerator and stove. I don’t remember why we decided to move there. Zipp had bought some land in New Braunfels and possibly he wanted to be closer to it so we could camp there and develop it.
Tom was a cub scout in San Antonio and loved going to meetings and wearing his uniform. Zipp became more abusive than ever. He was meaner than ever to Tom and wouldn’t stop. He would get drunk and hold a gun in his lap and threaten to kill us. At one point he smashed me in the face and broke my glasses and hit me over and over. I then acted like I had to go to the laundromat and filled the laundry basket with the kids clothes, including Tom’s cub scout uniform and a few dirty clothes on top and went to a motel and called my father. I waited and waited and he never sent any money so we left. We wandered all over San Antonio trying to find a place to go. I will never forget that night – walking the streets of San Antonio with 3 small kids. My face was beaten up and my glasses broken. At one point we were just standing against a wall in downtown San Antonio while I thought of what to do and a man handed me some money. I think it was $10.00 and I took it and we went into a restaurant and figured out I had enough money for burritos and drinks. I kept asking directions and found the YWCA but when we got there they said they didn’t allow children so they told me to go the Salvation Army. They gave me directions but it was a long walk and it was past 10:30 pm when we found it. We were very exhausted.
The next day I realized there wasn’t going to be any money coming so I called Zipp and told him where I was and he cried and said he was very sorry and would never do it again and begged me to come back. I didn't want to go back but believed he meant it so I went back since I had no place else to go. I think if I had been alone I would have been able to figure something out and stay gone but I couldn't figure out what to do with 3 small children. Before leaving the Salvation Army we sat a long table and ate scrambled eggs with the other people staying there – mostly sad-sack looking people with missing teeth.
Later he did it again so I called my dad again and this time he did wire money so we took off in the VW bug for Ohio. I waited till Zipp went to work then I got Tom and Tina out of school and told the school we wouldn’t be back. We drove to Tipp City. We stayed with my parents for a while. That was very upsetting for Tom and Tina because they had to go to a new school and I’m sure were very stressed out about all that had happened. I applied for jobs all over the area but no one would hire me. This was in 1973 and jobs were scarce in Ohio. I had never had a job before so had no work experience to put on an application. . Sometimes I went out to a job interview with Scott in the car. Or went in to fill out an application and hand it in. Scott would wait in the car till I came back. My parents were not keen on watching my kids when I went out. My parents were acting very irritated that we were still there after a month. My dad had had a talk with me telling me I needed to find a place for us, that it was becoming a problem.
Then Zipp called my parents’ house - said he had found the number on the phone bill. Again he was sorry and would never do it again so I agreed to let him come to Ohio and live with us. I had no place else to go. This was right after my dad had had the talk with me. I felt I had to get out of their house. He came to Ohio and met my parents. My dad said he seemed like a great guy. He didn’t understand what was my problem.
We first found an apartment in Troy across the street from an elementary school. It was a very small and crummy apartment but the kids could walk across the street to go to school. We found an old woman to babysit when we went out occasionally. She was very interesting and probably soothing to the kids. We only stayed there a short time - less than a year.
Zipp bought us a small house in the crossroads town of Gordon in Darke County. The kids went to Arcanum school on the bus. Scott was in kindergarten. The location was nice. There was a railroad track going right past our house but we got used to it. There was also a shed in back that would have been some kind of animal pen. I found a book at the Greenville library about raising goats and suggested we get one and he said he liked the idea so we bought one from a farmer in Arcanum. It turned out to be pregnant so we later had two goats. We learned to milk the goat and for some period he wasn’t bad at all. We had a large garden and I worked in it a lot and had the kids pick things to put in salads. I told them to pick whatever seemed like it would be good in a salad. We had some unusual salads sometimes. We drank fresh goat milk. I made soup and baked bread. Zipp would make big pancake breakfasts for everyone. He was working as a cook at a restaurant in some truck stop area. It was nice for some time. I thought all the bad times were behind us.
Then he became abusive again. It was pretty miserable. He seemed resentful toward us like we were holding him down and spending his money, etc. I remember him telling me that some truck driver had come into the truck stop and told him that there was a contract on his life. The truck driver said that the person had traced him to this location. He seemed scared and wondered who would do it. He thought maybe his ex-wife. I could understand why his ex-wife might do that. I do remember secretly thinking it would be OK with me if he was killed. He mentioned it several times so I know it weighed on him.
Although the kids had some nice friends in Gordon and seemed to have fun, I know they were afraid of him. It was such a small town they could stay out running around a lot and I didn’t worry. I could always find them quickly. I'm pretty sure they stayed away as much as they could.
Once I had put some bikes on layaway for Christmas and Zipp took them off layaway and got the money back and spent it. I was so upset when he told me he had done that. I had hinted to the kids that they were getting bikes so I felt I had to give them bikes so I applied for and got a job as a maid at a Holiday Inn in Englewood and worked there part-time to get money to buy some bikes. I could only come up with enough to buy used bikes so I felt bad about that. I have photos of the kids with their new bikes in Gordon. Scott was on a Big Wheel in the photo and had a big smile.
One day when I arrived home from work I saw Zipp loading up the back of his pickup truck with all his stuff. I felt jubilant but then I was very upset that I had come home while he was doing this because I thought he might change his mind. I remember wondering if he had seen me and maybe I could slip away till he was gone. But then I knew he had to have seen me. I went into the house and calmly brought him a few things he had forgotten, like his watch. That was weird. He gave me a very strange look when I handed him his watch. He thanked me and drove off. I never saw him again. I was terrified that he would come back so I worked on moving away to Dayton where I thought I might be able to get a job and he wouldn’t find us. I stopped making payments on the house so I could keep the money for the move. Then I went to Dayton and found an apartment I could afford. I paid a deposit and rent then I found a goat farmer who agreed to help us move for a small payment so we got moved to Dayton. That was 1976.
I still had the VW bug and we moved into a cheap rental house on Alden St., off N. Main St. It turned out to be a bad neighborhood and introduced the kids to a bad environment. They were 11, 10 and 6 when we moved to Dayton. We lived in that area until I graduated from U.D. in 1982. It was only 6 years but they were critical years in a kid’s life and changed them into city kids. Plus they were kids that had been through a lot.
Somewhere in there I discovered the Unitarian church on Salem Ave. I had heard about Unitarianism when a sociologist, Ashley Montague, on the Phil Donahue show was being interviewed by Phil. Phil asked him questions about his religion and he said “the only time you heard the word “Jesus” was when the janitor fell down the stairs.” The audience laughed but I was interested. I was considering myself an atheist at that time. I looked in the phone book and found 2 UU churches in Dayton so next Sunday I took the kids to the closest one. They didn’t want to go at first but I told them this one would be different and they would like it. For some reason they went with me. There is no way I could have forced them to go. And they did like it. They wanted to go every Sunday even if I didn’t. That church was a savior for me. I found intelligent, interesting people who read books like I did and accepted me. I felt very welcome and was so happy to be there. I met Ken Sinks there and became infatuated with him and chased after him a little and then we had a long affair that lasted most of the time I was in Dayton. Knowing him was very helpful to me although I now realize it wasn’t much of a relationship, really. But compared to what I had known up to then it was amazingly wonderful. We had great rapport and understood each other very well in some ways. We also had some problems that I am only aware of after the fact. Some due to his squirrelliness and some due to mine. Neither of us was ready for a serious relationship at that time but I didn’t realize it then. It was a transitional period in which I experienced a lot of healing. He was a very nice, kind man and I don’t like to think of where I’d be now if he or someone like him hadn’t come into my life at that time.
Iimmediately after moving to Dayton I applied for ADC and food stamps thinking it would be just till I got a job. I applied for jobs all over Dayton – in hotels, restaurants, retail stores and no one would hire me. I guess because I had no experience to put down except the Holiday Inn. But I had thought I could surely get hired as a hotel maid again. But that didn’t work. Somebody suggested I get a 2 year degree in something to help me get a job. So I applied to Sinclair Community College in the mental health technology program. I guess I felt I knew a lot about crazy people. I had always wanted to go to college and that excited me. I went to the campus and picked up paperwork for getting student grants and loans and course descriptions. I was scared but figured it wouldn’t be a problem to just fill out the forms and mail them in. Maybe nothing would happen. But everything I applied for was approved. I was amazed. So I kept my eye on deadline dates for admissions and took the next steps to get approved into the MHT program. I was approved for that also! Then came the day to register for classes – I was excited. I took classes for over a year in Mental Health Technology then began hearing that there weren’t many jobs in that field and the jobs there were paid very poorly. So since I had taken elective classes in geology as and loved it I looked into majoring in liberal arts at Sinclair so I could transfer to U.D. as a geology major. I picked U.D because it was easy to get to by bus. I took the entrance exams and applied for grants and student loans and got accepted into U.D.
I really loved going to college and the challenge of it. I had always wanted to go to college and now was able to do it. That introduced me to a whole new world. That was the best period of my life. It was hard but I really loved it.
Tom and Tina got paper routes during that time. Tom saved up for a bike and bought one. Soon after he bought it it was stolen. I felt so terrible about that. There was no way I could buy him one. The newspaper route manager asked me to take over as the route manager and collect the fees and send them to the paper, etc. So I agreed to do that. I had to make sure the papers were delivered on time and the money collected and some other duties which I don’t remember. Sometime I took over a route when one of the kids couldn’t do it. We all got some extra money that way.
During that time we met an old man named Eddie Creighton at the laundromat who was the caretaker. He was in his 70’s with white hair and smelled kind of funky. But he was very kind and talked to me and my kids when we were in the Laundromat. He started inviting the boys to come to his house and play with his dogs. He took them and other kids to a Reds game and to a play. I thought we were so lucky to have found a male to take an interest in the boys. Later one of the boys told me he was doing sexual things to them. I don’t remember the words they used. That explained a lot. When they told me I contacted the police and they told me Eddie Creighton had been in prison in the past for molesting boys. We went to the police station and gave them information. I heard later they had gone to his house but he had moved out and left a few of his animals. Someone had apparently let him know the police were looking for him. Before I knew what Eddie was doing with the boys Tom had been acting very depressed and withdrawn around the house. I was very worried about him and talked to Ken about it. Ken had the idea of getting him on a kids basketball team at the YMCA. When I asked him about it he said he wanted to so I took him down there and signed him up. Ken and I took him to the Y every week then sat and watched. He looked so lost out there with the other kids who were bigger. Although he never said he didn’t want to go. I don’t know if it helped him or not but I didn’t know the real problem at that time. Later Tom made friends with Mark Easter and his brother, Art. They seemed like nice boys and were very bright and fun kids. I was very relieved when he had some boys to play with regularly. They were very interested in technology and went to Radio Shack a lot and tried out things and talked to the sales staff. Tom was friends with them throughout the rest of his school years. At one point they all started getting in trouble shoplifting. Once the police brought Tom home when they said he had been helping some boys who were breaking into a car. I was distraught and talked to Ken about what to do. I don’t know what I did. I’m sure I talked to Tom and he said he wouldn’t do it again. Later he told me he had done that a lot but at one point became scared that he would get in real trouble so stopped stealing. He said it had been hard to stop and sometimes he still wanted to but he didn’t do it anymore. I believed him.
I got all the kids ice skates at the Goodwill store and they often went downtown to the square and skated in the frozen-over fountain. Tina hadn’t seemed to be in any trouble for a while. I bought her roller skates at the Goodwill store and she spent a lot of time skating around on a nearby parking lot. I had had clues that there was a problem. One of the newspaper customers called me and told me Tina had stolen a bracelet off her table when she came in to collect. There were also other signs that she was stealing things. I don’t remember what signs but I remember thinking that this was a problem. I hoped it was temporary and would go away. I don't remember if I talked to her about it except to ask about the bracelet. She said she didn't take the bracelet. I don't know if she did or not. There was no way to be sure.
During the time I was in college Tina had started running away over and over and I never knew where she was. I had heard she was staying with her friend Robin or that she and Tina White had gone somewhere together. I had heard that Robin’s mother spent a lot of time in bars and wasn’t home much so I didn’t think that was a good situation. Once I was called out of a physics class for a phone call from police in Florida saying they had my daughter and should they put her on a bus and send her home. I said yes, but knew she wouldn’t come home. Pretty often the phone would ring and when I answered no one said anything. I always thought it was Tina trying to make contact and I was very distraught after those calls. I sometimes felt she wanted to come home and be normal but didn’t know how. At one point she stayed with the family of a Polish girlfriend that I thought was very nice. I liked her. She had been Tina’s friend before she started running away. She would visit the house and talk to me and was very friendly. She was very interested in her Polishness. She and her parents went to Polish events, etc. After Tina was staying with them I had talked to the parents and they seemed to think they could straighten her out and told me she was going to school and doing homework. So I was glad and felt it would be good for her to stay there a while. I realized she needed more stability and a normal family and felt bad that I couldn't provide that. But later they called and asked if they could adopt her and said she wanted them to adopt her. I had never heard of that happening and was dumbfounded. That was without any doubt the most painful moment in my life. At first I said no, of course not but they asked me to think about it. I went around stunned for a while. Then at some point I decided that there was no better solution that I could think of and if she was doing better with them then maybe that is what should happen so I called them up and said OK. I got a letter from an attorney setting up an appointment to meet and sign papers in his office. I walked to his downtown office on that day feeling numb and half-dead. I went into the office and the attorney asked me to fill out some papers. I sat at a desk and started filling them out. Then the couple came in with Tina. They sat at the desk with the attorney talking and I couldn’t hear most of what they said. I just wanted it to be over. Then the attorney turned to me and spoke. He said “Is this what you really want?” I said something like “ I don’t know what else I can do”. Then he turned to the couple and said “I can’t do this, it isn’t right.” They acted shocked and surprised then they talked some more. Still, I was numb and just wanted it over. Then the couple left and the attorney said Tina and I could go now. What a nightmare that was! So Tina and I walked out of that office together. We didn’t talk. I hadn't seen or heard from her in months. I was the adult and should have been able to smooth things over but I was an emotional wreck and really didn’t want her back at that point. I was miserable at the thought of having to walk all the way home with this person who I didn’t know beside me. I remember thinking that she had ridden to the attorney’s office in an air conditioned car and had to walk back down the hot sidewalk with me, her welfare mother. She walked along sometimes making a comment and I responded. Sometimes I said something. I don’t remember at all what was said. I know I made some kind of effort to be pleasant. Nothing I had ever said or done had made any difference so I wasn’t trying to improve our relationship at that point. When we got home she took off again, which I certainly understood. I expected that would happen. This adoption episode was without any doubt the worst thing that has ever happened to me. I don’t know how she was feeling or what she went through over it. I would like to know.
She stayed gone after that and I heard from her occasionally. At some point I somehow got her into a program at school that was a kind of work-study thing. Maybe she had heard about it and contacted me since I would have to sign for it. That sounds likely. The rules were they would let you work half the day and go to school half the day or something like that. But you had to be registered at the school. She wanted to do that so went back to school. She got her first job through that program then kept working at fast food places. I don’t remember how long she stayed in school after that but she did keep working and met her first husband there. I guess that was the beginning of her adult life.
I graduated from the University of Dayton in 1982. I didn’t want to attend the graduation ceremony because I felt uncomfortable with it. Ken talked me into going to the ceremony and sitting in the audience and watching it. He said I should at least see it. I’m glad he did. He went with me and we heard them call my name. Then he took me out to eat at Frisch's afterwards.
Now I felt I could get a job and get us all out of the horrible environment we had been in. I was very sad that Tom and Tina were probably old enough that I hadn't been able to save them. I grieved that I couldn't make things happen faster. But Scott was 12 and could be raised in a normal environment. That was the only thing that kept me from total despair - that Scott could get out of that place and have a normal life. At one point my father had told me that if I'd put half the energy into finding a husband to take care of me and the kids as I was putting into college I could improve our lives a lot faster. I felt offended at that but now I wonder if he was right. I wanted to go to college very badly and that may have clouded my judgement on what was best for all of us. Maybe that was just best for me and I should have sacrificed that desire and just gotten some kind of job. I know I could have gotten one eventually. Maybe I was wrong about that. Tom and Tina were lost.
I had applied for jobs in Dayton and all over the U.S. It was hard to get a job in geology at that point. The bottom had fallen out of the oil industry just before I graduated. I applied for a few computer programming jobs in Dayton since I had done well in a few programming classes. I would have preferred to stay in Dayton with a good job but that didn’t happen. I had applied for a job I saw in the Kansas City newspaper for a job called NGPA analyst. One day they called me and asked me to interview for it. I mentioned that it would be hard to come out there since I was in Ohio. He actually said that if I came out there I would likely get the job. Also, amazingly, the job was in Wichita where I had relatives. I could hardly believe it. So I hoped my grandmother would let us stay with her when we first got there. I wrote her a letter and explained the situation and she called and said OK we could stay there till we found a place. Since I was pretty desperate by then to get a job and get out of Dayton I made an appointment for an interview and began the process of moving to Wichita. That could have been a disaster if they hadn’t hired me after I was there.
Tom also was going nuts and wasn’t going to school. For a short time he started staying somewhere else, too. He was using pot and I think he just stayed overnight a few times with people. He wasn't going to school. I was very worried about him.
But we were going to Kansas and I had hope. Ken helped me have a big garage sale at his house and I got some money for the trip and I sold a lot of our stuff with newspaper ads. A lot of our possessions went out in the alley behind the house for bulk waste pickup.
I hadn't known where Tina was for some time and didn't know how to tell her we were leaving the area. Somehow got word that we were leaving and she came to see me at home. She never did that. The house was mostly empty when she came in. It was obvious we were moving out. She asked about it and I don’t remember most of that conversation. I do remember that I was very afraid she would decide to come with us. It’s bad, I know, but I just couldn’t stand dealing with her any more and I still think I would never have made it in my new life if she had gone with us. I was very, very stressed just talking to her then. I didn't trust her motivations or my nerves. She didn't mention coming with us - maybe she wanted to say good bye.
I had Greyhound bus tickets for Tom and Scott and me. I hoped Tom would be better after we left Dayton. I kept trying to get ahold of Tom and at some point I told him about leaving for Wichita but on the day we had to leave I couldn’t find him. We had tickets and had to go anyway to the bus station. I was very distraught that I would have to leave Tom. I assumed he was refusing to leave Dayton. Ken took Scott and I to the bus station and I was very concerned about Tom. Then I saw him at the bus station sitting on a bench looking nervous and was so very relieved. He said he had been upset too, that we might have left him.
Then it was on the bus to Wichita and grandma’s house.
Tom’s magazine selling job
Wootens – Teresa
Jaime
Richard Ankrum?
Andi and Robin
Someone turned me in to welfare
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