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About Me

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Mother of three, one girl and two boys.

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Holding me 1956

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Floy,Mary Ann,Kathryn,Me,Mama,Daddy and Skippy

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1960 Rte 116

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June 13, 2009

My First 56 Years

I wasn’t at work more than an hour when a nurses’ aide came to the nurses’ station and told me a man was waiting on the bridge to see me and he had a rose in his hand he wanted to give it to me. The “bridge” is a walkway above Eighth Street that connects the main hospital to the geriatric wings. I got up and was sure it was Kelvin. I had already decided I wasn’t ready to see anyone for awhile; the pain of losing Bill was just too much for me to handle. I got up and met him in the door way of the bridge and he handed me the rose. He wanted to know if I would come by the apartment after work and he would have a steak dinner waiting for me. I hesitated but thought how good that really sounded because when I got home I would not eat anything and would just watch the shows I had taped and go to bed. I finally agreed and said I would.
I got off work after a typical night, tired and looking forward to a meal at Kelvin’s. I climbed the stairs to the upper floor and knocked on the door. He had been waiting for me. He said he was glad to see me and offered me a plate with a large steak and said the baked potato was coming right up. We talked and laughed. I hadn’t had reason to laugh in a long time. Kelvin had a good sense of humor. We talked about his mother in California and how he had hitch hiked all the way to his Grandma’s house in Saint Joseph from Sacramento, California. He had many exploits before ending up in the apartment he was in now. He couldn’t work but had filed for disability because of his leg. He described how he had been turned down and had to go to court, when finally he brought his Doctor to court with him who told the court if he does any physical labor for long periods of time he would eventually have to have the leg amputated. He had Kelvin show them his scars and told of the bolts and screws he had to put in his knee and above the thigh to keep it a working and useful limb. When Dr Smith got through talking he was granted disability and back benefits.
Kelvin couldn’t drive of course; he had had his license taken away when he had had his accident. He had been drinking and suicidal. His ex wife was flirting with other men and had made it plain that she no longer was his wife and wanted him to leave the bar because no men would talk to her while he was there. He was mad and left the bar, drunk and lonely. He was driving about ninety miles an hour when he slammed into the telephone pole on Karnes road, then another before the truck turned over in the ditch. He went through the windshield and started crawling out of the ditch and into a cornfield where he collapsed. He said the paramedics had to revive him numerous times before he got to the Emergency Room at the hospital. The Doctors said they may have to amputate the leg because it was crushed and unrepairable, but if he would sign consent they could do experimental surgery and try to save the leg. He was emphatic to say the least about not cutting off his leg.
We talked and reminisced about what had been going on in our lives up to that point. He had a daughter with his first wife. They had named her Vallie after his Grandmother. He also had a daughter, Shelby, from his girlfriend he had after he and his first wife Diane, divorced. He had been using and dealing drugs in those days and had spent two years in a state penitentiary. He informed me he had just gotten out of a halfway house in Kansas City. His mother had sent the money for him to move into the shabby tiny space he called an apartment. The living room was not bigger than a closet and the kitchen was half that size, room enough barely for one person to slide into. I asked him if he would like to see my trailer in Wathena, Ks. He said he wasn’t supposed to go over state lines. He was still on parole. He decided to go with me anyway. I showed him the big kitchen I had and the Angora lop- eared rabbit I had in the spare bedroom. He didn’t seem to mind the poodle as Bill had.
Kelvin was kind and big hearted. He was funny. He’d discovered at a young age that he could make money selling Marijuana and that was the drug of choice. He had been caught one night at the very bar I had been frequenting almost daily now. He had been caught possessing with intent to sell and he had been sentenced to four years in prison, two in and two out. He had vowed to never smoke again and never ever to sell. The last thing he wanted was to go back to the state penitentiary.

June 10, 2009

MyFirst 56 Years

As Christmas drew nearer I tried to look forward to opening presents and Christmas dinner. I had met a man who was handsome, blond, and tall. We played pool at the bar and by the end of the night he needed a ride home. I suggested he come home with me so I wouldn't be alone. We spent time together getting to know one another and as the days passed and two weeks or so went by he decided to move in with me. He’d take me to work and keep the car. He was always there to pick me up at the end of the night. One day my girlfriends at work decided to go to a restaurant bar to get something to eat and I had Randy meet me there. Everyone later remarked how good-looking he was and broad shouldered. I was starting to get happy again. Christmas Eve he picked me up from work and told me he had some bad news to tell me. Someone had "broken into my trailer and stole some Christmas gifts from under my tree and my VCR!! I was absolutely heartbroken and devastated as the main present that I had wanted to give Chuck, the Nintendo, was gone! I started searching through the rooms to see if my leather jackets were taken, crying as I went. I started searching through the rooms to see if my leather jackets were taken, crying as I went. I was broke and could not afford to replace the Nintendo. It was Christmas Eve and did not believe there would be any left. I went to Wal-Mart and they had one. I bought it and borrowed the money from Clyde promising to pay him back out of my next paycheck. I just couldn't believe someone could be so low as to take Christmas presents out from underneath my tree. I looked to Randy for support but he just said to quit crying and that it could have been worse.
On Christmas day we had Christmas dinner at Floy Mae's house. Mary Ann and Clyde were there. I told them what had happened and that is when I asked Clyde for the ten dollars I needed to cover the cost of the Nintendo. It wasn't long before Randy and I stopped getting along and he moved out. I really wasn't that attached as I had put up a sort of impenetrable shield since the fiasco with Bill. I had gotten my Glamour Shots back and decided I would take them to Bill's work at noon to show him whether he liked it or not. I opened the door where he and his co-workers were playing cards. I told him I had the pictures and he was going to look at them since I had bought them for him in the first place. He didn't seem interested but casually looked them over and tossed them aside one by one. The other guys sitting there perturbed that I was interfering with their card game shoved them over which felt like a slap in the face. I was the only one talking. He didn't utter a sound. I picked up the pictures and slid them back into the yellow envelope and left. I sat in the car crying my eyes out, went home and got ready for work.
On the 28th of December I was doing laundry at the Laundromat I went to on St Joe Ave. There were kids getting into everything and some were crying, some with no supervision, they had wandered in from the street to use the vending machine or to get change. I was bored and tired of the noise. While I was waiting for my laundry to dry I decided to head over to Ninth Street where my friend was staying. The one I had been seeing earlier in the summer when I wasn't sure if I was going to stay with Bill. I had brought my pictures to show him. I climbed the stairs and entered the building. There were more stairs to climb and when I got to the top and knocked on the door there was no answer. Sadly I started down the stairs, when I got to the bottom there was a large mirror on the right side of the stairs. I was always self conscience of the way that I looked no self esteem and no confidence. I stared at the woman I hardly recognized in the mirror when a man started limping down the stairs. He was using the handrail for a crutch as he made his way down. I asked him about the boys that lived in the apartment upstairs and he said they had moved out in October. He was living in the apartment next door now. I just started blurting out everything about Bill and Randy and how I had my Glamour Shots taken for Bill and he would hardly look at them. I couldn't believe how good they had turned out and that the woman in those pictures was me, I wanted to show them to everyone! Even my Director of Nursing was impressed; she had her pictures taken too! I was going to be forty in April and was going through some kind of midlife crisis. I couldn't believe that forty years of my life had gone by and I had done nothing but struggle. I wanted to see how the other half lived. I had been watching television as long as I could remember and I saw all the fun stuff that they did, talked to people who had gone here, there and everywhere and I felt stuck in a rut and was slipping further down. I wanted out of the life I had led so that I could start over and do things right and all I could seem to do was things wrong and deal with the pain as it came. There was a lot of it.
The man's name was Kelvin. He was tall and blond with blue eyes and broad shoulders. He explained his limp came from a car crash he had had a few years ago when he wrapped his truck around a telephone pole, several as it turned out and it was a miracle he was alive. They, the Doctors, had wanted to cut off his leg but he insisted they try something to save it, so they experimented and after a few bolts and screws his leg was saved, he just had to get used to the pain of everyday use and the limp. His hair was cut in a mullet; it was long and trailed down his back below his shoulders. He was more than happy to look at the pictures, he laughed and made me laugh, something I hadn't done in a long time. I told him I was a nurse at the hospital and had to go to work that very day. He said if I would come over when I got off, he would fix me a steak dinner with a baked potato etc. I was so lonely, and hungry, since Bill left I had lost at least ten pounds and hadn't been taking the time to eat or felt like it. When I went back to the Laundromat to get my clothes I started having second thoughts. After all I had just met this man, although that had not stopped me before but for some reason I was having these uneasy feelings about, "Here I go again!"
I went home, got ready for work, and started my evening shift at the hospital.

My First 56 Years

On Thanksgiving 1992, I had fixed baked beans from scratch. It took about three hours to cook the beans, I added bacon and onions, barbecue sauce and brown sugar etc… they looked magnificent! We took them over to his mother's and she baked them for another hour because they were cold. They of course turned to mush and tasted terrible. I already felt she thought I couldn't do anything right and that proved it. I had tried to tell Bill that the beans turned out that way because they were already cooked and that extra hour or so in the oven did them in. He wouldn't hear of it since of course his mother was the best cook in the world and it just wasn't possible! They tried to teach me canasta and I thought how hard could it be I had been playing cards all of my life since I was 10 years old and usually caught on quickly. I couldn't figure that game out and was always slow in my choices of what card to play. His brother and girlfriend were there and had this pitiful, sappy look on their faces as if I were too dumb to live. I couldn't wait to get out of there.
We went to my sister, Floy’s house in South end. We ate and laughed in an entirely different atmosphere. Everyone was laughing and telling jokes. I breathed a sigh of relief when the day was over and we headed for home in Wathena. It was cooler then and the trailer was tolerable.
Over the few months we had gone to various grave yards to see the monuments he had engraved for the monument company where he worked. We went as far as Plattsburg, and the little grave yard at bluff woods. I had visited him at his work several times on his lunch break to say Hello before I went to work. The whole time keeping the secret of the photographs that should have been arriving any day.
The Friday after Thanksgiving I was at work and at the end of my shift I called him as usual to find out where I was supposed to pick him up. It was my weekend off and we had planned to go to Metro North in Kansas City to see the Christmas lights. His mother said he wasn't home. I called the bar on Belt Highway; they said he hadn't been there. I called my friend and his, LeAnn at the trailer court. She said she hadn't seen him either. I was so mad and angry I could have spit nails. I had been looking forward to that weekend off and spending it with Bill, it was Christmas time and I was so happy and content with our relationship. He even bought me a Christmas tree and helped me decorate it about two weeks before. It was early for Christmas decorating but I was feeling all warm and fuzzy inside and he too seemed happy. We hardly argued anymore. The whole month of November was filled with love and contentment. After setting up the tree I sat on the couch and he laid his head in my lap just looking at that tree.
On Saturday Morning after not finding Bill on the previous night, I started calling. I called and called and no one knew where he was. I called the police dept to see if he'd gotten picked up for driving on suspended license, I was the one who drove him where he wanted to go because he didn't have a car or a valid driver's license. Nope, he hadn't been picked up. I called the hospital and again called his mother thinking he had to go home sometime. She would say, "I'm sure he's alright, don't worry about Bill he does this sometimes".That led me to believe that he had called her and told her he didn't want to be found, especially by me. I went to the bar and spoke to a guy we played pool with and he said," I think he's fooling around on you because during the week when you're at work he brings in another girl and plays pool with her". I was absolutely sure that wasn't the case because "I was his girlfriend and I knew Bill loved me." That line of thinking was shoved to the back of my mind, even though my gut instinct said it was a possibility.
All night Friday night and all night Saturday night I cried and ached and screamed. I tossed and turned and couldn't sleep, I held on to the pillow that he had slept on and muffled the sounds, thinking the neighbors in that trailer court probably thought someone was being killed. I drove to houses of friends of his where we had gone to play cards, they all said they didn't know where he was and hadn't seen him. I told them what the guy at the bar said; the looks on their faces told me more than I wanted to know. Still I denied and cried some more. I called his mother's house time and again and she'd still say he wasn't there. She said he'll call you if he wants. In other words, "stop calling here!"
On Monday I knew that he had to go to work and I had to go back to work too. I showed up at the monument company at noon. He was playing cards with his buddies at work and would hardly look at me. He told them he was going to talk to me outside. I asked him, “Well what happened? I spent my whole weekend off looking for you!"
He said," Over the last two weeks I found someone else and had been seeing the both of you at the same time. She knew about you but you didn't know about her. I was trying to decide which one I was going to choose and I chose her."
I said," You've been with me for seven months and you were with her for two weeks and you chose her?"
He said he was sorry and that they got along really well and didn't fight as we had been doing. I reminded him that we had been getting along really well for about a month now, feeling settled, happy. I asked him about the time I was laughing and joking at the trailer when we had finished making love. He said he was such an" asshole". I asked him if that was what he meant. He conceded that it was.
One day when I came home from work I noticed that he had been there and took his coffee maker. The tears started afresh as someone who has just lost a loved one to death and the death kept happening over and over again.
I tried to take back the items I had spent on him at the little gift store in Wathena, 200.00 worth. They said their policy was no returns on layaway items but I was so distraught and they could see the anguish on my face and inside my soul. They sympathized and returned my money.
I had bought the Nintendo Game machine for Chuck for Christmas. I couldn't wait for him to open it! It was 249.00, he had been waiting 2 years for it to come at Christmas but Charles and I could never spend that kind of money on one child when we had two to buy for. This was going to be the year!!
When Bill left me I finally decided to pull myself up by the bootstraps and go on. After all there were more fish in the sea right? I went to the bar and called in more frequently at work. I stayed from 1:00 o'clock in the afternoon one day and didn't leave until closing time at 1:00 o'clock in the am. I had a friend I had been playing pool with call in for me from the bowling alley next door telling them "I had fallen and couldn't get up" or something to that affect.

June 07, 2009

My First 56 Years

Charles was the husband; he was supposed to know everything. I got so tired of expressing my opinions and have him smirk at me as if he was appearing to listen but didn't care how sensible my ideas were, he was going to do things his way. That usually proved to be costly and when he found out his way wouldn't work he'd try my way. I’m talking about car repairs. Jenny and I would be able to hear certain a new rattling in the car, but Charles was deaf in his right ear and he couldn't hear anything. He said, “When they get loud enough for me to hear them I will do something about it!” He did this one day when he was driving to St Joseph, when he got to the 28th street exit the front wheel fell off. He finally got the car under control enough that he could pull over and make a change.
I told Bill I wasn't getting rid of my "sissy dog" as he called him. He resented the fact that I had to check on him and make sure he was cool enough and had enough water in the summer time. Pebbles was used to staying inside. I didn't have a fence around the yard at the trailer so I had to keep him tied up outside. The summers in Kansas and Missouri were extremely hot exceeding 100 degrees often. The humidity is thick as paste. We stayed at his mother's central air conditioned home in St Joseph on weekends, usually at night when his Mom and Dad weren't there. I got off work every other weekend.
At this same time bickering and petty arguments exploded between us, due to the heat and living conditions and just plain not getting along. We always got over them quickly enough. I was in love and had my head in the clouds most of the time. The next door neighbor in the trailer court was asking me questions one day when Bill was there and he slipped his arm around me to show that I belonged to him. I was so unbelievably happy.
Cooler weather finally reared its ugly head around September and by October it was time to shop for Christmas. I always had to put presents on layaway. Bill liked Indian and wolf memorabilia so I stopped at the roadside gift shop outside of Wathena across from Fleeks Market. They had snakeskin belts etc. I put all my things, about 200.00 on the counter and expressed my desire for a layaway account. I made my deposit and went away with the feeling that this was going to be the best Christmas ever! I drove to Wal-Mart on North Belt Highway and put items away for Jennifer and Chuck.
The Glamour Shots photography came to St Joseph that fall so my friend Lee Ann and I went to East Hill’s mall. I sat for several hours getting makeup and trying on different costumes. I begged Lee Ann to not tell Bill as I wanted the photography sessions to be a secret until I got the pictures back. Lee Ann lived on Gibson Drive in a trailer court in St Joseph. Bill introduced her to me as one of his friends. On Sundays we'd go to her trailer and watch the Chief's football team play. I hadn't been much of a football fan but she and Bill and her boyfriend really got into hooping and hollering every time the Chief's got the ball or something good happened. I tried to understand it but the game went so fast with very little explanation of what was happening. The announcers figured if you're watching then you already know the game. Bill tried to explain some of it to me but it was hard to explain and watch at the same time. I got so I just watched and started to figure it out on my own and waited until commercial to ask about anything I wasn't quite sure about. This seemed to work out better. Slowly but surely I started to get the jest of the game and started to look forward to Sundays. Monday nights too eased its way into my life, soon I became a die hard fan and wouldn't miss a game.
In the eighties there were the Royals games and Charles and I would sit for 3 hours and watch the Royals destroy every team they played. I was crazy about baseball and when the Royals won the World Series in 1985,beating the Toronto Blujays and before that the St Louis Cardinals for the Governor's cup, the crying and screaming for joy lasted until April of 1986.All Hell broke loose and the Royals were barely in the playoff's each year after that. We hardly watched another Royal's game.
When I figured out football in 1992 there wasn't any other game that could come close to the excitement. The Chief's was a good ball team and won a lot of games. They won the Super Bowl in 1970 but hadn't been able to win one since, however the excitement was that they came so close almost every year!
With the small fights and disagreements Bill and I shared we got along for the most part. One day I was at the bar and Bill and I were having one of our "squabbles" when a cute young man I was playing pool with offered me a ride home. We ended up at his apartment and he introduced me to a buddy of his. When the buddy left he told me his problems
with dating girls and I told him my problems. We got close and it was nice having a man's point of view. He lived in an apartment house close to the hospital. When I'd get off work during the week I'd find little notes on my windshield under the windshield wipers telling me to come up. He lived in a run down apartment building just a couple of blocks from the hospital.
I'd go, against my better judgment. We laughed and reminisce about all the things that had gone wrong from day one in our lives. He was crazy about some girl that had dumped him but he was thinking about taking her back etc... I filled him in on the goings on with Bill and me. I told him about the Glamour shot pictures I had taken and thought it was taking a long time to get the proofs. I was telling him about all the items I had bought for him at the little gift shop in Wathena. I finally confessed that I probably shouldn't see him anymore because I knew that I loved Bill and didn't want to do anything to mess that up. He said he was going to ask that girl to marry him anyway.
I had gotten my proofs and was excitedly showing them to everybody. It was going to be another couple of weeks when I would be able to get the whole package I had spent over 200.00 on. The pictures were so good I couldn't believe how they had turned out and I couldn't wait to show them to Bill.

Family Reunion 1961

Family Reunion 1961
All 13 of Us Together

Terre

Terre
Denton Ks 1977

Chuck and Jenny 1983

Chuck and Jenny 1983

Jenny

Jenny
Graduation Day 1991

Our Wedding Picture 1993

Our Wedding Picture 1993
A New Beginning

Dakota 1995

Dakota 1995

Chief

Chief
1995

Chief and Beavis

Chief and Beavis
Playing when Chief was a Puppy

Bullet

Bullet
Darlene and Bullet