LIFE WITH MY CHILDREN PART 12

When I brought Tammy and Buddy home from Indiana, they were thrilled with the new house we had. It was in the country with nearest neighbor at least a quarter mile away. There was a big barn that they weren't supposed to play in...but did. They still shared a bedroom, but had their own twin sized bed. We soon got into a routine again.

I'd get up in the morning, get us all dressed and drop them off at Avanelles on my way to work. Then school started. Tammy was an all-day first grader and Buddy started kindergarten. The school bus came by around 7:15 every morning, so I go up and got them fed and dressed and on the bus before I had to get ready for work. I worked from 8 to 5...so had arranged with the family living closest to us to baby-sit. The kids got off the bus there and I picked them up when I got off work. They really liked the new babysitters. I say plural babysitters because the family had a couple of teenage girls that absolutely adored Tammy and Buddy. A lot of nights one or both the girls would cut across the field and beat us to our house....sticking around playing with the kids while I prepared supper. Life was good! We still didn't have much money...living from paycheck to paycheck, but we were happy and content. On weekends we still went to see Granny, Avanelle and Aunt Susie, but through the week we were content to stay home evenings.

Then, in October, one Saturday, we stopped in to see one of my old girlfriends from highschool. It was de ja vu....Carol and her three kids were living in a small three room apartment with no electricity, no money, no car....and no one to help her. Her husband had left them high and dry for another woman. What could I do? I couldn't leave them like that. So, I helped pack up their few belongings and took them home with me.

Tammy and Buddy moved into my bedroom with me, giving Carol and her kids their bedroom.
Eventually, we were able to get a couple more beds...one for my room and one for Carol's. Actually, the original plans were that Carol and I would share a room, with all five kids in the other room. That didn't work out, though, because the kids just wouldn't go to sleep.

Now, Carol stayed home with the kids while I worked. Her oldest, Sheri, was in kindergarten with Buddy. Then Jacky was a year younger...and Ricky was only a year old.

The arrangement was perfect for me. The money I saved on a babysitter more than covered the cost of the extra groceries. And Carol cooked! When I got home from work, a hot meal was always ready for me. I thought it was perfect for my kids, too. They didn't tell me until years later that they hated it after Carol moved in. Tammy said Carol was mean to them...not physically...but always yelling at them..and at her kids. She had migraine headaches and the noisy playing really got to her. I knew that...and knew she often had to go lay down in her darkened room. I didn't know how unhappy my kids were, particularly Tammy.

Most weekends I would hire one of the neighbor girls to baby-sit and Carol and I would go the Pub bar in Ypsilanti on Friday and sometime Saturday nights too. Or rather, every Saturday night and sometimes Friday. Neither of us liked to drink, usually sticking to coke...but we loved to dance. And since I knew nearly everybody who went there, it was perfect for us. Her father even was a regular there. He was the one who had told me where she was living in the first place.

Carol began seeing Johnny, a man she had known for a few years...a friend of her ex-husband. Johnny introduced me to a friend of his named Dick. I can't say Dick and I ever dated. Mostly, we met him and Johnny at the bar and danced with them. Usually, they never stuck around very long. Sometimes they'd drop by the house for a couple of hours at a time. For a few weeks...perhaps a couple of months, I was infatuated with Dick. But that wore off, and we became just good friends. I knew both Dick and Johnny had been in prison for breaking and entering, but both assured us they were reformed. Yeah...right!

One day at work, I got a call from Carol. After school, Buddy and Jackie went out to the barn to play...and came back and told Carol there was a "buncha stuff" in the barn. She went out to check...and found tires...lots of them...cartons of cigarettes...lots of them...and various other things from gas stations. She was laughing about it...but I panicked. We had no doubt about how the stuff got in our barn.

I called Dick at work and told him I was asking no questions, but there was a bunch of stuff in my barn and it better not be there when I got home or I was calling the police. And, when I got home, the barn was clean. When I saw Dick at the bar later that week, he tried to apologize. Said he didn't take it there, Johnny had. Then Johnny told Carol the opposite. I told Dick I didn't care who took it there, but I was not having stolen goods on my property nor around my kids. And, furthermore, if he was still doing that kind of stuff, then I didn't want him around me and my kids, either.

Then on Monday, Carol again called me at work, laughing. Dick had come to the house and picked up a TV set he had given me. He told Carol to tell me I could keep the stero set he gave me because it was not "hot." From then on, Dick and were just speaking acquaintances. He ended up remarrying his ex-wife. A couple of years later he called me from the jail in Ann Arbor. He had been arrested for stealing stuff from the furniture store where he worked. A plea agreement he was working out included him telling who had everything he had stolen. He said he wasn't putting my name on the list, but because we had been friends, I might be contacted by the police to see if I had anything he had given me. Thank God, I could honestly answer that I did not have, had I been questioned. The stereo that I'm sure Dick was referring to had worried me enough that I got rid of it shortly after Dick took back the TV set.