LIFE WITH MY CHILDREN PART 32

Joe and I had a wonderful honeymoon. On the way to Florida, we stopped in Prestonsburg, KY and he met my relatives there.

Our next stop was his cousin, Florence, in Tampa. We were supposed to go on to his mother's after a short stop, but wound up staying all night. Then we stayed two nights with Joe's mom and her sister. Went deep-sea fishing where I got so burned I got sun poison. Spent a day with his very rich cousin in Venice, went swimming in the Gulf. Our last night there, we had dinner at a wonderful restaurant called the ...oops...not sure of the name...but all his Florida relatives were there with lovely gifts of MONEY!

From Tampa, we headed up the East Coast for a couple of days with Joe's Aunt in Pittsburgh. While there, his cousins took us to a healing service by Kathryn Kuhlman...then the very next day, to a wiccan fortune teller.

From there, we drove to Indiana where we stayed overnight. The next day we left, with Tammy and Buddy and my baby sister, Dodie.

The day after we got home, we signed papers for our new home in Highland Park. Since it was vacant, we immediately commenced moving in. Because I had to return to work, Uncle Calvin and his wife, Jan, moved all my stuff from the little country house.

The first Saturday night in the new house, Tammy, Buddy and Dodie came running in and said they saw a guy get shot! Wow! Scared me...made me wonder what kind of neighborhood Joe had moved us into! There was a motel on the corner of Louise (our street) and Woodward...just one block from us. They saw the desk clerk get shot...but so did several other people so the police didn't need to talk to them, Thank God!

We soon settled in our new home and loved it. The house was huge. Downstairs had living room, dining room, den, kitchen and breakfast room. Upstairs were four big bedrooms and a bathrom just as big. The third floor was unfinished except for a solid wood floor. The basement was divided into several rooms...big central room with the furnace..laundry room with a free-standing, raised, open toilet. A coal room that we used to store newspapers for recycling. And a storage room with shelves on the walls for canned goods, etc.

The floors, downstairs and up, were beautifully refinished hardwood. It had beautiful, original woodwork around the doors and the arch between the living room and dining room. Joe and I spent our wedding gift money buying new furniture and carpeting for the living and dining rooms.

Labor Day weekend, Mom and Dad came up and got Dodie. School started the next day. It didn't take the kids long to make friends and soon Andrea and Ruthie were running in and out almost as much as Tammy and Buddy. The kids liked school, even though for the first time, there were a minority. There were still white families living in our immediate area...in fact, no black families lived within several blocks of us.

Joe and I had talked about having another baby or two. I had stopped birth control pills when he left us, so hoped I would get pregnant right away. When several months passed, I became concerned and went to our new family doctor who told me it was not uncommon, after a couple years on birth control pills, to have problems conceiving. I had quit work because the trip from Highland Park to Ypsilanti, with traffice on I-94, was a nightmare. So...I decided to get a real estate license. I got the license in November and went to work part-time for a small realtor in Ferndale. I was there several months and didn't make a sale. The office was too small and just didn't generate much business.

In January, Avanelle's son, Gary Dale, was killed in a freakish accident. He was standing on the sidewalk, waiting for a train to pass when he was sucked up against the train and thrown across the street. Mom and Dad came up and stayed with us for the funeral. We gave them our bedroom and Joe and I slept in the den, on a single bed. And Joey was conceived! It was easy for me to pinpoint the exact date he was conceived, because Joe was involved in coaching basketball...and our love life was non-existent the whole month of January except for that one event.