LIFE WITH MY CHILDREN PART 35

Into every perfect life a little rain has to fall....and it built up into a huge storm in my life. It began simply enough. The schools began having racial problems. Every day Tammy and Buddy had sad tales about racial harassment...blacks to whites.

On Martin Luther King Day...still not an official holiday...Joe called me in the afternoon. He asked if I was watching TV and if not, to turn it on. He said the schools were letting out early because of rioting....and I should call Georgie to go to the school and walk home with Tammy and Buddy. As it happened, George was there...so he left right away while I watched in horror what was happening at the high school.

George came home with Buddy...couldn't find Tammy. So, leaving him and Buddy with Joey, I went looking for Tammy. I went to the school and couldn't believe my eyes. Kids were everywhere..mostly black and they were fighting each other and yelling insults at the few white parents who were looking for their kids. One mother told me that a few minutes earlier a little white boy had ventured out the school door looking for his parents and was immediately jumped on and dragged into the street by five or six black kids. He was rescued by a couple of adults. Other white kids were stranded in the school, afraid to leave. I checked, but Tammy wasn't one of them. By now the street was full of police cars. I started to walk away and one policeman...actually a black one...escorted me past the confusion.

When I got home Tammy was there. She and her friend Andrea had left right away when the trouble started and a woman across from the school called them inside her house, sent them out her back door. They cut across back yards and alleys to Andrea's house and then to ours.

Our neighborhood was an isolated white island within the city that had turned 90 percent black.
We still felt safe enough there within reason. There were severe problems at the high school and even the junior highs. Our neighbors 15 year old was attacked in the bathroom at school and six black girls cut off her hair with razor blades.

Joe and I began making plans to send the kids to Ferndale for junior high...the following year for Tammy...and pay the tuition.

In the meantime, that spring, I had transferred my real estate license to a busy office on the northwest side of Detroit. There, too, the racial problems were growing. The office instituted a policy that no woman agent could show or list homes alone after 6. We had to work with a partner. A friend at the office, Nancy, and I teamed up. Because of Joey, I couldn't work days anyway. Nancy's kids were in school so she could cover both of our floor time. And floor time was very important...that's where we got our leads and customers.

Our partnership worked out fine. Nancy and I were listing and selling at least two houses a week. Also, I got us into the neighborhood development program and we were placing five or six families a month into homes from their slum type developments.

In the evenings, when Joe wasn't home, Georgie came over and stayed with the kids. Tammy became a little second mother to Joey...bless her heart. Most evenings I was gone from six to 9 or 10 and most of the day on Saturday. Our savings account was growing plus another account Nancy and I started towards opening our own real estate office. Both of us would be eligible to take the brokers test within a year and we had big plans to open an office in Livonia together.

Then, at the end of the school year, Joe lost his job. Lincoln Park had held a special election to raise taxes to keep their athletic department going. And they lost the election. Lincoln Park was dropping all sports the following year. Since Joe was only there a year, they said they didn't have a teaching position open for him either.

He chased jobs all summer. Whenever he heard a rumor that some school was looking for a basketball coach, he checked it out. As it happened, it was a bad time financially for a lot of schools and they were dropping faculty rather than adding.

I added onto the hours I was working that summer, since mine was the only money we had coming in. Joe took it very hard. He didn't like...couldn't stand...it that I was the bread-winner. Our marriage began to suffer. I still had all the housework, cooking, etc to do plus my job. Joe would not pick up a dish to carry it into the living room. I'd get home at 9 or 10 and the house would be a mess.

I knew I was placing too much on Tammy's little shoulders, but didn't know what else to do. Even while I was yelling at her about not cleaning up after them, I felt sick and guilty inside.

One night at work, while I was with a customer, in the middle of typing up a sale, Joe called. He said the lights had gone out. I told him the fuse box was in the basement...and a box of fuses were on top of it. Ten minutes later he called back...screaming at me. Tammy and Buddy couldn't find the fuses...and God forbid that he'd go to the basement himself! It was nearly an hour later before I got home....to a dark house, a fuming husband, and crying kids. Well, I was furious myself. I went to the basement and replaced the burnt out fuse and in no uncertain terms told Joe he was useless! That he was going to have to get off his lazy bum and help me out. I couldn't do it all by myself! For all the good it did me. From then on he just called me at work more often....Joey wouldn't stop crying...Tammy wouldn't come in the house and take care of him....Tammy and Buddy were squabbling....Tammy wouldn't wash the dishes....two of three times an evening. I had to cut back my hours to three evenings a week and try to work all my appointments...as well as Nancy's...into those hours. When it was possible, I'd make appointments earlier...like at 4 or 5...often taking the kids with me to show the house, then letting Nancy write up the paperwork. Subsequently, I had to go in more during the day to process the paperwork, obtaining financing, credit reports, etc. that Nancy had been doing for us.
I took Joey with me a lot, giving Tammy some free time to be a child, herself.

Looking back, I don't know how I did it. This was much more difficult than having an 8 to 5 job with a salary. Plus, I now had a baby that needed a lot of work and attention in addition to the other two...who were growing faster than I could keep up with. I would have cried if I'd had the time!