LIFE WITH MY CHILDREN PART 43

Leaving Joe was really hard on all of us. My heart was breaking but I tried to keep it together for the kids. Both Tammy and Buddy were devastated. Tammy sobbed her little heart out for the first hour or so...and Buddy, sitting in the front seat by me, tried to be tough..telling Tammy he was glad to be leaving Kum's house. Tammy said she was glad of that, but wanted Joe with us. "Me too," he said, "but Joe says we can't get everything we want." Yet, he sat there looking out the side window and surreptitiously wiping his eyes every now and then. It made no difference to Joey, though. He had the three people who meant most to him!

I tried to reassure the kids, telling them we were only going to Indiana to wait until Joe got a place of our own then we'd go back...yet, the sinking feeling in my gut was saying it was over. My marriage, my dreams, my life. Now it was just me and my kids again.

We drove for about three hours...in the middle of the desert...and had a flat tire. In a station wagon, the spare is under the floor behind the third seat. We had to unload everything to get to the spare. By then a couple of men in a pickup had stopped to help us. Only to find the spare was also flat. They said the only thing they could do was go on in to Scottsdale, about 30 miles away, and send a tow truck. All in all, by the time the tow truck got there and fixed the tire, we spent about four hours sitting beside that road. The kids were great. They alternately played with Joey in the desert by the car and slept.

We stayed at a motel in Scottsdale and got an early start the next day. Overall, we took out time going to Indiana. We drove through the Painted Desert and the Petrified Forest. I opted not to drive the hundred or so miles to visit the grand canyon...a decision I've often regretted. We did go a little out of our way to see the meteor hole. We stopped at a few Indian villages and I bought the kids some cheap souvenirs. I really had to be frugal. I had left Joe all my money except for my allotment check of $80 ...and the credit card. I charged the gas and the motels and we used the money for food.

We stopped at a deserted western town and stayed a couple of hours where the kids could run off the excess energy and I could take a break from driving. Even though Joey was good, considering he was only 18 months old, after a few hours in the car he got really cranky. So, even though we were on the road from 8 in the morning until about 10 at night, we didn't cover a lot of miles because we stopped often.

Wednesday evening we crossed the Mississippi River, awed by the Arch, and stopped to eat. I explained that we were only six hour from Warsaw and could either get a motel for the night...or keep going, putting us at at Mom and Dad's about one a.m. Both Tammy and Buddy said to go on...they were anxious to get there. At the next gas stop, I called Mom collect and told her we'd be in between one and two...which was a surprise to her since she didn't know we'd left California.

It was the week before Easter when we got to Indiana...and we stayed with Mom and Dad the rest of April. Again the kids started a new school. I got a job in Nappanee at a trailer factory and rented a mobile home in Milford. We moved there the first of May...and again, the kids started a new school. This made four different schools in one school year...actually, four different schools in five months!

Two weeks after I got home, I got a disturbing letter from Joe. It scared me to death. He said he was living in a room in Los Angeles. The letter sounded like a suicide note. I didn't know what to do. I called Joe's uncle George in Detroit and read the letter to him. He told me to take care of my kids and he'd take care of Joe.

Uncle George called Kum Walter and, I guess, read him the riot act. Told him they had interfered enough in our lives and now it was up to them to find Joe and take care of him. I guess after we left, Joe and Kuma Lillian had words, to put it mildly. He accused her of running us off and she said it was his fault for being too lazy to take care of us. So, in a huff, he left them and went to LA...and got a room where he holed up, only leaving it to mail that letter to me...at the same time he sent a note to Kum asking them to put my stuff in storage. I had left all our kitchen stuff...pots, pan, dishes, silverware.. as well as all our linens, a console TV set, Joey's crib, all my picture albums, my silver tea set and a painting that the office had given me, as well as other odds and ends.

After Uncle George's call, Kum went to find Joe...and after some discussion, took Joe to Camarillo State Hospital where Joe voluntarily committed himself. And just walked away from Joe...with never another visit or phone call. Some Kum! The only contact Joe had with them again was some papers they sent to the Hospital for Joe to sign...including a Quit Claim Deed giving them back their house.

When I later called them and asked them to ship my stuff to me, Kuma said they had sold most of it a garage sale. I said then to send me the money, as well as the money I had paid on their house. She got all huffy and said the over $2,000 I had given them for back payments and utilities was rent and board for the two months we all stayed with them...and hung up on me. I never heard from her again...but when I visited friends in Detroit, I heard all kinds of lies she told them...such as we never paid them anything...and how good they treated us...while we were a couple of ingrates! Luckily, when I was at Kuma Eva's and she was telling me the worst of it, in my purse I had a couple of cancelled checks...endorsed by Walter, for over a thousand dollars.