I find it difficult emotionally to write about my life with Bertha. I have never been allowed to mourn her passing. But I must press on even if no one reads these words. I need the catharsis.
On our trip to Dallas, my stepfather decided to take the Southern route along I-10 through Houston to see Bertha. The familiy was in three vehicles. I was driving a ten-wheel van with Pop, Mom drove a pickup and my brother drove another pickup. We looked like a band of Roma when we pulled into her block on Avenue E just West of Macario Garcia Blvd.
When I knocked on the door, no one answered. Bertha’s cousins were all around the house and they assured me she was in there. So we waited for an hour and a half for Bertha to emerge. She was napping and didn’t hear the knock on the door. I only had ten minutes to greet her and get a hug before we had to get back on the road to Dallas.
The brakes on the big truck were failing by the time we got into the Dallas city limits. The slope of the street on one intersection caused us to have an adventure we didn’t want to have. As we sat at a red traffic light the truck began to drift backward. My mother, the hero, pushed the big truck with the front of the Dodge Power Wagon, the same Pickup type that today is called a Ram. It is fortunate that the pickup had enough power to hold that ten-ton truck from running over the other vehicles. We all were frightened by that close call.
We spent a couple days in the building to be demolished before we got a place to stay. That was like living in a haunted mansion from some old movie. I attended the Lakewood Memorial Assembly of God that first Sunday in Texas. My beard was down to my third button on my shirt and, with my dark complexion and Semitic cast to my face, made me look Hasidim in my dark suit. A woman walked by twice, giving me the eye, before she blurted out, “Are you Jewish?” and I answered, “Only by faith sister, only by faith.” I was referring to the passage in Romans where Saint Paul said we are Grafted into Israel. But I’m not sure she caught the allusion.
Pop’s employer had lined us up a house to rent in Garland, and it was a nice one. We moved in and got ready to begin work on the salvage and demolition of an old, condemned apartment complex to make room for condos. The buildings were fairly well preserved for ones that were not fit to inhabit. The fixtures were all antiques, quite valuable on the market, and we had the task of removing them intact.
I began attending the Broadway Assembly of God, just a short walk from the house, and enjoyed the fellowship of the congregation. Little was I to know that when I was falsely accused they would turn against me.
I only stayed the rest of the summer with my family. In November, I moved to Houston to be with Bertha. I got a job driving a delivery truck for Amerigas, Inc. in Deer Park, Texas while Bertha got us an apartment near her favorite church. Our engagement was announced and I moved into the apartment while Bertha sold her mobile home to her friend and roommate. Our relationship grew closer with the proximity, but the months to wait until June were trying on both of us. Finally, Bertha could take no more and moved the date for our June wedding up to May 22, 1982. I was all for it!
Ol’ Fuzzy is not employable and was denied for disability benefits. The only thing I have is the blogs. But I don’t qualify for ads on the blogs until September. If you like the scribbles I post, please help me keep it going. You can leave me a gratuity by dropping a buck or two in Ol' Fuzzy's Tip Jar. This is a PayPal account I opened on Wednesday, April 5, 2017.
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