My Life So Far, Vol. 14

I had no trouble finding a job in retail. I was hired to manage a kiosk in the Gulfgate Mall for Frontier Fruit and Nut Company. We sold ready to eat dried fruits and nuts as a snack item people could eat in the store. Working by myself, I brought the store to within a few dollars of the company quota for the first time in the history of the kiosk.

I finally found a crew to work the store with me, but one I had to let go because he couldn’t return from lunch in the half hour we gave him. As soon as there were two other people working with me, my quota was doubled. I taught them my tricks and techniques for sales, mostly how to catch the attention of passers by because the food sold itself once people looked at it. I took applications from a large number of people. No one gave it the effort that I did.

One of my tricks was to put a honey dipped, sun dried date on the scoop and present it to the oldest woman in the hall, saying, “Hay gorgeous, do you want a date?” It always made a sale. I just couldn’t get my employees to try. My most productive one became hostile because she perceived things in a racial way, being a black woman in Houston, Texas, and decided I had singled her out for being black. Little did she know I had singled her out for being good at the job. Before I could clarify it with her I was hired away at a shoe store for Genesco Shoes in the San Jacinto Mall in Baytown, Texas.

I worked for a black lady as her assistant manager in the Jarmin store. The job lasted through the end of 1982, then the company moved me to Beaumont, Texas to work in one of their Flag Brothers stores. My wife was now pregnant with our daughter, and she was miserable all summer. The economy in Beaumont is very much tied to the oil industry. When the country goes into a recession, oil is depressed. When the oil business is in a bust, Beaumont is dirt poor. The oil depression caused sales in the Flag Brothers store to drop so low the company was thinking of closing it for lost revenue. So that summer of 1983 in Beaumont, I was unemployed with a pregnant wife.

I sold Kirby vacuum cleaners and picked up scrap metal along the highway, mostly aluminum cans. It wasn’t easy making rent. But I did. When my daughter was due on September 4^th, my wife had not yet shown signs of immanent delivery. On September 16^th, the Ob/Gyn resident in John Sealy Hospital in Galveston, Texas had Bertha admitted to force labor with a pitosin drip. Bertha had the IV in her arm for seven whole days, in agony the whole time from forced labor. But the baby was not yet ready to come. Finally, on the afternoon of the 23^rd, Bertha began to dilate. If we had medical insurance, Deborah would have been taken by Caesarian section at least five days earlier. But non-paying customers don’t get surgical procedures unless it is life threatening.

It was four o’clock in the evening when the nurses suggested I dress in scrubs to help my wife with the delivery. My mother-in-law demanded to take my place in the delivery room. She had already monopolized the visiting time before delivery, and she had been telling my wife that I left and wouldn’t stay for the baby’s birth. I had already slept the night in the waiting room. I told her it was my place to be there for Bertha when the baby was born and so I shall be. My mother-in-law was livid. Her lies to my wife would all become apparent if I were to be there. She dressed in scrubs herself and told me I couldn’t go in there or “there’ll be hell on this floor.” I leaned forward and very quietly but firmly stated, “So be it.”

I would always be willing to give her her way in matters of no import. But when she would supplant my place beside my wife as our child was born, I had to stand up to her and put down my foot. I heard no more of it from her. The battle lost, my mother-in-law looked for other ways of tearing apart our marriage.

Deborah was born late in the night of September 23^rd, 1983. I had just turned 25 the previous month. Deborah weighed a little less than nine pounds and was healthy in all respects but one, her neck had not finished forming in the womb. She was precious to me from the start. The first time she sunk her little hands into my beard and refused to let go, I was smitten for life.

To be continued….

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.

My Life So Far, Part 13

As painful as it is to dredge up old memories of my life with Bertha, I must finish this series or I shall burst. I have been avoiding it far too long. So I shall plug in where I left off.

Bertha found an apartment in the Centerwood area of Houston where she wanted to live so she could be near her favorite church. In April, 1982, I moved into the apartment to hold it until our wedding. Bertha was still living in a mobile home she shared with a friend in Pasadena, Texas, half way between Gilley’s and Johnny Lee’s. Those were the big landmarks on the highway that every one used to navigate.

I found a job in Deer Park, Texas, delivering welding gasses for Amerigas, Inc. I usually drove a pickup truck. But sometimes I drove a three-ton flatbed. When the wedding day arrived, I dressed in my rented tuxedo along with my best man, my brother Alan and my father. We set out for the church in plenty of time. In fact we arrived fifteen minutes before the service was to begin. But my mother-in-law to be set sentries at all the doors of the church to tell me I could not come in by that door because the photographer was taking wedding pictures, and it is bad luck for the groom to see the bride before the wedding. Each pair of sentries directed me to try the other doors. Of course, when I got to the other doors there was a pair of sentries guarding it too.

So I decided to do a little prenuptial shopping at the local big-box store. My father, brother and I spent half an hour browsing at K-Mart and then returned to the church. Now the doors were unguarded and I could enter. Of course, my mother-in-law had begun a whisper campain against me in the church that I didn’t care enough to be on time. So I called on the people who were preventing my entry to testify of the time I showed for the service. There was a lot of squirming and excuses, but everyone realized how they had been used by my future mother-in-law.

Bert and I could not afford a honeymoon because we had moved the date up so far. So we decided to put it off for Christmas, and simply live as we pleased until then. Bertha reveled in the freedom I granted her as my wife. For the first time in her life, she was allowed to make her own decisions based on her own good judgment. Her mother hated the loss of control over Bertha’s life. Less than a week after the wedding, my mother-in-law was trying to drive a wedge between my wife and me.

On Christmas Eve, I had to work bringing in stock for the post holiday time. I was offered the week between Christmas and New Year off in compensation. I took the three-ton down NASA Road One to Texas City to pick up oxygen at one plant and acetylene at another. Then I set off for Deer Park and my honeymoon. The weather was turning bad before I finished loading, and by the time I hit the highway, there was a full blown ice storm in the coastal area of Texas. Driving on crowned roads covered in ice and sleet is no fun in a three-ton truck loaded with five tons of explosive gasses. Due to conditions, I didn’t make it back to the shop before closing time. There were three people there to help me unload.

As we were moving the gas bottles into the storage building, I heard a hiss and smelled acetone, a sure sign of a leaking acetylene bottle. We found the bottle that was leaking and moved it outside to a blast proof site built just for that purpose, finished unloading and set off for the holiday. Boy, was I tired!

Bertha and I went to NASA and took the bridal suite in the big motel there as soon as I was showered. Tired as I was from driving the bad road in the truck and then driving back in our car, Bertha didn’t let me have any sleep that night. Nine months later, Deborah Rochele Seys was born. I can’t complain about the abuse from my wife.

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.