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.
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