The Mill Street House.
* Note, I continued the numbers from the oss pages so there are no oms 1-38. Just thought I ought to clear that up.
At first I was relieved to actually be in a home that I thought I would live in most of the rest of my life. It was scary owning something even though the bank owned way more of it than we ever did. I did see a lot of possibilities in it.
I hated the basement. It was damp and dark and had spiders and who knows what else. It also had this huge oil furnace that took up most of the space in the first room of the basement. All of the basement soon became Tom's lair. I didn't care. I hated to even have to go down there.
The kitchen seemed nice as did most of the rooms in the house. They were neat and clean probably the last time I would ever see them that way. I had cupboards. I also had two kitchens as there was one on the second floor as well. I think she rented the upstairs out at some time.
I don't know why but I liked the green carpet in the living and dining room. I would soon come to hate it as I tried to keep it clean. It had upraised sections in the pattern that made it impossible to clean with a regular vacuum which we didn't even own at the time. I tried valiantly to sweep them but that got me nowhere fast. I cajoled and pleaded and eventually he bought a shop vac for me. Oh Gee! It did suck up the stuff good though. It was so loud the cats ran in terror.
Speaking of cats.
We had retrieved none of ours from New York. Blackie died within weeks of coming to Argyle. George and Scruffy lived a lot longer. However, Dad said I was NOT taking his cat and Mom wouldn't let me take Scruffy. My first children had been adopted by my parents and they were not parting with them.
That didn't mean we were going to live pet free. Shortly before we left State Street I heard a noise in the garage one night. I told Tom there was a cat out there. He said, "Oh, yeah, I forgot to tell you. This cat followed me home from work. It's in the garage." Later I found out the cat did not follow him home from work. The cat was dropped by someone at work. It seemed that Doris had talked Tom into taking it home with him. Why he made up that story I don't know.
It seemed after that a lot of other animals started following him home. Most stayed. One didn't.
I'm sorry, I wandered away from the house for a minute.
The attic was neat and also finished off. That became the new train room.
I tried sleeping upstairs on a mattress with old Tom. We still didn't have a bed. I just couldn't sleep right. It wasn't long before I was sleeping downstairs in a chair. I didn't really know that much about apnea at the time. I didn't even know the word for it. All I knew was I could not sleep good laying down flat. I don't know how I managed in the Army years. I didn't sleep upright in those years.
I had been half sleeping in a chair in the State Street house with the excuse of falling asleep that way. With Tom working nights he didn't notice it much.
I stuck my precious photos on the walls of the State Street kitchen so now they sat in a box. I didn't stick them to the walls here. I was so busy trying to keep the place clean despite the sudden influx of Tom's friends. Well, it wasn't really sudden it was more of a gradual thing.
One day we were walking down the street to the Golden Dawn grocery store when a man walked by us and said hello. Tom tensed up and told me afterwards to have nothing to do with that man. He said that was Bill Hicks and he was his half uncle born on the wrong side of the blanket. He said he was a drunk and they were bad people. Remember this because it points to a lot that happened later.
At first only some of his relatives came to visit but it wasn't long and he bought a second hand color TV. As Tommy got older and got into video games his father also did the same. After that there were a lot of whackos hanging around playing games and drinking beer, smoking and leaving heaping ash trays which often got beer spilled in them and then they too were spilled on the carpet.
They ate everything in the house.
I was expected to clean up after all of them and raise Tommy and do a lot of the outside stuff. Tom said he didn't do yard work. I had an old push mower at first and I tried with that.
Needless to say life was not as easy as I thought it would be in our own home.
I'm basically a stay at home person. He wanted others around him all the time. It was doomed. I couldn't keep up with it all.
The times weren't always bad. In fact there were good times, not loving times but good times. But there were definitely bad times.