Do you suppose this is what attracted me to the Mill Street house?
It was in the upstairs kitchen. The cord went through the wall but plugged in at the base board. It worked and I loved it. Then. Now, I think it would just bring back too many memories.
That is what it looks like today. There were half walls around that porch back then. I think they have done a lot of work on the outside and I'm sure they had to have done even more on the inside.
You can't see much of the house on the right but they used to have an equally large semi-walled porch. They had one big problem with theirs. It seemed that at least once a year they would find a car almost on their porch. They would come speeding as fast as they could up the hill and not slow down when they got there. There was a light about half a block from our house, but it didn't seem to deter speeders much.
One day when Tommy was little he was in the yard with some of us and he darted quick for the road. I grabbed him in time but that was the first and the only time I ever spanked his butt. I just felt I had to get through to him somehow how serious that was.
Tommy was a good baby. He seldom cried unless he was sick.
He adjusted to the new house well. Sometimes car noises bothered him.
During the first years there before he started school, we would take one of two trips back to New York each year. In a way, I loved those trips. There was a sense of freedom in being on the road. Some places were a little scary.
We had a lot of good times traveling but a few bad ones too. Now that Tom was working so much I had to go on my own. Our first trip back we had Sue with us but on the trip back it was just me and the kid.
I could do the trip in a day but it was tiring. In the beginning I would travel the back roads and ignore the throughway. Later, I would find the big highway a lot easier but not so much for interest or places to stop easy.
On one of these first trips I had to rest. I pulled into a small area off the road that other cars used for resting. There were no people and no facilities other than a trash barrel. After cleaning the car out of the travel debris, I pulled it in behind some trees where I couldn't be seen from the highway, rolled up the windows and locked the doors and tried to take a nap. I just couldn't sleep. I kept waking up. I know now that was the apnea but I didn't know it then.
Nothing bad happened to us there but looking back on it now I think we would have been safer if I'd parked where I could be seen by traffic but maybe not. It was one of the reasons I switched to the faster highway. It had a lot of rest stops that seemed safer. Of course I'd never seen all the TV news stories you see today about killers at rest stops. I naively thought with all those other people around we'd be safe. It was only dumb luck that kept us safe. That or maybe it just wasn't our time to get into difficulties.
When Tommy was old enough to eat fast food we would make a lot of stops at places like that. If I could afford it I let him decide what he wanted to eat. We always got too much food. I think it may have been that I just didn't want to stop again soon. I drank gallons of coffee and soda pop. I wasn't even drinking diet drinks in those days.
We'd leave Ohio before dawn and get to Mom's about five or six in the evening. If I really got sleepy while driving and I couldn't nap, I'd take a nodoze or have another caffeine drink.
Sometimes, I get an extra cup of ice. If I was getting sleepy and I couldn't stop, I'd dump some of the ice in my bra. Let me tell you, that will wake you up. I'd pull over as soon as I got to a place where I could. Then I'd get out and take Tommy for a walk about. We'd visit the toilet first and then just look in the gift shops or buy some food neither of us wanted.
Sue never understood back then why I always talked half the night. It was probably because I was so alert from all the caffeine I couldn't shut up.
While returning from New York when Tommy was about five I think, I ran into bad weather. After leaving on a bright fall day I'd gotten as far as Johnstown when it started to snow. It was falling thick and fast. We'd just stopped for a light at a four way intersection when a school bus came through and couldn't stop. They got hit by another car but it wasn't too bad. It could have been much worse. It was enough to scare me though. I drove very very carefully after that.
After that, near misses kept happening to us. I think it was the next year in early summer and we were on our way to Mom's when I thought I might be lost. I was in a heavily wooded area but the road was paved so I figured I'd find a major highway soon. It was starting to rain. Then the wind picked up and it got worse. I was just thinking I might know where we were headed when I had to slam on the breaks quickly. We were lucky and didn't get hit but huge tree came down right in front of the car.
When I got over the serious case of the shakes, I backed it up to where I could turn around and went back the way I came till I found a town where I got a good map and found another route there.
I believe this was the same trip where we had a real bad time coming back to Ohio. It had been raining for days but that day it had let up and the sun was shining. I'm not sure exactly what point we were at. We had crossed over a big bridge and were headed away. We had been beyond the bridge for maybe ten or fifteen minutes when we heard sirens. I pulled over of course and a whole bunch of rescue squad, and cop cars and a fire truck went by us. It seemed like a lot to me.
I pulled in to the first gas station or pitt stop as I called them and asked what all the commotion was about. I could still see emergency vehicles flying by us. The guy asked me where I'd come from and I told him. He asked me about the bridge we crossed. I told him which one it was. He said, "I hate to tell you, ma'am, but that bridge just crashed into the river and took a lot of cars with it." That sure explained the fact that there were no cars behind us for this stretch. I was beginning to think we may have had a travel guardian angel with us.
I drove kind of slow for awhile after that. We took more rest stops than usual. I called Mom from a stop somewhere about halfway and told her what time I thought I would be home and that we were safe. I didn't dare tell her about the bridge. Maybe she'd never have to know we'd even been on it.
When we left the New York state line, we would normally have an hour and fifteen minute drive through Pennsylvania and then be almost home. I thought we were safe.
Although it turned out we were safe we still had a long long way to go. I'd only got on the PA section when we all had to stop. That was real scary because I was thinking about what would happen if a car way back behind us somewhere couldn't stop and it caused a giant chain reaction.
We sat there at least an hour and no one told us anything. Eventually, they would tell us there was a "mishap" up ahead and we were being detoured. It was I90. We all had to wait our turn and the whole line of us was detoured back to New York where they showed us a map and told us we would have to find another route because no one was using that stretch of I90 that day. * The mishap was a big hole in one of the lanes that was up high in the air. I think they blamed it on the rain.
It took us hours of back tracking and going forward and we eventually did find ourselves on the far side Erie Pa and able to take a cut back on to I90. It wasn't a regulation cut but there were cops telling us to go that way so we did. We were still crawling along at about ten miles and hour.
While all this was going on, Mom had called home and asked Tom why I hadn't called to let them now I was safely arrived. He told her I hadn't got there yet. She told him I was supposed to have been there hours ago. He actually told our Mom that we would be OK because I could take care of myself. So much for a husband worrying about his missing wife and child.
We took our usual off ramp at the first exit in Ohio. It was a short hop from there to home or would have been if we had been able to move a little faster. We were still going slow. If anything we were going slower. I think we were down to five miles and hour and trying to go up a big hill. It took another hour at least just to get up that darn hill.
Now, you might think Tom would be there waiting for us. He hadn't seen us in two weeks and Mom had called to tell him we were late. Not only was he not anxiously waiting for us on the porch, he wasn't even home. When he knew we were going to be late he and Ray went to the bar.
I unlocked the door and went inside and there was no Tom. We unpacked the car and still no Tom. Finally, at almost dark he came in with Ray. He hugged Tommy and ignored me which was fine. I was already getting used to that.
He sat on the couch and lit a cigarette. I could smell the booze on him. Him being drunk I could handle but what happened next came as a shock. He started that twitching. I knew what was happening and I ran for the phone to call for an ambulance or at least someone with the know how to handle a seizure. He, of course, wasn't taking his medicine as usual because it interfered with his drinking.
The emergency guys came in leaving the door wide open and took over. I was fine with that. They knew more than me and it was not like he was going to listen to me, anyway. They were taking his vitals. The idiot had managed to light another cigarette which he then dropped on the carpet. I reached out to put it out before the carpet could catch and one of those paramedics yelled at me. I just figured they'd never notice if the carpet caught on fire.
Chastised, I went to my corner. They had nothing to say to me. They kept asking him stuff like what medicine was he on and the fool told them he wasn't on any. He then went into another seizure and then one of the other emergency guys actually noticed I was just sitting there and began to ask me questions about his health. I told them the truth. They sure didn't care for me or my attitude, I guess.
They hauled his butt to the ER. Nobody asked me if I wanted to go along with him. Ray of course followed along behind them to the hospital.
I corralled the cats back in the house, called his Mom and then Ruby. I think either Ruby or Diane watched Tommy while Tom's Mom and I went to the hospital to see what was going on. She was not impressed with Brown Memorial's treatment of any of it or the emergency guys either. She said she would have demanded to go with them but I had Tommy to think of and I would need my car to drive home anyway.
Tom didn't want me there. They kept him for about five days and ordered him to get the prescription filled and to take it. I knew what would happen to that. He took them while he was in the hospital but when he got home he sat the bottle on the shelf and it stayed there unopened.
Janice never did have much good to say about Brown Memorial. The first reason was that a few years before, one of Doris's girls was pregnant. She was at least eight if not nine months gone but she was small. She was small because she never ate right when she was pregnant. She lived on Reese's peanut butter cups and wouldn't take her vitamins.
She thought she was in labor and there was no one to call so she called Janice who came out and took her to the ER at Brown Memorial. They examined her and told her not only was she not in labor she wasn't even pregnant. After eight or nine months of being pregnant, Starr was pretty darn sure she was pregnant and in labor.
Janice drove her to Ashtabula hospital. They barely got her in the ER when she delivered her son. This Brown Memorial is the same place that gave me hell for letting Tommy get dirty at the playground.
Shortly after moving into the Mill Street house we had another occasion to visit Brown Memorial. Tommy was about two then and playing on the kitchen floor. His father, not taking his meds, of course, lifted the glass carafe of scalding coffee to pour himself a cup and promptly had a seizure dumping the coffee down Tommy's back.
I grabbed him up quick, ignoring Tom completely because Tommy was in pain. I was darn near in shock. I chucked him in the sink and turned on the cold water. Janice was there and helped to get his little shirt off him. We wrapped a wet cloth around him and hauled both of their butts to the ER.
They wouldn't let me in with Tommy. They said I was too hysterical and I'd scare him more. It was probably true. Janice went in with him. I honestly don't know what they did with his father. He didn't go in with Tommy. I knew that because Janice was the only one they let in.
Before we got to take him home, they got me off in a room alone and tried to get me to say I had poured the coffee on Tommy. I got really upset then and started out the door. I had it open and Janice was just outside. She'd heard what they accused me of. She told them she was right there and saw what happened and it was nothing I could have prevented.
This was not my last run in with that hospital.