Mary took me for my first ever meal at a Denny's. I'd never heard of them before. It was good food then. I say she took me but actually, it was a trucker friend of hers that she'd worked construction with in previous years who took us both. He was an older guy and nice. He said he just didn't like to eat alone when he had friends in town. We never saw him again either. At least, I never did.
After the meal, I think it was breakfast or lunch or in between, Mary and I went to visit the dogs at the dog pound. She loved dogs but they only had a pet ferret because she couldn't really afford a dog. When we got to the shelter a man was unloading a cage of ferrets. She stopped to oou and ahh over them. I swear, she would have taken all of the animals home if she could have. The man said they were going to charge him to take the ferrets off his hands because they were exotics and would be hard to find homes for. Mary got that gleam in her eye and the next thing I knew the cage of ferrets was in my car and we were off to the pet store.
(Somehow we managed to buy a second hand green station wagon. It was great for awhile but come winter it gave us problems. )
At the pet store the owner paid Mary 75 dollars for selling them. We were excited. It was the most fun we'd had in ages. We hit our favorite cheap store, Goodwill! We bought anything we wanted. Goodwill there at that time was a good place. Clothes were cheap and clean. You could buy a second hand dress for a quarter. We quickly blew forty dollars.
I told her she'd better keep the rest in case she needed it but first we had to stop at Burger King. I don't know what it cost but we often ate at Burger King because back then, this was in the late seventies, a burger there was a really huge burger. It was so huge I couldn't finish one. She got more food before we went to pick Kevin up at school.
Mary was a pale blond lady. Her next steady fellow was a big black guy. She asked me if I minded him being black. I said not at all as long as he treated her right. Tom and I were invited by him to a picnic in Garden of the Gods with him and Mary and Kevin. It was a little cool that day but we all had a great time running around and climbing and checking out places. I don't think they lasted long as a couple and I never knew why.
Before long she thought she was in love with a young cowboy rancher who raised horses. She'd been dating him awhile when she left Kevin with him while she was at work. It would have been fine but he let Kevin ride one of his horses. Mary said Kevin knew how to ride but something awful happened that day.
Somehow the horse threw Kevin. He got his foot caught in the stirrup thing. I think that's what it's called and the horse dragged him around the corral while the man tried to stop him. At one point Kevin's head hit a post. He was knocked out. The man got the horse called the ambulance and got him to the hospital. He called Mary at work and she called me. I got her to the hospital.
While in the waiting room she asked me to do her a favor. There was a small white dog in her apartment. She and her sister in Leadville had stolen him from a farmer up there. The farmer wanted a tough watchdog. I don't really thing a little white terrier fit the bill but he had him. He pretty much starved him to make him meaner. He would take the end of the chain he kept him on and beat him with it every day.
Mary's sister saw it and got Mary out there. Together they snuck in and stole the little dog. Mary was supposed to take him to the pound there in town so the guy would never find him and get him back. Both of really knew what would happen. A dog usually got three days before he was put down.
I waited with Mary until the doc came out and said Kevin would live but he'd be sickly for a long time because his spleen had ruptured and they'd had to remove it. I told Mary don't worry about the dog. He'd be fine with us.
Back home, Tom was back from work and I filled him in on what was happening. He took her key and went over and got the dog. I swear to God, I could tell from the minute I saw him with Scruffy I knew he wouldn't part from him with out a damn good reason. Sure enough by morning he told me we were keeping Scruffy. He did look scruffy too with spiky greyish yellow hair poking out in all directions and tootsie roll eyes.
I don't know how he did it but he got him into the tub and we discovered we had a very cute white fluffy dog who at that time was extremely loving towards the both of us.
We already had two cats. One was a cute fluffy orange kitten we found on our door step crying in the rain. He wasn't so fluffy till we dried him off. George, we named him for George Garfield not for Garfield the cat that we'd not even heard of then became a loving and cute little critter. Sure he attacked the Thanksgiving turkey on the kitchen table but we still loved him.
In winter George would sit on the cement walls surrounding where we all put our garbage for collection. He like to chase the squirrels. I think he wanted to make friends with them. He brought home a little black buddy one day. Then we had two kittens and a dog.
One day a neighbor asked to borrow one of Toms hand guns to shoot a skunk that was hanging around spraying things. It was getting pretty nasty around there and no one would do anything about it. Tom trusted him and let him borrow it. There was a young blond boy that hung around too. He liked Tom's guns but Tom wouldn't ever let him touch them.
A few nights later, the man who had borrowed the gun returned it. The boy was still hanging around. I think it was because Tom fascinated him. Maybe it was just Tom's gun collection. One night before Tom got home he showed up and asked me if he could borrow one of Tom's gun books to show his father who was interested. I told him I'd ask Tom when he got home. He left, dejected but I wasn't loaning a book of Tom's to someone without his permission.
When Tom got home he was exhausted from coming off 2 days of work with only 4 hours rest between. He said it was ok with him but he couldn't take it to him because he was half asleep. It was time for me to do another stupid thing in my life that was already getting chock-full of stupid things.
I took the book and started down the lane. It was only about 3 blocks and it wasn't quite dark I figured I'd get there, drop it off and be straight back before it was full dark. I hadn't counted on the fact that darkness seemed to creep in faster there.
It was just starting to get dark but not fully when I saw the lane leading to the back of the apartment house where they lived. I ducked in the lane. I'd done it before in daylight, no problem. It turned out there was a big problem and it was something I hadn't counted on. A huge, well, huge to me, white German Shepard dog came out of the darkness snarling and barking. I couldn't back up and he latched on to my leg biting in deep. I was screaming and hitting him with my fists trying to get him to let go. My shoe fell off and I grabbed and smacked him on the snout. He let go. I ran for the house still clutching the damn book.
The woman dabbed some medicine on it but I knew it wasn't going to be enough. The dog belonged to the other apartment renter in the front of the house. The boy walked me home bitching the whole way about the dog and the dog's owner. It seemed they let him out at night on the chain and most of the neighbors knew not to go in the lane at night. He told me his little brother and sister were out there eating hot dogs the after noon before when the man brought the dog out. He lunged for them but he couldn't reach them on his chain.
Back in the apartment I soaked in the tub. The dog had a rabies tag so I wasn't worried too much about that. The next morning I caught the bus to the clinic and got it looked at. I gave her all the details. Tom and I were still not married so I had no health insurance. The free clinic was all I could get.
She gave me a script for an antibiotic which I told her I had no money to pay for. She sent me to another part of town to a pharmacy who would let me have it for free as long as I only got it once. I don't know why they did that but I was grateful. The medicine helped and it was soon feeling better. I still have scars from it but they blend in with all my other scars. Mom told me once that scars were a roadmap to my life.
About two days passed when a cop showed up at our door. They talked with us for a bit and left. Someone had shot the dog in the night. I never even heard it but it was noisy there and I probably wouldn't have heard it. The copy had the copy of the report when I went to the clinic. He had talked to the neighbors and the boy had told them a fantastic story.
He said that Tom had come to their house and tried to "borrow" .22 bullets from his father the night before. The good news was that Tom was working in the mess hall then and couldn't have. He also had no need to borrow bullets that he could get anywhere. The hand gun he had was a .38 not a .22. He wasn't off the hook though.
The cop had left but the next day another man arrived with a court summons. Tom had to go to court to answer the charge even though he wasn't arrested. At the post they told him it was no big problem, just go and tell them the truth. I think they have him a sworn paper saying he was on duty when the dog was killed.
I went with him to court even though I didn't have to go. Nothing happened because the kid who was the "witness" didn't show up. It was postponed and we had to do it all over again. I think I stayed home this time. Nobody had seen the kid around for days. Tom came back and said the case was dismissed. The old man had shown up and said his son was an alcoholic and a liar and was in a facility for the alcohol abuse which was why he wasn't there. I don't know how much truth there was in any of that. The kid didn't act like a drunk. I was glad it was all over.
Tom bought another car off some guy in the Army. It was a VWbug. I think it was red. The motor sounded ok to me but I couldn't drive it. For one thing the only brake that worked was the emergency brake so you had to pull up on the handle of that when you wanted to stop. You had to drive slow and not speed up because you couldn't stop or slow down. Another problem was the signal lights didn't work so here again you had to use hand signals. Top that off with it being a car you needed to clutch and there was no way I was risking my neck or my license trying to drive that piece of junk.
He drove it a week back and forth to the post but he had no license either. He didn't even have a title to the thing. One night he came walking in. The car had stalled somewhere and he couldn't get it going so he left it and walked home. The good news is that it wasn't in our names and he never got caught driving without a license.
My old green station wagon died in the winter sometime after Mary's move in the frigid cold. One night the temps went astronomically low. Everything froze including whatever antifreeze was left in the car. The engine block cracked. Some of the guys got it to a fix it place but the cost of getting it fixed was too high. Tom told the guy in the garage to sell it for junk and I think the man took the title and swapped out the engine and resold it to someone else.