Fleeting Thoughts of Jim

He loved fried bologna sandwiches with mustard for lunch. The bologna had to be beef and fried crispy on the edges, one slice on really thin bread, folded, two sandwiches. Sometimes he would ask for Spaghettios with them and then halfway through he might say the sauce was too sour and beg me to eat the rest.

Often, on Saturday or Sunday mornings he would ask for Mickey D's big breakfast, pancakes, scrambled eggs, sausage, biscuit, jelly and syrup. If he didn't feel like riding with me, his last words as I went out the door were "don't let them forget to put in the hash brown potato patty".

But, usually for breakfast, he wanted oatmeal, just plain oatmeal with milk and sometimes, raisins. He loved oatmeal...and one cup of black coffee.

When he was still able, he enjoyed riding the mower around the yard, picking up sticks and pine cones with his grabber, an empty white bucket between his legs for the debris. Before that, he would do his yard work with his walker, even spraying for weeds. He was never one to sit still, always doing something to improve the house or the yard.

I wrote about Tiger in one of my stories. He was really Jim's cat, always with him when he was outside. I remember him down in the hole with him, keeping him company, when he was building our swimming pool. One time, Tiger went up an oak tree in the backyard when one of our neighbor's dogs got back there. Jim called and called for him to come down. Tiger wanted to, but he was scared. Finally, Jim got our ten foot folding ladder and put it as close as he could to a hanging branch. He stayed out there talking and talking to Tiger until finally he hopped onto the top of the ladder and walked right down to the ground.

Jim took me riding on a motorcyle he owned...once...once is the key word. I leaned the wrong way, important for some reason, I guess . I like both feet on the ground anyway.

During the last couple years, I always cut Jim's hair. Going to the shop was just too much for him. He always looked so nice when I got finished, just like when he was younger. I could always tell when he needed a haircut because the ends would start to curl. And he would complain about the front falling in his eyes. He even let me trim his eyebrows. They got bushy-looking sometimes, and I would put the comb through them and trim as close as I could.

He always told the kids how rough he had it growing up, whenever they would complain about something. He was from West Virginia and his dad built, or repaired, coal company houses for very little pay. It wasn't a job you could count on, usually feast or famine. Jim had three brothers and four sisters, actually five, but one died when she was an infant. A big family with an iffy income and too proud to ever ask for help. That pride followed Jim all through his life, not always a good thing. Neither his mom nor his dad drove a car, even if they had had one. Jim remembered feeling embarrassed when other kids told him they saw his dad walking along the side of the road picking up slag, the stuff that dropped off the coal trucks. It was their fuel for the winter in hard times.

I remember a story he and his brothers told about their dad's temper. One of them was helping him on a house, something did not go right, and their dad's hammer went sailing past one of their ears. I forget which one it was. And, later on, his dad took a tumble off a roof and broke his pelvis. He spent several months in bed recuperating. I guess the older boys were able to help out. Jim was the baby of the family.

His sisters always helped with the house cleaning, and Jim, usually underfoot, did his best to mess up, tracking through newly-mopped floors and such. He mentioned the mop being thrown at him several times like it was a mark of excellence. And then the sister would feel guilty about it and cook him French fries, not the store-bought kind but the real thinly-sliced potato kind you had to peel, slice and cook yourself. And he never tired of raving about his mom's chocolate and coconut cream pies. I knew I could never measure up to those although he raved about mine, too.

One night he took off and went camping with a good buddy and some other friends. They did not have provisions so they "borrowed" them. Corn was ripe in nearby fields, and they helped themselves, roasting the ears over a campfire in the woods. Jim said he ate so many he got sick. Later someone told him it was field corn. He "borrowed" apples the same way and ate chinky pins in the woods, a nut I never heard of.

On Halloween, he told of pulling the lever down on outside electric meters, turning off the power. And then there was the door knocking, running away like crazy, leaving the dog's mess in a paper bag for the homeowner to step on when he came outside to look. And, back then, there were always outhouses to turn over. Even to this day, I'm not sure those things were funny.

Once, one of his sisters didn't come home for supper and Jim's mother sent him to find her. A romantic tete-a-tete was suspected. Jim, just a youngster, started out with good intentions but got sidetracked with buddies. When he finally did come home with no sister, his mom was waiting with a crabapple branch, the wild mature kind with thorns. He said he got several licks. I found this hard to believe, but he swore it was true.

He talked about a grade school teacher he had. I should remember her name, but I don't. In her class, he was the teacher's pet. I think she knew his family could use some help, and on weekends, Jim did a little yard work for her. She had a small apple orchard and apples straight off the tree were one of the perks of the job. During another year in grade school with a male teacher, Jim had an argument, apparently a loud one, with a classmate, and his teacher decided they would settle it with boxing gloves. Some things have changed for the better.

His father died of a skin malignancy when Jim was in high school. All his other siblings were married and moved away. Jim spent the balance of that year with the French fry sister and her husband, who, luckily, was fond of him. The brother-in-law's dad owned a service station and Jim paid for his keep by helping out after school, pumping gas and repairing tires. His senior year he moved back home and got a part time job at a food market to help out his mom. The pay was not much, but he got all the bananas he could eat. And he was a saver all his life. He took a typing class that year and won an award for being the fastest typist in his class. We all heard about this many times. He was so very proud of it.

Without telling his mom, he enlisted in the Air Force, scheduled to leave right after graduation. He knew his mom would do her best to talk him out of it, and when he did tell her, she disclosed some savings, savings she would give to him if he stayed. Instead he worked on the home place, laying block around the foundation, trying to make it safer and warmer for the hard winter to come. Jim would tackle anything and almost always do it well. He promised to send part of his allotment to her and he kept that promise. Within that next year, she would leave, too, traveling to Silver Springs to live with the French fry daughter, who, with her husband and children, had also struck out on their own. The home place would wait for her return.

Jim always told me about the buddy he went into the Air Force with, being told they would stay together and promptly being separated, never to see each other again. He did the normal basic training in Texas and then, his aptitude tests determined he would do office work...guess that typing paid off. When our kids asked him what he did in the service, he always said he bent paper clips. After basic, he was assigned to Dover Air Force Base and was lucky enough to stay there four years, discharged as Vietnam was beginning.

I met Jim in June of 1963 at Kirby and Holloway's Family Restaurant in Dover, Delaware. I was waitressing over the summer holiday from school and Jim was washing dishes, trying to make some extra money to compensate for that allotment going to his mom. We hadn't said more that a few words to each other when another fellow, a customer, asked me out on a date. I had talked with him before and said okay. Of course, gossip travels quickly in a small restaurant, everyone knew I was dating Rusty, and word got back to Jim. He was the epitome of the expression "tight-jawed". I think, maybe, he was the first person I ever heard that expression applied to. For some reason, I felt guilty and never dated Rusty again. Jim asked me out shortly after that, and as they say, the rest is history.

I actually lived about fifteen miles south of Dover, so I stayed with my Aunt Sadie and Uncle Nick while I worked at Kirby's. Aunt Sadie did not approve of my dating a guy in the Air Force, but, of course, that didn't stop me. We went out almost every evening and sat talking in Jim's car in front of Aunt Sadie's and Uncle Nick's house late into the night. This enraged Aunt Sadie and she immediately informed my mom of my terrible behavior and my wayward ways. Within a few days, my mom came and insisted I come home. Jim and I discussed things after work, and I decided to ask another aunt, Aunt Sandy, who was divorced from my Uncle Parvin, if I could stay with her for a short time. Jim had already asked me to marry him, bought me an engagement ring, all this after knowing him around six weeks. Sandy said yes, and Jim and I looked for a place for me to live. We both had some savings so we rented a tiny trailer in a park near the airbase. I stayed with Sandy about a week and will never forget her kindness to us.

At the time, my mom and aunt were the enemy, but later I was able to understand their concerns. They didn't know Jim like I did. They wanted me to go back to the University of Delaware and continue my education. But at eighteen, love supersedes reason, and I moved into the little green trailer. Both of us continued to work at Kirby's with me estranged from my mom and Aunt Sadie. Sometimes our shifts did not coincide with each other, and Jim would let me drive his car. I would have to pick him up from the restaurant, drop him off at the base, and continue on home. Sleep is not a high priority for young love, and it finally caught up to me. One late night in August on my way home after dropping off Jim, I crossed a lonely stretch of winding road, drifted off to never never land and crossed the center line. Bright headlights were the last thing I remembered before waking up in Kent General with a double-compound fractured left arm, a broken jaw, several missing teeth, and many bruises and contusions on my legs. My arm had gotten caught in the steering wheel.

Jim knew nothing of my accident until the next day when he went to work at Kirby's and was told of it by a mutual acquaintance. He came to the hospital with flowers right away, but met an icy atmosphere. My mom and Aunt Sadie were there and naturally held Jim responsible. I should mention that the person (an airman) in the other car was completely uninjured. I was in the hospital about a week and, then, was whisked back home with Mother. Actually, I needed some motherly care and was sort of glad. In a short amount of time, though, true love prevailed, and we were planning our wedding, still unacceptable by my mom and aunt. Tempers let loose, boxes were packed, and I was thrown out of the house because I would not give up Jim. Back to the little green trailer.

We were married a few days later in a cute little Episcopal chapel with Jim's buddy, Morris, as his best man and my new neighbor, Sybil, as my attendant. Her baby lay on the pew as our witness. Even though my arm was in a cast and my jaw was wired, I managed all the appropriate I do's and I will's. It took Mother a couple of months, but finally she came for a spaghetti dinner and things almost got back to normal. We were all changed, though, different now, never to be the same again.

Jim was stationed at Dover Air Force Base (Delaware) for the rest of his four years, never having to go anywhere else. During the problem with Cuba in 1963, the base went on alert and we thought he might have to go, but it was cancelled and a few days' stay on base was all that happened out of the ordinary for us.

Jim was due to be discharged in about seven months when I discovered I was pregnant with our second child. This was in the 1960’s, and service men, at least two-stripe airmen, were practically poverty-stricken.

The Air Force doctor determined my due date to be July 1st. Jim's separation date was June 15th. Light bulbs brightened in my brain, and I foresaw a monstrous hospital bill with no government health coverage after the fifteenth. How is that for poor planning? Actually, there was no planning at all.

My pregnancy was an easy one, no nausea, minimum weight gain, no swollen ankles, and no heartburn. I had no complaints except for my due date. I worked part time for a State agency, and we managed to save a little, hoping we would not need it.

There was no ultrasound back then, so we did not have any idea of the gender of our expected arrival. We already had a little boy and hoped for a girl this time, but all that really mattered was having a healthy baby.

I continued with my routine visits to the Base doctor, optimistically visualizing him to be the deliverer of our new offspring. At a few days over eight months, my co-workers gave me a lovely combination baby shower/going away party. They could not have realized how needed and how appreciated those baby gifts were.

At home with our little boy, I relished the free time I now had with him. Together, we readied a gifted white wicker bassinet, beautifully skirted with white lace. Little tee shirts and jumpsuit jammies were added to my collection of cloth diapers, “rubber” pants, and various hand-me-downs. I still worried about my due date being after Jim's separation, but happiness in the present crowded it into a tiny corner of my mind.

As the warm days of June passed, I felt some twinges of false labor, but they never materialized into the real thing. I cleaned a lot and walked a lot, trying to hurry things up, but this baby was not to be hurried.

June 15th came and went, and Jim settled into his new job. On the evening of July 1st around 8 P.M., I was doing my ironing when I felt a gush of warm water run down my legs. Baby Erica was right on time, and Kent General was our hurried destination.

My doctor had a new face, but we became well acquainted in the months that followed. I never had any problems. The payment plan we worked out took some juggling, but our beautiful blond-haired baby girl was priceless. An anticipated inconvenient birthday became one of the happiest days of our lives.

The new job Jim had was almost as much of a miracle as our new baby. We had continued to live in the same trailer park throughout his service in the air force, only moving from the first tiny green trailer to two larger ones. Jim continued to need a part time job while in service and found employment with the owner of the park, who had taken a liking to him. It was a family business and the couple were getting up in age and wanting to retire. Jim's conscientious work habits made such an impression on Mr. Allison that he offered to sell us the park when Jim's stint in the air force was over. After talking it over with each other and considering the few alternatives, that's what we did. Mr. Allison held the financing and both of us worked to make the payments. While I was having our daughter on the first day of July, Jim was collecting rent. I laughed when he told me he stored the cash in the freezer of our refrigerator. Isn't that where robbers would look first?

The park had sixty-five spots and several rental trailers, but we were young, willing, and able to do everything it took to make a go of it. Jim handled the maintenance side, and I handled the bookkeeping. We both shared the rental duties. The work was not that difficult, but it was confining. Any lengthy vacation was out of the question, even if we could have afforded it, which we couldn't. Entertainment consisted of card games with friends, dinners at each others' homes, and, once in awhile, overnight camping at a State park.

Our son rode his first bike on the streets of that trailer park, and we and our children made many good and lasting friends. Renters came from all over the U.S. with most of them being in the air force and transient because of that. Several husbands had wives from other countries so my education continued, just in a different way. We liked our life, enjoying the work and the people. One time we even had a celebrity visit. One of Dale Evans' and Roy Rogers' daughters was friends with a renter and the whole park became aware of the goings on. We felt like celebrities ourselves.

After a little over five years, a businessman made us an offer to buy the park, and we decided to sell. We purchased a little house not far away and began to enjoy our new found freedom. Jim began remodeling, turning the basement into a rec room, and then adding onto the structure itself, almost doubling the square feet of the main floor. Those carpentry genes from his dad had been passed down, and the joy he had from building was apparent.

In the early 70's my mom had bad news from her doctor. She caught a cold that kept hanging on and would not go away. He admitted her to Kent General for a bronchoscopy where they put a tube down her throat with a light at the end to check out her lungs. They took a biopsy and the result was lung cancer. He gave her a year. My first reaction was to blame the doctor, stupid, I know. But my mom was only 47. She lived almost two years, and we all spent some very quality time together, even enjoying a trip to Florida to Sea World and Disney. She was past the operating stage, but did go through several chemotherapy treatments. I have to think that gave her the extra time but the side effects were hard to bear. In between treatments, as many times as she felt up to it, we went to play bingo (one of her favorites) and to Woodland Beach for heaping servings of blue-shelled crabs. Those happier times are what I try to remember. She died in Wilmington General Hospital in August 1975.

We held a reunion for Jim's family in the early seventies, the brothers and sisters scattered all over. Almost all of them came bringing their children. Some I had never seen before. His oldest brother stayed a few days with us. I had to go to elaborate preparation practically redecorating the house, just my nature. Picture buying was high on my list loving art as I do. One such picture was in a huge glass frame, consequently very heavy. Not being the sharpest tack in the box, I hammered a nail in the sheetrock and hung it...beautifully, I might add...over the bed where they would be sleeping. In the middle of the night I woke to the sound of crashing glass. Best laid plans and all that. I cannot imagine their shock when that thing slid down the wall and woke them from their snoozing. No one got up but I'm sure all of us were staring bug-eyed into the dark, yet manners prevailed. In the morning I apologized profusely and cleaned up the mess to their words of empathy. I learned a lot about Howard and Betty from that experience...and I learned about wall anchors.

Jim's mom died in 1974, a little over one year before mine did. It was January and not a good time to be traveling to West Virginia, but we had no choice. She'd had a heart attack and was in the hospital, not expected to live. We arrived in Beckley late at night in a snowstorm, the last few miles taking hours of winding through the mountains. This was before the completion of I-64. Sometimes we caught sight of its construction as we came to open rises on our windy road. A few months earlier Jim was told he had diabetes, a discovery much more important to our life than we realized at the time. We found a motel near the local airport and waited till morning to visit the home place. As the sun rose, the snow turned to slush on the highways, and the bright white world looked more inviting. The house was crowded with people I did not know, all related through Jim but strangers to me with stories passed down from Jim's siblings. I looked around and latched onto the French fry sister. Yes, that is Boyd, a husband-in-law reputed to have carried a huge cook stove out the front door and down the steps all by himself. My eyes followed him around. Jim's mom had remarried a couple of years earlier soon after she returned to Beckley. We had visited a couple of times and liked Oakey. He dearly loved Gladys. On one of those visits, Jim remodeled the kitchen, installing new cabinets to his mom's delight. They still looked lovely. Gladys passed away soon after we visited her at the hospital. Snow covered the ground at the cemetery, and from where I stood I could see Jim's dad's and little baby sister's tombstones, pristine in the bleakness of winter. I remember my freezing feet and the thorns on the stem of the red rose I held as the minister spoke the appropriate words. I remember wondering what Oakey was thinking...there's no place for me...and probably feeling so alone. We never returned to Beckley.

The French fry sister...okay, her name is Eleanor...came to visit us several times with her husband and three children. They lived near D.C., crowded with people, so we always enjoyed driving around the countryside of Delaware noting all the growing food. Delaware is full of wheat and corn fields, strawberries and tomatoes. It is one of these tomato fields that is in my thoughts now. It stretched as far as you could see, beautiful green plants with numerous juicy, ripe, red tomatoes dangling from every one. The field was so huge that the farmhouse was not in sight. And Jim's remark? There are so many, I don't think they'd miss a couple. Yep, he stopped, got out and picked (stole) some tomatoes. I agree, there is nothing like a warm tomato off the vine. We even got to drive a little ways down the road before a truck tooted its horn for us to pull over. Caught. Was that embarrassing! The farmer even made us give back the tomatoes after scolding us like children. Later, much later, we were able to laugh about it. And, of course, on every visit afterward, Eleanor always asked if we could visit that tomato field! Siblings.

Soon after we sold the mobile home park in 1970, Jim found a job with the State of Delaware. They required him to get a yearly physical and that's how he found out he had diabetes. He didn't accept the news well at all. The doctor told him he thought it best if he go on insulin injections as he had a combination of Type I and Type II diabetes, but Jim insisted he could control the disease with diet and exercise. He had already started to lose weight and so he began a morning running regimen around our three-acre property line. He did lose weight, from 210 down to 175 in a few months.

He supplemented the diet and exercise by taking one of the new pills that stimulated the pancreas to make more insulin. Of course, the pancreas has to be healthy enough to make more insulin for these pills to work. In the 70s there were no glucose meters, only Ames test strips that told by color whether there was glucose in your urine. And so began the narrow path of trying to juggle food, exercise, and medication without the technology to know the exact progress.

After losing weight, Jim looked so healthy it was hard to believe the terrible things uncontrolled diabetes can do to your body. He insisted he felt fine and was more determined than ever not to take insulin injections, only visiting the doctor for prescription renewals. He quickly discovered that not eating and drinking tons of water on those doctor days would result in a passable glucose reading. It wasn't until the late 70s that the A1C test was developed which gave an average of blood glucose over the past 2 or 3 months.

Around the same time Jim started working for the State of Delaware, I was employed by Scott Paper Company. They had advertised a testing session in our local newspaper. I called the number and was given a date and place to take their test, and I did well and was hired right away. Working for Scott was my favorite job. As the HR Manager's Assistant, my position involved a little bit of everything, payroll, health insurance, and mitigating a few complaints. I don't believe there is any Scott Paper Company now although I still see their paper towels on shelves for sale. In the 70s they had built a new plant near Dover to make a brand new product, a reusable paper towel named Job Squad, and I was one of their first employees. There were no individual offices except for the boss, Mr. Hankins, and my boss, Dave Biren. Everyone else worked in a huge room, engineers, accountant, invoice clerk, all thrown in together. I loved it. And then there was the "line" in the huge back of the building where they made the product. The rolls of paper towel were as big as the rolls of hay you see in the fields today. Only one bad thing happened the entire time I was there, around four years. A man on the beginning of the "line" lost a finger in the machinery.I still remember his name, Al Schmidt.

We had a spur from the railroad to bring supplies and pick up the finished product. I was fascinated by the waiting rail cars for some reason and felt my life to be part of some author's story. This was my first and only brush working for the corporate world. I made a lot of new friends and often wonder what they are doing now. Emily Eckert was in charge of inventory. Her parents lived on the west side of the Chesapeake Bay near the Severn River. We introduced her to the sulky races at Harrington Racetrack and had lots of good times together. Cenia was our invoice clerk and the first person I knew with an Afro. Her little boy, Antoine, was adorable, and we played cards with her and her husband often. She kept a pet raccoon in a cage for awhile, but raccoons are smart, and it eventually escaped. Arnie Forslund was an older engineer and after I learned he was diabetic and also on the pill, I racked his brain for information. He was a kindly man and started me on my investigative journey into the disease. John Ebenreiter, our accountant, was my on the job teacher and mentor, making successes and mistakes pleasant. Norm Savaria was another engineer from the Scott Sandusky plant in Ohio who enjoyed betting on the ponies. He and Jim got into a little competition of wins and losses on a horse named Justly Troubadour. Dave Biren, HR Manager, traveled back and forth to Philadelphia, Scott's Headquarters and his family's home. As my boss, I don't ever remember a harsh word from him. He even took a group of us to Philly for a tour of the executive offices. Dave and John came to my mom's funeral in 1975, for which I was so grateful. Our General Manager, Chuck Hankins, came from the Mobile Plant in Alabama. He introduced Jim and me to the Stock Market through Scott's Stock Sharing Plan, an introduction that continues to last to the present day.

Despite our best efforts Job Squad did not take off even though it was an astounding product. I suspect cost to the consumer was a factor. Later, after I quit in early 1976, Kimberly Clark bought them out introducing a similar product of their own. I missed Scott for a long time, but Jim had plans that needed his wife as a partner.

In 1976 Jim decided his sedentary job with the State was bad for his health and those carpentry genes he inherited from his father inspired him to start building houses. I had always loved to draw so building plans seemed a natural extension to pursue. We were a team, and soon, Jim was building residential homes.
After a couple years of fighting the cold snowy Delaware winters when the temps were so low concrete wouldn't set up, we talked about following the other Morrisons to Florida. Our parents had passed away so there was really nothing to hold us in Delaware. After waving goodbye to the Beacon driver and watching the truck carrying all our belongings disappear in the distance, on June 19, 1978, we began our journey to a new home. With a spider plant in my lap and the temps in the 90s, we traveled down I-95 toward Gainesville, Florida.

Two days later we arrived at Howard and Betty's eager to start looking at a list of houses to rent, well, actually one house to which they had gotten the key from a realtor friend. We dropped off our suitcases and drove to the address right away. From the outside it looked nice as the car headlights accented the well-landscaped yard of palms and tropical foliage. We were encouraged. But inside after flipping the light switch, the walls seemed to move. I guess we surprised the tiny tenants, and I'm not talking human.

A few days and several houses later we opted to go with an apartment in Brookwood Terrace, off 23rd Avenue, where the rent included monthly pest control. We spent a year there while we were building our house not far away in Chatworth Court, and it was pretty enjoyable considering I had never lived in an apartment before. I could walk or ride my bicycle to the old Gainesville Mall where Sears and Maas Brothers used to be. I even rode my bike to our house site, taking Jim his lunch several times.

Our furniture showed up a week later after several not so nice phone calls. We found out what sleeping on air mattresses felt like, and would you believe after carrying that spider plant on my lap for 922 miles, someone stole it off our patio the day after we moved in? A few other memorable things happened at Brookwood. One day as I was picking up electrical parts for Jim, a black kitten hid somewhere under the car and rode home with me becoming our first Florida pet. I've never been able to turn away a kitty. Then, in the Spring, one of Jim's nieces came to visit me bringing her little three-year old daughter. We walked down to the pool to sit in the sunshine awhile and in the blink of an eye little Shelley was in the pool, way over her head. Francis jumped in before the message even got to my brain. She got to her quickly with no harm done except a good soaking. I've told this story on Shelley so many times, I had to promise never to tell it again. This is a secret. And then there was the time Eric, our son, tied together sheets and shimmied out his second-story bedroom window to go frat-party crashing with a new school buddy, but I won't dwell on that one.

We moved into our new home just before our one-year lease was up on our apartment. It wasn't quite finished but that was okay, much more convenient in some ways to finish things. Chatworth was a welcoming neighborhood and we soon became friends with some of our neighbors. The kids went to Gainesville High now with only a short bus ride. We bought the vacant lot next door and Jim began his first spec house in Florida, soon to be purchased by a fellow church member. We were very fortunate. The interest rates in the 80s were astronomical, soaring at one point to 21%.

In the background the diabetes was still lurking not responding well to the stress of day-to-day living. Jim had a new doctor who told him he needed to start on insulin injections but he paid no attention, not even telling me.