We left Puerto Rico and Ray broke his contract. So we had to pay our own moving expenses. Two things made me mad, one, I didn't want to leave Puerto Rico, and two, we saved money by living there, and spent it on moving. I can vouch for the fact that, "rolling stones gather no moss." At the airport I stupidly said that, I hoped we got hi jacked and taken to Cuba. Somebody must have reported me, they searched our carry ons and even took the heads off of the girls' Barbie dolls.
We rented a townhouse, until we could buy a place of our own.
This is a picture of our house. We had beautiful trees in the back yard, and the dearest neighbors. I found a job in a cotton mill, in the accounting dept. Ray was still in the garment industry, my boss was intrigued with Ray's talents and they ended up as partners in an outlet store. Mum came over to live with us for a while to take care of the children while I was at work. That lasted for about 2 days and she decided she'd rather go to work with Ray. At that time he was making body suits for Kayser Roth, remember those? She was putting the snaps in the crotches. As I remember they weren't too comfortable.
So many things I could write about, it's hard to pick out the highlights. I remember when Steve was playing sand lot baseball and was the catcher, and didn't bother with his mask. Next thing I see is Kim marching across the front lawn arms waving like a drum major in a marching band, singing, "Stevie got hit by a baseball." I thought she was joking until I saw Steve. the bat had hit him in the eye and the ball followed. I was petrified, and was ready to take him to the ER just as Daddy came home, so he took over. It was when the Red Sox player Yastremski had lost the sight in one eye, which made it all the more scary. He didn't have any permanent injury but his eye looked like a pool of blood, and until it cleared he'd delight in looking at me sideways at the dinner table. Ewwwww!
We had some friends visit from Canada and we took them to Blowing Rock. Looking at the pictures now, thank God no one fell off the mountain. I'm glad I was the photographer, but then I usually was, I swear, I saw all of PR thru one eye, that was when we had an 8mm movie camera.
The next picture is of the children outside the Daniel Boone Inn. We had driven to Boone for a Sunday drive. Ray made the girls' dresses, in those days only Steve got store bought clothes.
The last picture was taken with our business venture, our own little shop. I was the buyer, sales clerk, book keeper. The mannequins were fashioned from poster board, string and very little else. I was rather proud of their faces, that was when I could still paint. One very interesting encounter. A man came into the store one day, and asked if I had a pink coat? His Mother used to have one and he couldn't find one anywhere? My stock was mostly tee shirts and S.O.B. jeans (Shades of Blue) He leaned on the counter and kept talking, told me he was formerly in the CIA and that he could see everything around him without moving his eyes. I was afraid to move, his eyes were really strange.That's when I started getting creeped out. He eventually left and I found out later that he went to all the stores with the same story.
Well not long after that, we'd lived in Conover for a year, next stop Maryland. I might save that story, next time I write it will be about my Spring break adventures. I think I am the oldest Spring breaker ever. That's one of the benefits of being the proud Mum to an English/drama teacher.
Note to self: remember to make the pictures larger, I don't know how to change them because they're in HTML whatever that is?
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