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The boys and I leave Dean in Los Vegas... Memoirs 148
Phoenix is where we ended up, living in the apartment complex that Mother and Dad bought in Arizona because of Dad's bad lungs. They offered a one bedroom to me rent free if I would be a gobetween with other tenants when they were gone.
The last year we spent in Page seemed to go by very fast. All the carpenters were starting to leave. Los Vegas was the next employment hot spot for local men Margie and Pole and Mother and Dad came to a mutual agreement about the Jepsen ranch. Margie did not want to be a rancher's wife because she could not practice her nurse's profession. She was a graduate nurse and had found out she could always get a good job everywhere she went but Boulder. Father confided in me that besides he just did not think Pole was smart enough to make a go of ranching!
Father sold all his property in Boulder to another buyer except for the 4 unit motel property and the mountain pasture which he planned to bequeath to his kids. He even gave the buyer an option on the motel property, so that the only place we would have to stay would be on the King's pasture property 8 miles from town when he died. Course Mother was still with him then so we assumed she would be taking over his assets.
Dean and I and Margie and Pole decided to move to Los Vegas together. Pole had still retained his membership in the laborer's union so he was going to wait for a job out of the union hall, but I doubted very much if Dean had the nerve to pass himself off as a union carpenter. He just did not have the experience or skills. What he had done in Page was very rough carpentering on the scaffolding.
We hired someone to move the little trailer because that would provide us with cheaper rent in Los Vegas, and we were going to need it. Margie immediately got a job in a hospital emergency ward. Pole tended the children while she was gone to work, still waiting for a union laborer's job. Dean moped around and finally took a job in a gas station which paid far less than his Page union carpenter's job. I could see he had immediately fallen into a big depression.
I started thinking that this might be the time to make a clean break with Dean who was becoming an increasingly unhappy guy, which I did not think boded well for me. In preparation I got Margie to go with me to see if I could not get a chance to talk to Reed when he came out of his job site. After all, he had been my main emotional support from a man for seven years. He had come over to visit her and Pole a time or two. When Reed saw me, he froze. He was still very angry at me for leaving Page just as we seemed launched off on our 'affair', and he soon informed me curtly he had to go. I figured I was getting his notorious cold freeze that sometimes lasted as long, I heard, as ten years. I gave Margie a sheaf of letters to give him the next time he came to visit her and Pole. I wanted him to at least read what I had been thinking. He had meant a great deal to me, far more than he knew, just simply because he understood so much about my life.
Not long after this, Dean met up with his old 'polyg' pal and they went out to drink. For the first time in a long time he came home drunk and threatened to kill me for an hour or so. That cinched it as far as I was concerned. The next day I packed up the boys' and my belongings and took off for Phoenix. I left a note telling Dean that he could perhaps turn the trailer back over to Pole and Margie if he decided to leave Vegas. I said since I was the one who was going to be taking care of the boys, I would need the chevolet he had bought. He traded the ford we had for 7 years for which I had provided the down payment with my inheritance from my Grandfather King. I also did not want him to have any easy transportation to visit me in Phoenix. I had found out from experience we needed not to see one another so a divorce could become a reality. I had long since ceased to trust that he would not become violent at the slightest provocation.
Mother and Dad were in Phoenix when we arrived and soon had us settled into the apartment next to theirs which had luckily come up vacant. It did not take me long to find a job at a Walgreen drug store lunch counter across the street from a big Ford automobile agency. I figured I would get some experience there before I hunted for another restaurant job where the tips might be better. While Mother and Dad were around they kept an eye on the boys. I worked the day shift, so I would get home almost the same time they arrived from school. The boys liked Phoenix and so did I, a lot better than I thought I would. Living costs were cheaper there than they would have been in California, especially with Mother and Dad's help on the rent. For the first time I felt pretty optimistic about starting a new life as a single mom. Being around Grandma and Grandpa soon led to the boys to depending on them rather than on their dad who had always had difficulty being a husband and dad without making somebody pay dearly.
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Grandma's and Grandpa's can be good influences as your mother and father turned out to be. I'm so glad you had them nearby Gerry. I'm also glad to read that you left Dean too.
That felt good on reading it.
Hugs
Jeanie xxx -
I did not know that Walgreens had a lunch counter. I remember woolworths having one. Oh my I am showing my age! LOL
Kelli
http://journals.aol.com/kamdghwmw/noonmom -
I don't know how you handled Dean as long as you did. I'm so glad you had a place to live in Phoenix. What a relief!
Pam
4/3/08 6:10 PM
Yasmin
xx