When my first husband and I separated, I took my nine month old daughter and moved back to Houston.  At the time I still loved him deeply.  We were on cordial terms although we knew we were not going to be together again.  We were trying to work out, child support, who would raise the child and thinking about a no fault divorce.  Meanwhile, my brother and his wife allowed Jennifer and me to stay at their home while I found work.  My niece was a couple of years old at the time and my brother and his wife constantly had vicious fights.  When I could I would take the two little girls out for a walk or to play.

Jenny was just learning to say a few words, Judi was past  using diapers and bottles.  I first worked at a nursery school which was very poorly organized and hired women who were just short of incompetent.  So I quit and took Jennifer out of that environment.  I went to charity stores where I found the perfect blue polkadot dress to wear to interviews for about a quarter (doesn’t that seem impossible)?  Interviewed many places and ended up working as a file clerk (before computers became widespread) doing this rolling machine, tiny card by card.  I eventually saved enough money to leave my brothers home and to move to a hippie area in Houston which had good bus service.

Meanwhile, I got back in contact with two friends, William and Andy.  William and I used to go out with each other and just end up at interesting places, where we had adventures.  Bill was my night in shining armor and would come and pick Jenni and me up even though it was 15 or 20 miles from where he lived.  My mom, would pick me up after work. She used to drop me off to pick Jenni up at the home nursery where she stayed when I was working. She would sometimes take me to my brother’s home or Jen and  I would take the bus. Another friend had found out I was back in Houston, probably through Andy. She recommended  me  for an opening,I  interviewed well and got a job working at the University of Houston library.  I spent Christmas that year at my friend William’s apartment with Jenni, in order to have time with a friend and to be with a happy person.

We drank magic Christmas morning and all three of us slept together.  Jenni slept later than we did and we were chatting away when a friend of Bill’s that lived below him came up a flight yelling and screaming about the fact that Bill had a woman with him, knocked the door until it shook and soon after the door was opened,fists were flying and Bills jaw was broken.  As this happened, I called the police, hoping they wouldn’t know we were high and would help my friend out.  The crazy jealous young man eventually left, my daughter slept through the event, and the police arrived.  Jen and I got ready to go, William took us back to my brother’s house, and then went to a hospital to get checked out.  He had a broken jaw and I don’t remember, but his nose may have been broken too.  You might think that this was the only shock of the day and the times, but it wasn’t.

Later, John my husband called that day and told me he definitely wanted a divorce. He also let me know how wonderful his girlfriend was (I had met her before I left Indiana where we had lived in a little town called Mishawaka).

A few months later I was working filing those tedious cards, had one of the worst headaches of my life and couldn’t concentrate and just hung on until I could leave those ugly files.  Mom picked me up dropped me off to pick up Jenni and we rode the bus until we were close enough to my brother’s house, to walk. Soon after I arrived I got a phone call from my favorite sister in law Jill…

“Hi Jill I’m so glad to hear you, this has been a horrific day and it is the first good thing that has happened today.”  She was silent for a bit as we chatted.  And then she hesitated and told me, I’ve got something to tell you,  Johnny is dead.  He died of a heart aneurism in the hospital and his last words were “God take me”.

My brother congratulated me, because he said, “I would now have some money”.  I couldn’t wait to leave.

It is 1986, and they are casting the original Broadway company of "Les Miserables." I want to play Jean Valjean.
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As the family upgraded to newer, better cars, it got so I could drive the older one almost exclusively even though I wasn’t technically the owner. A two-tone green Cadillac that was old but didn’t exactly qualify as a beater became known as The Green Hornet. What a tank. It was like a couple of big, comfy sofas wrapped in metal that has made all subsequent cars feel like a tomato can to me.

My friends and I would bomb around in it, ski-jogging in winter, cruising Riv in all seasons. Riv, or the Riv, Riverside Avenue, the main drag going through downtown, was all of maybe 10 blocks and kids from all over the city would come and cruise slowly, windows down in every kind of weather, checking each other out. At the end they would turn around and cruise back again, looping on endless repeat. Once, around Halloween, we wired a pumpkin to the hood ornament. Woo hoo. Would have loved to be getting up to more mischief than that, but mischief was in short supply on the ground.

Here is a pic of one like it. You lifted up one of the tail lights to put gas in.