Bill's next tour of duty after Illinois was Oklahoma. We lived off base in a rented, furnished, 2 bedroom house in Dill City, OK. We paid $50 a month rent. I don't think the house was more than 700 sq ft and every time we wanted to change the channel on the TV, Bill would have to go out and turn the antenna until I shouted out for him that the picture was good and he could stop!
We got our mail at the post office as the town was way too small to hire a delivery person. It was a very old post office with those old metal mail boxes with combination locks. The whole town consisted of a hardware store/gas station, grocery store (very small), bank, a closed movie theater and the aforementioned post office. We heard a story once of when the bank was robbed one time. The robbers called the president of the bank, and when he answered with "What do you want? I'm in bed sleeping!", they knew it was safe to rob the bank! The president of the bank was married to the post mistress.
We had a billy goat that was fenced in, in our back yard that belonged to our landlords. They lived two houses away. There was either a peach or pear tree in the goat's pen (can't remember which). Well, that goat was the meanest goat I have ever come across! Not that I've had that many encounters with goats, mind you. Bill tried several times to grab some fruit off that tree and got nailed by that him several times without getting any of the fruit!
Anyway, it was while we were there that Bill volunteered to go to Vietnam. We drove back to NY where it was decided that I would live with my mother while Bill was gone. It was going to be a very long year.
Bill went off to Vietnam and I went back into the workforce. I was surrounded by a lot of single friends who started to ask me to join them on weekends and I started to accept their invites. Drives into Manhattan to go 'clubbing', dancing all night until the clubs closed. Just having a lot of fun. I think that at that point that I knew that I didn't want to be married anymore. It was just too much fun being single.
We had, after all, gotten married way too young and both of us came from families that did not present good, happy, roll models.
Bill came back from Vietnam and his next tour of duty was in Abilene, TX. We found another house to rent there. I remember our next door neighbors introducing themselves, along with their little boy, Chance. She explained his name by saying "That's what we took and he's what we got!" Then there was the day before the postage rates were going up and she asked me if I wanted to go to the post office to buy up some stamps before the price went up! Thanksgiving came and our neighbors asked if we wanted to come over to watch her mother kill the turkey... Needless to say, I declined. I seem to recall that Bill went.
I had had enough and missed all the fun that I had back in NY. I announced to Bill that I was leaving, packed up all my things and drove home. The divorce was final a few months later and we went on our separate ways.
It was 6 years later that I decided to get married again (1972). 21 years after that, I was once again divorced.
Fast forward almost 38 years. Bill was working in California and while at work decided to log onto Classmates.com where he saw my profile. He emailed me: "Can exes still be friends?" It was my day off from my job and I immediately answered his email. I took me 3 years before I agreed to marry him again.
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| May 3, 2008 |
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