Home and Other Characters

I'm going to take a break from my adventures at John Tyler High School and say a bit about some of the other inhabitants of Hollandale Terrace. But first - I've had a few more Kindergarten flashbacks:

- I remember taking my Silly Putty for show and tell. I demonstrated how it lifted newsprint... And that's about all it could do...
- The teacher had us plant seeds and watch them grow. I guess we were supposed to be amazed or something. But - believe it or not - I had already noticed that plants grow - so I was like "Duh!" :-)
- Then there was the big paper wasp nest under our eaves. We hired an exterminator to spray it and after he got it down mom put it in a big (uncapped) jar for me to take to school. During show and tell a live wasp crawled out of it. For some reason the teacher didn't think that was cool...

And back to Hollandale Terrace:
I guess the first person I should mention is the landlady's daughter Joann. She was immortalized in one of my very first blog posts when she and my sister Karina were going for a walk with their boyfriends and I was tagging along and Joann seemed to sense how alone I was and reached out to take my hand...

Aside: After I wrote that initial post I realized that it wasn't very clear why that simple gesture made such an impression on me. I hope it now makes more sense now... Yeah - for the 5th time in my life I had been torn away from everything familiar and transported to yet another circle of hell :-)
Mom and Karina were fine, of course. You could drop them anywhere and within a couple of days they'd have a circle of friends and be totally comfortable. But I wasn't wired that way and I don't think I'd ever felt more alone... But I digress...

Joann's Italian heritage was obvious from her features. She was very pretty - but she was a few years older than me and (for some reason) I wasn't much attracted to her. (Not a redhead?) But I have to admit that I can't recall ever seeing anyone who did a better job of filling out a bikini :-) More on that later...
Joann and Karina were friends for a while, but Joann was a nice girl in every sense of the word and Karina was - well - Karina. I think their friendship started going south over drug use and ended when Karina became involved with Joann's boyfriend Hans. That didn't go over too well...

Next:
There was a young Texas state trooper and his wife living in the complex. He had recently transferred to Tyler in an upward career move... Unfortunately his wife couldn't adapt to life in the big city... Yes - they were from such a small town that living in a town of 50,000 was traumatic for her... I seem to recall that she ended up going back home - no idea how it all turned out.
I do recall that the trooper was a really nice guy. One day I was walking home from the laundromat (five blocks away from the apartments) when his patrol car pulled up beside me. Now - at the time I had a tendency to cringe at the mere sight of law enforcement and he scared the heck out of me until I realized who it was. He just wanted to offer me a ride back to the complex... And that's the only time I've ever ridden in a police car - it was a short trip but he drove really fast :-)

Another aside: When we were living in Tyler we were always at least 5 blocks away from the nearest laundry facilities and until that summer we even didn't have car. Therefore it should come as no surprise that my clothes rarely got washed and - just like in Escondido - I got "counseled" at school about my hygiene. Now - I did shower every day. But you can only wear the same clothes so often before they get kind of funky - especially when you don't own any underwear... Still - being offensive was pretty far down on my list of concerns :-)

The only other resident of Hollandale Terrace that I recall was this guy in his mid 20's who lived upstairs. I vaguely recall that he worked at a music store repairing instruments, had a black belt in Karate and was an amateur photographer. He used to hire Joann to pose for him out by the pool - hence my comment about how good she looked in a bikini... I don't know how much he paid her but it was definitely worth every penny :-)
He had an "on and off" relationship with Karina for a good part of the time we were in Tyler and I drank a lot of beer at his place... Drinking beer was one of my favorite pastimes back then... (Made me a jolly good fellow.)

You know - there were so many "interesting" aspects to our time in Tyler that it's going to be really hard to figure out how to explain it all... I guess I'll just cover it a bit at a time and hope I don't leave out anything important :-)