In a House Again

It just occurred to me that between the time we left Philadelphia in April of 1965 until the spring of 1970 we never lived in a house. Well - except for living with my mom's sisters in Germany - but that doesn't really count :-)

That's not to say we weren't always house hunting - it was one of mom and Karina's favorite activities. In Winnipeg we didn't have a car so the real estate agents had to chauffeur us around. And we looked at countless homes around Escondido, Carlsbad, Oceanside and San Marcos when we lived down there... Mom figured that if she could qualify for a loan she could talk her sister Vesti out of the down payment, but with her credit that wasn't ever going to happen...
Regardless, she never stopped believing that a bunch of money was going to somehow appear from somewhere and we'd be able to afford it... I guess it's a good thing that mom passed away before the internet went "public" - otherwise she would have been constantly hitting me up for money to send to Nigeria :-)

Aside: This thread has dredged up an apartment hunting memory from Winnipeg:
We went to look at a unit but the manager wasn't home so his daughter showed it to us. She was about my age (13 or 14) with short dark hair - kind of "emo" looking. Yeah - definitely not my usual type - but this girl was simply stunning. The second I laid eyes on her I was totally smitten. ... So the whole time we were looking at the apartment I was thinking "Please! Please! Please!" but (of course) mom and Karina hated the place... And I just couldn't bring myself to tell them why I wanted to live there - probably wouldn't have made a difference anyway... Sigh - I was depressed for weeks :-)

And back to Tyler:
So it came to pass that after a few months at Hollandale Terrace in Tyler we found a nice little house to rent about 6 blocks south - 1011 S. Chilton to be exact. ("Google maps" highlights it correctly.)
By then mom had a sizable circle of friends and decided it was time to start charging for doing astrology and "psychic counseling". She didn't put a sign out front or anything - she relied on word of mouth, but she had a small side room set up in the house with a table and chairs where she did her thing. And - I swear this is true - within two weeks complete strangers were coming up to me at school asking if it was true that my mom was a "witch"... I've never seen anyplace where gossip spread as fast as it did in Tyler :-)

Now - living in a house in Tyler meant that people from almost every church in town would stop by to save you. There was a steady stream of them - even more than usual once it was "common knowledge" that mom was a witch :-)
It wasn't until a year or so later when I "went Baptist" that I found out there's written instructions for doing the "door to door" thing... It's basically like telemarketing - you make your pitch and ignore everything the "mark" says. I suspect that's because listening could morph into an intelligent discussion or something - can't let that happen :-)

Aside: Pretty much everywhere we lived we ran across young Mormon missionaries (the ones with the suits and bicycles). They were always very nice and would actually talk to you (instead of just talking at you). We really enjoyed them - a couple of them even helped us move once (loading/unloading the car, etc).

But one of the main things that irritated me about all the religions is the whole "Now that you've heard the truth if you fail to accept it you will burn in hell" business... I mean - is religion really so lame that you have to threaten people with eternal damnation to get them to embrace it? :-)

Shortly after we moved into the house we got a cat named Chela and a miniature dachshund named Silly... Karina chose the name for the cat - it's apparently a Hindu thing. The dog's name is pretty self-explanatory. I'm sure there will be more pet stories later but I just have to tell this one now because it's so gross:
Silly's favorite treat was cat droppings. The fresher the better... That poor kitty could not take a dump in peace. The second any "substance" came out Silly would chase the her away and munch on it... I wish I could adequately describe the look on Chela's face as she watched Silly consume the "goods"... It was priceless... Needless to say, we usually avoided letting Silly lick our faces :-)

It's kind of hard to describe what was going on with Karina at the time. She was in constant motion but not getting anywhere... She moved out and moved back in - lived with this guy and with that guy... There were musicians, DJs, a recording studio owner and a restaurateur (I can recall at least 14 men she was involved with during 1970 - some of them married)... She even had her own apartment a couple of times when she was being "kept"... She was about 20 years old by then so mom had pretty much given up on trying to influence her - that greatly improved their relationship :-)

And it was around that time mom bought what would become my first car:
A white 1963 Ford Fairlane with a 260 V8 engine and a Ford-o-matic 2 speed transmission. It was a repo out of California and we paid $75 for it. It took 2 years to get a title on it and we drove it around with expired California plates that entire time - never got stopped for it :-)

Sigh - I don't know why it's taking so long to write these posts lately. I think it's because that was a very confusing and turbulent time in my life. I was about to graduate from high school at the age of 16, had never had a girlfriend, and had absolutely no idea what I was going to do with my life... I was so far away from being an adult. And now - 40 years later - I still often feel that way :-)