More Odds and Ends

I'm having some difficulty with the timeline of my life around the summer of 1971. I think it's because there was so much going on at that point. There was family, and the church, and cars, and girls, and the Denton Community orchestra, and the trip to Glorieta and the move to Denton... It doesn't seem like it all could've possibly happened in one summer, but it must have, because the prior summer I was in Tyler and the next summer I was driving a delivery truck in Dallas. (And the next I was in the military...) But I'm getting ahead of myself.

First - about migraines: I've heard lots of people say "I'm having a migraine" but I think a lot of them have no clue what they are talking about... I had my first one that summer and I was sure I was going to die. It started with the spots floating before my eyes followed by overwhelming nausea, and finally excruciating head-to-toe pain.
I had to seek medical attention and since my mom was out of town (and Karina was "who knows where") I had no choice but to drive there alone. So I fired up the Fairlane, stopped at the end of the driveway, looked both directions and pulled out to the left. That's when I heard the horn and the screeching tires... The other driver avoided hitting me but I was left wondering what the f*ck had just happened. That's when I realized I couldn't see a darn thing to my left which, of course, scared me even worse... The drive to Denton was nerve-wracking because I wasn't sure if I was actually seeing what I was seeing. (When given incomplete data the brain fills in the blanks - it's kind of fascinating, really.)
After running some tests the doctor informed me that it was "just" a migraine and I needed to drink more water on hot days, and maybe drape a cold wet towel around my neck... Really? It's that simple?? ... In retrospect, I think the whole thing was exacerbated because I was also having panic attacks - but I didn't know of such things back then...

Speaking of panic attacks: I occasionally let Karina drive the Fairlane on the back roads around Argyle with me as a passenger. She didn't have a learner's permit yet and didn't get her license until years later... I recall that she tended to stay way too far to the right. She was apparently more afraid of oncoming traffic than she was of hitting mailboxes. Yeah - that was scary... I also tried to teach her to parallel park in the driveway. I don't recall what I used for markers, but I do recall that it was hopeless :-)

Next - Chaela:
Chaela was the cat we had gotten in Tyler - the one that ended up with a broken hip while I was out of town for the weekend... Anyway - she loved country life. Despite being a tiny little thing she quickly became a stone-cold killing machine :-) And it wasn't just mice, rats and birds - I'm talking snakes and rabbits too. (That will come up again later.) Yeah - and she celebrated her freedom by immediately getting pregnant and having 2 kittens. (There rest were stillborn.)

So - when it was time move from Argyle to Denton I put Chaela and the kittens in a big cardboard box and stuck it in the back seat of the Fairlane. Everything was fine until the car start moving and Chaela freaked out. She forced the box open and the next thing I knew there were kitties all over the car... That wouldn't have been a problem except one of the kittens got under the brake pedal as I was approaching a stop sign. Luckily, I managed to nudge it aside with my foot at the last second... (I was on the verge of panicking.)

Lastly, that was the summer I learned I could be useful:

First up was the children's Bible Camp at the church... Steve, Royce, Sam and I were in charge of teaching archery. That apparently meant making sure the kids didn't shoot each other with arrows. I found it quite interesting for 2 reasons:
1) I had never spent any time around kids before (they're weird little people).
2) Providing encouragement and positive reinforcement was completely foreign to me... I was like "You mean I should tell them they're doing great even when they're sucking???"

Next: The church decided to convert a storage area in the attic into a "youth group room". That entailed finishing the walls, adding lighting and outlets and installing an air conditioner, all done with volunteer labor... Now - I had worked on cars before (always alone) but never did anything "handyman" like. And I had honestly never been around men who pitched in the way those church members did... They had me doing electrical work because they seemed to think I was smart. (I wasn't sure.) ... Yeah - it was almost like being a grownup :-)

Aside: Debbie and I were just talking about how the adults in Argyle treated me as if I were much older that other guys roughly my age. She thinks it's because the others had always been kids to them, while I had arrived fully grown... She's probably right... Steve in particular seemed to resent it, but then he still acts like a kid :-)

But my first exposure to the whole "pitching in" thing had been earlier when one of the elderly church members put her car into "D" instead of "R" and ran her front tires over the "stop" and off the edge of the retaining wall out front... All the men immediately headed for the car. One ran up and made sure she was OK while the others grabbed the front bumper - and I just stood there watching... One of them noticed me and was like "Um... A little help, please??"
So, we got the car back up onto the pavement - and it was a lesson learned that led to a lifetime of helping out...

Funny - I was just thinking back and I don't recall my father ever "just helping out" during his entire life. How sad...