EDWARDS AFTER CHRIS BIRTH
Sometime after Chris was born we found a 2 bedroom apartment in Boron, California. The fellow who owned the apartments, last name Bell, was a school teacher and supplemented his income with the apartments. To help offset part of our rent, I helped him put roofs on 2 other apartments he was building. Let me say hot tar roofs in that heat are intimidating. I'm not sure what kind of discount we received but it wasn't enough!!
About that time I decided to take instructions in the Catholic Church in Mojave. There was a church in Boron but the priest came from Mojave. The priest was a Monsignor, originally from Spain by the name of Sylvano Bacadono (sp). He and I hit it off from the start. I questioned everything and he had what I thought were good answers. It helped that we often met at Reno's restaurant over wine to discuss things. One time we met at his place and he provided Flamenco dancers for entertainment! He was a good friend and my idea of what a Pastor should be! I joined the church and was baptised with Reno and Lucille as my sponsors. I was 23 at the time.Our new son Chris was also baptised and the Ricomini children were his sponsors. We stayed in touch with the family until Lucille died quite a few years later.
We still didn't have a reliable vehicle, but one of my friends, Bob Bartholomew had a 50 Chevrolet which we borrowed to take a trip to Colorado with our other friends Ron and Pat Brady. They also had a young child so it sounded like fun, right? Well the Brady girl cried and screamed the duration of the trip. Worse was our trip back to California. We had just entered Utah when the Chevy quit us!. It seems the timing belt broke. The cost to repair was more cash than we had, plus we had to be back to base. We had it towed to a dealer and I called Bob and asked what he wanted us to do. He graciously said, "just leave it. I'll figure it out". We then had to call Ellen's Dad and see if he could drive us to Boron. He reluctantly agreed and came to Vernal, Utah. We all spent the night in a hotel room with one bed and the screaming baby. My luck with automobiles continued to infinity! Ellen's dad, Norm, never said a word . I stayed friends with the Brady's and Bob as long as at Edwards but it was our last trip with the Brady's and I tried not to borrow any more autos. It turned out that Ellen's brother Ed bought the Chevy from Bob and fixed the timing belt.
In June of 1959, my brother Jim called me to tell me our father had died from a heart attack. It was beyond sad for me as I never felt like I knew my father as an adult. He was 57. Ellen and I flew to Orlando for his funeral, but had to take the train back to Boron. It wound up being a 3 day train trip, sitting quite a bit of the time in the back row with seats that didn't recline. I hated going back to the desert but I only had a few months left to serve.
We met some wonderful friends after moving to Boron, James and Patsy Smith. They were childhood sweethearts from Portello, New Mexico (peanut capital of the west). James was a mathematician at Edwards working at the missile test site. He was an avid model airplane builder and flier and had a pilot's license. He helped me build a model which I wrecked many times. His plane flew perfectly every time. I went flying in his real plane with him several times and saw much of the desert country from the air (not the base. Restricted). James and Patsy introduced us to Volkswagen autos as they owned a 1957 model. We took Chris on quite a few rides and Patsy baby-sat Chris while Ellen worked. Jim had purchased a small camper which he was able to pull with the VW (not sure how!). It is hard to believe we pulled that trailer up Mt Whitney, the highest mountain in the lower 48 states. Many autos overheated and were on the side of the road, but not the VW. It was air cooled. We camped at about 9,000 ft. Ellen, Chris and I were in sleeping bags. Of course it snowed about 6 inches overnight (this was in June!), so we only stayed one night. Chris fit perfectly over the back seat in a space looking as if it was designed for a six month old baby.
Some time after that the jinxed Dodge finally quit and we sold it to a salvage company for $25. I felt lucky they didn't charge me for hauling it off. A friend drove me to Los Angeles to find another auto. I wound up at Felix Chevrolet and fell in love with a 51 Ford Coupe which just happened to be pink! It reminded me of the 49 Ford without the bearing issues. I purchased it without any qualms. It would be perfect to go to Florida in February (what could possibly go wrong, right?)
Our daughter Renee was born February 8, 1960. I was discharged February 12, 1960. It sounds like a broken record doesn't it (married Feb 9, transferred Feb 12, 1957). As I was driving to the base to pick up Ellen and Renee, a massive dust storm came up and virtually sandblasted the Ford, removing the paint from the front and pitting the windshield so one could hardly see when driving toward the sun. My auto jinx still stood! We stayed in Boron until our rent was due, March 1, then drove to Florida (with a stop in Steamboat Springs, Colorado). I had purchased a home made trailer which we planned to pull behind the Ford. As you may surmise all was not smoothly done. The trailer was not built to handle a load and every time we went around a corner the tire was rubbed by the trailer body. I tried shifting the load to no avail and wound up using several tires. When we we arrived at the ranch, Norm and the boys helped me rig up a hitch system good enough to get to Florida with out buying more tires. Poor Renee was sick the whole trip with what was an upset stomach and a terribly troubled father. How we all survived is a miracle but we did show up at my mother's house at the end of March, again no money and no job. Oh well the story continues!
My dad, brother Warren and his two youngest, not long before Dad died
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