Freque Factory - Home Again

Freque Factory

Home Again

  I was home again from Huntsville.  My dad was still living with the floozy, so my mom took me in.  Her divorce from my dad was final and she had moved on with her life.  She really liked her new job and was doing well at it.  She had developed a new set of friends too, a new support system.  She was to keep these friends for many, many years.  Some of them became my honorary Aunts and Uncles.  I'll talk about them now.

  The apartment complex we lived in was comprised of 3 buildings.  We lived in the one around the complex pool-7 units.  Ours was the one over the garage.  Mom, Dad, and I had moved there when I was 8.  When dad moved out, mom stayed.  The pool was the social center of the complex.  Especially in hot weather, almost everyone in the complex ended up there.  There was a bar-b-que in one corner, and the landlord didn't mind if people drank, as long as we kept the language pg, and the drinks weren't in glass containers.

   Just like we had made friends when we first moved in, with dad gone, mom started making friends with the other tenants again.  After my friend from high school moved out, a couple named Shirley and George moved in.  They ended up moving out to Arizona to be with mom after they retired.

   Both of them were originally from upstate New York.  They were what I would call functional alcoholics.  Both were able to work, but drank most evenings, and heavily on weekends.  George was a machinist.  He was an uncomplicated man.  He got up early, drove to work, came home and relaxed.  He played horseshoes.  He bore a resemblance to Barney Rubble of Flintstones fame.

   Shirley was as outlandish and complicated as George was boring and simple.  She held a good job at a downtown Los Angeles bank.  I have no idea how.   She didn't drive and so she was up early every morning too-so she could catch the bus.  Aside from work, her personal tastes ran to bright animal prints and pink-the brighter, the better.  Shirley was game for almost anything.  She would take mom to the races, out drinking or dancing, and other adventures.  Shirley was also somewhat flakey.  And squirel-ly.  But fun.  I sometimes wonder if her inability to have children (they checked, it was her) had a lot to do with her antics.  But she was loyal and loving.

   Downstairs was Loretta and Mike.  Mike was her second husband.  I liked Mike.  He did his best to be a good father to Loretta's two kids from her first (horrid) marriage.  But the marriage didn't last.  Too many loud fights.

   Loretta was pretty remarkable.  She reminded me a lot of my parent's friend, Pat Casey.  If Pat had been from the hills of West Virginia.  Loretta was hardworking and fun.  She was short, but she had a heart twice her size.

   I wasn't really friends with her children.  The older, the son was a couple of years younger then me.  He was probably smart, but he was so socially awkward that it was hard to tell.  The daughter was a smaller version of the mom.  Unfortunately the boy eventually got sucked in by Scientology.  He broke free many years later, but his wife stayed with his child.  Sad story.  The daughter married and moved out of the area.  Still doing well, last I heard.

   There were others that moved in and out.  They provided mom with friends and confidants.  She was happy.

   Because I was planning to return to Huntsville, I got a job via mom's head hunter.  I wanted a well paying job that I wouldn't feel bad in leaving.  Well, I did that.  I got a job working at a bank in Downtown Los Angeles.  Like Shirley I got to get up early every day to catch the bus.

   It was a pretty boring job.  I had a monthly report to type up that was almost entirely numbers.  This was back before computers, so it was me typing numbers into a report with an electric typewriter.  When I wasn't working on that, I had small reports to do.  But mostly I was the secretary/receptionist for a small group of management trainees.  The older of the bunch was the trainer.  Like the rest, he was a graduate of USC.  All had been members of frats.  Can you say bro?  And all of them were spoiled pains to deal with.  On top of that, the boss of our department was a sadistic, former alcoholic turned vegetarian tyrant.  He only left me in tears once, but he was the terror of his secretary.  She was a very sweet Christian lady who was working to help her husband get through Bible College to become a minister.

  Of all the stupid stuff My management trainees did my favorite was the hooker story.  The trainer, despite the fact that he was "happily" married to a former USC sorority sister, had a local prostitute that he saw on a regular basis.  One day, he took his trainees to see her (and her friends).  They came back, all happy, like kids back from a bit of mischief.  Then one of them giggled and said that he had called the bank and cancelled his check.  To the hookers.  The trainer turned pale.  After quietly really chewing out his trainee, the trainer sat at his desk and tried to figure out how to solve the problem.  It was already too late to cancel the cancelling.

   Less than half an hour later my phone rang. It was the prostitute-really, really angry.  I have never heard someone so angry that their voices were like ice.  I was impressed.  Before I could put her on hold she informed me that her client had better talk to her (my trainees were all motioning me to tell her they weren't there) or she was going to show up to our office downstairs and start yelling about what she did and his participation.  I fully believed she would do it.  The trainer took the call.  He knew I would have had his hide if he didn't (besides what the hooker was going to do).  He left immediately after to get cash to pay her double.  He made the trainees pay that bill.

   When I had the time I did check in on my friends.  Christmas time I got together with two of my former roommates.  HJ now had a very cute baby.  I hadn't heard from Monique in quite a while.  Her mom said that she was expecting Monique to move back home any time.  Ma expected the marriage to end any day.  Joanne and Jim were in Texas with the army.  Due to very, very strict anti-marijuana (and other drugs) laws, Joanne was miserable.  Jim was feeling adult and useful, a new thing for him.

   I did visit Susan and her husband.  It seemed a mismatch.  She had cut off all contact with Freddie and had cut way back on her drug use.  They were tying to start a family, but no luck so far.  They told me an odd story.  They lived near the train tracks and would often walk down to the local convenience store (to buy cigarettes) via the tracks.  One night they started their walk, but for some reason they took the longer route via the streets.  Just a feeling they had that they should go that way.  As they were walking they heard a horrid set of sounds-metal screeching and such.  A train had, for unknown reasons, jumped the tracks and crashed.  If they had walked their normal route they would have been right where the train landed.  Strange.  And scary.