Lessons not learned

People usually need to learn life lessons the hard way.  A little kid generally needs to burn his fingers on the stove only once before he learns to avoid the flame.  Some, however, need to touch the fire over and over again before finally figuring out that it isn't a very good idea to do so. And some people seemingly never learn from their mistakes, and repeat the same action over and over again.  Mom was one of those people that never seemed to learn her lesson when it came to men.

Paris Young bluffed his way into our lives on Eagle Street.  After a five-month nightmare, he suddenly disappeared forever on December 1, 1975.  He left a welding shop full of half-finished orders, and customers calling when too much time had lapsed.  Mom spent several weeks in bed, supposedly recovering from her miscarriage.  I don't even remember celebrating Christmas that year.  But eventually,  Mom couldn't ignore her responsibilities.  She hired a family friend to manage the office, and put out an ad in the help wanted column of the San Diego Union newspaper to find a welder to finish the jobs.  Luckily she found a guy, freshly out of the Navy, who had welding skills.  He started on the jobs and projected to finish everything by February or March.

Mom set up the huge grill and stocked the fridge in the shop for the next three months. There were always fresh hamburgers cooking for lunch, so the welder, whose nickname was "FlyBoy,"  would have no reason to leave the shop to go get lunch.  There were two office rooms.  I moved all my dogs into the back office.  The business manager worked out of the front office.  After school I went to the shop to care for the animals.  I would walk them up and down busy University Avenue, past all the bars where the nightly drama of Mom searching for Paris, finding him, and then fighting with him for hours afterwards replayed again and again in my memory.

One thing that I learned about convicts is that they all have a close-knit little posse of felonious friends. When Paris was in prison, he had a buddy named Marvin O'Dell Vaughan, A-36491.  His nickname was Dale, and while Mom was busy writing to Paris, she made me start writing to "Uncle Dale."  I was just a very young teen girl and had no desire to penpal with an old guy, but Mom made me write him at least twice a week.  She told me to just write about my own interests, so Uncle Dale learned all about Poodles, color inheritance, pedigrees, etc.  It must have bored him to tears.  His nickname for me was "December Doll." When Paris got released from prison, I was released from my responsibility to write letters to Uncle Dale, and he soon became a distant memory.

Here is Uncle Dale's flowery writing on a photo Mom sent him in 1974.  He returned it when he came to Eagle Street.

Sometime in early February 1976, Uncle Dale was released from Soledad Prison.  He called Mom, told her how horrible he felt about what Paris did to her, and said he was taking the bus down to San Diego to visit her.  Mom was instantly happy and excited.  She made plans to entertain him that night, and this entertainment did not include us kids.  When Skippy, who had been released from Susanville Prison in August of 1975, came by for his daily meal and handout, Mom told him he needed to babysit us kids at the Welding shop for the night.  We packed our sleeping bags, and Mom dropped us off around 4 PM.  I set up camp in the back office with my dogs.  The little kids set up their sleeping bags in the front office with Skippy.  We had Top Ramen for dinner, and then settled in for the night.

Inner City University Avenue was a very noisy and scary place at night.  Cars were constantly speeding by.  We heard brakes screeching and engines being revved up.  There were occasional screams from women and angry male voices. Sirens from police cars and fire trucks bounced off the walls of the dark garage all evening. The little kids were restless and a bit frightened. We had no TV to keep us occupied.  There were no Game Boys, cell phones or Kindles invented yet, so there was nothing to grab their attention.  I buried my nose in books until I passed out on the floor sometime in the night.

I was jarred awake by the sound of someone pounding on my office door. It was Skippy.  He was yelling at us to get up, because Mom called the office and wanted us to come home immediately.
It was really late, and Skippy was urging us to hurry up because he didn't know if the busses were still running.  We got the kids in their jackets, exited the shop and walked a couple blocks to wait at the bus stop.  It was probably around 11:00 PM or so.  The last number 7 bus came by, and Skippy got us all on the bus.  I was hiding a puppy in my jacket and hoped he wouldn't make any noise.  The bus dropped us at Park Boulevard.  The bus driver told Skippy that there were no more busses to transfer to that night, so we set out on the long 1.5 mile walk home along a dark and deserted University Avenue.  We got home around midnight or a little later.  Mom was frazzled and freaked out.  I asked her where Uncle Dale was, and she screamed at me to get the kids to bed and never mention his name again.

I have no idea what happened between Mom and Uncle Dale that night. All I know is that we never heard from him again. She must have found something out about Dale that was unsettling, even to her low standards.  I also don't know why Mom made us take the bus home so late at night, when she could have drove to the shop and picked us up.  Today,  if you go to the Megan's law website and type in Marvin ODell Vaughan, you will see his name still there.  He has been missing for several years.  He was convicted of Lewd or Lascivious acts with a child under 14 years of age.  It looks like soon after he disappeared from Eagle Street on that clear cold night in February, he got into more trouble and went back into custody, with a final release date in 1977.

Soon after Uncle Dale left, another posse member started writing to Mom.  His name was Talmadge DeWitt Smith, or TD for short. He was serving time at Tehachapi Prison. Mom started writing to TD, and by the summer of '76, we were once again setting out on the road for prison visits. The drive was shorter, and did not require an overnight stay.  Mom would round us kids out of bed in the middle of the night.  This time we traveled in the huge pick up truck instead of the Volvo. We were on the road by 3 AM. 

Halfway through, Mom would get sleepy.  She hadn't yet become morbidly obese again, so she would cram herself against the driver's side door, and let me slide next to her on the bench seat behind the wheel, and take over the driving.  I had just gotten my driver permit and loved the opportunity to practice.  Mom would nod off, and I sped through the dark desert at 4:30 in the morning. There was no one else on the road.  If I happened to see a cop, I would yell for mom to wake up, and she would resume driving.  The little kids were usually asleep for the trip, but once in a while Jeff would wake up and voice his disapproval.  He didn't like how fast I was driving and I am sure it was just plain scary for him to see Mom passed out and 15 year old Tammy taking over.  I would just tell him to shut up and go back to sleep.  We would arrive at the prison early in the morning, and waste a perfectly good weekend day sitting in a busy prison visiting room.  I had already told Mom I had no interest in having a relationship with TD or with any other prisoner, and would not talk to him.  I spent the day reading.

In early 1977, TD was released and came to Eagle Street to live. Mom bought a used camper that attached to the bed of the pick up truck.

Our halfway house for convicts

And suddenly, we had a curbside vacation home for released convicts.  TD was a wannabe country music star.  He used to brag that he was a song writer, and that he wrote the songs that George Jones  and Tammy Wynette sang.  He had an electric guitar and an amplifier. Mom bought him a used Cadillac, and he just kind of hung around.  He stayed away from us kids, and that's all I cared about.  After a few months, Mom and TD had some kind of falling out.  It had something to do with a stolen gas station credit card.  She sold his electric guitar and amplifier, which made him really angry.  One day, TD was gone for good.

Right on the tail of TD's exit, another posse member hit town.  Freshly released from prison, Tommy Adams came on the scene.  A little skinny country boy from Georgia, Tommy had a thick pompadour, all greased up with Bryl Crème.  Mom gave him Paris's blue leisure suit, and Tommy would wear it when he would walk up to the corner bar on Washington Street to get drunk every day.
He would get sloshed and then stagger home.  On time he was so drunk that he had to crawl home on his hands and knees and he wet his pants.  The leisure suit had to go into the trash. When he was drunk, he would cry about his hopes and dreams.

I often got stuck listening to him as he cried, lamenting the fact that he used to be a truck driver, and that all he ever wanted was a Peterbilt truck.  Over and over again, he would slur his dreams:  "I love yo mutha, and I wanna marry yo mutha and be a dad-deh to you, Jeff-er-reh, and little Doll bay-beh, and please can you tell your mutha that I wish she could get me a Peterbilt Truck?"  Alcohol fumes leaked from his pores.  A big black circle of hair grease stained the wall behind the chair he sat in.  His face was bloated and red.  His blue eyes were wet and puffy.  He was a pathetic alcoholic.  I would tell him I didn't want a new daddy and ignore his whines.

Tommy actually left Eagle Street for a month to go see his sister in Georgia, and returned in a big Peterbilt-type tractor.  He had a little white Poodle named Foo-Foo with him, and we kept the dog and renamed him Solo.  After a second stay in our camper, Tommy left for good, just in time for the final posse member to rotate in.

Jim Pourzanis was an old skinny, grey haired man who looked like a Billy goat.  I know almost nothing about this guy.  He just showed up one day, and Mom set him up in the camper.  Jim was a quiet, useless human being; he was an empty shell of a person.  He didn't work or even pretend to want to work.  He just came in the house every day and sat in Tommy's chair.  That's about all he did.  He had a peculiar smell about him.  An old, unwashed, no deodorant smell.  Looking back on it, the man seemed extremely depressed.  Mom didn't even like him, but seemed unable to send him on his way.  He hung out for several months, and one day he was just gone.

By 1978, the final prison loser had come and gone.  Mom wasted the better part of the '70's investing untold amounts of energy, emotion, and money on these useless dregs of society.  They were worthless parasites who somehow sweet talked their way into our lives on Eagle Street.   The effect that they had on Mom was profound.  By the end of this era, Mom had gained back all the weight she had lost when she fell in love with Paris Young. With the weight gain came the diabetes, high blood pressure, and in 1978, the first of many heart attacks.

Mom never learned her lesson, she just ran out of posse members.  But these years jaded me forever. To this day I have no sympathy for convicts, alcoholics, or drug addicts.  I know that every single one of them lied, stole, and wore out their welcome with their family members and friends. I feel no need to take on their problems or to be their savior.  I am not a sucker. Mom never learned, but these were lessons I certainly learned on Eagle Street.