AN UNEXPECTED LOVE Terre Haute: continued The home available in Terre Haute was owned by two Jewish brothers from Indianapolis. They had a nepotism clause so George and I would not be working together. Maybe I would just stay home and be a mom for once. Anyway, George took the job and we started house hunting. We settled on a ranch style home on Chickadee Drive in Robinwood, a sub-division next to Rose Poly Tech institute just down the hill from a golf course. It had virgin woods and a stream running behind the house. Perfect for the boys. The Athletic Director for the University of Indiana, lived across the street. They had a pool, which they graciously offered to let the boys use. We loved the fact that our bedroom had a sliding glass door that lead out onto a brick patio. We could watch all kinds of woodland creatures in the early morning hours. At night it afforded us a beautiful view of the sky. Spec’s dog house was under a nice shade tree where she could watch all the creatures too. I loved waking up beside George and knowing he would always be there to share whatever life brought our way whether it be big or little things. I loved spending evenings with him going over the activities of the day since we weren’t working together any more. I loved how we enjoyed each others company even if there was nothing to say. I loved sharing life with him because I just knew there was so much more to look forward to. Terre Haute, like Gibson City, was not far from my hometown so we could visit often and attend family events. During our stay there, my grandmother died. She was a big part of my life. I hadn’t lost anyone close to me for a long time so I was shaken by her death, but my George was right there beside me to comfort me. My stay at home with the boys lasted until school started, then I became bored and started looking for a job. I found one as Administrator of Clara Fairbanks Home. It was a Retirement home built by a beer magnate in the twenties. Single women or widows could be accepted by signing over their insurance policies. They were allowed to decorate their rooms as they wished and bring their own furniture. There was a 7 bed infirmary that required the presence of a nurse. My being a nurse and an Administrator kept them from having to hire a nurse. I missed seeing George. We kept the phone lines hot and often had lunch together. Being apart made our love more intense. The men he worked for were intent on everyone working on Sunday. Since Saturday was their sabbath, it was OK to be off Saturday, but they wanted you to be there on Sunday. They had other quirky ideas too. Everyone was required to attend their Christmas party in Indianapolis; spouses weren’t invited. George refused to go without me! When we got there George told them he would leave if I couldn’t stay, I stayed! The Food Service Supervisor at George’s home was from Boston. She had the same accent as the Kennedy’s. George was forever kidding her about it. Her name was Mrs. Olsen and he kidded her about that too. She became a wonderful friend. The boys rode the school bus to Clara Fairbanks after school then rode home with me when I got off. George drove the company car for Canterbury Convalescent Center and I drove the Caddy to work. In the winter or when it rained George would drop me off at work and pick me up. He was so protective and knew I didn’t like to drive. When Clara Fairbanks was built, the rooms were furnished with Jenny Lind beds, dressers and night stands. Somewhere along the line those were stored in the attic and residents allowed to furnish their own rooms, including carpeting, painting etc. The infirmary was furnished with hospital beds and equipment. When the home was inspected for a state license, the local fire department told them everything in the attic had to go as it was a fire hazard. They had an auction and sold all those antique beds! All that was left in the attic was a cane collection and a couple of boxes of antique books, postcards and other miscellaneous that the board had been offered $175 for. I told them I would give them the money for what was left because I knew the antique dealer who offered to buy it was going to sell it for a nice profit. I sold the cane collection to a doctor in Danville who only wanted a couple of them, but took the whole collection to get those two. The rest of the collection, went home with me. George, the boys and I had a ball going through it. I sold some of it and made my money back, the rest of it I still have. George would later take some of the opera programs and other material, from the turn of the century, that was in that collection; burn the edges, then decoupage it on to old barn siding he collected. They were great wall decorations and graced not only the walls in our home but other areas as well. His creativity never ceased to amaze me. The linen closets at Clara Fairbanks were full of quilts made by the residents, some of them very old and all of them beautiful. When I left Clara Fairbanks the ladies gave me three of those quilts. I still have two of them. I gave one to Anne. One of the residents made mens ties out of unusual material and for Christmas she made George 4 beautiful silk ties. She gave me 4 Christmas ornaments she had made out of styrofoam balls with velvet ribbon and sequins. She was very talented. The quirky brothers wanted George at the home by 7 AM every morning and didn’t want him to leave until 7 PM. They would make phone calls from Indianapolis at those specified times to make sure he followed the rules. He had loyal help who covered for him if we had plans that required him to be elsewhere. There was an RN who became a thorn in George’s side. She was determined to make him like her. George, being the person he was, totally mine, rebuked her which made her try even harder. Nothing worked. She was a good nurse, a single mother with one son. When we left Terre Haute, I recommended her for my job. She got the job and wrote me a nice note. She ask why I would recommend her when she had tried so hard to take George away from me. I told her that her abilities as an RN had nothing to do with what she had done. Besides I was secure in the fact that George loved me and that no one else could be to him what I was. In the Spring of 1973 George had all he could take of the quirky owners and started looking for a new position. He answered an ad for an administrator for a new 120 bed home in Missouri that wasn’t quite finished. We drove to Sikeston for an interview. We met with Bud Collins, one of the brothers who owned the home in Sikeston. Afterward we took a tour of the town. We liked what we saw. We drove home that night hoping that this would be a job offer, that it would be somewhere we could stay a while. It was weeks before we heard anything. When we did it was a request for another interview. This time we met with both brothers and were offered the job. The reason it took so long was, they hired a private investigator to look into our backgrounds.... We put the house up for sale and then came a gully washer, 9 inches of rain in less than 24 hours. Lost Creek, that ran behind our house, found itself that day and left it’s banks, destroying the house at one end of Chickadee Drive and returning to it’s banks, destroying the house at the opposite end. All houses in between were flooded except for ours, the one next door and the one across the street, whose foundations were all just a wee bit elevated. The water covered the For Sale sign out front. It also blew a hole in the foundation that we had to have repaired, but once again God was watching out for us. We discovered that whoever built the house failed to install duct work. The hole revealed that he had just covered the area under the house with plastic. The air from the furnace and A/C blew under the house and up the registers. When the water started rising it reached the registers and stopped just short of coming in the house. George, the boys and I had pulled the bricks up out of the driveway to elevate our furniture. I never prayed so hard or felt so helpless in all my life. The best part is, God heard our prayers. We hired a heating and A/C man to fix the problem of no duct work and then had the hole repaired, most of it covered by insurance. For the first time in our married life, we moved to a new town without selling our house, but the Collins loaned us enough money to put down on the purchase of a home, while we prayed that ours would sell soon because we would be paying the mortgage on two homes. Since most people knew about the flood in Robinwood, it wasn’t likely the house would sell quickly. The house sold in November to someone who was moving in out of state and hadn’t heard about the flood. Praise the Lord we only had to make 4 double payments. To be Continued: Sikeston.
Posted on: Tue, 16 Sep 2014 00:25:31 +0000
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