My Story, Beginning to End As Near As I Can Reccollect

I'm re reading this to try to remember more and do some editing, I thought I'd let anyone know what I'm doing just in case someone might be reading it, no one has been here in years so I shouldn't worry about it.

My Story, Beginning to End As Near As I Can Recollect

By Jeffrey Scott Tomb (Unstine)

This is dedicated to a friend, an person I consider to be one of my Guardian Angles.

I was born Jeffrey Scott Unstine on March 13th 1948 
Yes, I know, I put down everywhere else that I was born in 1950, when your older you really don't want a lot of people knowing how old you really are.
to Robert Lewis Unstine and Lois Ann Cannon Unstine.
They obviously didn't know how to put diapers on very well.

No fair guys, the least you could do
is wait for me to straighten my eyes out.

Me and my mom

I cleaned up pretty good

                      
                              Robert Lewis Unstine

     Born; October 4, 1924  Passed; January 23, 1998

                                                                  Lois Ann Cannon, My mom at about 19                                             Born; June 11, 1928  Passed; March 28, 1989

Some of my earliest memories and some things that I was told about, I don't really remember being potty trained but from what I've been told by my mother we lived in an old country house, in the kitchen sink was a pump for water and that was the only plumbing in the house. When I got a little older my mom and dad took us to see it one day, I still remember seeing that old house, one of the things that sticks out in my memory is the two narrow cement path ways for the car to drive up to the garage. The house faced the driveway so the side of the house faced the road. 

The garage is bigger than it should be and the out house was more toward the back of the house. I really don't remember if it was a one car garage or a two car but the house was just about like this. It was all wood siding and in desperate need of a paint job when went to see it. 

She told me that it was hard to potty train me because it was so cold outside during the winter and no one wanted to go out to the outhouse every couple of hours to train me but apparently they did it. I remember going to work with my dad when he worked as a milkman for Sealtest dairy products really early in the morning, standing in a semi dark tunnel watching him put glass bottles of milk into the truck and than putting large blocks of ice on top of them to keep them cold, a little before refrigeration. We went to a couple of restaurants and delivered milk, at one they gave me a small glass of milk and when we got back into the truck, I must have fallen asleep because that is about all I can remember of that day. I vaguely remember that when we lived on Circular Rd in Ohio walking up to the store with my mom, I must have been 4 or 5 then because my brother Rex was with us, we stopped where they were fixing the road and they had little round kerosene lamps (about 8" high) so people could see where they were doing construction day or night, I remember running our fingers through the flame, it was so cool. 

 I was sitting next to the window on a train trying to see the smoke from the steam engine, I think we were on our way to Piqua from Toledo Ohio to see my Aunt Gwin. This is a very vague memory, I couldn't have been more then 4 or 5 but I remember my brother and my mom sitting across from me at the time. I remember the smoke from the steam engine blowing past the window on the train.

Just in case you don't know what

a steam engine is.

The other day I was looking for a title for the motor home when I came across my adoption papers that Robert gave me before he passed. According to the papers I was 4 years old when the adoption went through and we lived in the house on Circular Road at that time. It was kind of weird seeing my name as Jeffrey Scott Unstine on an official document. 

                                             This is where the kerosene lanterns were. 

                                            This is a recent picture from Google Earth

We were waiting outside the store for my mom sitting on the curb. My brother and me were sitting there talking when a car pulled up and ran over my foot, I got a cast out of that one and still don't walk right.

                                              I was sitting on this curb about where the                                              light pole is now when the car ran over my
                        foot. This picture also from Google Earth                   

Another time I was helping my dad take groceries into the house, my dad gave me a bottle of mayo to carry in and I dropped it and then fell on it cutting my leg open, I still have the scare from it on my left leg, I couldn't have been more than four. When I joined the Navy they listed that scare as a way to identify me in case I was killed somehow.

My mom and dad and me in front of the Circular Road house

Our house on Circular Road in Toledo, Ohio (Picture taken in 2010)

When we lived here there was a vacant lot next door with a big dirt mount, (to the left of the house pictured) Mr and Mrs Scott lived on the corner on the other side of the vacant lot. One day while my mother was visiting the Scott's, Mrs Scott looked out the window and saw me on top of the dirt mound doing my daily dump, My mom ran out of their house and took me right home. My mom told me that story a couple of years before she passed on.

I meant my biological father when I was about 50 years old and he told me the story of how I saved my brothers life, apparently he was visiting to give up his rights to me so my step dad could adopt me, they heard me yelling for help and when they got up to our second floor bedroom I was holding my brothers by the hands while he was hanging out the window, I don't really know why he was hanging out of the window. My biological father told me that when he and my mother were married they lived with my grandmother and that she never trusted men again after she divorced her husband. Her husband Charles Cannon, he was a barber in Toledo Ohio, he was a very mean drunk who would come home every night drunk, he would beat up on my grand mother and once in a while his kids. They apparently divorced before I was born, we never meant him and even when he showed up at my grandmothers funeral no one would talk to him and that was the first and last time we ever saw him. She loved us very much but she drove a spike through their marriage.

My mother and biological father must not have been married long because I read his death announcement and saw that he re-married 08-04-1951 at which time I would have been three.

Jeff sitting at my grand mothers piano.

I remember sitting at my grand mothers kitchen table drinking coffee that had so much sugar in it that it tasted like candy, I have been drinking coffee since I was about 4, no wonder I'm addicted to the stuff but it didn't make me short. My grandmother always had a piano, I don't ever remember her playing but when she passed my mother made my dad load it on the trailer to bring it home to Pa. I don't remember what happened to that piano.

                             

                                           Jeff playing outside of my grandmothers house.

Everyone we knew smoked cigarettes and I mean everyone, actually I don't remember anyone who didn't smoke, my dad's father did quit but he was the only one.

                                               My grandma Cannon, my mom's mother

                                                                               

                                                                   Loretta Cannon

When we lived on Circular Road my dad's mother lived up the street, we used to go down to her house once in a while and spend the night, I remember the smell of her basement, kind of musty, old smelling house. Every time I smell that now I think of that old basement and my grandmother, always a good memory. My grandmother used to do a lot of canning, I remember the selves in the basement being full of jars of strawberry jelly and other vegtables. I remember bringing that jar of jelly up to her, she would open it and take off the wax seal covering the jelly, never have been able to find out what that wax seal was for but I think she called it paraffin.  
We always thought that it was great that she had a red bedroom and a blue bedroom up stairs, the walls and carpeting were the same color either Royal blue or bright red.

My grandparents (My dad's Parents) house on 
Circular Road (Picture taken 2010)

I don't remember this or how old I was but as told by my mother, one day I saw the fire engine and followed it back to the fire house. The fire station was across a major 4 lane highway and further up the street about a block. My mom told me that they were looking everywhere for me and called the police to help. Apparently the fire captain called the police and they found me fairly fast. I do remember being in the fire station and going into a room where they had bags of plums and sitting in a chair next to a fireman eating some them. 

I remember being in the Hospital when I was around 5 or 6 for pneumonia, I remember the kid across the hall sliding a rabbits foot on the floor into my room. (How funny, after reading this again I remembered exactly what it was.) I looked at it for a while and slide it back to him, we did that over and over for a while until the nurse came in and closed his door, I had the rabbits foot. I never saw that kid again, I didn't know what happened to him but I kept the rabbits foot for years afterwards.

My aunt Betty lived next door to her parents, actually my Aunt Betty loved to spend money and she got herself into a financial problems all the time and my grand parents bailed them out and bought the house next store to them and let Aunt Betty stay there until they could get ahead a little again. I remember the story of when my cousin Tommy was born, my aunt had a daughter who got attention plus, she was the princess until she was about 4 yrs old and then Tommy was born and everyone thought he was great and Nancy took a back seat to him. 

Me sitting in a chair in front of Aunt Betty's house.

One day Nancy volunteered to take Tommy for a walk in his baby carriage, she came back about an hour later all by herself, they asked where is your brother and she said I don't know. The whole family was out looking for Tommy, apparently she thought she could get rid of him by pushing the carriage over the hill that went down to a small creek about 25 feet. They got down to the carriage and Tommy was still in it sound asleep, she must have pushed it straight down because it was still upright and he was fine, just a funny old story that wasn't so funny at the time but it's always funny to kid Nancy about it now.
My grand father was a salesman for Amherst Coal Company, he was very good at his job. If a customer cancelled a railroad car of coal my grand father would get on the phone and sell that railroad car of coal to someone else further up the line.

My daughter and I were just talking outside tonight while getting set up on another job here at the shop in the middle of the night. She brought up different smells which took me back to Toledo Ohio as a kid and how I love the smell of bus fumes, yes that's right bus fumes, I loved going downtown and smelling bus fumes as we drove into downtown Toledo, weird. One day we were driving by Wall Bridge Park in the middle of the summer with my parents and my little brother Rex who couldn't have been more then 2 or 3 at the time yelled out "mom, dad, look at all the chocolate people and he wouldn't quit, he just kept saying chocolate people everywhere. You never saw two people roll up the windows in the car so fast in your life on a hot summer day and when that light turned green we were out of there. It's is funny how just talking to someone about something like smells can bring back a such a vivid memories that you would never have remembered if they hadn't brought it up. I've also always had a thing for the smell of moth balls, they bring back memories of my dad's Army uniform and some of his old suits in his closet. 

My Grandparents moved from there to the Holland Ohio house on about 10 acres, it had a small creek that ran through it which we used to go wading in. 

Evva Skelton Tomb and Rex Limen Tomb Sr 
Nanny and grandpa

                                  at the Holland Ohio house, my dad's mother and father.

We used to flush the toilet and run down to the creek and wait for the water to come out into the creek, I don't remember it bothering us that we were wading around in a toilet creek, I found what looked like a tomahawk head in that creek, must admit though, the creek did have a weird odor. Thinking back now I would imagine that every house on that creek dumped their sewage into it but it was still fun and the grownups never seemed to be upset about it. My grandfather made a huge swing set with wooden seats for us, the property was full of trees and he would ride his mower with the leaf catcher and then dump them in front of the swings so we could jump off the swing into the pile of leaves. We had gatherings there all the time, I watched the Ed Sullivan show there the night that he had Elvis Presley on for the first time, everyone was laughing at how he wiggled his hips, I guess it was a hit because the young ladies loved seeing him wiggle those hips. We also saw the Beatles on his show, they were introduced as a group from England and it was their first time on American TV, the young girls loved watching them, my cousins were in love, we thought all of them were weird. We had a family gathering one year and my uncle Orn always had a beer in his hand and he offered to let me try it, that was the most awful thing I have ever tasted and to this day I still can stand the stuff. My Great, Great grandmother Tomb was at that gathering, she was really old and seemed really grumpy all of the time. I think that was the year that one of the legs sunk in the dirt and she fell over a 3 foot wall. They took her to the hospital but she was a tough old bird and was home that night. Kids weren't allowed to talk unless they were asked something, you would answer the question and be quiet again. Rules were different back then, everyone was addressed by Mr and Mrs so and so, you didn't dare call any grownup by their first name, if you did you got backhanded and sent to your room to think about what you did. My grandfather was mowing the grass one day when he saw this huge hornets nest hanging in a tree, he didn't want that thing on his property so he took a long stick and started trying to knock it down into the creek, dumb move, they chased him all over that 5 acres until he could get into the house and away from them, we got the call from the hospital that he was okay but he had been stung 50 or 60 times, no one thought he could run that fast, they kept him over night to be on the safe side.
There was a small wooden bridge crossing the creek that we all drove over when we went to their house. One day a UPS truck tried driving over the bridge and got all the way onto the bridge when it gave way and the truck went straight down into the creek. When we went to see it all you could see was the top of the truck,  from a distance it looked like a new bridge until you got closer and saw the doors and windows. They built a new bridge with a weight limit on it, UPS had to go the long way around the creek and come in the back way from then on. We moved from Circular Road to a little town about 5 miles away called Sylvania, Ohio, when my mother was pregnant with my brother Micheal Charles, (Charles after my mom's brother who she loved so very much) we didn't live there very long but my brother was born while we lived there. My mother went in to have him and she had complications, They found that she had an aneurysm in her head that if it broke would have killed her instantly, they told her no more kids.  From there we moved to Maumee, Ohio, I didn't know it then but blacks were not allowed to live there although I think my parents knew.

                                      Our house in Maumee, Ohio (Picture taken in 2010)

I started at Anthony Wayne Elementary, we got our report cards about every 2 or 3 months and the class that did the best got to have Zippy the monkey (stuffed Monkey) to stay in their classroom until the next report period. I remember playing with the swings one day after school, I was trying to make the swing go up and over the top to make the swing higher, they were the kind you see in playgrounds now with the flexible seat with steel holding them to the chain. The swing came back at me and I missed catching it, that steel end hit me square in the lip, there was blood everywhere, all I could think of was how embarrassed I was and kept looking around to see if anyone saw and that my mom and dad were going to kill me. I got some toilet paper out of the school bathroom and stopped the bleeding and went home, I hid it until the next day when my mom saw it, she wasn't that upset and said that it should have gotten stitches but that it didn't look that bad and she would watch it until it healed, not nearly as bad as I thought it would be.

One day while playing in the front yard I stepped on a bee and it stung the bottom of my foot, it really hurt but my mom made it feel better and I continued playing. (more on that later)

My parents got involved in a school fair one year and volunteered to do mule rides, they rented the mule, they dropped it off at my parents house. My dad didn't want to walk that mule all the way to the school, it wasn't that far, we walked about a 1/2 mile to school every day, so he took the back seat out of the car and I can still remember him trying to push that donkey into the backseat of that old car, I can still remember my mom laughing so hard and him telling her to quit laughing and help him, we were all laughing. The mules name was Siesta and he was a great hit at the fair, everyone wanted a ride. We walked both ways to and from the fair that day, it really was a great day.

Jeffrey Scott, Rex Limen Tomb (My dad) and my 

brother Rex Skelton Tomb in Maumee, the 

car in the background is the car my dad tried 

to get siesta the mule into.

Back then pop bottles had a 2 cent deposit on them and it was understood that if we wanted a pop that we would have to find 5 pop bottles and trade them for a pop at the store, we never asked for money to buy a pop from our parents. It was easier that way because if we did ask they would tell us yea no problem but first you need to wash the dishes or take out the garbage or worst yet clean your room. A pop or soda pop back then was only 7 oz  and came in a bottle so there wasn't nearly as much pop in the bottle as there is today. Could be one big reason there are so many heavy kids walking around today. We were lucky if we got a pop 2 or 3 times a week, most people put the pop bottles back into the case so they wouldn't have to pay full price the next time.

When we stayed at my grand mothers house during the day we were allowed to have one Coke out of my grand father's case. He would drink one coke every day after work, he would come home pull one warm  Coke out of the case, open it and tip it upside down and let it flow down his throat never swallowing, it just ran right down, we used to get a kick out of watching him do that.

When I was in third grade I was having trouble with reading so they held me back that year, one day on the way home I was walking up Sacket Street and a guy called to me to come and help him do something, I got up to the house and he invited me in, I should have run out of there screaming but I was in shock. There in front of me was this guy dressed as a woman and he proceeded to show me his pretty pink panties and his pretty bra, than I ran out and ran home and told my mom and dad, they called the police and he was arrested and that was the end of that and we never talked about it again. We had an interesting lady down the street who was in the military and every morning she would blow revelry at six in the morning and every night she would blow taps on that trumpet, I think some people got upset and she was told to stop it in the morning. My friends there were Michael Sass and Tommy Coleman, Tommy Coleman committed suicide a while after we moved to Penna.. After he found his dad in the garage with the car running and later that year he heard a gun shot and found his mom on the kitchen floor dead.

We were climbing a tree one day and Michael Sass fell out of the tree and broke his arm but he was still good at finding pop bottles.

One summer day we went out to my uncle Orn's farm, they grew tomato's for Campbell's Soup Company  and they grew a lot of tomato's. My cousin Ann decide to have a hay fight in the barn, we were throwing hay at each other and all of a sudden I started to itch all over. I had hives all over my body, my Aunt Shirley took me up to the bathroom and filled the tub with hot water and made me get into the tub in front of her. I know that she meant no harm but I had never gotten naked in front of any other woman since I was a baby and yes back then I was bashful about that. Needless to say we didn't go back out to the barn but I did get to ride the tractor while they picked tomato's which was a blast. 

Behind our house was a huge open field, one day towards the end of the summer I found asparagus growing in the field, I ran into the house and asked my mom if that is what it was and if she could cook it up for me, that night I got to eat the asparagus I had found, I still love asparagus.

We had a dog who's name was Snooky, she used to stand out in the snow, very still and listen and then all of a sudden jump and dive into the snow head first and come up with a mouse that was borrowing under the snow. She had long hair and short legs, she couldn't have been more then a foot high on all four legs. One day just before moving to Penna. we were taking a family walk down Sacket St. and Snooky darted out into the street and got hit and killed by a passing car. The driver felt terrible but it wasn't his fault, we were all very upset and buried Snooky in the back yard.  

My dad worked as a printer for a small print shop, he was very good at what he did. He applied for a job with Hartzel Machine Works in Phila, Pa and got the job. He would be working on monotype and Linotype machines, they rebuilt them and then sold them to printing companies all over the east coast. These machines were the old lead type machines, they made the lead type for newspapers and print shops, my dad was really good at working on them, so good in fact that they promoted him to sales.  When he was promoted the Hartzel's invited us to their home for dinner, he was a really cool guy. In his basement was an entire HO train lay out, biggest train layout I had ever seen, we watched those trains until dinner was served. My dad was really good at sales but it took most of his time because he had to do daily and weekly reports, who he saw and if they bought anything. He would go to work at 7 in the morning and come home at 6 at night and go up to his office and spend an hour or two doing his report for the day. He made really good money doing this, I still have one of the pieces he did, it's a piece of type about a quarter inch square with the entire Lords Prayer on the face.  

 

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This is what is imprinted on the front of the type faced.

We moved to King of Prussia, Pa what men I was 9 yrs old. My mom really had a problem with moving because she didn't want to leave her mother and brother but her brother talked to her and assured her that he would take good care of her mom. The new company hired a moving company and we left for Penna. My mom and dad had been going out to Penna. to look at houses for about three months before we finally moved so that when we got there we moved right into to a new house, it was huge compared to what we moved out of. It had 3 large bedrooms and an attic which my dad had finished after we were there for about six months and that became their bedroom. The house cost a whooping $15,000 dollars back then, it had 3 bedrooms not including the attic that my parents had finished. It had a large living room, dining room and a good size den which my dad eventually put a pool table in and a one car garage. My dad constantly complained that we had so much stuff that he couldn't ever get his car in there.

                                 

                                            Mom & Dad's house in King of Prussia, Pa

Right after we moved here I got sick, I had to stay in bed the whole day and that night I got up and ran into the bathroom to throw up, my dad followed me in and I threw up blood and it didn't stop to the point I was starting to pass out. My dad held me up over the toilet until I stopped, I woke up in my bed again. My parents called the doctor, in those days the doctor came to the house and after what my dad told him he came right away. He told them to just let me sleep the night there that it was probably just a blood vessel that burst but that if it happened again take him right to the hospital. Now this is where it gets a little weird, I remember laying there and then all of a sudden I had this feeling of floating in the air. I really don't know how to explain it other then a total feeling of peace and when I looked down I could see myself lying in bed, I saw my mom, dad and the doctor standing at the door to my bedroom. It was the most awesome feeling I've ever had, like floating under water without any cares or worries, it was just an amazing feeling. My mother came back over to check on me and shook me to make sure I was okay and interrupted the dream or whatever it was. I told my aunt Guin about it 20 years ago and she experienced the same thing when she was a kid. She was out in a boat on a lake and fell in the water and almost drowned, she said that it was a feeling that she has never forgotten, that it to was the most amazing feeling she had ever had. I have tried to get that feeling again but I think there is only one way to get there and I'm not ready to go there yet. There are only about 3 people I've ever told this to for fear of sounding a little wacky, but I want people to know about this. I sometimes wish we could talk to the people who have passed just to find out if they had this same feeling.  I wish I could explain it better for you, it's like your soul is completely at peace and your floating with no restrictions. That's pretty close to what I felt that night, I don't know if you can imagine that but it was the most wonderful feeling I've ever had. 

I started school at Belmont Elementary School which was just up the hill about a quarter mile away and we walked to school. I still wasn't very good at reading so they put me into a special reading class and I had to stay after school every night and go to the teachers house every Saturday while I was in 4th, 5th and 6th grades, I hated reading, hated it. I had to go to reading class throughout the summer for 3 years and I never got better at reading, for that matter I'm a little better now but not much. 

We loved it when it snowed, there was a huge hill right next to our house on Colmar Dr. We would walk to the top and sled down the hill and cut the corner wide to make the turn onto Redwood Rd and continue for another hundred feet or so and then walk back up the hill and do that over and over all day long. One winter day when everything was frozen we were throwing the football around. Jack kicked the ball and I ran to get it and decided to kick it back to him. I got myself set up and raised my leg to kick it and found out that I was standing right in the middle of a big patch of ice. I landed flat on my back, we all got a laugh out of that right after I got my wind back. My favorite song back then was "Duke of Earl", we would sing it at night while playing outside.

When I was in I was third grade we did Hiawatha, I was an Indian and danced around a fake camp fire on stage in the school, I don't remember much about that play but I remember practicing my toe heel step all the time.

When I was in fifth grade we put on a play at school (Peter and The Wolf), I tried out for several parts but got to be the grand father since I was the tallest in our class. Someone taught me how an old man walks with a cane all shakey and unsure of the next step, now I know they were right although my problem now is ladders mostly.

 During the summer in Penna. the summers were really hot and humid. In the morning the milkman would come and walk up to the house, put the milk in the milk box and drive down the road to the next house. He would be in the neighborhood until early afternoon when we were out playing and we would stop him to get the extra ice he had after getting rid of most of the milk, we all got a nice piece of ice to cool us down. Back then there was no refrigeration in the truck so they kept the milk cold with ice. During the winter after the milkman put the milk in the milk box, the top on the box would start to rise if it was really cold and you didn't get it in right away. The lids on the milk bottles were paper and the cold would make the cream rise to the top and freeze and the more it froze the higher the lid would get on the box. The cream was great but after we ate the cream once or twice out parents told us that the milk didn't taste the same and they were right because all the good stuff was gone, we ate it. Some of the other people in the neighborhood complained about it to and they didn't have kids so we had to stop doing that but boy was that stuff good and every once in a while we would be questioned about another neighbors milk. Something you might want to ask your grand parents about or if they remember the old milk man. 

The teachers there taught the same class for 3 years and in 4th grade you would get a new teacher for the next three years so I had Mr. Joesph the whole time I was in elementary school, it made me want to pass into 7th grade or Jr High.

About 2 years after we moved to Penna. my mom got a call in the middle of the night, her brother Charles Cannon had been killed in an auto accident, his car slide on some ice into a power pole and broke his neck. We left that morning for Toledo, Ohio, it was about 550 miles and my dad drove all day to get there as fast as he could for my mom's sake. My Uncle Chuck was really good to us, he took us to an abandoned quarry once and told us that there was no bottom to stand on in the water, he gave us life jackets and threw me and my brother Rex in to teach us how to swim, I remember both of us panicking and crying to get out. It was main the idea that there was no bottom and we couldn't stand on anything. We calmed down after awhile and enjoyed floating around in the water but it was still scary to think that there was no bottom.

After that experience my uncle told my mom to take us to the YMCA for a swimming class. Okay I thought, I can do this, so my mom took us to the Y one day and they took us down to the pool where they were having a class at that time. They had a whole bunch of boys sitting on the side of the pool naked at which time I said no way can I do this. There is no way I am going into a pool with a bunch of naked guys to learn anything. Luckily my brother agreed with me and that was that and we went home.

I remember when we lived in Ohio on Hunt St. Uncle Chuck would to bring this huge box of toys at Christmas time, he was a realtor and did very well at it. He married a lady just before we moved to Penna,. my mom didn't like her much but my dad thought she was beautiful and when they visited a year after we moved to Pennsylvania he just hovered around her and my mom hated it.

From our house you could see the Schuylkill River about a mile away just past the rail road tracks. We used to walk down to the rail road tracks that ran along the river and put penny's on the tracks to see how flat they would get and walk down to the river to go fishing. We had a great time down there and always lost track of time. We found our first Playboy Magazine down there which we couldn't stop looking at. At that age I had never seen a woman without a top on, back then they didn't show anything else so I didn't learn what a woman looked like down there until I was 15 and my sister was born. When we finally got home after sunset you could hear all of us getting yelled at or getting the belt for being so late and missing dinner. They didn't save a dinner for us but my mom would always sneak something up to us when my dad wasn't watching.  We got the belt when we did something wrong and made them worry about us but the kids across the street, Robert and John Allen  got the belt every night for no other reason then their dad loved beating them. My dad would fold the belt in half and use it that way but Jim Allen didn't care, he used it like a whip, he was one mean SOB. Every night when Jim Allen got home we could hear the screaming and yelling at their house. Jim Allen got his just deserves though, he contracted Legionnaires disease and was dying in the hospital. He called for his two boys to come and say their goodbyes to him before he died and they told him to go to hell, he never saw them before he died.
 When we were in high school we had a maid that came in once a week to help my mom with the house work, her name was Gertrude, she smelled like Lysol disinfectant, like she took a bath in it, it was an over powering smell. She was always happy and fun to be around except for that smell, it was just so strong.

I went to the doctor one year because they thought I had a planters wort on the bottom of my foot, the doctor gave me a shot right through the middle of that wort which hurt like nothing I had ever experienced and then proceeded to dig it out. He said that he got it all and that I should never have any more problems with it again, bull. I had to have it done again after about three years and it never seemed to go away.

We used to walk down the rail road tracks to what we called the fort along the river. They said that it was an old ice house but it was the neatest place you ever saw, it had high walls made out of river rock and had to be a hundred years old. They said that when the river froze over they would go out and cut large chunks of ice out and store them there so they could sell ice to the people for their refrigerators. There were big trees growing inside and it had no roof but it was a great fort for us. I often wonder if it is still there, I'd love to take a metal detector down there to see what I could find in that old place. I've looked on Goggle Earth but the trees are so over grown there that if is there you can't see it anymore. There was an old barn just down the street from where we lived, one day I was on my bike in front of it and looked down and found an 1870 Indian Head penny, not in the greatest shape but I still have that penny.

When I was about 10 my parents called me into the living room and said that for my birthday we could go do to the pound and I could pick out the dog I wanted. I was so excited, I could hardly wait to get there, once we arrived I checked out all the dogs. There was this one that I found that was great, his name was Mike, he had curly white hair, he was friendly and he was big, about the size of a small Sr Bernard. My parent said no way, he's to big and it would cost a fortune to feed him, they said that I should pick out another dog. I refused, Mike was the perfect dog so they picked out a dog for me and brought it home, I don't remember the dogs name or even if it was male or female. They said that this dog is now your responsibility and I said you got it you take care of it and I refused to even acknowledge the dog. Well the first night we had the dog they let it run through the house, they feed it, played with it and went to bed. The next morning we got up and that dog must of have had a major bowel problem, it had diarrhea and it was everywhere from one end of the house to the other. My dad helped as long as he could before going to work, after he left we all pitched in to help my mom with this really stinky, messy job. The next night they put her in the utility room by the back door and put newspapers down everywhere. The next morning they found that they didn't put down enough newspapers, there was shit everywhere. No one in the house could believe that a dog could go that much and it was the runniest stuff you can imagine, it was terrible. Every time this happened I'd just say if you would have gotten Mike we wouldn't be having this problem with your dog which really pissed off my dad. After about a week of taking it to the vet and talking to the pound they took it back and that was the end of any dogs until my mom got Chocho, a little black cocker spaniel about 6 months later. Chooh was a great little dog she never went anywhere with us and stayed with my mom all the time, she was definitely her dog. 

In Junior High I found that I had no idea how to take notes and when you read slowly you type slowly so typing class was a bomb. I never got past 20 words a minute so my teacher had me stay after school to practice, she could never figure out what the problem was until someone told her that I read slowly then they sent me to after school reading class again. I ditched school all the time, got caught smoking on the bus ramp and got suspended for 3 days and really hated school altogether. I used to ride the bus to Jr High and there was this girl, her name was Betsy Ross, I'm not sure about the last name now, I may be confusing her with a famous person but I know her first name was Betsy. Anyhow she was really cute and I used to look forward to seeing her every day, one day she saw me looking at her and in front of  everyone on the bus she yelled "why do you keep staring at me all the time" I was totally embarrassed, I didn't know what to say so from then on I never looked at her again. I was never a bold kind of guy with the girls and for that matter I really never saw another one that I liked well enough to worry about it.  There were a couple of girls who at the time I thought were gorgeous, one was Cheryl Anderson and the other was Sara Sawyer but I learned from experience not to watch them to much. They dated the football players and the smart guys, I wouldn't have dreamed to ask them for a date for fear of getting laughed at.

I was invited to a birthday party for the girl next store, I really liked her, she was really cute with freckles and a great build, her name was Georgiann Stone. I went to the party, I think my gift for her was a heart shaped locket that I spent my money on it without saying anything to my mom, kind of embarrassing if you know what I mean. We played spin the bottle a game that I had never heard of, you spin the bottle until it points to someone and then you spin it again until it points to a person of the opposite sex and those two get to go into a room all by themselves for 5 minutes. The first spin pointed to me, oh Lord help me, after a couple of more spins it came up with the birthday girl, now I was sweating bullets, I had never in my short life been in a room with a beautiful girl for 5 whole minutes. We went into the room and I kissed her and went for the door, she garbed me by the back of my shirt and said whoa, you call that a kiss? You kiss like your kissing your mom and she proceeded to show me how to kiss, this girl knew how to kiss, I had never experienced a kiss like that, not ever. By the time the 5 minutes were up I wanted another half hour, I was in seventh heaven by the end of that 5 minutes. I couldn't talk to anyone about the party because her brother Jack was one of my best friend at the time. Me, Jack and Jerry did almost everything together, fishing, smashing penny's or having fun on mischief night. She dated a lot of other guys and eventually her family move to a small town in up state New Jersey and I never saw her again. I found her on Facebook a couple of years ago, she had a stroke a couple of years ago and s till has trouble talking but she is still nice to talk to and when I call her she gets real excited and tries to talk real fast and I have to tell her to slow down because I can't understand her, I tell her, we have time to talk so slow down.

My friend Jerry Delia parents were celebrating an anniversary one day and they had shrimp on the barbecue, Jerry offered me one and since I had never had it I tried it, well, he must have sprayed it with a little starter fluid because to this day I remember the taste of that starter fluid whenever I eat shrimp. His mom and dad were really short people, they were Italian and she always made all kinds Italian food, one day I was at his house at lunch time and she had made some small pizza's, they had a little fish right in the middle of the pizza, she said they were anchovies. I ate the whole pizza including the anchovies, wasn't to keen on that, it was really salty. Jerry was also very short, about 5 foot tall and never wanted to date a girl who was taller then he was which made it really hard for him to ever date a girl. He was really good at playing baseball, he played baseball all through high school and always wanted to play pro-ball but I think he always held back because of his height. Sitting here writing about him I remembered that he had a really good laugh and he was always smiling. I got back in touch with him about 25 year ago and found he had never married and lived alone somewhere in Maryland. I asked him for his email address but he wrote back and said that if I couldn't write him a letter to not bother. We lost touch again but I still look for him ever once in a while just to see if he is still alive but from what I've learned he has past on.

In Jr High I had trouble with almost every class except science and math, I looked forward to those two classes. My science teacher was Mrs. Grant, she was young, pretty and I worked my ass off for her, I learned all the chemical abbreviations and each chemicals atomic weight. After we came back from Christmas vacation we found out that Mrs. Grant had gotten the measles and had past on, that was a shock. We got a new teacher that really didn't care about teaching, he would write on the black board before class and then tell us to copy everything he had written and study that for the night and he didn't erase it until the following morning when he filled all the black boards with more and we repeated that until the Friday test on all of it. Math was okay until we got into geometry, I had a little trouble with that and algebra but somehow I pasted 7th, 8th and 9th grades with a lot of homework which I never got completely done. 

When I was in 7th grade I was in the old Jr. high, a two story red brick building, in the basement we had health class. I remember when they announced over the loud speakers that President Kennedy had been assassinated, the whole class went silent for a moment and then some began to cry. It was a very sad day for the country, we watched on tv as he laid in state in the Capitol Building and then the funeral procession, the horse with the boots placed backwards lead the funeral. 

During the summer in eighth grade I wanted a new bike, I talked to my parents and they told me to get a job somewhere and earn the money so I got a part time job at the orchard. That was a fun job and I learned a lot and got my new bike in no time and would ride it to work. I worked on the peach defuzzer, you can't believe how much fuzz there is on peaches. I also learned that peach fuzz really itches when you get it on you, so we would make little balls of it and drop it down girls backs once we went back to school. It was funny to watching them trying to scratch their backs on door jams or ask another girl to scratch it for them. Actually we would ask them if we could scratch it for them but we never had any takers. At the orchard they had a huge cold room that they would keep all the fruit in after they picked it. We watched the owner go in and out of there all day every day, as the day went on he would start to stagger and slur his words by the end of the day. One day in the late afternoon we followed him into the room and saw him climb a ladder that went on top of a small room within the cooler. The next day we checked it out and found that he kept a couple of cases of Rams Head Ale in the cooler and that was why he was plastered by the end of the day. On day while he was out we went in and openned a bottle and took a drink, it still tasted terrible and that was the end of drinking beer when I was younger. I have tried it since, it's really good on a really hot day but I still can't drink more then a half of a can, after that it tastes terrible again.

I also played football for a couple of  years while in Jr. high and got out of reading class until the season was over. When I was 12 my mom got pregnant again, we were really afraid that she would dye because of it but she didn't have any problems though the whole pregnancy, she had to stay on her medications and see the doctor all the time and my brother Christopher Lee was born when I was 13.
Civil Air Patrol

My brother and I joined the Civil Air Patrol, we wore Air Force uniforms at meeting and fatigues on camp outs. We went on one camp out in the middle of the winter, there was about 6 inches of snow on the ground and it was so cold at night that all I could do was shiver. We had to stand guard duty at night for 4 hours and then afterwards go back to a cold sleeping bag but for the most part it was kind of fun hanging out with all the other people. On really cold night we had a camp fire and my feet were so cold that I stuck my jump boots right next to the fire. In no time I felt my foot heating up and my boot had formed a bubble in the soul, the bottom of my foot started to burn. I had to take my boot off for a while to let it cool down, I put it back on but the bubble never went down and I had to wear it until I could afford to buy another pair. We went up in a small single engine air plane and hit a down draft, it like being in an elevator and going down but with no warning. The pilot told us that it happen all the time, we dropped about 100 feet. Another camp out was in the fall and not nearly as cold but we were searching for a young girl who may have been murdered. We walked about 10 feet apart in a straight line looking for a shallow grave or a body under the brush. We checked drainage  on the side of hills, one guy started down and the next guy grabbed his ankles and continued down until there were three guys were in the culvert. Everyone hoped that we wouldn't find her, I don't think any of us had ever seem a dead person other then in a coffin. About a month later she was found in a shallow grave about 10 miles from where we were searching, it was still sad that something like that happened. To raise money for our squadron we had a competition, we had to sell boxes of candy and whoever sold the most got a 25 dollar savings bond. I sold my but off, I went to every house in the area and some more then once, I was competing with two twin brothers who were ordering more candy as fast as I was. I got some extra candy from a couple of guys that were having trouble selling theirs. The time came to decide who won the contest, I sold 160 boxes of candy, the two brothers sold 151 boxes and won the 25 dollar savings bond. One night while taking a break one of the twins pulled out a pack of cigarettes and offered on to both me and my brother. We couldn't stop coughing, it was terrible but we were both smoking within a couple of months. Rex quit until he got out of high school but I continued and regrettably still smoke to this day.

 

When I was about 13 I got this great idea to steal a cigarette out of my dad's pack, he smoked so many he would never know. I started by taking one a day and going down to the creek at the end of the street and sitting on the bridge and smoked it. After a while I was up to 3 a day and I think by than he knew he was missing them but never said a word about it. One day I was sitting on the wall on the bridge and he and my mom came driving by, they didn't stop but now they knew for sure. No one ever said anything and he left his pack of cigarettes out where I could take one whenever I wanted one but until I went into the Navy I never took anymore than three a day. Looking back on it now I wish he had taken off his belt and beaten the living tar out of me, this is the worst habit I have ever had but even now no one seems to care weather I quit or not so I'll probably continue this dumb habit until I die.
When I was 14 she got pregnant again and again everyone was worried for her but no problem and in October my little sister Jennifer Ann was born, my dad finally had a girl. I thought this was great until my parents wanted to go out to dinner and I had to babysit but I did learn and soon other people were asking me to babysit for their kids for money so that one paid off for me. One time I was lying on my bunk bed and I was holding little Jennifer up over my head trying to make her laugh by wiggling her and she spit up all over my face, my brother Rex just about split a gut laughing, last time I did that for a while. I still had a lot of pent up frustration and me and my parent argued all the time about my school work and grades, I could never do good enough in their eyes.

During one summer my mom set me up with the daughter of one of her friends and told me that there can't be any hanky panky because her mother checked for that. I don't think my mother knew that I had no problem with that because I didn't know anything about having sex or hanky panky anyhow and I have always wondered how a mother would check her daughter for that. For that matter, why would a daughter let her mother check her for that, totally beyond me. I took her out to a movie one time, she was very quiet and withdrawn and never talked unless I asked a question, she would answer and not say another word. I saw her a couple of years latter shopping for clothes in JC Penny's and her mother was with her telling her what to buy and what she thought looked good on her. I wanted to walk up to her and tell her to buy what she wanted but her mother was huge and would probably have beaten me to death. 

The high school I went to had an Olympic size pool, I wasn't a very good swimmer but we all had at least one class a semester in swimming. I learned the there are 3 kinds of floaters, diagonal, horizontal and sinkers, I was a sinker. I could lay on the bottom of the pool when everyone else would float to the top and I got really good at it. I enjoyed and still do on occasion swimming under water, I used to be able to swim the length of the pool and back twice without coming up for air which I believe is why my lungs are so big now. I know that they are big because I went to the VA for a chest x-ray and they told me that they are so big that they can't catch both of them on the film so they do one for each side now. I can't hold it like I used to, about 3 and a half minutes but I can still hold it for a minute or so. 

I lived in King of Prussia, Pa back then, they built a new Jr High School across the road from the high school and put in another Olympic size pool there to but the whole thing was 4 feet deep. Everyone thought that was the dumbest thing the school board did, if your going to spend that kind of money on a pool why not make the same as the high schools with a 12 foot end and a 4 foot end.

I was in high school and was invited to go to a dance with a girl, I was kind of bashful back then so the girl had to ask me, her name was Cheryl Smith I believe. I didn't know how to dance so my mom started teaching me the box step, I guess that was what she learned when she was younger but it was a good time with my mom. I stepped on her feet a lot and since she was 5 foot 7 inches, I think she liked the idea of me being taller then her at 6' 1”, it was a fun day. At the dance we never danced the box step but I did learn the twist and the bristol stomp, there was also the swim but I just couldn't get into that one. My favorite song back then was Duke of Earl, my tastes haven't changed to much except I like a lot of different types of music now. 

My brother and I joined the Civil Air Patrol, we wore Air Force uniforms at every meeting. We helped in a couple of searches, one I remember very vividly we were looking for a missing girl and were told to report any areas that looked like mounds of dirt freshly dug up. We got the idea fairly fast that they were looking for a body, we looked down the culverts on the side of the hills. One of us would start down the culvert head first and the next guy would hold the legs of the first guy, there were two guys in the culvert and another holding the legs of the second guy so we could get closer to the bottom to see everything down there. I want to tell you that before we started down those culverts we were all praying that she wasn't down there.

One night while doing nothing at the meeting we were standing outside talking to Calvin and Bruce May. They pulled out a pack of cigarettes and asked if my brother and I would like one. We both said we didn't smoke and they said "it's cool and everyone does it" so we gave into the devil. We coughed and choked but after a couple more we were smokers. I used to steel a cigarette or two out of my dad's pack every day, he smoked so much he never really knew. I'd go down to the creek and sit and smoke, it made me feel a little grown up and very cool. I will remember those guys names for the rest of my life, they got me started on something I have a lot of trouble fighting off.

I've never said anything about this until now but until I found this new habit I had an old habit of sucking my thumb which drove my dad nuts. He bought tons of a product called Thumb, it was a liquid that they put on my thumb while I was sleeping that burned my mouth and for that matter after putting on so much it also made my thumb hurt and crack. I had to hide while we watched TV at night so my dad couldn't see me sucking my thumb. I never did it any place but at home. There was another kid in elementary school who sucked his thumb all the time and the other kids always made fun of him, I always felt so sorry for him, his name was mike. Not sure I should leave this up, your the only person I've ever felt comfortable about telling, no one else knows about this except my younger brother because he was there at the time.

Another time we went on a camp out in the middle of the winter, we set up big tents, one for a mess tent, another for operations and another to sleep in. We had a camp fire at night but it wasn't nearly warn enough so I put my jump boots right next to the fire and the soles got so hot that they bubbled. I had to take them off because they were so hot on the bottom of me foot but when my feet started to get cold I'd put them on for a few minutes just to warm them up. After a while they cooled off but the bubble didn't go away and I had to use them like that for the next two days. Sleeping was unbelievable, it was so cold at night that it was hard to sleep and then in the middle of the night I had to get up and do guard duty for 2 hours, I had to keep walking just to stay warm. That was the longest 3 days of my life and unless I'm forced somehow will never camp out in the middle of winter again.

One summer we had a fund raising campaign to raise money for our unit, we had to sell boxes of candy for 3 bucks a piece. At the end of the campaign there was a 25 dollar savings bond for the person who sold the most boxes. I worked my tail off knocking on doors selling that candy, everyone I talked to was asked if they want a box. The time came to see who sold the most and I out sold one of my friends by two boxes and got the savings bond. 

The big event of the year was a military ball at one of swankiest places in the city. We all had to wear our dress blues, shine our shoes, belt buckles and even the buttons on our dress coats.  I waxed the car and made sure that it was all vacuumed out so that it was as clean as a whistle. We got ribbons for any of the missions we went out on and had to wear those and bring a date. The night before my mom started asking questions about the girl I was taking to the ball, she asked the usual questions, what does she look like and where is she from and is she white which was the only question she really wanted answered after all your going to thing thing with a girl named PearI. Mom thought that she might be black, we all got a good laugh out of that one. She was a quiet girl, not real out going, a little bashful and not sure of herself when it came to dating. The young ladies name was Pearl Pazzolo (not sure of the spelling), she wore a beautiful white long, low cut silky dress, I couldn't help but tell her how beautiful she looked. She was Italian with dark skin, very thin and extremely pretty. When I walked in with her on my arm everyone was watching us, it was so great, one of those nights you just never forget. We danced to almost every song, the slow dances were the best although those were the ones that other guys kept cutting in on me including the Commander, she was the belle of the ball. It was as though she was having the best time of her life, she felt so beautiful and she was just glowing. They served a big spaghetti dinner with meat balls and a salad. She started cutting her spaghetti up and the plate slide off of the table and onto her beautiful white dress in her lap. I jumped up and called the waiter and asked for a towel and tried to wipe as much of it off as I could but the damage was done. I tried to tell her that we could wrap a towel around her waist so we could stay and dance some more but she just wanted to leave. She cried all the way home, I felt so sorry for her, I kept telling her that it was okay and held her all the way home, kissed her good night at her parents door. She never again accepted any of my calls and I never saw her again, I even tried to talk to her mother to find out if I did something that hurt her but her mother told me she was to embarrassed to see me again. Every time I think of that night I still feel so bad for her. It truly was a Cinderella story for a shy, bashful, pretty young lady at the beginning that ended badly for her. She got attention from almost all of the young men who wanted to dance with her and I'm sure that if that didn't happen it would have been the perfect story for her and I really think eventually we would have become much, much closer, to what extent I don't know but she was a really great young lady.

On day I was standing out in the back of the school waiting for the school bus and a couple of the other smokers went to a spot where no one could see us and lite up. I joined them a few minutes later and just as I lite up a teacher came around the corner and busted us all. I remember them calling my mom and dad, waiting for them to get down there was the worst feeling in the world. I knew my dad was going to be really pissed and my mom would be more disappointed then anything, which one was worse I really don't know. When they got there the principal told them and me that according to the rules they had to suspend me for three days. When we got home I found out, my dad took me up to my room and took off his belt and said bend over boy and he let me know in no uncertain terms that he was really, really mad. The next couple of days at home weren't to bad once I got all the assigned chores done that my dad had given me, it was better then school. 

When I got into tenth grade they gave me biology with Mr. Porbon, he was a real stickler and made fun of me because of my reading and told me that I would never get out of High School. 

That year I turned 16 and I wanted to learn to drive but my dad kept putting me off always saying when I think your ready. During the summer I bugged him constantly and one weekend he finally gave in. We went over what everything was, the brakes, the accelerator, turn signals, the whole drill. He got me out on the road and I was doing fine driving around until he took me down a big hill and at the bottom I had to make a left turn. I have never seen my dad turn that shade of white before, I didn't slow down enough and ran the stop sign and took that turn on two wheels, I thought we were both going to dye that day. I was learning in my mothers 1953 Ford convertible with the top down and I think if he could have, he would have jumped out. It took another month or so before he took me out again and I got my drivers license by the end of the summer.

I failed 10th grade and now I was in the same grade as my younger brother Rex, I think I embarrassed him a lot, he was fairly smart and had never failed a grade. After the first report cards came out the principle called in my mom and dad and told that something had to be done, I had basically quit doing anything, I had given up. I was called to the principles office and meant my dad and we went out and got in the car, he wouldn't tell me where we were going. We arrived at the Navy recruiters office and he told me to either sign up or start getting better grades, I signed up. They told me I would see the world, it's an adventure, it's a career opportunity. I left the recruiters office and they took us on a bus to the Phila office for the physical, after we passed the physical they gave us the Oath and then they took us to the airport and we boarded the plane to Great Lakes Boot Camp. While on the plane the stewardess told us that the bar was open and that since we were going into the service we could have whatever we wanted. Oh My Lord, I have never had anything and had no idea what I should try but the guy next to me knew all about it and told me what to order, I think he figured he'd have a little fun with the dumb 17 year old kid. I drank but I don't remember how many but when we got to boot camp I wished I would have never meant anyone on that flight. I was so stinking drunk that I fell down the steps off the plane, got up and they started right in on us, yelling orders which I couldn't follow because they were speaking to fast and on top of that I was beginning to feel sick.

After a little while my stomach was so sick and my head was so dizzy I had trouble standing up, all that fun on the plane was defiantly not worth this. They told us to strip down and get in line, so now you have 100 naked guys stand in line in this huge building with doctors, nurses and corpsmen waiting to see each one of us but first you have to walk through the shot area. They told us that they would be using these guns that shoot the injection into you and not to flinch because if you flinched it would leave a cut in your skin that would need stitches. We walked down this line with a guy on each side of us shooting injections into both arms at once and no I didn't flinch but got about 15 different injections that day and after all those shots I sobered up real quick. They checked us for everything, I never bent over so much in my life so they could check everything. Then they sent us down another line to get our clothes, once we got our clothes we went into a locker room to dress, first time I ever wore boxers shorts, and I have worn them ever since. From there we went to the barber, I don't think they were really barbers because all they did was shave every hair down to the nub. my head came to a point so I looked like a missile. We learned to march a lot, shoot M-16's and M-1's, we had to run everywhere, when we went to breakfast, lunch and dinner at the mess hall we had to run, no one walked unless they were marching. We spent a lot of time in the water, treading water, going to the bottom and rescuing a dummy from the bottom, jumping off a 30 foot deck into the water. We learned how to take off our dungaree pants, tie a knot in the bottom of the legs and fill them up with air by holding both sides and throwing them over your head to use as a flotation device. About mid way through boot camp I started feeling ill and told the Petty officer that I was sick, after two days he finally told me to go to sick bay, I walked in and there were a bunch of guys there standing around waiting to be seen by a doc, there were no chairs so everyone had to stand. I checked in, started to walk across the room and that was the last thing I remembered, I woke up 2 days later lying in a bunk, I stayed there for another 2 days and went back to my barracks and got back into the grove. We graduated right before Christmas and we got 15 days off before I had to report to the Norfolk, Va for a school, assault boat coxswain, basically a small boat that carries troops up to the shore, drops a front gate and lets the troops out and than goes back to the ship for another load.

Chris, Jenny My Mom, Jeff and Brother Rex

1966

 After I completed that 2 week course I signed in on the ship (USS San Marcos LSD 25) they told me that for the time being I would be assigned to the deck crew, I would be chipping paint, painting and doing whatever needed to be done to make the ship look good.

USS San Marcos LSD25

Once on the ship it was up at 5 am and work till sundown with church services on Sunday, not a whole lot of time to sit around, although one night we were sitting out on the deck and we saw a large explosion in the night sky and another one on the ground. We ran in to see what the news had to say about it and found that two transports collided in the air, one crashed and the other made a safe landing. When we left port we would cruise out into the Chesapeake Bay and over the bay bridge tunnels and out into the ocean. When we first got into the ocean the flying fish would come out of the waves, put their wings out and glide for about 30 feet and then go back into the water. It's okay if you don't believe that there are flying fish, no one else does either but that's what I saw. After we got out into the ocean for a while I began to feel sick again, I now know what it is to be sea sick, about the same thing as a bad hang over but it lasts for about 3 days and then you have your sea legs. 

                                            

Jeffrey Scott Tomb

                                 

                                                          Jeff Tomb at 17 years old

One great thing about going out to sea was once we got past the 10 mile limit cigarettes dropped from 25 cent to 10 cent a pack but we couldn't smoke in certain places on the ship because we carried helicopter fuel. I went to Lisbon Portugal, the president of Portugal sent his limo to give us a tour of the city, it was so cool. I meant an American journalist who ripped me off, he said that he would sell my camera and get me a better one, I gave him my camera and never saw him again, I bought a new camera the next day. The biggest problem I had there was that I didn't know any Spanish and I had to go to the bathroom bad, how do you ask someone that doesn't speak any English where the bathroom is, I finally went into a restaurant and figured it out. We had table wine with our dinner, that was terrible, it has no sugar in it at all.

We were in a bar in town and the ladies of the night were lined up at the bar, now you have to remember that I was kind of stupid when it came to women and the only woman I had ever been with was at a party years before. In Lisbon things were a little different, the ladies didn't shave so here are a bunch of really old ugly woman with leg hair worse then mine and all matted down with stockings, to be honest they looked like men with dresses on and I said no thank you.

I had coffee with ouzo a liquor that is very good but you have to watch it because it kicks in all of a sudden and you can't walk right for a while. When we left the port of Lisbon half of the ships crew had jumped ship or gone a-wall, terrible moral aboard our ship. We got into Rota Spain and docked next to a nuclear sub, everything in Rota was so cheap, the camera I bought in Lisbon was about half the price there, kicked myself for that one. We didn't stay there to long and started back for the states, on the way we ran into a hurricane, the wave were coming up over the bow of the ship and when they crashed onto the deck they took the paint off in sheets, the power of those wave was amazing and I had the perfect seat as the port lookout on the side of the ship outside. We had to tie ourselves to the railing so that we wouldn't get washed overboard  by any larger waves. I think the Captain had pity on us and finally let us into the bridge to get out of the rain or maybe he thought he might loss one of us in the waves, not sure, but it sure was nice to get inside. After the hurricane was over the water became like glass, smooth, shiny and not a wave to be seen, so weird after those 50 foot waves. A couple of guys helped me get the scaffolding over the side of the ship so we could scape and repaint the side of the ship, we were doing about 13 knots. I got down on the scaffolding and started chipping some of the paint that was lose and I went a little to far over the edge of a board and slipped, the safety rope was a little to long and I was half way into the water bouncing across the waves. One of the guys on deck heard me yelling for help and pulled me up hand over hand all by himself, he told me that if he hadn't heard me that that little safety rope would have snapped and they would be out looking for me. I started hanging around with Jarvis after that, no one messed with Jarvis, biggest black guy I've ever seen, if someone would start a fight with him he would end the fight. We got back to the states and pulled into port, tied up the ship and a couple of guys asked me if I wanted to go out on the town with them, I said of course, dumb, really dumb. We went to a bar in Norfolk and we drank the night away until a bunch of Marines walked in and one of the sailors said something smart and a fight broke out. No one told me that half way through the fight you were supposed to run so when the shore patrol got there I was still fighting and I found myself in the brig the next morning. I got busted down in rank for 90 days, my pay was dropped back down to 97 dollars a month and I still had a hangover to boot. The next time they asked me to go out with them I said no way, my friend Jarvis overheard me tell them no and asked if I would like to go out with him and a couple of his friends, he told me they didn't go out to get drunk, he went out to have fun, I learned to dance that night, it was a great night. We went out several times again and I danced with the young ladies at the bar and had a drink or two but never got drunk again and always had a great time. It never dawned on me that someone would be offended that I was hanging around with a black guy but we had a lot of southern boys on the ship and very upset that a white guy would be going out with a black guy and one day they cornered me and beat the crap out of me, I wasn't a bad fighter but six to one was just wrong. Jarvis saw what they did to me and cornered the leader somewhere on the ship and paid him back royally. I went on shore leave by myself one day and went to Virginia Beach, I went swimming in the ocean for a while, did a little body surfing and got out and went and laid on the beach. I woke up about 2 hours later and I was in pain, I had to put my uniform back on but my back was so blistered that it was killing me. I got off the bus and went directly to sick bay, They saw my back and admitted me and put some kind of cream on my back and then gave me notice that they were going to court marshal me for destruction of government property, they did and I got busted again, back down to 97 dollars a month.  

Once I got back to the ship we got word that a hurricane was moving up the coast and all the ships were ordered out to sea immediately. We cruised out into the ocean far enough that the hurricane wouldn't bother the ship, we moved to a location in order to do some target practice. We went down and got boxes and boxes of 80mm shells and loaded 4 shells to a clip, 80 mm is one big shell (about 2 feet long, the shell is about a foot long and the projectile is another foot long) one of these clips weighs about 50 pounds and they have to be picked up about shoulder height and loaded into the cannon, you've seen them in war movies, they call them pom pom guns but when they are fired it's anything but a pom, it's more like a bomb going off right next to you. On the way to the location we were going to fire from we dropped off 3 or 4 55 gallon drums that were painted Grey and moved about 500 yards away from them. We started firing at them and missed the first couple of shots and then one hit, wow what an explosion, missed a couple of more times and then hit again. By this time we had been firing about 45 minutes and the Captain shut it down and told the gunners mate to get the 50 cal out and sink the remaining drums. The guy set up the 50 cal and started firing, Jarvis and I weren't really paying attention, we were talking about how cool those cannons were when all of a sudden Jarvis was dead. He saved my life, I just wish I could have saved his. The guy that Jarvis had straightened out was the one chosen to sink the barrels and got even for the beating he got and shot Jarvis with that 50 caliber auto machine gun 15 to 20 times. I went into a deep dark depression that I couldn't control, I really didn't want to live anymore. They sent me to the mainland to talk to a couple of doctors who tried just about everything to get me out of it, every night I relived what happened that day and I couldn't get past it. They discharged me with an Honorable discharge a year and a half after I joined the Navy and the reason on the discharge papers was I couldn't face reality.

After the Navy I moved home for a couple of weeks and got a job and then moved into the YMCA, jobs didn't last long, I was late to work quite often, the night mares wouldn't let up for a long time and I think I took what they told me to heart that I couldn't face reality. I went through about 30 jobs in a year and another 20 the following year.

I got to know a lot of great guys at the Y, I'd get off of work and go back and we would get a pinochle game going and play throughout the evening or until it was time to go to bed. Those guys found out about my past when I would wake up yelling but they were cool about it, a couple of them would sit up and talk for about an hour afterwards. The pinochle game got more and more involved, soon we were playing triple deck with about 12 guys and we had a great time, we would buy Coke a Cola in the 7 oz bottles and add a little whiskey to it, the Y never found out about that. One night I got an awful craving, I couldn't believe it, I was craving anchovies so I went across the street to the local pizza place and ordered a large pizza with anchovies and eat the whole thing by myself, it was great. To this day I love anchovies on my pizza but if I get them on half of the pizza everyone say it spoils the taste of the real of the pizza for them.

One night I went out with a couple of guys I meant, I still remember their last names, Mayberry and Hysick, I was driving and they were in the backseat. I was driving my 53 ford convertible that I bought from my mom. We were cruising through Pottstown when all of a sudden shots rang out but they were coming from the back seat. Mayberry had a blank gun and was firing it at a couple of black guys on a street corner, they were running every which way trying not to get shot. He stopped firing and we left the scene in a hurry. The black guys caught up to me and made me stop the car, they got out and beat the crap out of all of us with bricks. We got back to the Y at about 12 that night, at about 3 AM the cops showed up and arrested all three of us. They took us to the Norristown jail to await a preliminary trial. That was an experience I will never forget, at lunch we got soup with vegetables and hardly no meat but lot of dead cockroaches floating around in it. The jail itself was all stone and had to have been built in the 20's, the bed was a steel sheet and we each got a blanket and a pillow. It was winter and there was no glass in the windows so it was really cold all the time. We got transfered back to the town we committed to crime in and were waiting for the preliminary when a cop came in and said "Mayberry, Hysick, we have another warrent for your arrest for rape" I have never forgotten that day and probably never will. We went in for our preliminary and my dad had hired an attorney for me who went over the testimoney and threaten to press charges again the black guys for assult with a deadly weapon, all charges were dropped. Mayberry and Hysick were transfer back to the Norristown jail and I never saw them again and I never want to. I did learn to pick better friends after that, actually that may be one reason I don't have that many friends now.

While I had a room at the YMCA a guy that was involved in the state rehab system started staying there and got me involved in a program, radio and TV repair in Wilkesbarre PA. They paid a weekly amount to live on and put us up in a hotel downtown, it was a nice place and I walked to the school Monday - Friday from 9AM to 5PM, our weekends and nights were our own to have fun, I liked going out to dinner at White Castle Restaurant, it was just like eating at home, inexpensive meat and potato's, great restaurant. From there to a local bar to dance, have a few drinks with friends and then walk back to the hotel. On Sunday I started going to the Lutheran Church there but decide after a couple of weeks that I would try a couple of different churches, I went to a Catholic Church a couple of times and then to a Synagogue one time on a Saturday morning which lasted almost 4 hours, I really didn't have anything else to do and it was a good experience. Most of the time I tried all the different Christian Churches and since I knew the service so well at the Lutheran Church I usually ended up there. I never went to the Mormon church in Wilkes -Barre and I wish I had now. I decided to get my high school diploma while I was there, I was assigned a tutor, when I went to meet her I knew her, she went to high school with me, she was a little younger but she was one smart cookie and she made me work my tail off but it paid off, I took the test and passed every single subject with flying colors, we were both really happy about that. There was this one girl that I really liked, I thought she was really cute and I would see her almost every day while walking to school. One afternoon while walking home I saw her and she saw me and she stopped and waited for me to catch up with her, we were walking together and before I could introduce myself she came up with a question that shocked me to my core, she asked me if I would like to come up to her place and have sex, I was stupefied, I didn't know what to say, I had no idea how to do that, I had never done that, why would she ask that, I couldn't even answer, I just wanted to ask her out, I just walked away dumbfounded while her and her friends laughed. I dated another girl from Honesdale Pa which was about 90 miles north of Wilkes-Barre, she was a good christian girl and none of that ever came up but in Honesdale they had one movie house and there wasn't much else to do so we went back to her house and sat on the porch swing freezing our butts off until the bus came to take me back, we didn't go out again. 

I graduated from the tech school and moved back down to the Norristown YMCA and landed a job working for a company that rebuilt IBM machines, the pay was good but most of the work was mechanical not electronics which is what I was looking for. I made a good friend while living at the Y, his name was Jimmy Rotts, he was a good friend and we went out to the dance bars a lot to meet girls. He meant a girl from Norristown, her name was Kathy and he went out with her a lot, she would always bring a friend for me to dance with while they danced the night away. I never really dated any of the girls she brought, she had a different taste in girls, they were usually big girls and I've always liked thin women but they were fun and I always liked to dance. Jimmy and Cathy got engaged and eventually got married, Cathy really loved Jimmy and they were doing great, they bought a house and had a great life together. One day Cathy came home unexpectedly and went upstairs and caught Jimmy shooting up, he had been doing drugs the whole time I knew him and before he meant her and I had no idea, it just never dawned on me that he was an addict. Cathy filed for a divorce about a month later and wanted nothing to do with Jimmy ever again. I didn't see Jimmy for a long time after that but heard that he had overdosed and had tried re-hab several times, when I did see him again he was wearing thick glasses and he was really out of it and hard to talk to. I asked were he lived now had he just walked away and I never saw or heard from him again. 

One of my favorite jobs was taking computer tape back and forth between offices for Lee Carpets in Bridgeport, Pa. Yhey gave me a great car and I could take any route I wanted but I had to return the car before going home. I was driving one rainy night down Valley Forge Rd, all of a sudden mail boxes were bouncing off the hood of the car and another car was coming right at me. I turned the steering hard to the right, now I'm going down the road at about 20 mph spinning. I hit the car coming at me first in the front with the front side of my car and spun around and hit him in the back of his car with the back of my car. Apparently I fell asleep at the wheel but I told the cops I slid on a patch of ice. After another year of driving I started getting really bored and cocky, I found a long hill, about a mile and a half long, great hill. When it snowed and the road got covered it became very slippery, so i would go down this hill and part way down I would do a spin, a little scary at first but I got better at it. Eventually I got so good at it that I could throw it into a spin at the top of the hill and do ten spins and still have enough time to stop at the stop sign. I was really hot until one night, I was in the ninth spin and the stop sign was coming up to fast so I tried to pull it out but screwed up and my rear bumper caught the sign pole and the sign came down and sliced the back of the car open like a can opener. Oh crap, how am I going to explain this one away? I found a big phone pole and backed up into it to push the bumper back into place, that worked fairly good but still not right. i took the car back and dropped it off and went home. the next morning I got a call from the company, they wanted to know what happened, i was going to lye and say that i didn't know but I told the truth and they said that it's time you look for other work.

I got a job as a radiographer, we x-rayed tires, parts of sail boats or anything that had caused accidents for insurance companies that were taking companies to court. They sent me to school to learn all about x-raying with an industrial x-ray and isotopes for going out in the field and x-raying air planes that had crashed. I always thought it was dumb x-raying a plane that had crashed, of course it had stress cracks, it crashed. Only had to work with the isotopes once the whole time I was there. I x-rayed some of my personal things like my Cross pen and a radio beside whatever they wanted done. They went out and bought a camera and all the equipment to develop the camera film and told me that I was now a photographer also. We would go out and photograph burned out home where the occupants had died in the fire so they could show where the fire had started. On one they put in a fire alarm that ran on the house current, the fire started in the fuse box and killed all power to the house so the fire alarm never sounded and everyone died in the fire, so always use a battery operated fire alarm. They used to kid me about the x-ray, they used to tell me that they could see me where ever I was in the dark because I glowed from all the radiation.

x-raying with an industrial x-ray and isotopes for going out in the field and x-raying air planes that had crashed. I always thought it was dumb x-raying a plane that had crashed, of course it had stress cracks, it crashed. Only had to work with the isotopes once the whole time I was there. I x-rayed some of my personal things like my Cross pen and a radio beside whatever they wanted done. They went out and bought a camera and all the equipment to develop the camera film and told me that I was now a photographer also. We would go out and photograph burned out home where the occupants had died in the fire so they could show where the fire had started. On one they put in a fire alarm that ran on the house current, the fire started in the fuse box and killed all power to the house so the fire alarm never sounded and everyone died in the fire, so always use a battery operated fire alarm. They used to kid me about the x-ray, they used to tell me that they could see me where ever I was in the dark because I glowed from all the radiation. I wanted a new car but wasn't getting paid very much so I got a scond full time job as a guard in a Sherton Hotel and office building. I worked second shift from 6 -2 am, we were always on call for the hotel, hourly we had to check the offices floor by floor. If we got a call of a fight in the bar or any other problem we had to respond from where ever we were at the time. The people who owned the buildings also owned a bar out in the middle of no where called The Speakeasy and it was a very popular place for the younger crowd. They were having a problem out there with not pulling in enough money at the bar but the booze was going fast. A really pretty middle aged lady came up to me while I was at work one day and she said 'hi” and I said “hi”, she couldn't have been more then 36 or maybe 40 tops but was she pretty. The kind of girl you look at and go why would this beautiful woman ever want anything to do with me let alone talk to me. She continued by telling me her name which I don't remember now but went on “this is all mine, and I need your help, I need you to go out to my other bar and watch the bar tender”. My response was “what's yours” she said the Sherton and the office building, I was talking to the owner, why me? I said no problem, whatever you want. I drove out to The Speakeasy and sat at the bar the whole night and watched the bartender put some money in the till and most of it in his pocket. At the end of the night the owner walked in with the police and asked me what I observed, I told her and the police, they hand cuffed him and took well over a thousand dollars out of his pockets. The owner pressed charges and the police hauled him off to jail, she turned to me said thank you, handed 200 dollars and I went home. About a week later three of the guards were called to the sixth floor of the office building to a large insurance office. There were rows and rows of desks, there had to be 100 desks in that room, 6 across row after row with someone at each one of them. We were called to the rear of the office where a man walked up to us and told us if there is any trouble your to escort that person out of the building by force if necessary. He walked up the middle of the isle pointing at each person, you stay, your fired, your fired, you stay, you stay, your fired. He had no papers in his hands that he was working from but he knew who to fire and who to keep all the way through that office. There were a lot of tears in that office that day but I have never seen anything like that guy, he was amazing. No one got out of hand, they just packed up and left one by one. I kept working two jobs until one day about six months later I got laid off at my first job because they had run out of work and went out of business. I kept the guard job for a while, we always had to run down to the bar to break up fights so it was kind of an exciting job too. One night after work I was invited to go to the bar where I was introduced by a young lady to a flaming jelly bean. You had to be young and naive to be dumb enough to actually do this. You take anisette and blackberry brandy, mix those together and pour a thin layer of 151 rum on top and light it on fire and drink it down, it tastes just like a black jelly bean. By the end of the night I had no eyebrows, really stupid but I had a lot of fun that night. 

I meant a young lady that I enjoyed talking to, on our first date she taught more than I had ever learned before, another very experienced young lady. I was 19, we went out to dinner and saw a movie and I went to kiss her good night and she said let's go back to your apartment, once there, well wow. We continued dating for about a year and I asked her to marry me, she said yes and she moved in with me in another apartment. That wasn't the greatest idea, we had a couple of arguments that almost broke us up and looking back on that time I wish they would have but anyhow it just wasn't the best idea. 

We got married, in 71 at the Catholic Church her mother attended, it is a grand old church, everyone we knew was there. I did have a problem with the idea that in order to get married there I had to sign a pledge to raise my children Catholic but she just told me not to worry about it. It stayed on my mind for a long time after that. 

Jeff & Marilyn's Wedding

The Wedding Party

My sister Jenny Tomb, Chris Klish, Cathy Mentz, Marilyn &

Jeff Tomb, my brother Rex Tomb, Jerry Delia, and my brother Chris Tomb

We left the church and went to the Hyatt in King of Prussia where my parents got us a room for the night, they thought we should start our honey moon the day after the wedding. We drove south down to Virginia Beach and stayed in a motel there for about a week and played in the ocean. From there we drove south a little and then back north up Sky Line Drive, we saw lots of old hill billy cabins in West Virginia. We stopped at a mall in Virginia, we were listening to the radio when they announced that they were giving away tickets to a Micheal Jackson concert that night. I saw the guy in the mall and started walking towards him  to get the tickets, I was about ten feet away when someone else ran up to him and got the tickets, I should have ran. 

We did have a lot of fun together, we smoked a lot of pot and went out drinking and dancing, a trip to Arizona and bought 5 acres of land on Shea Blvd which is now Scottsdale. 

I went to the dentist one time for some oral surgery which meant she had to be there to drive me home. I went into the office and sat down in the chair and he explained what he was going to do and told me that he would be using a gas and he would put head phones on me so I could listen to music while I was under. This sounded like a great idea, I never liked the sound of that drill and it might be relaxing. All started well until I started to dream the wrong dream, I couldn't wake up or get away from it, I was stuck and there was no way out. Apparently I let out a blood curdling scream, my wife came running in and when I woke up the doctor was standing in the corner of the room scared that I was going to hurt him. I told him what had happened not going into a lot of detail when my wife cut in and told him a short version of what she used to put up with at least once or twice a week. He made another appointment for the following week and we left vowing never to use the gas again. I really think he canceled the rest of his appointments and went to the bar for the rest of the day.    

We also had a pet skunk by the name of poppy and when that one dyed we got another one we called Thumper and believe me, when you are walking a skunk through Valley Forge Park people notice and ask some really dumb questions. Aren't you afraid it will spray you?  I don't know, we just caught it running across the grass. They are really cool pets, they go in a litter box like a cat but they hibernate during the winter under the bed and when they finally wake up they are a little grumpy for a while, Hmm kind of like me in the morning. Marilyn was an only child and very close to her mom, her father had passed on a couple of years before I meant her. The purchase of the land in Scottsdale was the beginning of our undoing, I wanted to move out here then but she wouldn't leave her mom but I continued to harp on it which drove a wedge between us. She meant a guy at work and would talk to him about what was happening at home and she became more and more distant from me. One night she told  me about him and how she felt and we discussed it very rationally, I was actually very proud of myself for the way I handled that situation. After a couple of days though I became jealous and started acting like an idiot, I was 23 now and acting like I was 5, and became very belligerent all the time which made the situation much worse. She moved out one day while I was at work and went to live with her mom, I came home and found out that I was alone, her mom told her that she never liked me and that she should get a divorce and that is exactly what she did. When my dad got sick back in 92 I went back to visit him in the hospital, I called her and set up a meeting. We meant at a small restaurant near her home and talked for almost an hour, we just kind of caught up with what each of us had been doing after all those years and shook hand and departed. She called me the next day and told me that the meeting brought all kinds of bad memories back and that she never wanted me to call her again and hung up. Before our meeting I used to call her every ten years and after the meeting I've never talked to her again. This is the first time I've ever said or written about this to anyone.  I did learn from my brother in law that she started going to a Christian church that he went to that after her mother past she finally re-married again after about 30 years, her mother was very controlling.

After the divorce I went through another bunch of jobs, a couple as a district manager for different newspapers, a sales job for a janitorial company. I sold a dairy two complete restrooms, one for the men and one for women, took the order back to the company and they told me I was done working for them, I never received my commission on the order, it would have been 2 – 3 thousand dollars but I found out later that that's how they operated. Hire someone to go out and do the running and when the end of the month came and it was time to pay the commission they'd just fire them and screw them out of the money.

I didn't go out with anyone for about a year and continued to wear my wedding ring the whole time, My mom suggested that I should take a first aid course because the local ambulance company was advertising for volunteers so I took a first aid class at a local hospital and joined an volunteer police ambulance company. We ran with the police dept and used their radio system, I worked 12 hour shifts about 4 days a week. I started out working with an old man and an old lady, her name was Mrs Brownlie but we used to call them Barfsky and Crotch because they would load the patient into the back of the ambulance and then get into the front and haul ass to the hospital both in the front seat. I took the EMT course at the college and started working with other EMT's and we changed the way things were done in that someone was always in the back with the patient.

We all worked as teams, one of us would drive while two stayed in the back with the patient and we all got to know each other really well and all of the police officers also, it was a good time. When something happened to someone in the group we all pulled together to cover for them so that no one would be short handed. One of the ladies had two very pretty young daughters that would come in and visit all the time, they were really good kids. One day one of them was walking through the park and got pulled into the bushes and was raped, we all felt really bad for her, the police were called and a suspect was found really fast and the daughter identified him and he was busted.

I was on duty one Sunday morning with a police officer, George Horvath, we got a call and the woman said she couldn't wake up her husband, at that time we had an old Cadillac ambulance that weighed around 8000 pounds, George got in the drivers seat and I got in the passenger side, I was so scared, George was doing 100 mph and not even slowing down for traffic lights, if someone would have pulled out we would have gone through them. I did this for another 2 years and then went back to school to become a paramedic, once I became a paramedic it was great, there was so much more we could do to save lives. Of course there were times that you just couldn't help people, we had a call for a man on fire, he poured gas all over himself and lite a match, if I would have known about the egg thing then I might have tried it, just kidding. We had a lot of bad calls too, we had a police officer who wrapped his patrol car around a tree and was killed instantly, it took 3 hours to get him out of that mess. We had lots of gun shot wounds because most people have no idea how to handle a gun. 

We had a lot of accidents involving cars and motorcycles, that may be why motorcycles scare me so much, I have a friend who had an accident a year ago on a scooter and I believe that the Lord or an angel was with him that day because no amount of luck could have saved him from the pictures I saw.

We had a car accident involving a VW beetle, he mast have been going 100 mph when he hit a bridge abutment, they are made of concrete and don't move, his entire body was on the floor under the steering wheel, every bone in his body was shattered, he was the same age as me exactly right down to the same birthday. Another one was a motorcycle accident and the kid slide across the road and slit his neck and cut the artery, I had to reach into his neck with my fingers and pinch off the artery so he wouldn't bleed to death, he lived to ride again.

I wasn't going to add this one but it was one that has bothered me for years now and I have never told anyone about it, Linda Gallagher. We got the call for an over dose about 3 on a Sunday afternoon, we got to the apartment and her mother directed us to her room, she was a 21 year old girl who was trying to kill herself and took a bunch of pills. Her breathing was labored and her pulse was thready, she was in and out of consciousness and seemed to be going fast, I gathered up the pill bottles and put her on the stretcher and got her into the ambulance. My partner got into the back with her and I got behind the wheel and called for clearance to the hospital (all roads blocked by police to get there faster) My partner was losing her and instead of pulling over to assist I kept driving. I could have requested an officer to meet us to take over driving while I assisted my partner and start CPR, it was a total mess up on my part and as a result Linda dyed on the way to the hospital and I still feel that I could have saved her, it was poor judgment on my part.

I got a job for the summer of 1976 the Bicentennial in Valley Forge Park as a paramedic on a hospital ambulance stationed in the park, great job, we had two calls all summer long. The first one was a man pinned under a crane, we got there and the guy wasn't pinned any more but he was losing blood fast, I stopped the bleeding, called the hospital for orders, they told me to apply the MAST pants and start an IV and transport him code 3 to the hospital. The second one was stupid, a kid fell down 3 step and was crying and said he was in a lot of pain, I checked to see if he had any broken bones which was weird because every time I touched his leg and his hips he yelled louder. We transported him to the hospital code 1, I thought he was just scared and embarrassed and he was, nothing wrong with him except a little embarrassment.

The call that ended it for me was a call that I will never forget either, we got the call as several cars on fire at the entrance to the turnpike. We arrived at the scene and found that a tractor trail had lost it's brakes on a Friday night at rush hour and plowed into the back of the cars at about 60 mph, there were about 6 cars were on fire and the smell of burning flesh permeated the air, we pulled out several people from the cars that didn't catch fire but once the fire dept put the car fires out we found adults and kids that were burned to death, I think just about every fireman and all the ambulance personal were had tears in their eyes as we pulled those people out of those burnt cars, it was the most terrible scene I was ever on and I quit the following day.*

I started dating a young girl there at the park, she worked in the concession stand, I think her name was Elizabeth but I'm not sure about that anymore which is weird because I really liked her. Elizabeth was engaged to a guy in a military school in the mid west but I think she just wanted one last fling before she got married and boy did we have a fling. Elizabeth had a friend named Helen and she was in love with me, she would show up at my apartment all hours of the night, I finally had to tell her that I was interested in her friend only, I was lying through my teeth, actually I had meant another young lady who was a kindergarten teacher at a local school, she was very pretty and all she wanted to do was be with me all the time and I mean all the time. No matter were I went she would show up and sit down next to me, I couldn't even go to my parents house, when I came out to go home she was waiting in her car for me. I tried to let her down easily but she would ignore everything I said and show up at the apartment the next day, I felt like she had bugged my car or my clothes, she was always there. I finally did something that I have regretted for a long time but it did the trick, I told her I didn't want to see her anymore because she was to easy and I know that that really hurt her but I was at wits end and I didn't date anyone after that for about a year. So, now you know that there is a mean side of me but I do care about other peoples feelings and I hated myself for a long time after that. 

About this time I landed a new job as an assistant warehouse manager working for A. Duie Pyle Warehouses & Trucking Company. We all had particular accounts that we kept track of and kept an inventory of their product at the warehouse. One of my accounts was Dupont films, huge rolls of plastic film each weighing in at about 5 - 6 hundred pounds and we kept track of it to the tenth of a pound. Each roll had a number on it and when called to ship it we would load the trucks with the rolls they wanted and ship them all over the country. Once in a while the buyer needed them right away so we had to over night the shipment by air freight. There was one young lady there who had worked there for a while who constantly argued with me, apparently she thought that the job I had should have been hers. Connie would do everything possible to screw up my bookkeeping on my accounts and then run to the warehouse manager and tell him that I screwed up. When I decided that we were going to move to Arizona they begged me to stay because they knew they would have no choice but to give her the job. She made everyone who worked there miserable, she was constantly telling the boss which dock workers to fire, I told them before leaving that they needed to find a way to get rid of her, she got my job, I felt sorry for my boss. 

I got back into going out to the bar and dancing, I never went to meet anyone in particular, I just enjoyed having a couple of drinks, asking a girl to dance and dancing the night away. One night I went to a local bar and saw this really cute girl and asked her to dance, she said that she didn't know how to dance and didn't want to learn so I asked the girl sitting across from her and we dance all night together. The following week we went out to dinner and then to a movie and than back to my apartment. then I took her home which was about an hour drive. That was the night that she found out that I had a room mate. I advertised for a room mate to help with paying the rent, a young lady answered the ad and said that she had no problem living with a guy and moved in. I had a two bedroom apartment so there were no problems, she did her thing and I did mine. The night my wife came home with me I introduced them to each other and everything seemed fine.  Then I took her home which was about an hour drive, I meant her dad, he looked at me and didn't have much to say, just sat back down and watched TV again, I left and went back to my place. The girl who lived with me decided that it was time to move out and within a couple of days she was gone. We did not have any kind of a relationship at all, she made her own dinners and I made mine. I was usually out when she got home and we never did get close in any way, it was strictly platonic but somehow I've always felt that I hurt her in some way. To this day my wife still has her doubts what I told her about that young lady. I went to my parents house and talked to my dad, he said to me what is there to think about, you got her pregnant, you need to marry her, no if's, and's or buts, get used to it and set a date together and get married and that is exactly what we did. We got married August 26^th, 1978 at the Parksburg Christian church, my brother Micheal took the pictures and my brother Chris was the best man, we had a reception afterwards at her dad's house, it was a great time. 

Susan walking down the isle with her dad.

                                      

                                                      Jeff & Susan getting married

                               

                                             Wedding party, my brother Micheal, Susan,

                                                          Jeff and Susan's friend Kathy

                                        My dad, Susan's Aunt Myrtle, Susan, Jeff, my mom 
                                         and Susan's dad  (Pictures like this have a lot more
                                         meaning to me now that both of my parents are gone.)

Had to show this one, it's one of my favorites

She started to smash it in my face so I did it to her,

I thought it would be a bad luck thing, guess not.

During the time we were dating she told me that she really wanted to move out west so after we got married we made plans to move, the day came to pack the trailer up and she wanted to take everything in the world but it wouldn't fit so I had to unpack the trailer and start over. After I unpacked it for the third time I was getting frustrated and I said it just won't fit and she started crying and my mom stepped in and said you make it fit and you don't make her cry anymore, my mom was really pissed at me for making her cry and I know that because when she was mad at me she would always say Jeffrey Scott Tomb you apologize to her right now. oww, mom's mad at you. That day after my mom yelled at me Susan got her way on just about everything and if I said no, Susan would say I'll tell your mom if you don't do what I want, my mom was short (5' 7") but you didn't cross her and Susan knew that and my mom was on her side that day. We pulled out after I repacked again finally with my mom's blessing and went south towards Florida, we stopped at her dad's house to say goodbye to all of her brother and sisters and  then we stopped in Washington to see my brother and headed out to Florida. It took us a couple of days to get there, we were just taking our time and enjoying the trip. We stopped at Virginia Beach and watched and swam in the ocean for a while and then continued, we tried to drive as close to the ocean as possible but most of the time we were inland a little. We stayed in Florida for a couple of days, we went to Disney world one day and then on to Cape Kennedy and saw a lot of Florida before we left. 

 We left Florida and went up towards New Orleans and the temperature dropped like a rock, we had the heater on full blast and we were freezing, I had made a twin size bed in the back of the van so if Susan got tired on the trip she could lay down while I drove. She was all bundled up and was still cold, we found out the next day that the temperature dropped throughout the south and froze a lot of orange groves in Florida. We went though Texas from one end to the other, that is the longest, most boring state I have ever driven until about the end when we came across all the religious statues, that was amazing. We drove into New Mexico and stopped at a little roadside stand and bought some really nice crystals  which I have since given away and than on to Phoenix where we stayed with Susan's cousin for about two weeks while we looked around the state for a place to settle. Upon driving into Phoenix I said I couldn't believe how big Phoenix had gotten, in 1971 there were 4 separate towns, Phoenix, Tempe, Scottsdale and Glendale.  Now it was just one huge city and I said we may as well move back to Philadelphia. We went to Tucson but decided we didn't like that town because it just seemed dirty, Yuma was to hot, Flagstaff to cold and we knew Phoenix was way to big, we drove into Dewey and there was a light covering of snow and the temperature wasn't bad so we rented a little apartment in the middle of the valley, we weren't very smart back then, we didn't look at jobs and we should have looked at the average temp during the winter. That little gull winged apartment on Preston Dr. with big single pane sliding glass doors had hardly no insulation at all. About two weeks after we moved in the temp dropped to 10 to 20 degrees and we were freezing our butts off, the heat didn't work half the time but we got really close that winter and stayed close just to stay half way warm. During the day when the sun was out it wasn't to bad, the sun warmed the place up but at night it was terrible and to make it worse I had gotten a job at the Circle K in Mayer from 3 -11 so Susan had no one to keep her warm until I got home at 11. Tabatha was born on March 4^th 1979 at the hospital in Prescott, I was in the delivery room with Susan when she was born, when Tabatha crowned she had the blackest hair I have ever seen, I asked Susan afterwards who's baby is this anyhow, she said that it runs in the family that way. She lost most of the black hair within a month and it came in dirty blond. Susan and Tabatha stayed in that cold apartment all bundled up until I got home from work. We stayed there until the summer when we found a mobile home on Ranger Rd for about the same rent but we had to heat it with propane and at the time we didn't have a lot of extra money so when it got close to or empty we had to come up with the money to fill it and Circle K didn't pay that much. Circle K offered me a job as store manager with no increase in pay and longer hours, I said I don't think so and they said then we don't need you anymore and I left. I went to the unemployment office and Circle K had said that I quit so we fought that and after about 4 weeks of he said you said I won but my unemployment would be coming from Penna. and might take a couple of days. After taxes I was bringing home approx. 110 a week at Circle K, we got our first unemployment check and almost fell over, I got a raise, I was getting 150 dollars a week through Penna and we got about six checks all at once. My wife Susan has always been a stickler about paying the bills on time so we were paid up totally and had a full tank of propane for the winter before I could take her out to dinner a couple of days later. Susan picked up a job at Super X Drug Store in Prescott which really help our standard of living, she worked there for about 3 years. Her boss David Nelson and his wife Cindy lived next door to us, the extra money really came in handy. We were at the insurance office getting insurance for our car and the I started talking to them about getting into insurance, I went to school to get past the insurance test and pasted it for home and auto, and went back to his office with my license in hand, he told me that I should start by going out and knocking on doors to get new clients which I did but found that this was not a way to bring in money so I got another job working for Hellman Bros. Cabinets in the same shop that we are doing screen printing now. While doing the door-to-door insurance sales I meant a nice young couple, Gary & Christine, they were my age and we got along famously, we went out to dinner together, they are Tabatha's God Parents. Gary helped me build my first house and we smoked pot while working on the roof one day, we joined the volunteer fire dept together, yes I did it again, I told myself that it was different here and it was a fire department not an ambulance company. We had a lot of fun together and ran a lot of calls together, Gary got on with the Prescott Fire Dept full time while I continued to work at better bilt. The insurance never panned out and I just let it go by the wayside. My job was working on building the Better Bilt Paint line for a company out of Michigan, my bosses name was Lee Jockheck, kind of a fun job because I learned so much there, how to run a huge fork lift, a little welding and a lot of putting beams together and walking on them a couple of stories high, I was never afraid of heights. I wore a pager so that when we got a fire call we responded. When that job ended I went to work for Better Bilt and worked my way up to line supervisor, we decided to have another child because things were gong so well for us at that time. Susan never had any trouble getting pregnant that's why we had to be very careful about fooling around, I didn't want her on birth control pills because of the dangers and also because she has a history of cancer in her family. Her mom died the year before I meant her from cancer.

During this period we moved from our rental to a little mobile on Queen St, the owner was extremely nice and rented it to us with the option to buy which meant that half the rent went to the down payment.

 At this time I was working for Better Bilt Aluminum as a line leader on a storm door line. We had some money saved up and were looking for a way to buy or build a house. We found out about a company that sold kit homes and looked into it and at the time thought it might be the way to go so we bought a nice piece of property over on Lobo Way in unit 20. We bought the land for 5000 dollars and paid cash for most of it but had to put 1500 on a credit card for it. We ordered the house we wanted (3 bedroom, two bath, two car garage) for about 45,000 dollars, the company we bought the kit through financed it and we paid for it monthly. We had a company come out and help us with dig the footings and the foundation and got them paid and the day after we finished the house arrived on a huge semi. I never knew that a house would have so much lumber, everything was there, doors, roofing all on one very well loaded truck. We unloaded everything putting it piles as to what went up first and followed suit around the foundation. We started on the walls first and got all of them up and then started on the interior walls. Susan helped as much as she could but now she was pregnant so she had her limits. She did do a lot of the nailing and measuring and helped wherever she could, her pregnancy didn't slow her down much at all, I think I have a picture somewhere of her sitting on one of the rafters nailing something. Once we squared everything up we put plywood up on the corners to keep the outside walls plum. Then it was time for the rafter and the trusses, we had to build the trusses out of two by eights, that was no fun task holding them up and trying to nail them together on each side. Once we got all the trusses up I had Susan stand the plywood up on end and lift it up a little so I could get a hold of it and pull it up on the roof and nail it down. This was a 1200 square foot house so it took a lot of plywood about three days of doing just that. Once we got that job done we had to roof it fairly quick because ir was getting colder and winter was coming on. I had to take each bundle of shingles up the ladder and place them on the peak of the roof and go back down and get another bundle. Do that about 30 time and when the day is over your done. It took a couple of days to do the roof, Susan got up there with me and handed me the shingles and I nailed them on which made it go fairly fast. We got the windows at Better Bilt because we could get them cheaper because I worked there. Money was getting a little tight so we couldn't afford all of them but put the main one in, there were two in the back that we covered with siding. Now it was all sided, roofed and the doors were on and we were tired and broke. When we got some money we would buy a roll of wire and maybe some electrical boxes to wire the house with, I will never forget how expensive the wire for the stove was. Like I said earlier I was working at Better Bilt durning the day and working on the house at night and weekends. On day while I was at work one of the ladies was working on a press and reached in to pull out a piece of metal and it came down and cut her fingers off. They rushed her to the hospital but since the fingers were crushed they couldn't reattach them. OSHA came right in and started talking to people about the accident. The company had pulled the guard off of the machine so they could get more production off the particular machine and the guard had been off for about a month. My boss called me into the office and told me that I needed to lye to them and tell them that the guard was on the machine. I said I wasn't going to do that because I was against taking the guard off in the first place and told them this was what might happen and that I was going to tell the truth and that's what I did. I found out a day later from the girls friend that they were trying to get out of paying workmen comp by saying she didn't follow the rules of operation. From what I was told and what I told OSHA made the case for the girl with no fingers and the company got a hefty fine out of it to boot. From that day on my name was mud, first they demoted me to be a saw operator and when I didn't quit they moved me to a production job and stayed on my butt yelling at me to go faster. I have to admit I got sick of it after a couple of weeks and quit. Susan got a job at a drug store in town and I became a stay at home dad for a while. Susan didn't make as much and we were getting further and further behind on the bills until one day the company that sold us the house served us with notice that they were foreclosing on the house. I looked all over for a job, I even went down to Phoenix looking but couldn't find work anywhere and they took the house back. To this day I blame myself for that, that was a terrible feeling losing that house and seeing the disappointment on Susan's face. We still to this day take a drive over there to see it and imagine how much further ahead we would be if I had just lied the told them that the guard was on the machine but at the time I couldn't do that and I don't think I could do it if it happened again today.

After a couple of years we exercised the option and bought the tiny mobile, it was a tiny mobile with one bedroom. It was very tight with two adults, a child and one on the way.

During the pregnancy Susan started having asthma problems and she used the medicine she had gotten years before but it didn't help and her lips and finger nails started turning blue. I called Gary who was taking paramedic training at the time and asked him what he thought, we both agreed that it was time to go see the doctor, I thought I was going to loss both of them, we took her to her doctor in town and he told us that there was nothing he could do without harming the baby so I took her down to the Cordes Junction Medical Clinic, the physicians assistant took one look at her and said that if we don't do something soon we're going to loss both of them. Susan's lips were totally blue, her finger nails were blue and she was having trouble breathing. He called the hospital in Phoenix and they ordered a shot of  epinephrine, we waited for about an hour but she was still about the same so the doc in Phoenix ordered another one and we waited and within 15 minutes you could see she was breathing easier and her lips and nails were getting their color back. We didn't have insurance for this baby but we had gotten a new doctor and he told us he would deliver the baby when the time came and he did in his office in Dewey, AZ.  The delivery of Jeremiah Jeffrey Tomb cost us all of 600 dollars total.

After Jeremiah was born we decided that I should get a vasectomy so we wouldn't have to go through that again. Susan made an appointment with Planned Parenthood in Phoenix for a couple of days later. We went down on the appointed day and were in the waiting room when the doctor came in and asked if I would mind if some students observed the procedure, I said I was okay with that, I figure that a couple of interns would be looking on, wrong. I got all shaved and prepped and in walks about 15 young pretty girls who were going to nursing school. I was not ready for that at all but I don't think there was a way to be ready for that anyway. Now I am lying on this table with nothing on from the waist down with 15 girls giggling and pointing and they weren't the only ones pointing. The doctor walked in and asked if everything was okay and I really didn't know how to respond to that so I just said yes. he said these young ladies are from the nursing school, you should try to settle down a little, (easier said then done) there's nothing to get excited about. I was sore for about a week afterward and we weren't supposed to fool around for that whole time which I really didn't mind.

Better Bilt hired a new guy that I trained who eventually took my over my job and than went on to become plant manager. I never got that job back and younger more aggressive people got the supervisor jobs, one day one of the ladies on one of the presses had her fingers cut off because they had taken off the guard on the press, OSHA came in and the supervisors told us to lye about the guard being taken off and I said no way, you screwed up so you could put out more product now deal with it, they also wanted to get out of paying any damages to the lady. When OSHA came in they sent me in with a supervisor that tried to make it sound as though I was lying about every question they asked, then the others went in and told the truth because they knew I had told the truth and they also wanted to backup the lady who lost her fingers. The company pushed all of us out by standing over us and telling us we were to slow and to pick up the pace, I quit a couple of days later

The worst part about quitting was that we were building a kit home on Lobo Way in Prescott Valley and we were making payments on it, with no job there were no payments and we had to let it go. We lost the land, the house which was just about done except for the drywall, I can still remember Tabatha riding her tricycle around in the house.

I finally picked a job working for the first cable company in the area, I dug trenches and buried cable all over Prescott Valley, I became an installer and learned to climb telephone poles, back then most of the installs were aerial. Cable One bought that company out and put me to work in Yavapai Hills burying cable through the easements. most of the work was done with trenchers except when we got to areas were telephone wires were going into the house and then we had to hand dig to get past the wires. We cut so many phone wires that the phone people taught us how to fix their lines. I got to the point that they put me in charge of a couple of different crews there, we were working on a hill one day when we found a 4" pipe about 3' underground, there wasn't supposed to be any piping in the area we were digging in so we call for the Yavapai Hills maintenance crew and asked them, they said that must just be an old piece of pipe that got buried there and just cut it and don't worry about it. We broke a hole in the top of the pipe and found some water in it and about 30 seconds later there was a geyser of sewage about 30 feet in the air. We had to do a patch job quick because the sewer pump came on about every 10 minutes, the maintenance guys had no idea that that pipe was there.

I was having trouble with my foot again while working here and started walking on the side of my foot so as not to aggravate that growth on the bottom of my foot, I finally went to a foot doctor and he said that it's a planter wort, I told him that I had that cut out years before and he said they sometimes grow back. I said that there is something else in there and asked if he would cut it out, he said no, it's a wort. I went to another doctor in town and asked the same thing and he also declined. I went to the last foot doctor in town, Dr. Knockle and told him that there is something in there that needs to come out, he made me sign a consent form saying that I wanted him to do this, he numbed the area and made an incision through the inflammation about a half inch deep and found an object that was about a 1/16th on an inch long and thin, put in a bottle and sewed my foot up. The lab sent me the results, they weren't sure exactly but it had all the ear marks of a bee stinger and they couldn't explain how it had gotten that deep.  Apparently my mother never got that bee stinger out of my foot and it work itself deep into my foot. The doctor said that that was totally possible because if you get something in your foot and continue walking on it it will be pushed in deeper and deeper with every foot step. After walking on the side of my foot for so long my toes and ankle had become turned and now that the problem is gone and has been gone for about 20 years my foot is still angled but the problem has never reoccurred.

Another time we were trying to get the last leg of a run done and we were waiting for Blue Stake to come out and let us know where the phone cables were. We had called a couple of days before and my boss said that if they can't do their job to bad, just go ahead and get that line in. I told the trencher operator to go for it, the minute he got the stinger into the ground all these wires started coming up, never saw so many wires in one place in my life. We cut a 300 pair right in half, then the phone company was out there fast, they had to splice all those wires back together, sure didn't make my day either. While I was working on this job Christine got pregnant and had their first baby while Gary was in Paramedic school about two years later Christine was pregnant again, Gary was at work when the time came to have the baby during a bad snow storm, Gary rushed home and since Christine wasn't planning on having the baby and Gary was at work she had locked all the windows and doors. Gary watched as she had her baby on the bedroom floor all by herself through the bedroom window. Now they were a family of four and I think Christine was done having kids for a while, when Zach the youngest started kindergarten Christine got a job collecting pollen with a guy in Mayer. All was well with them for a while, bringing home two pay checks and paying all their bills of until a friend came to visit for the weekend from Sedona. Christine confided in her friend that she had had an affair with her boss, her friend wanted her to tell her husband but Christine said no way, he would divorce her for that, her friend said no way, he will forgive you and everything would be fine. Christine said no and begged her friend not to say anything, the friend told her husband and he kicked her out of the house that day in front of her friends and then told them to leave and never come back. Christine left and moved into another house not far away but Gary kept the kids, I couldn't believe what had happened when Gary told me the story, I tried to tell him that maybe he should just sit down and talk to her and try to straighten things out but he had made up his mind and Christine was out of there, period. Gary kept the kids and wouldn't allow her to see them until they were old enough to make the decision for themselves. Gary married another girl about 4 years later, I think she was pregnant when they were married, she had a little girl and before we knew it they were divorced but this lady went and got the best lawyer in town and took him to the cleaners, he ended up paying for her lawyer and child support of 900 dollars a month, later we found out that she had done the same thing to her first two husbands. She made it very obvious that she didn't like us and we knew something was up with her because they were always fighting whenever we went over to see them, that's when we kinda grew apart. I introduced Gary to a young lady that worked for Safeway, Farland was very nice and we always got along really good, just a good person to talk to. Gary took her out for about a year and they got married, Farland couldn't have anymore kids due to complication with her last one. Now I was working as a fire dispatcher which Susan loved because I was gone every other day (24 hours) for four days and then I'd get 4 days off and back to work for 4 shifts every other day and then get 6 days off, she like having the time alone. 

Around this time they were still doing the hot air balloons during Prescott Valley Days, we knew one of the pilots and helped him get his balloon out and ready to go. He offered us a ride so my son Jeremiah and I went for a ride in a hot air balloon. It's the most amazing feeling, it's like your standing still and the earth is leaving you, there's no feeling of movement, everyone should try it at least once in their life.

We sold the one bedroom mobile on Queen St and bought the 3 bedroom house on Jester Circle while working for the Fire Dept..*

I worked for the fire dept for about 5 years and was still a volunteer fire fighter, we had some huge fire calls, one night we got a call for a house fire on Tower Rd about 4 houses before Gary's house, Gary and I arrived at the same time way before the firetrucks even left the building in PV. There we were standing in front of this house with flames shooting 50 feet in the air in full turnouts waiting for the fire truck with people asking us the same question over and over, what are you going to do. Finally I went over and picked up a garden hose just to look like I was doing something, it was like peeing on a bonfire. Another night we got a call for a house fire in the Country Club, I came out of Prescott Highway onto Highway 69 and could see this huge ball of fire. I raced down to the fire and one of the Captains told me to start pulling hose and get some water on the fire. This was the Weem's house right at the entrance to Country Club, they were trying to sell it for 3 million dollars, it had a tile roof and the water wouldn't penetrate the roof so we were spraying water though the windows. All you could see in the house was fire, and then we heard the ATV's in the garage exploding, the gas tank were going up. A few minutes later a captain walked up to us and told us to go get air packs on, we came back all suited up and he said we are going in, we all looked at each other and said screw you, you can go in if you want but we're not, about that time the Chief walked up and pulled the Captain over to the side for a little chat, he came back and told us to just continue to spray water through the windows. 

One day while I was working at Better Bilt we got an auto accident call on Highway 69 at Truewood Rd, I will never forget this one either and I have to always remember that I put myself into this situation by joining the fire department. We got the call at about 2 in the afternoon, apparently a truck hauling a trailer coming up Highway 69 that had heavy steel pipe on it and was loaded wrong (the weight was on the back of the trailer). The trailer came unhitched and there were no safety chains on it, it went across into oncoming traffic and hit a van loaded with people heading to Phoenix for a church service. The tongue of the trailer went right through the engine block (I've had never seen anything like that) and through the firewall of the van and caught the driver just under his seat and pushed him straight up to the ceiling of the van, the driver was a priest from a local Catholic church. Me and Gary were the first to arrive on the scene by car, I jumped into the van and checked the priest's carotid Artery for a pulse, nothing and moved right on to the next lady who was lying on the floor right next to the door, nothing, so we pushed her out of the van onto the ground so we could work on the two that were still conscious. We started  by trying to free the ladies legs because they were caught under her seat, the seat had come forward until it hit the stop and then the whole seat bent forward. We tried crow bars or anything we could find to try to pry her seat back. The Fire Dept finally arrived but since they didn't have the jaws of life at that time we had them call for assistance from Prescott Fire because they were the only ones that had one in the area. Which meant this lady would have to wait another 15 to 20 minutes, we start trying to get the lady in the passenger seat out but with the impact being so bad her seat had beat so far forward that her head was inches from the dash board and the passenger door wouldn't open, she wasn't hurt but was really scared, so all we could do was try to calm these two down and wait for Prescott Fire to arrive. I wished I could have called the hospital and started an IV but my paramedic license was for Penna. not Arizona and the Chief at the time didn't want Paramedics on the Fire Dept., we might have been able to alleviate some of the one ladies pain. One of the Chiefs arrived on the scene and called the police to give Prescott Fire clearance all the way to the scene, all side roads were closed so that Prescott didn't have to slow down at all. We popped the door open first with the jaws and then pushed the passenger seat back with the jaws and got the passenger out. Then came the tricky part of getting the lady whose feet were stuck under the seat. We had to put the jaws just under the front of the seat and pry it up, she screamed the whole time it was coming up but we managed to free her and get her into a waiting ambulance and rushed to the Prescott hospital. We heard later that since the circulation was cut off to her feet for so long that she lost both of them, we all felt bad about that. One thing that came out of that accident was that we got a grant and within a couple of months all stations had the Jaws Of Life on one of the engines. We didn't have that many calls after they started to hire people so it wasn't that interesting any more and I decided to drop the Fire Dept. but I still remember most of what I know and try to stay up on new methods of doing things just in case.

The fire dept decided they were going to go to an 8 hour shift in the basement of another fire station, no more 24's and I decided to leave and go back into cable TV. I went to Cable One and got a job as a lineman, yea, I was one of those guys who climbs the poles with a belt and hooks on my feet. You would be surprised how many people would go out of their way to stop and say hello or wave as they went by, that always amazed me that people enjoyed watching us up on those poles. I cut out a few times but always seemed to catch myself before I burned a pole and I climbed some high poles. We used to make extra money (100 dollars) by climbing 100 - 150 foot poles and changing the lights out at the top. I still have my belt and hooks but haven't tried it in years, once in a while I think I might like to but why chance it. We got a new kid on the crew one day who thought he was great and he was good at climbing but he liked to smoke pot once he got to the top. One day he climbed all the way up, smoked his joint and we were putting up new cable and he cut out and slid all the way down the pole with the arms and legs wrapped around the pole. Now I don't know if you have ever looked closely at one of those poles but they have wood sticking out everywhere on them. That kid had to be taken to the hospital and they were pulling inch and a half splinters out of him everywhere, needless to say that once they found out that he was smoking pot he didn't come back. We were taught that if you start to burn a pole you take your belt and push the sides together and tighten it around the pole and if not belted in push yourself away from the pole to avoid those splinters at all costs, which is probably easier said then done, luckily I never had to find out.

There was one lady that used to have trouble with her cable connection all the time and she would ask for me when she called in to fix her problem. She was really nice and she would talk to me the whole time I was on the pole, her name was Lori and she owned a printing company in Prescott. I really enjoyed talking to her, she would show me around her business, she was very slender and very pretty but they found out that they couldn't have kids because her husband had a problem. I got to be good friends with them and would go over to their house once in a while and have a few drinks and watch a football or baseball game with them, she was kinda like me in that she would kid around but he had a very dry sense of humor and for the most part very serious.     

My career in cable came to an abrupt end one day when I was out doing an install by myself, I ran the cable to the house and then climbed the pole, there was a lot of crap on the pole so I had to reach up to get the cable hooked up, after a few minutes of reaching my arms got real heavy and a few seconds later they went numb, I was up about 30 feet on a pole with numb arms and no way to get down and no way to get help, my arms stayed numb for about 15 minutes at which time I came right down the pole and called the office for assistance. I finished running the cable in the house and hooked up what they wanted and had another guy finish the pole work. I went back to the office and they grounded me as soon as I told them what happened and at the time there were no other positions open so I got laid off. I went to the doctor to find out what was happening with my arms and they told me that since I used my arms while climbing the muscles in my shoulders had got so much bigger it cut off the circulation to my arms and that my climbing days were over.

I went to Yavapai Vocational Rehab and told them that I wanted to get into, a t-shirt business, they were a little reluctant but I told them that I had been doing screen printing on the side and that I had made my own screen printing press and dryer and that I believed I could make it work. Believe it or not they wanted me to take a typing course so that I might get a job in an office, I am typing this using the home row but I have to watch each letter I type and then read over it to make sure there are no mistakes and I am not very fast at all. I told them about my experience with typing and that I couldn't read much faster then I could type and they saw the light, my light. They told me that they would give me 5000 dollars to start a business, oh yea!!!. I bought about 1500 dollars in t-shirts and rented a store for 600 a month and paid first and last (1200 Dollars), then I found a store that was going out of business and bought a bunch of clothing racks for 125 dollars and than bought a used t-shirt press for about 150 dollars, then I bought bought a bunch of touristy type transfers and and a bunch of iron on lettering for about 500 dollars. I bought some hard foam and cut the letters out in a cooper font and than painted them yellow, T-Shirt Antics was now a little store. I still did screen printing at home in the garage at night after closing the store and did pretty good but wanted to do better. I called on the Small Business Association here in Prescott, they told me that they would have someone stop by, a month latter I called again and they said the same thing again. The next time I called them 4 months later they said the same thing and I told them that I have been trying to get their help for the last  four months. The guy came out the next day, he looked around a little and turned to me and said my advice to you is, just go out of business, you'll never make it.  I was very polite and thanked him and told him that I was in business for the last 6 months and I haven't had to touch my backup once yet and that I wasn't going to take his advise and I have never called on them again. I had been doing some screen printing out of the garage but the equipment I made wasn't really doing the job so with the profit I made in the store I bought an inexpensive 4 color screen printer and used a flash dryer that I bought to dry the shirts and we rented the back half of the shop to put it all in to. Then we started getting more jobs and most of them were one color jobs so I got to thinking and came up with an idea for a conveyor belt, I took 2 4 inch pieces of sewer pipe and bought a motor and a piece of canvas and had it sown the right length so that it would fit and go around and around and I could turn the speed down slow enough to dry the shirts and it worked great. One day I was working in the store area and a really pretty young girl came in to the shop and was looking at t-shirts, she asked what size I thought she would wear and I told her a medium or a large, I didn't explain but she had very large breasts. I didn't have a fitting room and was about to tell her she could use the restroom when she took her shirt off in the middle of the store and she wasn't wearing anything underneath, I never saw anything like that before and could feel my face turning totally red. She put the shirt on and looked in the mirror and didn't like the way it fit then took it off again. Now she is standing in my store looking for a large in the color she liked topless, I was panicking, what if someone else should walk in, what would I say, how do I handle this? She finally found what she was looking for and tried it on and liked it and asked the price and said she would take it at which time she walked over to the counter and said that she didn't want to wear it now and off it came again, my face had to look like a beacon on a police car and I could feel it. I told her the price and asked her to put her other shirt back on before paying, I think she would have gone through the entire transaction before putting it back on. I built a fitting room the next day, never saw her again and to be honest I didn't want to, she was very pretty from the chin up. 

After a couple of years in that store we had an opportunity to get into a bigger store, about 1000 square feet for 200 dollar more a month and I jumped for it. I build a Temporary partition to split about a third of the store for the screen printing. We moved in and put transfers up on the walls and numbered them and kept the rest behind the counter so that when someone asked for a particular number we just pulled it out and ironed it on the shirt of their choose. The store paid all of it's bills on time and what profit we made paid our expenses and we still had enough to give to the church. An accountant moved in next store to us and started to complain about odors coming from our shop from the screen printing so in an effort to appease him we moved the screen printing back to the house. Susan still worked at Better Bilt so I ran the store during the day and she would come to the shop after work about 3:15 and I'd go home and screen print whatever needed to be printed. One afternoon she got to the shop and realized that we had forgotten to do a screen job and I had to rush home and get it done within a couple of hours, it was only a dozen shirts but I had to burn the screen and print it and get it back before we closed. I got them done at about 5:30 and rushed right back just in time to give them to the customer. We sat down to relax and talk when we heard a call on the fire scanner for a structure fire at out address, I forgot and turned the conveyor off but didn't turn off the flash dryer. I got home to see the fire dept with hoses all over the street and firemen everywhere, luckily a neighbor saw the smoke billowing out of the back of the garage and ran over and put it out with the garden hose just as the fire dept got there, that was one scary afternoon, I thought for sure the house would have been gone. 

My mom and dad moved out here for about 10 years and my younger brothers came out with them, my mom still had the aneurysm and it was getting bigger. My dad used the money that he got from the sale of the house in Penna. to buy a beautiful Dodge van to drive out here with and settle in Payson. He used the rest of the money to buy a phone business which I didn't understand because I was in business already here in Prescott. He worked really hard trying to make a go of it, I would come over to help him once in a while but got frustrated because I didn't know anything about phones and he wanted me to close my business, move over there and help him in that business. I didn't think there was a future in home phones and he got upset with me for saying that. He finally had to close the business because he couldn't pay the rent, I always felt he blamed me a little for not getting involved with his business. He tried to find a job in Payson but had no luck in that small town and moved to Phoenix into an apartment on Bell Rd. Before he moved I asked him if he would like to get involved in my business and he declined because he thought I did have the ability or the drive to keep the business going. He worked in Phoenix as a driver for a denture lab, he delivered dentures all over the Phoenix area to dentists that ordered from that company. He had had several accidents, none of which were his fault, the last one someone broad sided him and the small pick up truck he was driving rolled over and he hurt his arm really bad and went on disability. By then my mom was getting real bad and needed to be put into a home and he didn't have the money to do that so they had to go through the state. The put her in a home that was really bad at first and my dad complained and filled out more forms to get her into a better home and it worked, they sent her to another home that was much better for her and for my dad, it was closer and easier for him to go see her every day. We had a birthday party for her while she was there and my aunt's who lived here were there along with my brothers and their kids. 

After a while being here she was starting to lose control so they put her on steroids which effectively made her come back to being her old self but she was only allowed to stay on them for a month. She recognized us and she was alert, her memory was as sharp as a tack and it was like talking to her when she was well. Just before the month ended we were supposed to go down to visit her on the weekend but Susan just didn't want to face the heat again so we didn't go down, my mom past on the following Wednesday. My dad was with her, they were eating lunch at the home when she fell backwards in the chair and hit the floor, my dad rushed to her side and said that she looked at him, smiled and then pasted on March 28, 1989 at the age of 60.

I saw this in a movie and liked it so much that I decided that it would be something to try to live by as much as I could;

So live you life that the fear of death can never enter your heart. 

Trouble no one about their religion. 

Respect others in their view and demand that they respect yours. 

Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life.
Seek to make your life long and it's purpose in the service of your people. 

Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide. 

Always give a word or a sign of salute when meeting of a passing friend, even a stranger, when in a lonely place. 

Show respect to all people and grovel to none.

When you arise in the morning give thanks for the food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself.
Abuse no one and no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of it's vision.

When it comes your time to die, be not like those who's hearts are filled with the fear of death, so when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.
Chief Tecumseh

When we burn a screen we had to have a positive with the design on it so it comes out on the screen the same way. I had always worked with Lori's printing business in Prescott, she did all of my positives, all I had to do was fax her the image, tell her the size and she would have it ready for me when I walked in her shop. I got a call from her one night while I was working late and she asked me a question that I will never forget as long as I live, she asked me if I would help her get pregnant, I was dumbfounded, she said that her husband was unable to get her pregnant and that she wanted to have a baby. I totally screwed the whole conversation up because I didn't see it coming at all and it caught me totally by surprise, yes she was pretty and very thin, might have mistaken her for a boy but I have always liked thin women but I never thought of her like that, I didn't know what to say and my mind just kinda went haywire and I found myself babbling about nothing. I said things that made absolutely no sense what so ever and I totally regret anything that hurt her and I know I said some really dumb things to her. I really liked her but I was totally unprepared for that question, it would have been better if she would have asked when we were face to face but I'm not sure the answer would have been any different. I couldn't have gotten her pregnant anyhow because like I said earlier I had had a vasectomy. After that incident we really never saw one another much more, I tried to call her and apologize but she would never take my calls. Her husband had another friend who was about 6' 6" and weighed about 280, he was huge. About a year later I saw her with a new baby, I stopped and talked to her for a moment and the baby looked exactly like her husbands friend and the baby was big, I don't know how she could have had a baby that size. Soon afterwards they moved back to North Dakota and I never saw her again, I sometimes wonder how she is doing. We started using other printing companies for our positives until we bought a printer that we could use in the shop which made it much cheaper for us. I bought a Jeep in 1994 and got involved with a four wheel drive club, we went out on rides throughout the area. We went up to the top of Mingus Mountain one weekend and a couple of the other people in the club decided to make a road where there was no road up a hill, just about then a Forest Service vehicle came by and stopped them and gave them a $2000. fine for tearing up the vegetation on the hill, needless to say they didn't do that again. The worst part about it was that they were driving brand new Dodge 4 wheel drive pick-ups loaded, they were beautiful and they didn't care what happened to them. We meant Wayne and who started coming into the shop, he liked Susan and would sit in the shop and talk about four wheeling. Wayne would come over to the house for dinner about once or twice a month, he was about 10 years older then me but we had lots of fun together. 

                                                  My great friend Wayne, I do miss him.

We would go out to on over night trips to places like Sheeps Crossing and the Verde River and spent the day in the water swimming. 

One weekend we drove Wayne's motor home up to the property and parked it next to ours, we hiked up to the top of the hill where you can see forever. He was a great friend and would do anything for you and we remained friends for about ten years. When moved into the shop we are in now Wayne talked to the owner and rented a space next to the shop so he came over every morning to have coffee and hang around for a while. On weekend he loved to go out and find Jeep trails  to find out what was at the end of them, he had an two old Toyota Land cruisers that he had fixed up a little at a time. He loved taking Susan up and down scary hills that I wouldn't take the Jeep, Susan loved riding with him because he had no limits on what he would do in his Land cruiser. I on the other hand was a lot more careful about where I took the Jeep because it was the vehicle I used every day.

Right around this time we got word that my dad was in the hospital and that we should think about getting back to Penna.. I got there along with my two other brothers and my brother that lives in Washington meant us and told us that my dad had lung cancer and was in the VA. We visited for about a week but the VA seemed like they just weren't sure what was wrong with him but at the end of the week I had to leave, for the first time I can remember I told my dad I loved him in front of my brothers, I got a look from my dad and brothers that made me feel really weird so I said it again, dad, I love you and you take care of yourself. He stayed in the VA for another couple of days and them they sent him home. He was fine for another three years when they thought they found brain cancer and went into his head to get it but it turned out that they were wrong about that cancer too. They put those metal staples in his head to close the incision and they really hurt, he went back several times to get them out but they kept telling him that the incision needed to heal more. My sister says that the pain from those was so unbearable that he couldn't sleep or do anything for himself during the day, my sister found him lying on the floor of his apartment after he called her for help, he died because of the pain and I blame the VA.  

                                                      My Dad, Rex Limen Tomb Jr.

Born; October 28, 1924  Passed; October 27, 1994

After my dad passed in 1996, Susan and I felt that it might be a good time to see if my biological father was still alive. I just couldn't do that while my dad who raised me all those years was alive, I felt as though it would hurt him if he found out. We went on the internet and looked up Unstine, we knew that they were from Michigan and my mom had told me his name before she passed. We found one Unstine in North Carolina, that was the only Unstine in the whole country so we looked the phone number up. Now we just had to dial the number, I told Susan to do it, I just couldn't bring myself to call, I felt like I might be interrupting his life to a certain extent. I was also afraid he would be upset that I called because I wasn't a part of his life anymore. She dialed the number and a lady answer the phone and Susan handed me the phone. I asked if Robert was there and the lady asked who is this and I told her my name and she got all excited and said hold on, hold on, for a minute. Robert got on the phone and said well it's about time, I've been waiting for this call for 50 years now. Now you have to remember that I had no idea what to expect when I called and I never even thought about him having other children. We talked for a while about me and him then he said he had 5 daughters, Kathy, Laura, Janie, Julie and Nancy. He told me that my sister Nancy had had a problem with depression and that in 1987 put a shotgun under her chin and pulled the trigger, I think one of the kids found her when they got home from school. 

                                              My sister Nancy with one of her children

I really felt bad when I found that out, I wish I could have been there for her. Her daughter is doing great now, she is married to a really nice guy and she has a little boy and just had a girl, Olive.  That really never dawned on me at all, I have 5 new step sisters, it really floored me. We talked for about an hour, he told that when he retired they moved to North Carolina and that his daughters all still lived in and around Detroit. We hung up and and two hours later his oldest daughter Kathy called and said that her father had called her all excited and told her that I had called him. He told her everything we talked about and she wanted to know more about me and what I did for a living. We talked for a couple of hours about how and when they learned about me. Apparently they were driving through Toledo one time when the girls were young and her parents were talking in the front seat and Robert said something about me and the girls overheard him and they kinda just hushed it up. She told me that for years her parents had to know who they were dating because they never knew if I still lived in the area. 

We made plans to go up to Michigan when we found out that Robert and his wife were making plans to visit their kids. We decided to drive up there for a week and get to know everyone. The drive was great, it was me and Susan and Jeremiah, Tabatha wasn't living with us because she was living with her boyfriends parents, a whole other story that I'll try to figure out one other day, will probably need help with that one. Anyhow, we drove around Kathy's neighborhood found her house and drove around some more, I had to build up some courage to actually walk up to the door and knock but I finally did and they were all waiting for us.

                                              Robert L. Unstine with his wife Collette

                                            

                                                           Robert Unstine in 1997

                                                 

                                             Robert Unstine and my son Jeremiah 1997

                              

                                         Kathy, Laura, Janie, Julie and their mothe Collette

We meant so many people that day and they were all relatives that I never knew I had, We meant all the husbands and all their children. Robert kept asking me to call him dad and at the time I really had trouble with that but looking back on it now I shouldn't have had a problem with it and it would have made him really happy. I wish we could have seen each other again before he passed in January of 1998, he was a very good man and someone I had a lot in common with. His wife Lydia passed a few months ago in a home in Michigan, I still have four new sisters that I talk to at least once a month. 

The people who own the land that the business was on past on and the kids were worried about Wayne's health and wanted him to move closer to town so that if something were to happen he would be able to get help faster. He had lived in this motor home for about ten years, he added a small addition to it but it wasn't insulated very well and during the winter got very cold. We went over to his place on day and found that he hadn't cleaned the place in a very long time. Susan and a friend cleaned the whole place and threw away the sheets he had been sleeping on for the last six months without washing them. While cleaning they found old dead mice, old food that he had drop behind the tv and mouse droppings everywhere. We knew it was time to get him out of there, we found a place in Prescott Valley that he could afford, he had to pay $300. a month which left him with about $500 a month to pay his phone, electric and food. Wayne always ate at Denny's, we figured out that he was spending about $700 a month at Denny's or his entire S.S. check. We went out and bought him food that was easy to cook so he could cut back on Denny's, he never ate any of it and at times would not eat anything all day long. It got to the point that we had to go over and make him eat something or make him at least drink an Insure. One day he went over to Denny's and tripped and fell, they called the ambulance and took him to the VA and they admitted him thinking he might have had another heart attack. We went down to see him just about every day, one morning the VA called and told us that he had pasted in his sleep and that it was very peaceful for him. I called his son and gave him the news of his fathers passing and he came out to the shop and went through his dad's stuff that he left in the motor home and packed up his apartment, His son was a great help after Wayne's passing, we still think about him and he is always in our prayers. The problem I have with this is that I feel kind of responsible for his demise because I was the one that made him move from here to a place he really was very uncomfortable with, he really didn't want to leave here. The only problem was that his place was full of mice and smelled to high heaven, I should have let him come to the decision to move on his own rather then force it, it might have prolonged his like an extra year or so. I still stop once in a while to see him at the VA cemetery in Prescott, no one knows but I enjoy the solitude and just telling him what we have been doing and then leave behind a little prayer for him, he was a really good friend and I will never forget him. 

Not sure if this one goes here so I may have to move it to another spot. My son and I planned a trip down the Verde river starting off at Perkinsville. We had two rafts about 6 liter bottles of water and enough food for 3 days. Susan dropped us off at the river and we drifted down the river for about a mile and made camp at about 6 that night. Once it gets dark there isn't a whole lot to do so we went to bed and got up at around 6 and packed everything up. We drifted down river for about 2 miles and the river got wide and shallow so we had to walk and pull the boats, in some spot we were pulling them over the sand beings that it was only a couple of inches deep. We saw Gray Herring foot prints in the water that were huge in size.

Picture here

We got to a spot where the river got narrow and went down hill all of a sudden, we got into our boats and went screaming down the river for about a mile. After walking so far and then coming to that it kind of made the walk worth while. We drifted for about another couple of miles that day, and came the railroad tunnel about the same time as a train was coming through. We decided to go over the rocks instead of chancing going through the tunnel and having another train come, not a lot of clearance in there. When they dug the tunnel they put all the rocks that they dug out in the river so we had to climb huge boulders for about 30 feet to get past the tunnel. It was really hard because of the canyon walls on both sides and taking those rafts over the rocks was a real pain and I could see that my son wasn't having much fun. We finally got past the rocks and set up camp at the other end of the tunnel because we were both dead tired. We made one of those dehydrated foods the come in an envelope and it was very good, I think I could live on those things. The next morning I got up early and when I got out of the tent and walked over to the river there were hundreds of large mouth bass everywhere in the river. I have never seen that many fish in one spot in my life and they were big, a foot to a foot and a half long. I started kicking my sons foot to wake him up to see this, I was afraid to scare them off by yelling so I just kicked his foot. He was pissed when he got out of the tent, he was still tired and wanted to sleep more. He saw all the fish, looked at me kind of weird and got back into the tent and tried sleeping a little more. That whole day he was grumpy, first he didn't want to go down the river anymore because he said his rear was sore from bumping into rocks on the bottom of the river so we started walking the rail road tracks. It was a hot day and carrying our back packs, the boats and water got old real quick and I kept saying let's just get back in the river and more I said it the madder he got. The river at that point was pretty deep and flowing nice and slow so it would have been a nice ending to the trip but he just kept walking. The sight seeing train came around the corner and he started waving it down because after walking a couple of miles our water was just about gone. They stopped the train and let us get on and we rode to the stopping point and then back to Clarkdale where we called Susan to come pick us up. A few months later we took Susan's aunt Myrtle on the train ride again to kind of show thanks for picking us up that day.

I was working on my car one day and this really pretty young lady was walking her baby down the street, I said hello to her and told her that she reminded me of a girl I went to high school with a who was almost as pretty as she is. We talked for a few minutes and she continued down the street, at the time I thought she was beautiful, she just seemed so down to earth, so nice to talk to and had a great laugh, she left an everlasting impression on me. I got to know their family a little better and found out that they are Mormon's, I told my wife that we had new neighbors and that I had talked to her and that they were Mormon's. My wife repeated what her sisters had been telling her that Mormon's aren't really Christians and that they have another book. I was brought up with Catholics, they have another book and no one seems to care about that, why would you worry about The Book Of Mormon? I really never cared who was a Christian and who wasn't, it just never bothered me, as long as someone was friendly and shared their smile with others they were worth being friends with. This young woman was amazing, I told her that we wanted to have a park party, she went for it, she made up invitations, got the right people involved with getting food and soda pop and we had a party, she set up games for the kids, game that I would never have thought of. I have to say that if you ever want to get a party going get this lady involved, she knows how to throw a party. Her husband even got involved, he brought the biggest grill I have ever seen over to the park and he cooked all the hot dogs. The hot dogs were donated and we gave them away free, her husband also has a smile that is contagious and he is a very honorable man. These are the kind of friend everyone needs, they are good, honest, up front people, they are very religious and I believe they are the best of all Christians. 

This pretty young woman loves children and knows 
                             what they love, this is a good example of her award 
winning art work. I love this picture.

                                         This is a painting by the young lady above, better 
                                                than any Picasso as far as I'm concerned.

                             

The only thing I really want to say about this young lady is, think about one of the most beautiful women you've ever seen, put a pair of wings on her and you have a beautiful angel and her name is Sara Thompson. Don't even try to look for her on the internet, you can't believe how many Sara Thompson's there are on the internet. I talk to her husband Scott once in a while via email and I know way beyond any doubt that when and if we get to heaven you will see both of them flying around doing God's work. These two people have given me doubts as to am I good enough to go to heaven because they are such a kind and loving people. They are more Christian then anyone I've ever known and I know a few of so called Christian's, I can't tell you how impressed I am with these two people, their friends and their faith, I wish everyone would take the time to get to know them and not listen to what others say about them. I know they believe in angels, I think that is because they are really angels in training, I just hope that the Lord doesn't take them when he thinks they are ready because I'll miss them.

They were from a town in Utah called Springville, at the time we were into a company called New Ways. Actually Sara told me that she used to work for them in Springville. We were going to go up there for a meeting at the New Ways headquarters, all we had at the time was our big gas guzzling  dodge pick up to drive up there but we wanted to go. two days before we left my brother Christopher shot himself in the head.

I will have to continue this tomorrow, when Susan says it's time to leave it's time, if you see any mistakes please let me know if possible.

One of my pride and joys now is my hot tub, I love going out there at night around 10 and watching the stars and jets going everywhere. If I could afford it and figure out how to do it I'd mount a telescope on the tub and sit there most of the night. 

I moved the tractor over to a friends property at The Ranch a couple of weeks ago and am trying to get over there again to get the engine out so I can rebuild it. First I have to dump all of the fluids, anti-freeze, oil and hydraulic fluid before I can start taking it apart. I got back up there around April 14th and 15th to pull the engine, it took a full day and a half to get it out and was hoping to take an extra day to relax up at the property but when I called my wife told me she needed help at the shop so I had to leave that night. 

The tractor with the frontend off.

The frontend of the tractor after we pulled it off with a fork lift.

This is how the tractor looks now with no engine.

I got home and took the engine apart in about a day and found that the block is cracked and ordered another one from a company in Michigan. I dropped off the radiator at a shop and they called me to say that it to was shot and would cost 500 dollars to fix which should be done this week some time. I still have to buy a rebuild kit which will cost another 700 to 900 dollars and a book with all the technical information for 150 dollars. When I'm done it will be a great running tractor with no other problems hopefully. 

My two sisters came out a couple of weeks ago and brought some things that my father Robert had left for me. They gave me 10 silver dollars and a stamp collection from the late 1800's and early 1900's. There are some really old stamps in this collection some dating back to the early 1800's. I've never been interested in stamps but I need to take some time to look them up and see if they are worth anything even if I just pass them on to the kids after I'm gone. The visit was really nice because I got to see my sister Julie who I haven't seen in about 10 years. 

My sister Julie, in a Jerome bar.

My sister Kathy in the red with her friend.

We went out to dinner several times and then over to Sedona the last time for dinner at their hotel, It was a good time and so nice to see them again. I'd like to get back to Michigan to see all of them before to long and then back to Pennsylvania to see my brother and other sister. It's a bear having two families in different states and wanting to see them all.

The Jeep is down again and I have my suspicions as to what happened but it really doesn't matter because I still have to decide what to do with it now. I've taken it down to the block again but am going to wait until the tractor is running before deciding what to do with it.

It's now 07-16-15 and I'm hoping to get the new engine back next week so I can finish putting it back together and take it back up to put it back in the tractor. 

Last week I had the last of my back teeth taken out, I don't have a set of teeth yet for the bottom so I'm going to wait for the whole to heal and go see a friend in Phoenix about new ones. Until then I'm eating oat meal for breakfast and lunch and something that's easy to just swallow for dinner I can hear you suggesting things, baby food, apple sauce? good ideas but remember that baby cereal you used to be able to buy that you just poured milk on and it got thick, just add a little sugar and it's ready to eat, I have had a hankering for that for a while now and I might just get some this weekend.

Today, July 24th 2015 the Hyundai broke down on Susan when I asked her to meet me to switch cars. It may have either a linkage problem or a transmission problem but either way I think it's time to look for another more dependable vehicle.  I went into the bank today and got pre-qualified for a loan for a new car today so that we can go into a car dealer and feel comfortable haggling with the sale people. A friend of mine told me that if you buy a newer used car that cost around 20,000, offer them 12,000. If they say no turn around and start walking to your car, in most cases they will chase you down. They might come up with a counter offer but if it seems like to much walk away.

These car lots aren't dickering any more, they tell you the price and if you don't like it to bad. We need a new car or at least one that has low mileage (under 100,000 miles) and is no more then 5 years old.This has been a nice summer for the most part except for all the rain, I'm getting rained out all the time here lately. We can't go up to the property for fear of getting stuck up there which would drive Susan up the wall, I'd be on my knees thanking the Lord. I would so love getting stuck up there for at least two weeks, just not sure I could handle it with Susan but by myself or another person I know I would jump at the chance. I am hoping to get the tractor engine back this week also although I haven't hit Susan up yet for the rest of the parts which will cost another 500 dollars, she is going to go through the roof. I have the trailer all hooked up and tomorrow morning I'm going up to Home Depot and buying everything I need to finish that shed, I am so looking forward to going up there at least twice a month for a while. Once I have everything up there that I want I'm going to have to come up with other things I want to take up. More lumber to build above ground gardens, cider block for a dome house, I'll bet I could keep that one going for about 6 months.

We have been working on our property, we built a shed 10 X 14 so that we could put most of our tools in there and they would be safe. It was fun and a little scary getting up on a roof supported by 2 X 4 rafters. We finished in the beginning of November 2015, it took a lot out of us but it will hold up to the weather now.

This was the way Wayne's original addition looked.
After his kids came and took the motor home it became
a rat trap so I decided to tare it down. 

We started with this, the remains of Wayne old house, 

no not the motor home silly, the wooden box.

This is the finished product with a new steel roof.

 I just have to get back up there with some paint to cover the bare wood. Maybe if this tractor engine ever gets done I'll be able to do it then. I'd really enjoy taking someone up there with me but it looks as though I'll be going alone.

2015

This has been an another amazing year both here at the shop, at the house and at the property. We have stayed busy through out the whole year which has kept the money rolling in to pay our bills with enough left over to give to the church and have a little fun. I have to hand it to my wife for doing most of the work and keeping this place going for the last three years now or since my arms gave out. I think she is finally coming around to the idea of selling the shop and maybe getting a part time job somewhere so we can enjoy each others company for a while before our time to go home comes around. 

At the house not much has changed because we spent most of our time at the shop. We did accomplish taking the pool down this year and we got another dog, a boxer from our neighbor. He said that the dog was just plain mean but it has been one of the nicest dogs we have had, I think his dog was the mean one. 

At the property we bought a travel trailer that was an unbelievable buy, we got it for 2000 dollars and it is immaculate for what we paid for it. It has aluminum covering all the windows with locks so no one can break in. It was well taken care of and when we use it we leave it the way we found it every time. We finished a 10X14 shed up there in the beginning of November so we can lock up all of our tools and all the other things we have taken up there. I would love to move up there but I think I might have to find another woman who would be interested in that idea or move up there by myself. I think there is only one other woman I could live with but she is married and probably feels the same way as Susan, your not taken me out into the middle of no where. It truly is in the middle of no where but I love seeing the deer and other animals up there. We had to extend the fence for the shed and with my next project being a dome house a I will have to move the whole back fence up the hill about 100 feet before starting. In April I pulled the engine out of a tractor I bought a couple of years ago and should have it back in the next couple of weeks ready to go, probably during the next snow storm, right around Dec. 1. 

I'm trying to make this similar to yours, I'll add more pictures when I have some time. I would like to do this once every three months if I can remember, I have been forgetting a lot lately and I'm not really sure what to do about it but I know I need to really start writing things down. I just hope that I don't whined up like one of those people who don't know who they are which would be all that bad, maybe they forget other things too.

Today, December 11th, 2015 I finally got my engine back from the engine repair shop. We loaded it on the trailer and I took it home and covered it with a tarp to keep it dry. I still have to put a lot of other parts back on it and eventually get a new muffler for it. I bought some primer for it today and will buy the yellow paint for it when I'm done priming it. Now it's supposed to get cold and I really don't want to go up there when it's really cold because my body just doesn't work that well in the cold any more and besides that I'm not sure how to work the heater in the travel trailer. The rest of December was both good and bad, on the 14th Susan slipped on a piece of plastic that was covered with snow and broke her fibula and cracked the tibia. She called me to have me meet her at the hospital when she was about half way there. She got a cast the very next day at the doctors office, they gave her her choice of colors and she chose purple because the grand kids like that color. 

This is the little scooter we rented for her which

didn't help slow her down at all, she would go wizzing

around the shop all say long. It was kind of a pain

for me because I had to load and unload it in the back of the 

truck any time we went somewhere.

  From there we went down to the medical supply and picked up a scooter that she has been getting around on ever since. We were busy right up to Christmas and didn't get much of a chance to go shopping so on some of the gifts we waited until after Christmas. My son came up New Years Eve with his wife and daughter, he also brought one of his Christmas gifts with him, a drone. I asked his wife where she got it and she said Amazon for 50 buck, I bought one on the 6th of January. It takes pictures and videos and I guess the is a way that I can see what it sees through my cell phone. So I guess you could say we had a very blessed Christmas and New Years, Susan braking her leg is kind of a blessing in disguise because she was running so much that I was worried she might stress out and have a heart attack. 

In late April we went up to the property so we could work on the tractor and newly rebuilt get the engine in place. After a couple of days Susan had to leave to go back down and care for Annie, the little old lady who will be 90 this this year. She was gone for about a day when we figured out that I needed a couple of alignment pins to put the front end on the tractor. Once we stopped working on that it was still early so I rode the ATV back up to the property and decided to get the motor home cleaned out so I could take it back down to Prescott and sell it. I cleaned out the whole inside and put everything in a box and put it in the shed. I did a walk around and noticed that I forgot to get the solar panel down off the roof. 

I was up at least another step on the opposite side of the 

motor home when the ladder went one way and I went to 
other way and  I fell.

I got the ladder and hurriedly put it up against the motor home, I should have checked to make sure it was set right. I climbed up the ladder but couldn't reach the solar panel so I climbed up to the top of the ladder and reached way over and the ladder went one way and I went the other. I have never told anyone but I was out cold for I don't know how long, I came to because it was raining on my face. I was laying next to the bottom of the ladder, I figured I fell about 10 feet and I hurt my back, bad. I had to crawl back to the trailer and trying to crawl up the steps was probably the most painful thing I've had to do in years. When I got into the trailer I managed to get up on the bed and that's where I stayed until I started to get hungry, crap. I had to move very slowly but managed to make some mac and cheese with hot dogs and laid right back down afterwards. The biggest problem we have at the property is that we have absolutely no phone reception. I had to get up the nerve the next morning to go out and get on the ATV and ride very slowly avoiding every bump and ride up to the top of the mountain to call Susan and tell her what had happened to me. The top of the mountain is about 2 miles away on dirt  rutted roads, that was a painful ride. 

My son just got here with the new baby so I'll have to finish this a little later. Yesterday after my son got here he finished up a job that Susan started when a customer came in that she had to take care of. At about 4 we all left here to go out for dinner at Chili's and than to my grand daughter's graduation. Susan had to go pick up Annie so she could go to the graduation, Annie has always been a part of the family since her husband passed and she really has no one in the area to depend on. Since my son came up for the graduation, Susan got to hold the new baby most of the time.

Actually he looks like his dad, my son.

This is the first time Annie has gotten to hold the baby,

on Saturday evening they are having a graduation party

and Annie has expressed that she would like to go so she

can see and hold the baby again.

Me and my grand daughter the graduate 
Miss Athena Hurley who had to run home to 
get an hour or two of sleep before going to 
work at the casino in Prescott.

 

Athena wants to go to college at Yavapai for a year or two before switching to ASU or NAU, in the mean time she is talking about living with us while attending school and working.

On Thursday the 21st I drove up to the property with the idea that I would work totally on the tractor and stay until it was up on the property. I got up at 4 or 5 every morning and went down the hill on the ATV to get it running. I had a couple friends once in a while come down and help me until it got to hot for them and they went home. I set up the canopy over the tractor so we wouldn't have to work in the sun, for the most part it got up to around 105 every day I was there. There were a lot of bolts that had to be tightened and hydraulic hoses that had to be repaired and put back in place. One or two of the days I quit at about 3 so I could run to the store and get some needed essentials (cigarettes, a sub and pop). Most of the time I worked until 7 or 8 at night, thank the lord that the ATV has headlights on it, I'm sure I would have hit at least one cow on the way back up if it didn't. Ice was my main problem, it was so hot the the ice in the cooler melted within two days so I had to run to the store several times to get ice which meant I had to go back up and bring the truck down to be able to get on the highway. On Sunday morning me, Carl, and Norman got the tractor running, killed one battery trying but had a spare to put in just for that reason. I called Susan so she could hear it running and got a text back saying she was in church which didn't hurt my excitement at all. The next job was to get the bucket on which we did that afternoon and hook up all of the other hydraulic lines. On Monday morning I ran into town to get new filters for the hydraulics and some other small parts. I got back and took the old fluid out of the tractor, I had buckets for it but had to cut them down so they would fit under the tractor. I pulled the plug on the bottom to empty the old fluid and first water came out and then the fluid and it kept coming out, I try to put the plug back in but dropped it in the bucket. I had to try to plug the hole with one thumb while sticking my arm into the bucket to find the plug. Needless to say that by the time it was totally drained I had one heck of a mess, hydraulic fluid everywhere, 5 gallons in one bucket and about 3 gallons on the ground where I had to work and I was covered in it, (that would have been the time I could have used you there), Once that was empty it was time to take the old filters off, I started unscrewing the bolts and more fluid started pouring out, why couldn't someone have told me that they also have fluid in them? Now I am totally covered in hydraulic fluid and I still have to put the new filters back on and lay in this muddy fluid in the process. The containers that the filters are housed in are heavy steel and trying to hold them up and put the bolt back in is almost impossible but it finally started and I got them both back in place. Next it's time to refill the hydraulic fluid with new fluid. Carl was helping me now and we got the first 5 gallons in with no problem, we started on the next five and about half of that container we saw that one of the filters was leaking badly, the steel container was cocked a little. We stuck a clean bucket under it and unscrewed it a little and moved it a little and screwed it back into place and it stopped leaking. We finished pouring all the fluid back into the tractor and now had to try to work the air bubbles out of the system. By now it was Tuesday and I was getting a slight stiff neck but didn't think much of it after working so hard on those filters. We decided to go home early that day and let the bubbles flow to the top, maybe they will work themselves out. On Wednesday morning I got down to the tractor at 5 AM and cleaned up most of the hydraulic fluid by digging it up and putting it in the buckets and dumping that dirt in the dumpster and then going back and forth about 5 times to make sure everything was cleaned up. Carl showed up at about 7 AM and we got the tractor running and played with the hydraulics until they started working a little better but not the way they should but good enough. This tractor is a 3 cylinder and has 8 gears, 4 under low speed and 4 under high speed so there is going to be a lot of shifting going on on the way up to the property. This is all new to me also because this will only be the second time I have driven it and this time it had to go ten miles. We put gas in it, topped off the radiator and I was off and on my way up to the property doing about 3 mph. I had it in the low gear in 2nd gear, if I went any higher it would stall out. I told Carl to go home because this was libel to take a long time to get home, before leaving I grabbed my cigarettes and left my water which was really dumb at 105 degrees. Today my neck was hurting a little more but with the excitement of actually driving the tractor up to the property made me have a so what attitude. 

On the way up I stopped to say hello to John and his wife, they were on their way into town for some supplies, they live at the half way point up to our property. I sat in the tractor and they have a large suv and we talked for a few minute and then they continued after I passed them, I got about another 100 feet and looked down and saw my shorts were torn from stem to stern and everything was hanging out. I got about two thirds of the way up there and ran out of gas and I was really thirsty. I hated to do it but I called Susan first and then called Carl and he ran over with five gallons of gas and picked up my water on the way. Susan called back and said she was on her way up and I told that Carl was on his way over and she didn't need to come but she got all weird on the phone and said she was coming anyhow. Carl told me that the only suspension on the tractor is the tires and that if I get going to fast and hit a bump it's libel to throw me off, that made me feel real good. Carl followed me the rest of the way up to the property at which time I had to switch gears from going down hill into low, I stopped and now my brakes were gone so now I'm rolling backwards towards Carl's truck so I turned the wheel and crashed into a hill next to the road, I got it into gear and continued up to the gate. All in all it took about three and a half hours to get it up to the property and when I got there I found that I had left the keys to the gate in the ATV so I parked it and rode back down with Carl. I rode the ATV back up to the property, that took another 45 minutes and opened both gates and went up and ate breakfast at about 4 oclock, that was probably my biggest problem, forgetting to eat. By now my neck was hurting much worse but I knew Susan was on her way and I had to finish getting the tractor up on the pad. Just as I was about to walk down to the tractor Susan pulled in, she was not a happy camper, she said she thought I goated her into coming up and that I just wanted to see her up there. I said that's true and for that matter I would have liked it if she had been up there the whole time but I told her she didn't have to come up before she left so I really didn't understand where she was coming from. She took me down to the tractor and I got it up the hill to the fenced in area and shut it down. She helped me get everything together so I could leave that night with her so she could get back to the shop first thing in the morning. We left at about 9 that night and headed back to PV, she was still pretty mad about having to come up which in turn pissed me off because she didn't have to come up and I could have stayed another night with a beautiful full moon. We got home at about 12, the dogs were happy to see me but I think Susan was still a little mad about having to come up and rescue me again, it won't ever happen again, I'll call you before I call her again. On Friday my neck was killing me so I decided to start taking my muscle relaxants which seemed to help by Saturday and by Sunday the pain wasn't nearly as bad and I decided to try taking a quit smoking aide that I bought before I left for the property. By Monday I was having trouble with my prostate and having a lot of trouble peeing so I stopped the quit smoking aide. On Monday we had to go back up to the property to get some thing we forgot out of the refrigerator and Susan asked a friend to go along with us. On the way my problem got a lot worse but I made it up and back. I had only taken the morning pill on Monday and didn't take any more. I had trouble all day on Tuesday and come about 6 o clock Tuesday evening I called Susan at the shop to find out when she might be home so she could take me down to the VA because I couldn't pee at all. We got to the VA at about 7:30 and they put a catheter in right away and got a little over a liter out and I felt much better, what a relief. My neck still hurts a little on one side but I'm not taking any pills except maybe Ibuprofen, this catheter is starting to be a problem in that it hurts my who ha a little but it is much better then not being able to go when you really really have to. That's about it for my week so far, you'd better believe that when I get the chance I'll be outa here and working on that tractor as soon as possible. 

I am a very lucky man, I'm in great shape and pretty darn healthy for 68. I've been getting up to the property a lot more lately and have been doing a lot of off roading on the back roads up there.

This was a very special week for the American people, we elected a new, hopefully Constitutional President, a leader that we can hopefully stand with. We all need to pray that President Donald Trump follows through with what he promised and for his safety throughout his Presidency. We all need to come together as Americans first whether your black, white, red or green, because we are all Americans first and nothing should ever change that. 

I had to write about this today, I have been plagued for most of my life with nightmares, last night (11-14-16) I woke up in a panic, I looked at the clock display on the ceiling, it was about 3:30. I looked over and there on the edge of the bed was a good friend and she smiled, put her hand on my shoulder and told me that it wasn't my fault, you didn't cause it to happen, now go back to sleep. I smiled at her and rolled back over and went sound to sleep until about 8 Oclock this morning, it was one of the best sleeps I've ever had. I can't explain it, I don't know where it came from but it was as real as real gets and she was there just at the right moment and put me totally at ease and I will never forget it as long as I live.

About three weeks ago an old friend (Dave) called me and told me about a man in Coyote Springs who could possibly help me with my prostrate problem. He had been talking to my daughter (who has a big mouth) about me bleeding when I pee. It's not really a problem for me and it happens every once in a while but it is a little scary at first. Apparently that how his prostrate cancer started so he directed me to Jim who also has an organic cure for any type of cancer.  I called him and went and meant him at his house on morning with my wife. We talked for a little while and he told me that this silver water would cure any type of inflammation in your body and sold me the things I need to make it myself. 

Dave had Kidney, bladder and prostrate cancer, his doctor told him that they all needed to come out and that he would be on dialysis for the rest of his life. Dave was 72 than and told the doctor he wasn't going that route, the doctor of course told him he only had about 3 months and Dave went to a naturalpath who put him on a special diet. That doctor also pointed him to Jim and now two years later Dave has been totally clear of any cancer, his kidneys are working at 100 percent and his prostrate number is lower than mine. I was one of those people who has never taken care of my teeth and now I'm suffering the consequences, I have a bad tooth and I had pain in my neck from the infection. I started taking the silver water and with 3 days the pain was gone and hasn't returned, I still need to go to the dentist but just don't have the extra money right now. Anyhow I also bought the cancer cure which I haven't started yet because I haven't been diagnosed with cancer although my prostrate is still swollen and if I drink or eat the wrong thing it swells up like a balloon. Yes, coffee does a real number on it, if I have more than two cups in one day I'm running back and forth to the bathroom all day long, so no caffeine at all. I also know that smoking is a problem, when I light up a cigarette and take a puff I have to go also which is a sign I should quit some how but I just don't have the drive or the desire to drop that one. I heard about a friend who has rectal cancer and really bought it for him but I called him and I really don't think he believes that there is any other way to cure cancer except through a doctor. I still believe with all me being that the Lord put everything we need to cure ourselves right here on earth.

Last year was a pretty good year, not great mind you but good. We accomplished some thing up at the ranch that took a while but got them done. We are always repairing and adding new things, the tractor is running great now and we added a canopy over it to keep it out of the weather a little.

 I fixed a leak in the top of the travel trailer where the radio antenna was, it rotted the wood out a little but fixed that also. We now can take a shower because we finally figured out how to work the hot water heater. Believe me it's much better that trying to heat that black bag of 5 gallons of water, then trying to houst it up on a strong piece of wood and taking a show outside. When the wind is blowing even just a little and the sun is going down it gets kind of chilly when your wet and full of suds. 

 

We went down to Gilbert on Saturday to see my son and his family and also to pick up some parts for the Jeep. It's amazing how fast these kids are growing, Urijah is getting taller and speaking very clearly so I can understand most of what she talks about now. Ivan is crawling around and is really fast to the point that when I stand still for a few minutes I have to make sure I know where he is at so I don't step on him. He is at that point of standing and moving around the sofa and end tables with no problem. He is used to walking in one of those walkers which he pushes and stand on his toes to do it. When I held his hands he would lean forward and walk on his toes like he did in that walker thing, so I held one hand and he would walk on his feet a little slower but didn't lean forward.

  Jeremiah and I were standing there talking and Ivan got side tracked for a minute and didn't realize he was standing by himself. Val just happened to be ready with her camera and got this shot of the three of us standing and talking. It still amazes me how big my son and I look compared to Ivan.

I went up to the property on the 23rd of April (2017) and got Carl to help me install a winch and light bar on the Jeep. It was so nice to get away for a couple of days, it was short lived but I really needed to get away. Susan could only stay for two days while I stayed for 4 days, I found I got very lonely up there by myself. There was no one to talk to or give me ideas about things that need to be done, I wanted to do some tractor work but if something were to happen or if I had an accident I'd be out of luck if I needed help. I love being up there but at the same time I love sharing it with someone else. I would have probably stayed longer if it wasn't so windy, for some reason it felt as though the wind took all of my energy and made me feel really tired the whole afternoon on Tuesday. Now that I'm back here at work I would rather be back up there again looking for things to do around the ranch.

I knew a guy for about 15 years and saw him at different shows selling his t-shirt, he always seem like a great guy to know but we never got together. I meant his wife one day at a Halloween store in the mall and she told me that he had contracted cancer. One day he called me out of the blue and asked if I wanted to go out to breakfast with him and I jumped at the chance. He wanted to know what I had learned about cancer, being a smoker it is one of those thing that is always on my mind. I tried to get another friend (Dave Snell) to join us, Dave was diagnosed with kidney, bladder and prostate cancer several years earlier. They told Dave that everything had to be removed and that he would live on dialysis for the rest of his life, at that time he was 72. He told them to take a hike and they told him he had 6 months. Dave is 78 now and has beat his cancer with a special diet and turmeric, cancer hates turmeric. I usually have a cup of it every evening before I go to bed, it's also good for swelling of internal parts. Apparently Stacy had be going through chemo treatment for quite a while, he heard about a treatment he wanted to try but he had to be off chemo for 5 or 6 months before they would do it. He stopped the chemo around the beginning of November and was scheduled for this new procedure on March 22nd. When we had breakfast I ordered coffee and my usual special (scrambled eggs with lots of tabasco, beacon, and hash browns), when I ordered the coffee Stacy smiled and I knew what he was thinking, that's a no no. I was kind of surprised that he orderd biscuits and gravy, I should have said no just give him a fruit bowl, nothing with sugar. I got him the name of Dave's doctor and he made an appointment and got in pretty fast because of the condition he was in, he was in a lot of pain. The doctor spent a lot of time with him, I called him after the appointment and Stacy seemed to be very excited about what the doctor told him. I went out to breakfast with him again and he ordered the same thing again and I knew this stuff was really bad for him but I held my tongue and I shouldn't have. This time he was in a lot of pain, he kept holding his right side over his liver which scared me but there wasn't anything I could do to ease the pain for him. About a week later he left for China with his son on some type of mission, I know he felt obligated to go with his son but what he really needed was to go back to the doctor and start a diet that might help him get past the cancer. When he got back to Phoenix he went right to Mayo Clinic, I talked to him and told him I wanted to visit him down there but was afraid of the sores on my legs. At the time the VA said it was a staph infection and I didn't think Stacy would fair to well with something else going on. A couple of days later they moved him from  Mayo to the hospice in Prescott, I went to see him there but I don't think he was aware that I was there. I'm not good around people who are dying and I pray that when it happens to me that no one else has to go through that. I would like to be on a walk in the mountains and be attached by a wild animal or fall which will probably be the case off of a cliff. Stacy passed the next day with his family and some of his close friends around him. I still feel bad that I couldn't help him when he needed me to come up with something and I feel just as bad for his wife and children, I want to help but have a lot of trouble expressing it in the right way.

It was a real nice Independence Day, my son Jeremiah came up from Gilbert and stayed the weekend at his wife's sisters house in Chino Valley. They came over on Thursday and stayed the day at our house, we sat around most of the day and accomplished nothing but talking. On Sunday after church we got together again and they stayed for a couple of hours before leaving to go back to Gilbert. Before leaving I showed Urijah my son's daughter my piggy bank, I had it covered be a hand puppet monkey. I pulled it off of my piggy bank and Urijah was more interested in the puppet then the piggy bank. I decided to give it to her but it brought back a memory from years ago when I was a kid.
I'm not sure what age I was but when we moved to Pennsylvania I got this puppet of a young blond haired boy. I took him everywhere, I named him Tom and he was about the only friend I had for a long while. One day I woke up and Tom wasn't in my bed, I looked everywhere for him and found his head in the trash. I kept just the head for about another week when it disappeared again, I never saw tom again but to this day whenever I see a hand puppet I think of Tom, he was a good friend for a while.



 

  

 

 

 

This needs to be here so other people don't make the same mistakes I made.

 

Christopher Lee Tomb Born; 07-19-1961 to Passed; 09-27-2007

 

 

My wife and I were due to leave on a trip to Utah for a seminar on some products we were selling for the weekend, two nights before we left I was sharply awakened by my mothers voice yelling my name, Jeff and than again Jeff, louder. I didn't know what to make of it and thought it might have something to do with the trip, I was wrong and I still feel as though I let my mom down. Chris was a fairly good man who loved his wife & kids and just drank way to much,.eventually his drinking got the best of him and he lost his job and stayed home most of the day. One morning he was riding his motorcycle down the 60 and a car pulled into his lane and the cars rear bumper clipped Chris's front tire sending him sailing through the air about 100 feet. People rushed to his aid, he stood up a little shaky and told them that he was okay, he never wore a helmet so he was bleeding a little and the people made him sit down until the police arrived. The police had him taken to the hospital where they checked his blood alcohol level and found that his alcohol level was 3 - 4 times the limit, they told him that he should be dead with that much alcohol in him. His motorcycle was destroyed and he was cited for the the accident and for drunk driving, after getting out of the hospital and serving 24 hours in jail he went home and drank a 6 pack. We used to stop by his house once in a while, he would drink 6 -12 beers and than fall asleep on the floor, his wife told us that he did this every night and that is where he would spend the night. His wife got very tired of him drinking all the time and living on only one income so she decided to leave him. He didn't worry about that until the divorce was finalized and she told him to get out, he was under the impression that he would get something out her for his half of the house, he just wanted to buy a new motorcycle but she kept it all and he got nothing. That night he pulled out a gun and shot himself in the head, I think he just wanted to scare her into dropping the divorce but being as drunk as he was he accidentally pulled the trigger. He lingered for several days on life support, the Monday after we got back from Utah they pulled the plug, I should have been there with him when they did that and that is another very big regret that I will have to live with for the rest of my life. After he shot himself and we got to the hospital and finally saw him it looked as though he was crying and knew he had made a huge mistake. I wished he or his wife would have called to let us know what was going on so we might have been able to intervene, I should have been there for him as a brother and a Christian.

 

Micheal Charles Tomb  Born; April 16, 1954  Passed; 

 

This man was very different, he was the middle child of my parents, I'm the oldest, my brother is 2 years younger than I and Micheal was 7 years younger than me. Than about 6 years after he was born came Chris and 2 years later my sister. Micheal had also gotten into drugs and alcohol at a young age, he was able to control it to a certain extent but he would binge about once every month or two for a couple of weeks and than be fine until he couldn't control the urge and than do it again. He always had good jobs, he would apply for a job and tell the employer that he had experience doing what ever they were looking for and than learn what he needed to look like he knew what he was doing. He landed a job at Ingersol Rand and learned how to repair the generators they use for construction, I mean big generators and he got really good at fixing them. He got a promotion one day into sales and service making a six figure salary, a company car and all the perks. He moved up in the world got himself a new apartment in one of the nieces apartment buildings in the area, got new furniture and lived like a king. He didn't cook so good so he would go over to my parents house and eat with them a lot, my mom had a Seal a Meal for leftovers and at lunch time he would stop by and pick up the left overs for dinner, he renamed the Seal a Meal to Steal a Meal. With all the new found money he got into cocaine and beer. He was also a diabetic so he couldn't drink alcohol but the doctor told him that he could drink as much beer as he wanted (dumb doctor) and he drank. The first company car he rolled while racing, he took a curve over a bridge and went up over the rail and 20 feet down into the creek. The second and third cars he crashed into other cars at high rates of speed and always walked away because he was so drunk. After the third crash they fired him, we all felt bad for him because he had

the attitude that he was to good at his job to worry about it. After that he lost everything and took jobs at small engine repair shops, my parents sold their house and moved to Payson Arizona and he followed. He went to work for a small engine repair place in Phoenix for a long time until he went on a binge one day and came back a week later and was fired. He came up to Prescott and moved in with us and worked in the screen printing business and he was good at it. One day we got a big job of about 250 shirts and I was going to start on them the following Monday and I told him that I really needed his help on Monday so could he please make sure he was there first thing Monday morning. Friday night he went out and never came back, Monday morning came around and he never showed up so I did the shirts all by myself until the job was done. The next day I went looking for him, I found him at his friends apartment drunk as a skunk laughing and having a high old time, I told him that I didn't need him anymore and that he was fired. I never saw him again after that until I got a call from my brother Chris that he was in the hospital dying with cancer. Apparently he never found another job and was living out in the desert with some alcoholic friends drinking his life away, he was a red head with lots of freckles and never did well in the sun. We went down to see him at the hospital, he had tumors all over his body, he dyed about a month later and I have always felt that if I would have just had little understanding he might still be here today.

 

If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his immediate family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever

 

1 Timothy 5:8