BIG UNEXPECTED CHANGES!!!

MOVING BACK TO ALBUQUERQUE

          “We’re moving back to Albuquerque, Gloria,” Mom informed me.

          I was dumbfounded!  I had mixed emotions.  I had made friends.  My life was full of school activities, hay rack rides and High school football games. 
          Dave and I still wrote, but not as often.  I no longer wore his heavy ring around my neck (It was on my dresser). There was a boy at Hotchkiss High that was giving me a lot of attention. We had sat together on a hay rack ride.   But, I still remembered Dave’s prediction that I would be returning to Albuquerque.  I would later find out about Dave’s prayer life.  Perhaps that was why he had been so sure.

          As usual I was never told the whole reason for our move. “Installment” was the word.  It seemed the installment had not been paid and Mom was angry with Deryl.  There was also no house on Childers Drive to return to.

                                          SANDIA HIGH SCHOOL

            I could not believe it…I was back in Albuquerque!!!

           

          Mom and Deryl rented a house in Princess Jean Park in the northeast part of Albuquerque.  It was a three-bedroom ranch.  The neighborhood had block walls separating the yards.  My friends and I would walk them occasionally.

          Sandia High School was situated in the NE Heights of Albuquerque. It was different being in a big school again.  After Hotchkiss, where I had become a big fish in a small pond, now I was only one in a thousand.

          Dave and I took up where we had left off.  His ring hung around my neck once more.  He was still into motorcycles and had taken up karate.

           One Friday night Dave and I were invited to a party.  I was getting ready and for some reason I was uptight.  Mom and I got into it. 

          “Gloria, you are grounded.  You call Dave right now and tell him you are not going to that party!”

          “I’m sorry Mom.”

          “No, you are not going!”

          I called Dave.

          “Tell your Mom you weren’t able to reach of me.  I will be over in a few minutes.”

          Dave showed up acting like nothing was wrong.  Mom gave me a look but let me go.

          “I really didn’t want to go to this party,” Dave said, “But I knew you wanted to, so I used the prayers in my prayer bank.”

          Dave, who was Catholic, had never mentioned anything religious before, so I was intrigued.

          “What is a prayer bank?”

          “Well, any time I have a free moment I say a prayer and I put those prayers in a prayer bank in heaven.  Tonight I prayed and withdrew them so you could go the party.”

          I wasn’t sure about Dave’s concept of prayer, but I was on my way to the party and that was good enough for me.

          I thought a lot about Dave's prayer bank. I was intrigued by it.

BOYFRIEND WITH A MOTORCYCLE

HARLEY DAVIDSON

           

           The only thing Mom didn’t like about David was his motorcycle.

          “Gloria, I do not want you on that cycle!  Now, I have told you before how dangerous they are.  When you were only two years old, Tommy Terrell came by the house in Magdalena, and took me for a ride on his motorcycle.  We were going to take you with us and then I decided not to.  Thank God we didn’t or you would have been killed!”

          I knew the story well; the motorcycle had collided with a car.  Mom had been thrown from the bike and suffered a concussion, which put her in the hospital for weeks.  Her friend had walked away with minor injuries.

          David drove up to the curb, sitting on the seat of his black Harley Davidson.   I was standing in line for the school bus.

          “Want a ride home?” he yelled.  His green eyes sparkled good naturedly and he smiled his cocky grin.  I looked over at him, and then at the bus.  It wasn’t hard to decide.

          “Okay, but you’ll have to leave me off at the corner or Mom will have a fit.”

          “Your Mom doesn’t need to worry.  “I’m great on this chunk of metal!”

          It was true.  David and his cycle welded together as one mechanically smooth machine.  He had confidence and full control.

          I swung my leg over the seat and tucked my cotton skirt under my legs to maintain my modesty.  Holding the books in the crook of my left arm, I placed my right one around David's waist and hung on tight.

          “Ready?”

          “Ready,” I answered.

          The engine revved, the side pipes smoked and we were off.  The wind blew my face causing my eyes to sting, so I leaned my head against David's back.  My long hair whipped in the wind and I wondered if I’d be able to comb out the tangles.

          Wyoming Boulevard flew by as David guided the cycle through traffic.  We turned at the Constitution intersection and a few minutes later the bike came to a halt.

          I climbed off the Harley, straightened my skirt and combed my thick tangled hair.

          “I’ll call you later,” David yelled, as he spun his bike toward home.

          “You here already?” Mom asked as I entered the front door.

          “It didn’t take as long today,” I answered, hoping she wouldn’t notice my cheeks were red from being wind blown. (And from her question.)

AN UNEXPECTED RIDE

ROLLING ACROSS THE MESA

          I answered the front door. I was surprised: there on the front step  stood my "X Trouble".

          "Hey, Gloria", she grinned, "Come riding with us".

          I peeked out the door. There was a low-rider, black car parked in the driveway. Three Spanish boys were in the front seat.

          I hesitated. "Come on, we won't be gone that long," she said.

          We ran out to the car and I hopped into the back seat with the two girls who had been my "double trouble." The "2nd, X trouble" gave me a small smile.

          (Mom wasn't home or she would never have allowed me go.)

          The car headed for the Mesa. There was still a lot of desert that was undeveloped.

          Dust swirled around and behind us as the black car sped over the hilly dirt roads. We yelled and laughed at each tummy tickler…it was just like a roller coaster.

          When we drove back into our driveway: I climbed out of the back seat.   

          "Yey Gloria…Adios"

          "Adios, Amigos," I answered as I rushed to the front door. Mom still wasn't home…she never knew about my exciting ride.

         

           

ALBUQUERQUE...JUNIOR HIGH

ANDREW JACKSON JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL

          Activity was the only way to describe the hustle and bustle of the hallways in  Albuquerque’s Andrew Jackson Junior High.

          I felt excitement over the hundreds of faces scurrying to the first hour class.  In my homeroom, I was one of five new students.  It wasn’t long before I was joining in the laughter and chatter between classes.  Through our many moves I had learned to push myself forward, with an air of confidence that I did not always possess.  It was kind of like, “Fake it until you make it.”

          Two weeks into school, Amy, a fellow ninth grader, walked up to me after dismissal.

          “Gloria, didn’t you say you were from Socorro?”

          “Yes.”

          “Do you know Janet Bailey?”

          “Sure,” I replied.

          “She’s my cousin,” Amy said.  I smiled, and was ready to discuss our mutual acquaintance when Amy continued.

          “Gloria, is Fess Parker your uncle?”

          The question caught me off guard.  I remembered the day in the elementary school yard, where I had watched the fifth grade girls’ jump rope.  Feeling left out, I had called Janet apart from the others and told her my lie, “Janet, my uncle is Fess Parker.”  The words rang in my memory.

          ‘No, he isn’t my uncle.  Why would you ask that?” I asked as if I didn’t know where she could have come up with the idea.

          “Well...huh,” she stammered, “Janet wrote me and said to ask you.  She said you told some whoppers.”

          I didn’t say anything to incriminate myself and Amy walked away, perplexed.

          I watched as she crossed the schoolyard toward the city bus.  No one, since the fifth grade, had ever mentioned the lie.  Now, four years later, I was confronted with it.

          “Whew!  I will never tell another lie as long as I live!  Even as I thought it, I knew that was probably not true.

NEW BEGINNINGS

ALBUQUERQUE...SANDIA MOUNTAINS

          ALBUQUERQUE....1952

 

          The sandy dirt covered the toes of my shoes as I left the school playground.  The pre-fab building sat behind me, it was serving its purpose until the new school building was finished.  Shuffling my books, I crossed Constitution Avenue and began the half-mile walk home.  The wind whipped across the mesa causing the sand to sting my legs.  Only the south side of the street had a sidewalk.  I looked across at the barren land.  Sand and sagebrush lay for miles in the distance.  Tumbleweed rolled from the mesa, across the pavement, and onto the green lawn before me.
      The new housing development was claiming the desert, turning it into structures and green grass.  Dad said the houses would someday be up to the mountains.  My eyes followed the mesa as it stretched for miles up to the base of the Sandia Mountains.  The Sandias' stood majestically against the blue New Mexico sky.  Shades of purple and browns enhanced their rugged beauty as they cast their royal gaze down upon Albuquerque, the civilization springing up in this once wilderness land.

          I still remembered my first impression of Albuquerque.  It had been overwhelming.  Bronco and I stared with fascinated wonder at the busy intersections, restaurants, stores, and pedestrians that passed by the windows of the 1949 ford, as it pulled the bulging U Haul down Central Avenue.

          We waited outside and “people watched” as Dad entered the large building bearing the name, “Public Service Company of New Mexico.”  It was close to an hour before Dad strolled back to the car.  His face was serious.

“Oh dear,” Mom said anxiously, as we watched him approach, “I wonder what happened.”

          “Well Wanda, what do you think we should do?” Dad asked solemnly.  His face was sober and under control, but his eyes twinkled.

          “Slim, don’t tease me at a time like this.  Did you get the job?”

          Dad’s face broke into the grin he had been suppressing.

          “Yep, I sure did,” he said with laughter in his voice, “See, I told you there wasn’t anything to worry about.”

          Celebration filled the interior of the black 1949 Ford.

          We rented an adobe house in the northeast side of Albuquerque.  We were living there when I started school.  I was scared when I entered the forth grade classroom.  I soon discovered I was only one of many new students.  The population explosion of Albuquerque was adding to the schools.

          One particular day, when I came home from school, Mom’s face was radiant.

          “The loan went through.  We’re going to have our own house,” she declared, “and a brand new one at that,” she added proudly.

          When Dad got home from work, we drove the four blocks to the new housing site.  We stood before the empty lot while Dad and Mom planned and dreamed.  The house would have an attached garage and we would plant a lawn and trees. 
         During the months that followed, in the cool of the evenings, amid the sounds of neighborhood dogs barking and young children playing on the sidewalks, we walked to the builder’s site.  The noises became distant as we entered the unoccupied street.  The builder’s tools had been put away for the day, and the houses stood half finished.  We watched with pride the building of our home.  Every part of the structure, from the foundation to the shingles on the roof, had been important to us.

          My thoughts returned to the present as I approached the familiar landscape.  The new signpost bore the name “Childers Drive.”  I quickened my steps as I turned the corner.  Manicured lawns and young-planted trees graced the front of the newly built homes.  At the end of the block the greenness ended and the barren mesa stretched into the distance until it reached the next development of houses.

          “Hi Gloria.”

          I turned in the direction of the voice and saw Jane waving as she walked up her driveway.

          “Hi Jane,” I answered and waved my one free hand.  I was adjusting to the move from Montana
back to New Mexico.
            Little did I know of the changes that would be taking place in all of our lives and the secrets I would soon learn.

                                        ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO AT NIGHT