An anxious man, a pregnant woman, a crazy dog and a strangely fat cat. It was all going well as we traveled across the desert from California to Arizona and then we made a stop mid way and discovered we also had kittens! Al had found our home on his previous trip to Tucson as he ironed out job details. It was a little duplex in mid-town. 3518 E Presidio to be exact. Perfect little place for us. It was close to the restaurant Al was opening with his friend and Al worked a LOT of hours. A young high school kid (3 years my junior – ha!) came in looking for a job and was hired. He and his crazy friends became a fixture around our place. That high school kid was Brian and a life-long friendship began.
I tried to find a job but quickly found out no one was interested in hiring a pregnant woman. So I set about making our house a home and getting prepared for the baby.
We found a great obstetrician with a midwife in his practice. Finally the time came and we went to the hospital.
It’s funny that Al and I walked those halls late at night trying to work through my early labor and now I walk those same halls as part of the labor force at Tucson Medical Center. We brought our beautiful son Marshall home and Al was so incredibly proud. He was such a doting father and would spend his evenings after work cradling his son and just staring at him.
Our German Shepherd Hagar and once pregnant, okay twice pregnant, cat Chablis flourished and were great pets and companions. But Hagar was teased unmercifully by a kid in the little duplex complex and one day justice was served when Hagar jumped the fence and bit this kid. No break in the skin, just mental trauma for the kid (hopefully he learned a lesson) but Hagar had to be impounded at Animal Control for a bit. When he came back home we got another dog to keep him company and hopefully calm him down. A fat little lab mix we named Micah. We soon found out that Micah was an escape artist and thief. We’d find chewed up shoes (not ours!), toys (again not ours!) and other things in our fenced yard and the neighbors started complaining. We found another home for Micah and kept a closer eye on Hagar.
I went back to work a couple of months after Marshall was born. I did some waitressing at a locally owned restaurant on Country Club.
Another funny little thing….that restaurant was located in the exact same spot as the ad agency my employer uses. I just realized that. I was soon hired to be a teller at Valley National Bank – the University branch. There began my “career” in banking.
We had a lot of fun at that house. One time we had a big, crazy party at the Presidio duplex after a javelina hunt. There was a band, a bunch of very potent jungle juice and a javelina wrapped in burlap buried in the ground slowly cooking on hot coals. A little too slowly though since everyone kept drinking waiting for the meat to be done, eventually passing out and waking up the next morning to falling off the bone javelina.
Restaurant business is a funny thing and Al knew he needed more stability for his family and an opportunity to get on with the US Postal Service came up……in southern California!! Ready, set, go!
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