The Butcher

Tucson had quickly become our home and neither one of us really wanted to go back to California but we both knew that in order to have a stable future, we had to make the sacrifice. Al had tried to get on with the US Postal Service in Tucson but there were little to no opportunities. He went to Los Angeles and tested there and before we knew it, Al was hired in South Gate, CA. We packed up our little family and made the move. Thankfully Al’s parents offered their guest room to us. This was a really gracious and generous offer since we would obviously disrupt their lives quite significantly. We stayed with them just a couple of months but were anxious to get our own place.

We found a great house on Bowman Ave in South Gate. It had hard wood floors, a little phone nook built in to the wall in the hall and lots of fruit trees in the backyard. We had an abundance of plums, apricots, peaches, oranges, lemons and avocados. (The avocado tree was actually next door but hung over our back wall.) We’d order pizza from Cousimano’s down the street on Tweedy Boulevard and we’d pick up great cuts of meat at the little local market on Otis. They even had their own packaged ice cream that was to die for!

Al worked hard at the post office and played just as hard on a local softball team and improving his golf game. I worked for Mechanics National Bank and before we knew it a baby was on the way. I worked up until the weekend before Alison was born. While Marshall went fishing with his grandparents, Alison Lacey Navarro came in to the world. Al was so excited to welcome his little girl. She was amazing and everything felt just perfect!

Well, perfect was hardly the case. You see our landlords lived next door. And these weren’t just ANY landlords; they were an older couple that didn’t seem to know their boundaries….the McQuiddys. They stored furniture (mostly antiques that attracted rats!) in our garage, actually utilizing MORE than half the garage space, they’d come in to our backyard and pick fruit and we had a feeling they were even going inside the house on occasion when we weren’t home. They were terribly meddlesome and it didn’t sit well with Al. They christened Al with a new nickname towards the end of our time there.

Al enjoyed doing yardwork…mowing the lawn, pruning the trees, etc. He was trimming the trees once and the McQuiddys came over in a huff, screaming at him and then Old Man McQuiddy said it....THE BUTCHER!! Oh we thought it was hilarious and we’d purposely annoy the McQuiddys by tossing around that title. If the McQuiddys were in their backyard and we in ours, we'd make jokes about Al being a butcher not a mailman and laugh loudly making sure they heard. (I know, we were really mature about it all) Oh, how they hated us and after one particularly heated argument Al had with them, we found an eviction notice on our front door. It was a blessing in disguise and led us to a much happier place.