She's Sherrie

MAY 29, 1963 CAMP DAVID John Fitzgerald Kennedy would have been 99 years old today, May 29, 2016, had his life not been taken by an assassin.  Truly one of the saddest days in the history of our country.  Those of us living in that era all know exactly where we were and what we were doing when the news of the shooting came over the television and radio.  The world stopped. Living in a suburb of Washington DC at the time enabled me to witness his last journey to the church for his funeral service and his burial ceremony on the way to Arlington Cemetery.  It was the first time in my life that I had experienced grief.  Not just grief but massive grief.  Men, women, and kids lined up on the funeral route crying unashamedly.  I can still hear the muffled drums' sounds on Constitution Avenue playing the funeral march, Hail to the Chief, and the Navy Hymn.  I have never heard absolute silence from crowds of thousands and thousands of people as they watched the procession in freezing

The new guy at work was named Ed.  He was a cutie.  Blond hair, blue eyes, nice bod, but not much taller than me.  But he did have a hilarious sense of humor, and I enjoyed going into his office searching for files.  He always seemed to have just what I was looking for, the missing files.  It always took me a while to tag all of them, and he would entertain me while I was looking.  I knew this would not be a romance for me, but he was a nice change of pace.  Not that he wasn't trying to entice me to go out with him, but I just wasn't ready for any complications in my life. Soon it would be Christmas, and I was buying things for my kids and hiding them.  Living at my mom's was always a challenge; she didn't know the meaning of the word discipline, and I was hoping that she would keep them out of her room and away from the gifts.  She pretty much let them do as they pleased, and when I tried to make them behave, she would undermine me.  My biggest complaint was that sh

Dallas Mike called my mom's house to talk to me two days after I left.  I told her to tell him that I had nothing to say and hang up.  And that's what she did.  I guess he called several times; I remember hearing the phone ring only one time off and on for the next couple of days.  He didn't know that we were moving to Dallas, and that was fine with me. I hated moving, I really did.  I had moved so many times in my short life, and I would move many more times over the years.  I knew that this would be a grueling move.  Driving two vehicles and pulling a Uhaul and both my brother and mother drove like they were decrepit.  Neither would travel 1 mile over the speed limit at any time.  A few parts of I-40 and I-30 were still not completed, and that meant traveling down podunk, barely 2 lanes wide, roads in some parts.  And it was hot, September in the South, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Texas was brutally hot.  It was something that I would have to get used to. The last ti

Some of the people that I knew have just vanished, and some have not.  I have found some of my former schoolmates on Facebook, actually quite a few, and we correspond through our posts.  Some of them that I may not have known well have become friends, and I am grateful to Facebook for the opportunity to know them.  Occasionally, I will get a message on Classmates.com from someone that I knew in school or lived in Southview or both. My ex-husband Mike, the woman beater, died in September of 2015.  I was a little shocked at that, in a way, but in a way, I wasn't.  He had some kind of issues going on health-wise for a while.  The last time I saw him in 2006, he didn't look completely healthy.  Maybe it was his second family that took a toll on him, finally having to be responsible must have been hard on him, but more on that subject in a different post. My boyfriend David is still around, and there will be some posts regarding him later on.  He never remarried and still l

Before I start writing again about my past, I wanted to update the stars that participated in my young life.  When I pick up my story after moving to Dallas, I will be turning 20 years old and starting out with no friends.  Some of my teenage friends I never saw or heard from again; others are still in my life one way or another. Shelley was a very close friend for 4 years.  I saw her change from a gawky, immature little girl into a woman.  I believe in my heart that Judy and myself, both being older, played a part in her transformation into a beautiful butterfly.  She was such a naive person, and I used to get the best of her with my weird sense of humor.  Shelley was one of those people that were book smart but had very little common sense.  She just didn't always make the best decisions in the real world.  That may have cost her her life. You could tell Shelley almost anything, and she would believe you; she was very gullible.  I remember one afternoon when she was sitti

My fun times in Ohio were few and far between.  I mostly stayed at home, taking care of the little ones.  My only entertainment was going to bingo, and to be honest, the main reason I went was that it was profitable for me.  Mike had been laid off for a while now, and my winnings helped fill the void that his unemployment left.  He was still going out drinking about 5 nights a week, and now he could start in the afternoon since he wasn't working.  My little 5 dollar investment paid very well; I was pretty lucky and winning about a hundred bucks a week, which was a lot back in those days.  I was making up for some of the money he was pouring down his throat. My mom and brother drove up to see the kids.  Jeff was crawling, and Glen was almost 2.  They had changed so much that I knew my family would be surprised.  Glen was a chatterbox.  He talked all of the time; he was a very smart little boy.  He soaked up everything he saw on TV, and his favorite program was Mutual of Omaha, a s

I didn't get to see the new baby Jeff very much.  They would bring him in but only for a few minutes.  I was just too out of it and had too many IVs and tubes.  Demurral was my new best friend; it kept me out of pain and out of reality.  It was most pleasant.  And it kept me asleep so that I didn't have to see Mike whenever he decided to show up. As best as I could tell, baby Jeff was starting to look like his dad.  He had a little golden red fuzz on his head, and his mouth was identical to Mike's.  His nose was not like his dad's; it was more like mine.  He still was scratched up quite a bit, but at least his head had taken on a normal shape.  He was much bigger than Glen had been, by almost 2 pounds, which is why I should have had a cesarean section.  I wondered how many women that small-town doctor had messed up.  I guess it really didn't matter; he really did a number on me.  I spent 10 days in the hospital. To this day, the hospital was great; I have never r

I had two doctors to choose from for my prenatal care.  Both were general practitioners; there were no obstetricians in the village.  I chose the one that my sister-in-law used.  He was an older guy, probably close to retirement.  The other doctor had actually delivered Mike and several of his brothers and sisters, so he was also knocking on the door of retirement.  I wasn't very pleased with the choices; I was afraid that they would give me a piece of rope to bite on during delivery instead of any anesthesia when the time came.  The good news is that I would be going to St. Rita's Hospital in Lima, which was a big step up from the naval hospital. I was a lot bigger than I had been when I was pregnant with Glen.  I was all baby, but it was sitting very high up where Glen had been very low; I was hoping it was a sign that it was a girl.  I would have been very happy to have a pretty little red-headed girl to match my pretty little red-headed boy.  Either way, I didn't h

Life goes on.  I think as young women, we kid ourselves into thinking that an abusive husband will change.  Their apologies seem so sincere, but they just don't last.  It was a taboo topic during the seventies; you didn't really talk about it; it made you feel ashamed.  It was more acceptable than to knock a woman around, belittle her, and take her power away.  Women understood how degrading it made them feel, but we were expected to tough it out.  Often, we only stayed with the man because we had nowhere to go if we left them.  If we were at home taking care of kids and being wifely, we didn't have our own income to stash away to use to escape a bad marriage.  And that was why I stuck around.  I had no way of supporting a baby and another one on the way.  I refused to turn to my family and have to live under their rules.  I just had to make the best of a bad situation. I started taking care of my uncle's little girl.  That would give me $25.00 a week to call my own.

Eventually, Mike returned to the party, still very drunk, but at least he was quiet.  As soon as he came in, I told him that I was going home and that he could stay or go with me.  Unfortunately, he came with me, but I drove the car home.  It was just a short drive, a few miles from the location of the party. Mike slept on the way home, and I was grateful for that.  I was very tempted to just leave him in the car, but it was freezing outside.  I woke him up and walked up to the apartment by myself.  As soon as I went inside, I went and changed out of my clothes into my nightgown.  I wanted to just lay down and go to sleep, but Mike was still not inside.  I heard him stumbling around outside the door, so I just turned and started walking back to the bedroom.  As soon as he came through the door and locked it, he ran up behind me and grabbed me, and threw me down on the floor.  I immediately got up and ran to the bathroom and shut the door, but he caught up with me and was pushing on t

We were officially out of that awful house and found a new apartment in Laurel, Maryland.  It was a nice apartment, brand new in a brand new complex.  I really didn't think we would be there long; it seemed like my mom and brother were different.  I thought that maybe they resented the fact that I had been in Ohio when the house performed the finale.  They just didn't act the same.  And they were getting in my business.  My mom was interfering with the way I was taking care of Glen.  And anything that she didn't like, my brother didn't like either; I always called them a tag team.  They would back each other up no matter what. Glen had become accustomed to being held a lot.  I  believe you might call that being spoiled.  As long as somebody was holding him, he was delighted.  As soon as you laid him down, he would scream.  He didn't want to sleep in his bed at all.  He would sleep in his swing, but it wasn't good for him to have his legs hanging down all of

A Professor Joyner from Duke University contacted my aunt to advise her that he and his wife, also a professor, and their team would meet my family at the house on Sunday at 3pm.  That would allow them adequate time to set up their equipment throughout the house.  They would be staying overnight along with my family, but they would run the investigation and decide what actions would take place.  That was wonderful news. My mom rented a Uhaul truck, and they would go to the house early in the morning to start moving all of our possessions out.  Everything would be stored in my aunt's garage until a new place to move to was found.  Their goal was to have everything out of the house to not have to come back once the investigation was concluded. On Sunday, my family arrived at the house around 7am.  They wanted to have everything out of the way and loaded into the truck before the parapsychology team arrived.  Most of our belongings were upstairs, but a few things remained downs