Men In Black

Strange things began happening even before we were married

When you live in Sunnyslope not much happens.  It's quiet on Orchid Lane.  There were lots of kids there to grow up with.  Most around the same age.  One mom taught piano lessons, one dad drove a 18 wheeler and would park the cab in the driveway from time to time.  One dad was a fire man.  My dad was an accountant. We played capture the flag and kick the can.  We had to be home for dinner at 5:00 and in by 10:00 PM.  There was my good friend, Brandy, who was the 6th of 7 kids. Brandy & I had spent our first 2 years of middle school trying to see who could run faster than the other. The mountains were close by and we climbed them all the time.  Most mom's were home and didn't work.   All in all a great, quiet fun place to grow up.

In the Spring/Summer of 1983, I had just finished my 3rd semester of graduate school and I was home from Flagstaff and working as the office manager for a Dental practice in Phoenix .  Jeff had graduated from Yale, he was working for Harris Corp. in Palm Bay, FL. and we were engaged to be married.  Our wedding date was set for late June.   Jeff had 17 job offers upon graduation!  17 Who does that??!!   He could have gone anywhere he wanted.   He even had an offer from some small start up in Washington State called...  Microsoft...

One evening towards the end of May Jeff called and said that we had to postpone our wedding.   WHAT?!  The invitations were almost all addressed and ready to be mailed, the venue booked, deposits paid, the Priest was scheduled and we had already done our Pre-Caina classes.  WHAT?!  Well, it seems there was a supposed to be a Space Shuttle launch earlier that Spring which had to be postponed and was now scheduled for the weekend of our wedding.  WHAT?!  He had to be there for the launch, as a big part of his job was software development for the Space Shuttle.  AARG!!  After quite a few tears from me and several OMGosh's the new date was set we rescheduled for September 24th.   After the Jewish Holidays...  I didn't know what the Jewish Holidays were at this point, but I do now!  I had to get busy as all these changes were on me.  Who's wedding is postponed for a Space Shuttle Launch?!

A few weeks later, early in June, during one of our nightly phone calls Jeff said "oh by the way, ( I have learned to dread it when he says "Oh by the way....")  "there will be a couple of men coming to talk to you about me."  My head went spinning in all different directions, are you OK is there something wrong?   Well it seems that Jeff had decided that working at Harris and launching Space Shuttles was OK but he really wanted to do more.  He decided he could also work for the C.I.A.  Yes them!   The kinda scary guys...  WHAT?!  This was so not the direction my head had gone spinning to.

He then began to fill me in, as best he could, (with very little detail...) on the interview process that he had already been through.   He couldn't say much, but what I did get from him sounded rather odd.  He talked about riding around the D.C. area in a car for quite a while until he was very confused about where he was, then he was taken to the final interview...  Didn't they know Jeff has ZERO sense of direction?  That he can't find his way out of a wet paper bag on a good day?  So all this driving around was only a waste of gas.  Sounds like some sort of movie right?  At this point in our conversation my jaw was on the floor.  He went on to say that  it seems these men needed to talk with those of us who knew Jeff well, to determine if what he had told them was correct and to "assess his personality."  Does anyone really know Jeff "well"?  The CIA were going to talk to his both his parents, his siblings and close friends. I was in that group as we were engaged. WHAT!!??  These things don't happen on Orchid Lane.  It's quiet here!

A few days later, as I was getting ready for work early in the morning, the doorbell rang.  Curlers in my hair, bathrobe flapping, and 1/2 my makeup on I ran to answer it before my parents did.  I had been expecting these men to come later in the day, not at 7:30 AM!   How do I explain this little visit to my parents?  My family is kinda boring.  Actually, really boring.  Orchid Lane is boring.  This would not sit well with my dad.  Oh my dad loved Jeff! Don't get me wrong, he loved him but, thought Jeff was a bit odd.

I opened the door and found "Men in Black" standing there.   You know the movie?  The movie wasn't even out in 1983 but looking back now that is exactly what showed up at my parents front door.   How did I know who they were you ask?  Easy!!  First of all, in Phoenix no one who lives there, wears a black suit and tie in June!  No one!!  It is generally 100+ degrees by 10 AM.  So I knew exactly who they were.   My knees and stomach resembled Jello Jigglers.  They made me soooo nervous.  They both removed their sunglasses and introduced themselves.  I invited them in and they declined as they showed me their "official" ID badges.   I stood there with the door open, curlers in my hair, dogs barking and worried  my neighbors would see them and really worried that I would be late for work!!

A few simple questions later and they left.  That's it!?  They slowly walked back to their black, government issued sedan and drove away.   OMGosh! That's it?!   I was a wreck!  Had I answered their questions right?   Did I do anything that would cause Jeff to not get the job with the C.I.A.?  Why did he even want to work there? I couldn't even talk to him until that evening as, remember, this is pre cell phone! My stomach in knots I rapidly finished getting ready for work and then tried to figure out how I would explain to the Dentists why I was so late.  "It's  because I was talking to CIA agents in my bathrobe..."   Right!!  Orchid Lane is boring!!!

Men In Black

That first date

Oh I should have known better.  
Our first date was on Friday April 1, 1977. 

 April Fools Day!!

We had joked about going to San Diego the previous weekend.  Neither of us had gone of course.  But, all the same when you live in Phoenix, San Diego is a wonderful escape from the heat!  Everyone wanted to be in San Diego especially during summer.  Plus it was California in the 70's!  What could be better?

There was much harassing of each other between scooping ice cream and me decorating & selling ice cream cakes.  He insisted that he "had come to pick me up" for San Diego but that I wasn't there.  Of course I knew he hadn't.  Me insisting "I was oh sooooo embarrassed to be standing on curb with my suit case ready for the trip and he never came by."   And so it went for nearly 3 hours.  Until he finally said do you want to go to a movie with me on Friday to make up for not going to San Diego.   I though he was joking!  Really!  Then the pit of my stomach said wait a minute I think he really means it!  I told him I would think about it and let him know on Thursday...

I immediately drove over to see my dear friend Anna, who uttered those fateful words...  "Oh what will one date hurt".   But, I can't date him!  He is younger than me!  He is from a clearly more affluent family than my family!!  And he is Jewish for crying out loud!!  And so it went on and on in circles, as I sat with Anna for over an hour trying to find a way out of the "date" but alas to no avail.   There really was no way out, as I did kind of want to know more about this guy.  He sure could talk a lot, unlike most of the guys I knew.  He was very smart and interesting and I did have fun when we worked together so why not.  It was only 1 date anyway and he did make me laugh!

So I devised a plan: my sister Cheri would be my back up.  You always have to have a back up and Cheri was it!!   On Friday I got ready for my "date" and if he didn't show up Cheri and I would go to the movies instead.  It would be my treat.  A movie didn't cost an arm and a leg back then.  It was a great plan!!  Then he called and asked where I lived. I told him, and that is when he said he would see me in a little while.  Remember this is pre-cell phone and pre-GPS!  Our family had 1 phone and it was attached to the wall in the family room.  Panic time!!

Still doubting, I stood behind the curtains in the living room peering out the window to see if he would actually show up.  Then very slowly I saw him coming down the street.  He was driving his mother's silver Oldsmobile Cutlas.   A very nice car!!  It was the nicest car I had ever seen on my street before!  Oh I knew I was in over my head.  So I ran down the hall and pushed Cheri out to the living room to answer the door!!  Great plan!!

Off we went to the China Doll Chinese restaurant and to see the movie Rocky.  I was too afraid to touch anything in the car.  It was so clean inside and smelled like perfume.  I was a nervous wreck!  This was the nicest car I had ever seen!  Remember my Mustang that I did my own repair work on???   This was soooo NOT that car!!

It was a Friday during Lent.  I couldn't have meat.  Yikes! I had only eaten out in a restaurant a handful of times in my entire life!  What was I going to order for dinner in a Chinese restaurant that didn't have meat?  I had never even eaten Chinese food much less eaten in a Chinese restaurant! But here I was on a Friday night during Lent in a Chinese restaurant trying to order a non-meat dish that I could identify the ingredients. You see the closest thing to fish on a Friday night for my family was tuna fish from a can or frozen fish sticks- yuck!  And we certainly didn't eat out on a Friday during Lent or any other Friday for that matter.  I had my first shrimp that night and then felt guilty as it was a little more expensive then the chicken dish. "Catholic Guilt" at its finest.  Then I had to explain Lent to Jeff.  Now that took some doing.  I am very sure I didn't do a good job of explaining Lent.   I was too nervous.  And I didn't know if he understood a word I said.   But I guess it didn't matter because he asked me out for the following weekend.  So I must have said something right...

Thus we began a 6 1/2 year courtship, oh sure it was an unusual courtship as he was away at Yale in Connecticut and I was in Arizona for 4 of those 6 1/2 years.  Then again, it seemed most things with Jeff were a bit unusual right from the beginning.  Through these years we both finished college and got jobs and I even attended graduate school at N.A.U. in Flagstaff!  Finally my dream of going away to school had come true, better late than never!

Here we are before Jeff's senior High School Prom in May of 1979

Don't you just love all the hair we both had?

Here we are at a Birthday for both of us given by Jeff's Aunt Joyce

Our birthdays are 3 years and 3 days apart.

This was taken in my parents living room on one of Jeff's visits home from college.  

He was at Yale and I was in graduate school at this point at N.A.U.

          This was taken at the Harvard vs Yale football game November 1982                                                                            

"The Game" 

I flew into New York and we drove up to Boston for the game with 

a bunch of Jeff's friends and roommates.  It was freezing!!!!  

For you trivia nuts, this was the game where 

M.I.T inflated a balloon on the field during the game.

Here is the link to the news reports of "The Hack."

Notice the man in the full length mink coat on the left center part of the screen?

A MAN in a full length fur!   We didn't even wear coats in Arizona much less a fur coat!!

 

Yale lost 21-7

So as you can see strange things seemed to be happening from the very beginning. 

 "The Hack" was a huge thing at the time.   Imagine how crazy things progressed from here because we were not even married at this point!  This truly is the beginning of the unusual things that have happened surrounding Jeff  over the past many years...  

Where I came from.

I am new to the blogging world.   It seems that this is the way of the world now...   So here I go.  I don't' know how often I will update but my goal is at least once a week.   I am going to slowly but surely fill you in on what life with Jeff is like.   Sometimes humorous other times frustrating.   But always an adventure!

In the Fall of 1976 I was working at a Baskin Robbins 31 Flavors ice cream store in North Phoenix, Arizona.    I had graduated from High School that previous Spring- the Bi-Centennial year!  I had worked at B.R. all through my Junior and Senior years of high school and I was currently in my first year of college.  It was an easy job with great benefits.  Oh no insurance. Nothing of what the current world considers "benefits".   Heck we didn't even make minimum wage!!   No our benefits included all the ice cream, cake, cones, and toppings etc that we could eat!   Oh I loved that job!  Believe it or not I never gained an ounce of weight.  I was skinny as a rail!  5'6" tall and barely 115 pounds!   Life was good!

I had saved enough money from babysitting and working at B.R. to buy my first car; a '65 Mustang.  Yes!  I did own one of those wonderful classic cars. Dark blue with a hard top.  It was my pride and joy!   I washed and waxed it weekly and I even learned how to do all the mechanical work; yes!  Tune up's, oil changes and radiator flushes, I did  all the work myself!  I had the seats reupholstered to the original design of the car.  I LOVED that car!   Still do even though it is long gone... more on that another day...

Due to family financial issues I had to attend college not the way I had planned.  I had great lofty goals of going away to college.  Maybe to N.A.U. in Flagstaff, AZ or even to a college in Pennsylvania, or maybe Michigan St. as they had "cool" football helmets.  Oh I so passionately wanted to get away from home but it was not to be.  So as "life" would have it I was attending a local Jr. College; Phoenix College.  I knew it was a stepping stone to A.S.U. (Arizona St. University).  So I sucked it up and did it.  After all I was paying my own way through school and this was the least expensive option available.  I had to make this work!

I was 18, and ready for life!  I am the middle child of 5 children.  The sandwich meat of 5 kids.  Not the oldest in any group and not the youngest in any group.   The middle!  Not the best place, but I certainly did know my place. I have 2 older sisters, both of which were married and either had children or were about to have children, at this point, and neither had attended college.  I also have a younger sister and a brother, who was the youngest of all 5 of us.  They were still in  high school & elementary respectively.  I had to go away.   I was different.  I didn't want to get married, I didn't want children- at that point.   I wanted a college degree and a job that paid more than I was making scooping ice cream.   I wanted out!!  I was strong willed and independent   Yet I rarely spoke while in high school.  I had my close friends of course.  And, we had a blast!   Not the drugs and alcohol kind of fun but just hanging out, going to movies & "Cruising  Central Avenue," kind of fun.  Basically I was shy and quiet...   But, I knew I wanted more!  I always felt I should live on the East Coast and not out West!  I knew that college was my ticket out and I was going to make it happen.  Nothing or no one would get in the way of my degree!  

Life was clearly defined in the mid 70's.  There were clear class lines in the Phoenix area at the time.   I lived in N. Central Phoenix, the Sunnyslope area, the area just North of the "rich" area in Phoenix.   I had attended Sunnyslope High School.  It was a good respectable High School.  Central High School was the "money" school in Phoenix at the time.  Both were public high schools.   But, whew!  If you went to Central everyone knew what that meant...  You lived in the "right" area of town!  However, we had "S" mountain and a Homecoming football parade down the middle of the street with floats and everything...   and they didn't.  So we were just fine.  Not wealthy with money but we had spirit!!

And then I met Jeff...   He was a big, curly headed guy that came to work at BR.  I had to teach him how to wrap cones and scoop ice cream.   Oh he was not so good at it... His apron always was on wrong and his hair was rarely combed, and he always had a bloody scrape on either his hands or elbow.  He tended to make a mess of things on a regular basis.   But, oh could he make me laugh!   He was always joking around about something and he had the most interesting "stories" he would tell.   I was dating someone else at the time so he didn't really interest me.   Besides I was in college and he was in high school.  However, he did go to Central High School.   So I was always interested in what he had to say about life there...

Jeff and I had several running jokes and by the Spring of 1977 I had broken up with my former boyfriend and was dating other guy off and on.  Nothing serious but just fun.  Jeff didn't "approve" of any of the guys I was dating at the time.  He made fun of each of them as he met them.  This annoyed me!!  Jeff and I sat in the parking lot when we weren't busy scooping ice cream and fed the sparrows broken bits of cones and talked about our life plans.  He always made me laugh!  Then one day it was something he said and I "knew" he was going to ask me out on a date.   I was panicked!  I didn't want to date this guy!  He was my best friend and I just knew that if I began dating him I would lose my best friend.  Plus!  And this is a huge PLUS!!   He was younger than me, he was from a family with money, and he was Jewish!!   I am barely middle class & Catholic!!   We didn't do that in the 70's in my area of town!   We didn't cross all those lines!!  At least I didn't do that!!

So as any good Catholic girl does I went and asked my best friend, Anna.  Another good Catholic girl whom I had known for many years!   I had told her that Jeff had indeed asked me out and that I told him I would "think about it..."    Her answer and I will never forget it was simple.  "What is one date going to hurt?"   Just go have fun and no worries...  Oh Anna!  If you only knew what you started with those simple words...

And so began what has turned into thus far a 36 year whirlwind of a life that is full of all the up's and downs that one can have...  One that is never boring and one that I pray continues for at least another 36 years!

Life with Jeff!