This is the last installment of the diary I began
Thursday and continued on
Friday. When I began writing I had no idea it was going to be so long and involved. I hope you all don't mind.
I had meant to finish my three part series on Saturday. A full blown 3-alarm family crisis took place on Friday night, so I've been otherwise occupied. Are you curious? Good, because I'll get to that near the end of the diary.
(more below the fold...)
When I left you last, I had gone through a mid-90's divorce and moved back to Mom's house with my kids. I didn't mention Richard then, but I will now. (I'm using his name with his permission.)
My first husband and I took Richard in when he was 11. Richard became my oldest son's best buddy the minute we moved into the neighborhood. He was a permanent fixture in the house and we loved him like one of our own. Richard's Mom is single, had 3 kids, no money, and a serious problem with addiction. Her two oldest boys ran wild every day--there was very little supervision and they got into trouble for things like shoplifting, etc. Children's services stepped in and she was going to lose custody at least temporarily. Richard's Grandma wanted to take in the two youngest kids but she didn't think she could handle Richard and all his problems. So with his Mom's blessing we legally adopted him when he was 12. Richard has had many issues and problems since that time but I'll save it for another day, another diary.
During my divorce I packed up all three kids and went home to my mother's house. I had no money, no real skills, and I needed a decent paying job really quick. My brother and his wife had left the Marines and moved back to the city by that time. He and I decided we would try to get jobs with a new booming industry in the area--the prison system. We got phone calls a few weeks apart, did the training, and went to work as prison guards. He thrived and I was miserable. But I was making decent money and I could move out of my mother's house with the kids. I rented a house in the country, found an older neighbor lady who could watch the kids while I was working, and we found a bit of real happiness.
I could write an entire diary of what it was like working inside a prison. Suffice it to say that when one is hired to work for DRC, the employee is warned that the job will change you and often not for the better. My brother became more aggressive and unforgiving and I became more and more sympathetic. It was a terrible job.
Around this time I met a man. He was someone I had known since high school and was a very nice person. I knew all along that he had been in alcohol recovery for many years. We started dating. He accepted all three kids and really connected with them, and they with him. At Christmastime of the following year he asked me to marry him and I said yes. We had a civil ceremony at the mayor's office in June. We bought a house together and moved the entire crew closer to the city in a subdivision. The houses were all old coal miner's row houses but we saw great potential. We planned to remodel and make it what we wanted.
I still worked at the prison until one particularly vile day I thought I just couldn't continue. I couldn't take any more of the racism and misogynistic attitudes. It was truly a daily horror show. My husband told me that we didn't need the income and I really didn't need to work there any longer. So I put in my notice, worked the two weeks, and happily left. I found part-time work and could stay with the kids more than I had before. My husband's job was fantastic except for the long hours. He was making close to $100,000/year working as a store manager in a privately owned lumber company. It was sort of like a smaller version of Lowe's except that they catered mostly to contractors. So my hubby was happy, I was happy, and we all were thriving. We had an income that was far greater than most people make in this area. My husband all along had wanted some children of his own, particularly a boy, to carry on his family's name. You have to understand that in this area it's not unusual for families to have 3, 4 or 5 children, so I never even considered at the time that having such a large family was not a good thing. We had another boy and soon after, at long last, a baby girl. A total of five wonderful children.
I don't think I'll ever know what exactly changed everything. Maybe it was the stress of parenting that did it. Or maybe the demands and increasing stress of his job. My husband started drinking again. It started slowly and slyly. He started coming home from work with beer on his breath. I would find empty bottles in his truck. Then he stopped hiding it. He would come home staggering. On the weekends and his days off he would drink a case of beer in a few hours. He always drank in the car on his way home from work. I was deeply concerned but didn't know what to do. One of neighbors was a minister and I asked him for advice. He told me to go to Al-Anon, and I did. I tried to learn how to cope with it but never quite succeeded. My hubby got picked up for DUI and spent a weekend in jail. He went to work drunk and was fired. One day soon after that he packed up some of his things and moved home with his parents. I got divorce papers in the mail a month later.
So there I was, alone with not enough money and this time I had five kids to support. I enlisted the aid of the older neighbor lady again and got a full time job. It wasn't enough. I got a second part-time job. We could make it but things were very tight. My now ex-husband had started a lot of projects in the house and had never finished. But that was ok, because even though the house was unfinished it was liveable. We could manage until things looked up. And I had a plan. I knew that as soon as my daughter went to school full-time in kindergarten I would go back to school and re-educate myself.
Then hurricane Ivan hit. A hurricane in Ohio?? I can still hardly believe it myself. In 2004, we were deluged by the remnants of the hurricane. We had high winds and 14 inches of rain (in my area, less in some) in less than 24 hours. My kids and I sat in the house and listened to roof shingles being torn off. It started raining in the living room. The foundation of the house buckled. The next day we got our first good look at the damage, and it was devastating. I had more than a foot of water and mud in the basement and the foundation had cracks in some places that were two or three inches wide. The roof was a disaster. There was water damage in two of the bedrooms, and the furnace was destroyed. My neighbors, many of whom experienced the same sort of damage, told me to call FEMA. I filed a claim online and there was an inspector here within 3 days. 3 days after that I had a direct deposit for immediate repairs. I filled out an application for an SBA loan and had the money to complete repairs within a month. I hired a company from Pittsburgh to repair the foundation. Wow, they did outstanding work and they did it quickly. I hired a local guy to install a new furnace. I had the money to replace the hot water heater, the washer, the dryer, and I did that. We did all of the cleaning ourselves and I hired one of my hubby's friends (a contractor) to replace the roof and do the drywalling in three rooms that had water damage. Here's where the trouble began. I paid him half-down, with the other half to be paid when the job was completed. We signed the contract, I made sure he had worker's comp. insurance for his crew, did everything I thought I was supposed to do. He was a reputable contractor and I shouldn't have had to worry. But I was kind of stupid. He asked for the other half of the money before he was finished. He had a good sob story and I believed and trusted him. After all, I had gone to high school with him and I knew that he was reputable. I gave him the money. He installed the new roof very poorly, never finished the work, and took off. I filed complaints with every agency I could think of but nobody could find him. He had taken money from about a half-dozen families and not finished the work. He was gone, and I was out all that money and had a house that was still damaged. And damaged it remains today.
Hurricane Ivan was the single most devastating thing that happened to our family. The second most devastating thing happened this past weekend. I know I teased you at the beginning of the diary, and I'll explain it all now. During all of the marriages, during the good times and the bad, I kept the same vehicle, a 1991 Chevy S-10 Blazer. It was all I could afford on my own. I was ashamed of it because it was a gas hog and after 15 years it looks pretty crummy. But it was reliable transportation. It began to have troubles in 2005 and I knew eventually I would have to buy a newer car. But I waited because I wanted to do something for my son first. Richard isn't permitted to drive because he was caught three times driving friends' cars under the age of 16 without a license. I couldn't legally provide him with a vehicle nor could he buy one on his own. So C., my next oldest, turned 16 in 2005. In the middle of 2004 I started sticking a bit of money aside every week to buy him a car. I never let on to my son what I was doing, but Richard was my co-conspirator. I bought a 1994 Honda Civic with a blown motor for $500. I saved for months and bought a used motor for $500. I bartered services (I networked two computers and set up new software) with a local auto shop in exchange for installing the motor. I bartered with another local shop to do small repairs to the body. On his 16 1/2 B-day I gave him the car with a smile. C. got a job, paid for his own liability insurance, and spent every day and a lot of his money "euro tuning" his car. When the transmission in my Blazer started slipping C. would ride me back and forth to work. He also ran errands and took his brothers back and forth to baseball games and the like. And this past weekend the #2 most devastating loss hit us. Literally.
High speed rear end collision with an intoxicated, uninsured driver
The car is totalled. I had a friend that owns a body shop come and look at it, and there is at least $6,000 worth of damage. It's not worth fixing. My son spent the night in the hospital on pain meds and in tears. Richard was in the car with C. when it happened, and he is still in pain as well. We have health insurance to cover the costs of medical services but nothing will cover the cost of the car because we only had liability insurance. I got gouged horribly by the city-approved company that towed the vehicle. $370 out of pocket for the tow and cleanup at the scene. I'm completely bewildered. And pissed. The uninsured driver will almost certainly be ordered by the courts to pay for the damage but it will be a very long, involved process with no guarantee of recovery for our losses.
I wanted this to be a story of hope so that's why I waited to finish this diary. My Mom is going to loan me the downpayment for another car and I will start looking next week. I didn't really want to have a loan because money will be so tight but I'll manage. You see, I still have a plan. I'm quitting one of my jobs in September and will only work part-time outside the home. I'm also going to be doing simple bookkeeping at home for a doctor's office and two small businesses to make ends meet (I can thank my Mom again for hooking me up). I start college (again!) this fall. I'm entering a two-year nursing program at the local tech college. After two years they promise I will have the skills to enter the job market again. I'm terrified of the unknown but I'm very optimistic. I know that there is no such thing anymore as "The American Dream" and I know that nothing and nobody will swoop in to "save" the area in which I live. But I will change and I will make my own dreams come true. I could beat myself up daily for the poor choices I've made but what is the point? It's just some shit that happened and I have to move on.
Believe it or not, my circumstances are actually much better than a lot of families living in Appalachian Ohio. I'm one of thousands who have experienced the devastation of the regional economy. I'm one of thousands who live every day waiting for the next shoe to drop. If we can't save industry then we have to make other changes. Certainly, the most important thing is to change state and national elected officials. If you have the ability please do donate and volunteer your time and talents to the campaigns of Zack Space, Charlie Wilson, and Ted Strickland. Nobody knows what it's like to live in the region more than these three wonderful Democratic candidates.
I never wrote these diaries so that people will feel sorry for me and mine. I wasn't always poor, and I don't intend to be poor forever. We always keep hope alive. Sometimes it's all we've got.