Homes I've Lived In-#8

June 2015

Back in 1969, the birth control pill was still quite a strong formulation and doctors were told to tell moms to quit breast-feeding if they wanted to go on The Pill. So I made the decision to quit breast-feeding Jill after just a month so I could do that. It broke my heart! We had just got started and it was going so very well! But I didn't think we could afford to have another baby right away, so I followed my doctor's advice. I did many sit-ups and was back to my pre-baby weight by the time John got back from San Diego in June.

Scary to look back and remember that we drove all the way from Buffalo Center to Millington, TN, with Jill on top of all our possessions in the back of our GTO! There were no such things as child seats way back then! If we would have had an accident, she would have been thrown right through the windshield! Ah, but that didn't happen, and we arrived safe and sound at our new home at 7786 W. National; Millington, TN.

It wasn't a place you could walk anywhere from. But we were finally able to be a family together by ourselves. John would go to school on base each weekday and I stayed home with Jill. Our rent was a whopping $53 a month!

John's pay got delayed for over three months. We had a little money when we got to Tennessee, but that didn't last very long. John had to finally borrow $350 from his sister so that we could buy some food and some furniture. We went to a second-hand store and got a bed, one of those small playpens whose floor you could raise up close to the top to use for a crib and a table and chairs and something to sit on in the living room.

He also bought a tiny black & white tv. John was always fascinated with the space program and followed it in the news. So on July 20th, 1969, he woke me up and he made me wake Jill up (it was the middle of the night, if I recall). He made us come into the living room where he turned on the tv to watch Neil Armstrong take his first step on the moon! We put Jill in her little Infaseat so she could say that she saw it, too!

We didn't have any extra money at all during that time so I was washing Jill's diapers in the bathtub. Water as hot as it would come from the tap with some detergent, some inexpensive bleach, and we used two new toilet plungers to agitate everything. then drain the tub, add clean water a few times and try to get all the soap and bleach rinsed out before hanging them to dry outside. that evidently wasn't a very good plan because Jill developed a horrible diaper rash. It didn't go away until John's pay came through and I could use the base laundry.

John went to the local hospital and sold his blood so that we would have money for some groceries. It was really touch and go for a while then, not knowing when his pay would finally come through.

I can still remember the day that Jill discovered she could giggle and even belly-laugh. So cute! she was just lying in her "crib" one evening and started laughing. It made us remember that there were things to be thankful for!

We bought groceries at the PX (post exchange) which is where only the military families could buy things at a reduced rate. There was also a clinic which is where we took Jill for her early childhood vaccinations.

Jill was teething and getting cranky so I sent John out to buy me a rocking chair. He came back with a rocking lawn chair that he got at a hardware store for $6.00! We loved that rocking chair. It saved my sanity. I could always get her to calm down when I rocked her. (That rocking lawn chair came with us through all of our moves until one day in the 1990's, I finally sold it on a garage sale. I'm pretty sure we must have sold everything we had for furniture before we left Tennessee except for Jill's little playpen and the rocking chair).

One day, she started crying and wouldn't stop, and she had an angry red rash all over her body. I got really scared because she had quit crying and was acting listless, so when John got home, we took her to the clinic on base. We had to wait in the waiting room for what seemed like a lifetime (it was over an hour) before we were taken back to a room. She was burning up with fever and we were so scared! The doctor took one look at her and issued orders to his staff to prepare an ice bath for her. They filled a sink with cold water and added a lot of ice cubes and then they undressed her and held her in the ice bath. Of course, she screamed! By this time, I was crying, too, and John was ready to kill the doctor. Finally, they took her out. I don't remember if they gave her a shot or if we were given medicine to give to her, but we were so glad to get out of there. They told us that she had roseola and to come back if it didn't get any better. Of course, she did get better.

I got to know our neighbor while we hung our laundry out. She had a little girl about 6 months older than Jill. I remember her telling me that she didn't buy baby food. She just bought various Campbell's soup and fed her from the can! I didn't think that was such a good idea so I still used baby food. I had started Jill on a little baby cereal to help her sleep through the night when she was two months old and it worked like a charm. I had put her on Similac, which my mother told me was the same formula that I had been on and I believe it was the same formula brand that Vera had put John on! I think I started Jill on some Gerber baby food that summer.

One time, I was going to need the car to either get groceries or to do laundry on base, so I would have to give John a ride and then go pick him up at the end of the day. Jill was sleeping and we decided to try just leaving her at home while I dropped him off and came right back. It would be a ten minute round trip. I locked the door, drove John to the base, drove right back and... couldn't find the house key! OMG! Here I was locked out of our duplex with our four-month old daughter still asleep inside! I agonized over what to do. Finally, I knocked on our neighbor's door and asked her if she thought I could access our side from the attic. Her husband was in the military, too, and we had spoken a handful of times. Her husband hadn't left for work yet, so he was able to climb up into the attic that we shared via an access door in the ceiling of the hallway. He crawled over to our access door and was able to get down into our side and come open the door for me to get in. Talk about a heart-stopping event! This was 1969. No cellphones. EEEK!

I don't really remember going outside very much in Tennessee. We were only there for ten weeks from July through September and it was soooooooo hot and muggy. Not my favorite place to live! A while later we heard that a black man had been shot and killed by another black man just two blocks away from us so we were glad when John finally graduated from his school on base and got his orders to go to Yuma, AZ. We didn't mind that a lot of our neighbors were black, we minded that there were murders happening!

I just went on Google maps to find the address of our duplex and discovered that it's been torn down! Nothing but the sidewalks left. And lots of memories!

...and on we went to YUMA!