Moving On Down the Road

Posted in Eternal Love | 4 comments

As I have written in the last chapter, Frank and I were looking for a home to buy in Hubbard, Texas, and we found one about six blocks down the road from our rental house.

The home that we purchased was an antique, and it was full of furniture, dishes, etc. The house had belonged to an elderly couple who had left it to their children in an estate. Their children decided to remove the small things that they wanted to keep and sell the rest with the house. All of this was wonderful. The major exception to fantastic was that I did not have time to go through what was in the new home before we moved. Why did I not have time? Mr. Dimples! Frank wanted to get everything moved then go through it all. Of course, the fact that all of the kitchen cabinets in the home we bought were full of dishes, bowls, pots, and pans plus out of date food, did not bother Frank, at all.  Frank was also not concerned about me packing up our stuff to move into the new home.  When I tried to explain to him about the consolidating and cleaning that need to happen, he said, “Nancy Lou, the new house is just down the street. We can move all of our stuff down there then go through it all.  We need to get it all moved first.  Why are you looking at me that way? We’ve got this Lou.”

Well, I knew that there was no way to change his mind, so I just started laughing and trying to figure out how I could get some boxes then pack up some of our priceless possessions quickly before the next weekend. Of course, we were running the swimming pool full time, so we called in help for the move to our new house.  My brother, Mark, and his wife, Cindy, agreed to come to our rescue the next weekend. Also, Frank and I got a friend of ours to run the swimming pool on that Saturday and Sunday. When Mark and Cindy got to our rented home on Friday night after they got off of work, the fun began.

After Mark and Cindy arrived at our rental home, Frank was ready to move, and it was all I could do to keep him under control.  I finally convinced him that the best thing to do would be to start early in the morning, but he and Mark did move a pickup truckload of furniture down to our new home while Cindy and I bought supper at the burger place. After everyone went to bed, I stayed up. Knowing that my dishes and other breakables were at risk of being broken, I packed up the whole kitchen.

By the time I got done packing everything, it was very late. After getting the coffee pot ready to turn on in the morning, I took a shower and put my dirty clothes in the washing machine then started the washer. When I got into the bed, the only thing I had on was my undies and one of Frank’s big white t-shirts. Glancing at the clock on our nightstand, I could see that it was around 4:30 in the morning. It seemed like only two minutes passed before I heard Frank laughing, shaking my shoulder, and saying, “Get up, Nancy Lou! It’s moving day!”

As I rolled over in the bed away from him, I told him, “Frank, please go away and give me five more minutes.”

Frank just laughed louder then said, “Okay, but I’m moving stuff.  It’s moving day!”

The next thing that I knew someone was shaking the mattress on our bed.  I sat up in bed and saw my dimpled faced husband standing at the foot of the bed laughing then said, “Times up, Nancy Lou. You have to get out of that bed so that I can load it onto the truck. ”

Looking around the room, I did not see our clothes dresser.

So, I asked, “Frank, where is our dresser?”

Frank answered with a big smile, “Mark and I have already moved the dresser down to the new house while you were sleeping.”

Knowing without a doubt that Frank knew my clothes were in that dresser, I told him, “Frank, my clothes are in that dresser, and all I have on is this t-shirt and my undies.  What am I going to do for clothes? My clothes were in that dresser?”

Well, that brought loud laughter from ‘Mister Dimples’  then he said, “Well, Lou, I guess you can run fast and get into the truck then run faster into the house when we get there then get dressed. Remember, I told you to get up because it was moving day.”

Not to be outdone by my mischievous, laughing husband, I replied, “Mister Dimples, I have a better idea. I suggest that you get your laughing self right on back down yonder to the other house and bring me back some clothes to wear.”

Frank was laughing loudly, and so was I as he exited the bedroom while I threw pillows at his head.  He soon returned with some clothes for me to wear and even fixed me a cup of coffee.

After I was fully dressed, we got into the pickup truck and started our drive to the new home, but on the way, Frank told me, “Nancy, I love you, and thank you for staying up all night to pack up our stuff.  It means a lot to me that you care about our things.  Plus, those dang kitchen cabinets down at the other house are full of stuff, and the counters are full now too.”

I shook my head, took another sip of my coffee then looked at him, and said, “I love you, Mr. Dimpled Faced Henderson.”

We got everything moved into the new home that weekend, and it was a big mess, but with Mark and Cindy’s help, we soon got it all liveable.  Our new home had a big screened-in back porch with roll down canvas latch down curtains.  We put a lot of the extra things on the back porch until we could have a garage sale to get rid of them.

Mark and Cindy had to go home, and Frank, Scotty, and I went back to running the swimming pool.  The only incident we had at the pool that summer happened to our son.

“Mommy Watch Me”

It was Thursday night, and we were at the swimming pool getting ready for Teen Night. Frank had gone back to restart the prime and start the pump, which never failed to need doing at least ten times a day. I was getting the concession stand ready for business, checking on and watching Scotty play in the kiddie pool.  Once I finished inside the concession stand, I sat down on the counter with my feet dangling on the outside of the concession stand to watch Scotty play in the water.

Scotty was only about four feet in front of me playing in the water, then he climbed out of the pool and said, “Mommy, watch me.”

I watched as Scotty jumped backward into the pool then when he came up out of the water I was clapping for him then my heart raced. I jumped down from the counter to run to him. All I could see was blood running down Scotty’s face and body flowing into the water.

Immediately, I grabbed him up out of the water, placed my hand over his forehead, and screamed as loud as I could for Frank.  Frank looked up from the pump, and I knew he heard me.  The hospital was about eight blocks or more from the Swimming Pool, so barefooted in my bathing suit with Scotty in my arms with my hand over his forehead in a panic, I took off running down the road towards the hospital.

Frank came running up behind me as I got to the Emergency Room door and grabbed Scotty out of my arms. We bypassed the receptionist desk and yelled for a doctor. A nurse hurried us into an examing room, and a doctor soon followed. The doctor asked what happened and I told him that Scotty had jumped backward into the pool and had evidently leaned forward hitting his head on the lip of the concrete water spillover canal that ran around all sides of the swimming pool.

Scotty had not cried until the doctor place a paper sheet over his face. This paper sheet had a large hole in it that only exposed Scotty’s forehead, which was swelling and had a large gaping jagged laceration. Frank, the nurse, and I were trying to hold Scotty still while the doctor tried to deaden each side of the gash, but he fought so hard that we ended up having to remove the paper sheet from on top of his face.

Once the doctor thought he had deadened the injury site, he started to stitch up the gash, but one side of the wound had not deadened, so the doctor stopped then tried to deaden the one side of the injury several times. Our two and a half-year-old, Scotty, was screaming and scared. I had tears running down my cheeks, the nurse was visibly upset, and Frank was mad. Suddenly, Frank told the doctor, “Keep stitching up the wound and get it over with, or I will do it my damn self. You are torturing my son!”

The doctor did as Frank had demanded, while Frank, the nurse, and I held our son down. With the stitching done, the doctor decided Scotty should stay the night in the hospital. The doctor wanted to be safe just in case of a concussion. Concrete does not give when a person hits their head on it, and Scotty’s forehead just busted open and was swollen from the impact. Scotty was taken to a hospital room with his Dad and me by his side.

When we got to the hospital room, the receptionist brought paperwork for us to fill out, and it was then that I realized my purse along with our car was at the swimming pool. Also, I realized that I was sitting next to my son’s hospital bed in my swimming suit.  Frank was telling me that he would run back down to the swimming pool, close it up, grab my clothes, and the car when two teenagers walked into Scotty’s room.  We knew them from school and previous Teen Nights at the pool.  In their arms, they carried my purse, the money box from the swimming pool, my clothes, and Frank’s clothes.  They told us that they had just arrived at the swimming pool when they saw me run out the gate with Scotty in my arms then had witness Frank run after us.

Knowing that something serious had happened, together with other teenagers that had arrived, they shut down the pool, gathered our clothes, and locked the gate.  Frank and I were overwhelmed with the love and support that these teenagers had displayed towards us. Frank and I hugged them then thanked them. After they left Frank and I decided that we would only have Free Teen Night for the rest of the summer. We never forgot the kindness and maturity displayed by these very grownup teenagers.

Frank and I spent the night at the hospital with Scotty. The nurses made sure they woke him up every hour to check his eyes and make sure he was okay. The next day we took him home with us. Frank returned to the pool that day after enlisting the help of another teacher friend, but I remained at home for the next week with Scotty. During that week, my Mom and Grandmother came to visit Scotty along with many friends in town.  I was afraid that Scotty would be fearful of the water when he and I returned to the swimming pool, but that was not the case at all, he was fearless.  Of course, there was a new rule for all swimmers, which was,  “No jumping into the swimming pool backward.”

<<<< Book One |Next Chapter>>>>

 

 

 

Visits: 173

4 Comments

  1. That was quite the move. It must have been really scary for you with Scotty–and for him, too. I’m glad it didn’t make him afraid of the water after that. With kids it only takes a second for something to happen. It sounds like it was a pretty bad wound, but I’m glad it was no worse than it was.

    • It was very scary for all of us. I am so glad I was watching him when he jumped in, otherwise, I am not sure what would have happened. I knew immediately that something happened. Moving down the road was the worst move I have ever made. Nothing got packed except what I packed that night and stuff was everywhere. LOL
      God Bless You and Thank You for your comment.
      Love,
      Nancy

  2. WOW..Fabulous share.
    What stands out so much is the maturity and caring expressed by those teenagers.
    That behavior might be harder to find today.

    • Chuck, you are so right. They instantly took charge of the situation and responded with so much maturity. I will never forget their love for us when everything got so scary and intense. Praying that teenagers today still respond in such a way.
      Thank you for your comment.
      God Bless You,
      Nancy

Leave a Reply to Chuck Bartok Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.