ReaLife II

My story is most unusual Mr. Stone. I think your readers will agree once they read it. I guess it all began about fifteen years ago. You see, I was divorced for a long time and my kids are all grown up living all over the country these days. Anyway, I met this babe down in south Florida at a church social. I found out the night that I met her that she was a driving instructor in the city. Well, what a small world. I’m one too. I have a small driving school business in Miami. We hit it off right away. You know what they say, “Birds of the feather.” I first thing I told her the day she came to work was, “Welcome to my world.”

We tied the knot about a month later. She has eight kids, but I didn’t mind. I was doing pretty good back then, and I was getting pretty lonely. We rented a house near the huge apartment complex where I was living, and they all moved in including her mom and Uncle Ross. We were one big happy family. I was starting to feel like my old self once again.

The girls ranged in ages from twelve to seventeen, and the boys were all teenagers. All five of the boys were big enough to play for the New York Giants, and they all ate like it too. The first few months I was a little scared, because my house was becoming chow hound city. These people could really eat. I had to take on some new customers and work longer hours to keep food on the table.

During that time my new bride was driving more hours than I was. She pulled her weight at the driving school, and often got Big Bubba to do a lot of the housework, but she had to hire him. Those kids don’t do anything for free, but then who does these days?

Uncle Ross was out of work a lot, but he did get some jobs with the Gator City temp service. He mostly works feeding gators, and trimming back bushes at the zoo and other gator farms. He’s a great guy once you get to know him, but you don’t want to cross him. He’s not a serious chowhound, but every now and then he nips the bottle. I guess all of us have our problems and weak points. When he was younger he use to wrestle gators for a living, but that was back in the fifties.

When I lived at the apartment complex I had to use a big stick and bang it on the ground several times to chase the gators back in the river. You see, in the morning they sun on sidewalks. Then they often climb into the dumpsters and chow down. You have to be very careful when you throw your trash in the Dumpster, because you could become the meal of the day.

A lot of those gators are out there in the big land fill. They get hauled out with the trash on Monday morning and dumped. People say that they live well out there. Their only competition is in Rat City. The sewer rats have an extensive tunnel system all through that place. There have been reports of a lot of people going missing out there. Most of them have never been found. I don’t even know where the place is at, and I don’t want to know

The house that I rented was in need of a million and one repairs, but it was big, and that made the difference. We were all reasonably content living there. I think we lived there for the next four years. Things change fast when you have growing kids. When I lived alone in the apartment time moved slowly and nothing seemed to change very much.

The summers were rough there. We had West Virginia air conditioning, but all the fans in the world couldn’t do much on some days when it was over ninety degrees in the shade. It was on one of those days that the wife said, “Bobby, I want to move back to Ohio!” I replied, “Why sweetie?” She answered, “Because it’s too damn hot down here, and everyone is sweating like hogs!” Then I thought about it for a minute and said, “All right dear, I sell the school, and we’ll open one up in Ohio.” She smiled and went out to the kitchen to prepare breakfast for the gang.

After that I sold the driving school, and got a good change of change on the deal. Anyway teaching punks how to drive had rattled my nerves, and made the old lady mean as hell. I found a house early that fall just north of the Ohio River out in the country about fifty miles from Dayton. My wife’s relatives all lived near there, and some of them lived up in Cleveland too.

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