Chapter 18: A nice place to visit
Determined to make a new start, our new apartment was going to be it. We worked hard cleaning the place as spotless as it could be. We even took up all of the old wax buildup off the tile floors and put a fresh coat down. Debbie even planted flowers next to the door out back, things were looking up.
We had bought new furniture at our last apartment so that was all still nice as well, but looking back I don’t know how we ever decided on such crappy looking stuff, green and white fuzzy material. But as I said, we were young and it looked good to us at the time.
The townhouse styled apartment was nice, with the kitchen and living room downstairs and the 2 bedrooms and bath upstairs. Debbie was learning a little bit more on how to cook, she really wasn’t all that bad, I guess it just wasn’t like mom’s cooking.
I would drive to work across town each day and come home to a clean apartment and fresh cooked meal, life was getting better. We used the tax refund to pay dad back so I had my ’63 Chevy with the transmission fixed, which left the Buick at home for Debbie. We really could have been the perfect little family if things had turned out differently, but they didn’t.
Even though living costs were much lower back then and our rent was dirt cheap, maintaining and insuring two cars was expensive. We decided to sell the Chevy and just make do with one vehicle. I think I only got a couple hundred for it, the rear quarter had never been fixed, but it was one less vehicle to pay for upkeep, so it helped.
Debbie was getting more and more frustrated now at home every day. The neighbor kids kept destroying her flowers and so the apartment began to look more like a disaster zone each night when I came home. A lot of times she wouldn’t even bother to cook, expecting me to do it, of course that didn’t sit very well with me.
Partly in an effort to help out and partly because she was having a nervous breakdown, my mother decided they should buy me a motorcycle to ride back and forth to work, which would leave the car home for Debbie and she wouldn’t be stuck there every day.
Vehicle # 14
It wasn’t a big motorcycle, just a little Harley Davidson Sprint 90, but it fit our needs perfectly. The little 2 stroke was easy on gas 
and not very fast, but it got me back and forth to Norwood each day, except when it was raining. For a short time, things were looking up again.
Of course that didn’t last too long. Even though I locked the bike up each night, in no time at all it was gone. As I said, we didn’t live in the best neighborhood and being naive about such things, we just didn’t think someone would actually steal it. Lessons are hard learned sometimes.
Join me next time when the story continues.
For those who would like to follow the count, I will keep a running tally of my vehicle list here.
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