1974 Bergenfield

I'm not sure why we moved from New York to New Jersey.  We were getting seriously into showing dogs, and most of our friends lived in New Jersey.  I had been laid off from Air France and David was driving cabs at that time.  However, he was robbed at gunpoint one night and decided he was done with that.  His music career wasn't taking off either, but he was doing some sound work.

In the winter of 1973, we moved to Bergenfield, NJ.  The house we rented was a little strange, but it had a fenced back yard.  It was next door to a house where apparently they dealt drugs.  We built a ramp from the living room window down to the back yard for the dogs, because the back door didn't open into the yard.  It was a little bizarre but it worked.  When they dogs needed to go out, they went out the window (Sophie, Madigan, and Glider).

That was in the middle of my full-fledged crush on Harry Bennett.  He would drive down from where he lived near West Point, and crash at the house, just the way he had in NY.  He would usually come down on Tuesdays and we would meet at handling class, then we would go to the diner with everyone (Harry Stiles, Sharon, Duane, Connie, etc).  


Diddy lived with us too.  Not too long after we moved, David got a job as a sound man with Hall and Oates and went on the road.  Diddy and I were both unemployed at that time.  All we ate were boiled potatoes with the new craze, Hidden Valley Ranch dressing.  Every night.  

The car I had at the time (an old Toyota) had no heat, and we would drive around freezing, looking for jobs.  David occasionally sent checks home but it was rare.  Later we found out that that particular record company wanted Hall & Oates to lose money for them, so they rarely paid anyone.  David didn't care, of course, he had room and board and lots of groupies.


Diddy and I weren't so lucky.  Eventually, she found a job at a mall store demonstrating pans and doing food demos.  I actually found a good job at a company in Paramus called DataScope that made heart monitors.  I started right before Christmas and hadn't been working there a week before their Xmas party.  The owner was so sweet, he got me a bottle of Charlie, which I have loved every since.

One of the things I remember best about that time was driving home from work in the dark and the rain.  I stopped at a doughnut shop and got a dozen day-old doughnuts for us, and on the radio they were playing "The Best of My Love".  "You see it your way and I see it mine, but we both see it slipping away..."  That song always got to the depth of me because that's how things were with David and me.  Unfortunately, the best of my love wasn't very good.

We didn't live there very long because not long after David got back, our friend Patti Piazza moved in with our friend Fred von Ahrens (the breeder where we had gotten several of our dogs) and her house in Iselin was available.  It was perfect so we moved from Bergenfield to Iselin.  David and I weren't getting along extremely well at that point.  He seemed enamoured of the touring lifestyle, and he also wasn't crazy about having Diddy live with us.  I would lie awake at night thinking, "Should I get rid of David, and Diddy and I can move to Iselin?  Or should I get rid of Diddy, and David and I can move to iselin?"  Eventually, we all moved to Iselin  and I left DataScope.  Not long after that, it became a huge corporation that ruled the world of cardiac monitors (and still does).  

Strange Twist of Fate
In 2012, when I worked at Grays Harbor Community Hospital, I was having my blood pressure taken and I noticed that the piece of equipment sitting beside me was a DataScope monitor.  If only I had bought just one share of stock in that company.