1974 Freddie Prinze and Free Bird

The house in Iselin was wonderful.  Because Patti had  lived there for years, it was totally dog oriented.  It had a great back yard with snow fencing all around, and the basement had been made into a  kennel.  There were 3 big pens with 8-foot chain link, and each pen had an elevated platform because Afghans love to be up high.  It was also heated.  It was perfect.  The only problem was that there was really only long bedroom with doors at each end (this had obviously been 2 rooms at one point).  Since Diddy was living with us, we hung a sheet down the middle.  There wasn't much privacy, and our rooms were tiny, but it worked.  I remember the sheet was striped, various shades of brown, orange, and yellow, and when the sun hit it, it glowed.  It was really pretty.  The inside of the entire house was panelled in dark green panelling.  It was a little craftsman with a porch and I loved it.  We did quite a lot of work to it; painted it, etc.

Diddy lived with us.  I remember sitting at the round table in the kitchen between Diddy and David and talking French on one side and English on the other.  We had a couple of fishbowls on the table, each containing a beta, and they would attack each other through the glass constantly.  At the time, Diddy had a boyfriend named Freddie who looked just like Freddie Prinz.  Darn, he was cute.  However, she never paid the rent, and after 3 months, we evicted her (I remember calling Mother and telling her the situation so she would be ready when Diddy called her to complain).

One of my strongest memories of Iselin was lying on the bed with the sheet glowing, and listening to Free Bird over and over and over again.  When Lynyrd Skynyrd died,  that song just broke my heart.  That was also when mother and I had a fight and didn't speak for 6 weeks.  During that time, she went to Texas and I thought I would never forgive myself if something happened to her.  But I was too stubborn to give in, and nothing happened.

1974 Dawn, Gabby, and Annie

Dawn was a leach.  She would latch onto you and you couldn't get rid of her.  She was constantly being evicted, with one hard luck story after another.  She had a young son, maybe 6 or 7 years old, and four Afghans.  One of them was a little black female named Gabby (Gabriella of Grandeur).  She also had Gabby's two sons, a big red brindle named Montrose Smackwater Jack and a bigger black male named Montrose California Soul, as well as Gabby's beautiful cream domino daughter, Sally (Montrose Azul Dominga.)  Gabby lived with us for a couple of months when Dawn was between living arrangements.

Ch. Montrose California Soul "Jules"

Gabby was wonderful.  I would have kept her forever.  She fit right in.  I think she is the reason I have always had a special place in my heart for little black Afghan bitches.  She is also probably the reason that I got my Hermit daughter, Alabama, who was also a little black bitch, from Jeanette in California.

Gabriella of Grandeur "Gabby"

Strange Twist of Fate
Many years later when we lived in Denver, I was offered a black and tan Champion Afghan Hound bitch by my friends at Shylo.  That was Her name was Ch. Shylo Ceylon, "Annie" and I was thrilled to have her.  One day when I was at Shylo, I asked about her pedigree.  Bruce told me her mother was their beloved, "Puff", Linmara Lucinda of Shylo.  I mentioned that I had known someone in New Jersey whose kennel name was Linmara and sure enough, it was her.  And Puff's mother was a bitch named Montrose Azul Dominga, whose mother was Gabriella of Grandeur, Gabby!  I had Gabby's great-granddaughter and didn't even know it!

1974 Dog Days

My friend Harry Bennett and I spent a lot of time together talking about dogs and shows.  We loved it so much, in fact, that we invented a game called Dog Days.  It was based on Monopoly but adapted to showing.  We had made a board and tokens and cards, etc.  We would play it every time Harry came to stay with us, which was pretty much every Tuesday night.  We even took it to the diner after handling class a couple of times.  Everyone loved it.  

One of the girls at class, Andrea, who owned Khan, one of Sophie's brothers, told her dad about it and he actually came to class one night to talk to us about it.  He was willing to invest in it.  We were shocked.  We had never really expected it might become reality!  He did some research into patents/copyrights, etc., and we discovered it was not at all cheap to pursue that.  It never really got off the ground for that reason.  

But years later, sure enough, there was a dog show game.  It wasn't really based on ours, but it made me sad.

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.

1974 The Concorde

I worked at Air France in New York when the Concorde was developed. One of the people in our office won a trip on the Inaugural flight from Paris to Rio. Unfortunately, as much as I wanted to, I never got to fly on one, though I did see one depart from DFW once.

1350 Avenue of the Americas, NYC

We was walking out to the plane and suddenly there was a tremendous noise.  Someone behind me said, "That's a Concorde!"  Immediately everyone in line just ran to the tarmac where we could see the runway.  We all stood there watching in awe, totally ignoring our own boarding.  The stewardesses were there too though.  It was incredibly loud, and I never forgot it.

Concorde takeoff

Many years later, I went on board the BA Concorde at the Museum of Flight at Boeing Field.  My goodness, it was so small.  I think it would have been a little scary to be inside that bullet.  But I wish I had gotten the chance.

British Airways Concorde
Museum of Flight, Seattle

1974 Ziggy Stardust

The ring in this picture belonged to David Bowie.  I was a big fan, but the way I came by this ring is somewhat convoluted.  

 
David and I were living in Iselin, NJ, and our marriage was on the rocks.  David had been seeing the girl who eventually became his wife.  They had gone to a concert and David, as usual, was able to get backstage, where they met David Bowie.  They started talking, and Bowie, always expressive, waved his hand and his ring flew off and into a corner.  David immediately went to retrieve it, and when he handed it back to Bowie, Bowie said, “No, you keep it.”  


David did, of course.  His girlfriend, Debbie, asked for it, but he refused to give it to her.  

The next day, he told me about the incident (leaving out that Debbie was there), and gave me the ring.  I don’t wear it often at all, but after Bowie died, I took it out of my jewelry stash and left it out where I could see it.  

I love having something that belonged to Ziggy Stardust, or Captain Tom, or David Bowie...