1975 Impending Doom

David and I were driving home from a dog show in State College, PA.  We didn't leave the show until fairly late and we had to go to work the next day.  The drive should have taken about 4 hours, maybe a little longer in our Volkswagen bus.  It got dark not too long after we left.  The highway, I-80, was long, straight, dark, and deserted.  

After we'd been driving a couple of hours, I started to feel uneasy.  I couldn't explain what was wrong, but something was definitely wrong.  I kept telling David something terrible was going to happen.  An accident?  A storm?  I had no idea, but it kept getting stronger.  I even thought it might be an alien sighting, it was that intense.  When we were about halfway home, I made him pull into a rest stop.  I was too jittery to go any further, on the verge of a panic attack.  By then it was after midnight and it was obvious we weren't going to make it to work the next day.  

We stayed at the rest area for about 3 hours.  He kept saying, "Is it okay now?"  And I kept saying, "Not yet!"  Finally, around 1 a.m. or so, we decided to eat at the rest area restaurant.  They had a full buffet and I had spaghetti and meatballs.  It was great, especially in the middle of the night!  After we had eaten, I felt better and we got back on the road.  

It was a very strange and unsettling experience.  The thing that I realized, though, was that if doom was going to get me, it could just as easily have happened at the rest area.  When we pulled off the highway, were we avoiding it or driving to it?  

It reminded me of this.

Appointment in Samarra
A merchant in Baghdad sends his servant to the marketplace for provisions.  Soon afterward, the servant comes home white and trembling and tells him that in the marketplace, he was jostled by a woman whom he recognized as Death and she made a threatening gesture.  Borrowing the merchant's horse, the servant flees at great speed to Samarra, a distance of about 75 miles, where he believes Death will not find him.  The merchant then goes to the marketplace and finds Death, and asks her why she made the threatening gesture.  She replies, "That was not a threatening gesture, I was just astonished to see him in Baghdad, because I have an appointment with him tonight in Samarra".

Doom, waiting...

Sense of impending doom:  You feel as though something extremely bad is going to happen, but you are not sure what.  You may also feel as though  your world or you life is going to end.

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 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.

1975 Oh My God I Killed John Boy!!!

In 1975 I bought a new car, my first.  It was a Toyota station wagon, standard transmission.  It was a pukey mustard color.  I ordered it brand new thanks to a loan from my grandmother (with interest).  The only problem was that I couldn't drive it!  I actually had to get a ride to and from work every day (with a cute guy who worked at the Brown-Boveri Corporation semiconductor plant with me named Walter Witt.  He had long curly hair).  Finally, I decided it was ridiculous to have this brand new car sitting in the driveway.  

The big day was when we went to the Baltimore Kennel Club show, which was about 175 miles from our house.  We had to take the New Jersey Turnpike, which was a toll road.   David said that would be good for me.  He would drive until we reached the turnpike, then I would take over.  That way I could get the feel of the car before I had to stop and start for the tollbooths.  The fact that we had to leave in the middle of the night wasn't really the problem, it was the damned shifting.  It sounded like a good plan.


Everything went smoothly until the first tollbooth.  Stopping was easy.  Foot on the clutch and glide in.  But starting again was a little harder.  Jolting jumps, grinding gears, it was pretty ugly.  And the tollbooth attendant was really very nice, he hardly laughed at all.  By the time we reached Baltimore it was dawn, and I was a pro.   

We arrived at the showgrounds.  I was still driving and doing quite well negotiating the streets and turns, even when I had to shift.   We had to park in the back to unload all our equipment (crates, dolly, dogs, grooming bag, etc.)  As I was pulling into a parking spot, I was distracted by an Afghan Hound walking by.  I suddenly heard a yell and quickly turned back around.  

To my utter shock, standing in front of me with his hands on the hood of my now stopped car was - John Boy Walton!

John Boy?  What?  He was standing in about one foot of space between my bumper and a van in front of me.  He started waving his hands at me!

He even had that mole on his face.  But it couldn't be John Boy, could it?  

I leaned out the window and told him how sorry I was, was he okay, all those platitudes.  But my head was spinning.

When we got all set up inside and had the dogs settled down into their crates, we went to get some coffee.  While we were walking back we heard two women talking:

     Did you see who's here?
           No, who?
     Richard Thomas, you know, John Boy on the Waltons.
           What?  Why is he here?
     His dad is a judge, they have English Toy Spaniels.
           No kidding?  Let's go watch when the judging starts.

So it WAS true, it WAS him...  

Like everyone else at the show, we went to ringside to watch Richard Thomas' dad (Richard Thomas) judge.  As we walked up, someone wearing a plaid shirt and holding a spray bottle of water suddenly threw up his arms and said with a mock show of horror, "No no!  Please don't kill me!" and made a face at me.  Thank goodness he had a good sense of humor.

I'm so glad I didn't kill John Boy.   It would have been the final 

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...