My Life with Jim, Part 3

After we were married in July of 1964, we decided to buy a house while Jim could avail us of  the perks of the GI Bill - no down payment.  The following Spring, we moved into a compact, but nice 3 bedroom home in Norfolk, near the Chesapeake Bay. We had a good sized lot and Jim soon learned that home-ownership meant constant maintenance, especially for the lawn.  He had been raised in NYC, in apartments where lawn maintenance was not required of tenants. He hated it, but he did what was required. 

I set out to make it the floral showplace of the neighborhood. My neighbors all gave me plants from their gardens, and that summer, I planted 7-8 canna lily plants, 7-8 rose bushes and numerous marigolds and zinnias. I had a green thumb then, and the plants prospered, especially after we had a cedar stockade privacy fence installed.  Prior to the fence, the plants were in the path of the daily salt spray from Chesapeake Bay, moved by the constant windy conditions on and off the bay. But the 60' by 4' deep flower bed continued to grow well for years. 

I shudder now, to think of the decor I bought to decorate the  inside the house. It was right up with the times, of course, mostly avocado green, gold and pumpkin. Our couch is now the subject of memes on Facebook - the ubiquitous large print floral and trompe l'oeil patterns of the 1960's, in orange, rust, gold and avocado, of course.  

Eleven months later, we found out we were going to be parents. The guest room (one of them) was decorated as a nursery, leaving out color until we knew the sex of the baby. He was born before the capability to find out early.  After his birth, in 1966,  I sewed red-white-and blue curtains and kept that color scheme until we moved to Raleigh in 1969. By then, we had baby number 2, who arrived in July, 1969, six weeks before we moved.  

The only thing either of us knew about Raleigh was what we had seen on The Andy Griffith Show on TV, where Barney talks about going to Raleigh and staying at the YMCA on Hillsborough Street. At the time, neither of us could have imagined that Jim would play basketball in that gym and our children would attend the "after-school" programs put on by that YMCA.  Raleigh proved to be a sleepy small town (back then). We chose to rent a 3 bedroom apartment for a while; not wanting to buy a house there until we learned more about the area.  The apartment complex was at that time, almost the northernmost building in the city. Sometime in the 90's I learned that that corner was now the center of the city.  It had grown so fast it couldn't be believed if I had not seen it happen. 

I achieved the best tan I had ever had that first summer. The pool was just outside our apartment and the children and I went there often. Jim joined us after work. We had never had daily access to a pool, and we both loved it.   After 18 months in that apartment, we bought a home across town. Baby three made her presence known soon after, and was born in October of 1971.  

Our new home was a 4-bedroom split level, and it had a big yard too, but no landscaping to speak of. I soon learned that the land was full of small rocks, and I would pick them up and throw them into the woods, only to have another layer visible after each heavy rain. It was very discouraging to both of us. 

To be continued.....