DELTONA, FLORIDA
On October 26, 1988,
we moved in to our new home in Deltona.
That included Skip, Doug and myself. Skip (who
was supposed to find a place and get moved out on his own, but he was unable to
do so). Here is a picture of Doug and our dog Thor. Some of Mom's owls on the
wall in the rear.
Doug and Thor in our newly built home in Deltona,
Florida
On November 25, 1988, Doug and I drove from our new home in our new
car to Key West, where my Jack was now living (on Simonton street, I
believe). I can remember this date
clearly because my sister gave birth to my niece, Pamela Devon Norris, on this
date while we were traveling. This trip only took only 8 hours since my car did
not have a governor and the speed limit had been raised to 65 in many places.
On September 12, 1989, my household expanded when my
sister, Darlene, and her 9-month-old baby, Devon, moved
in with us. They stayed with us for about two years and these were some of the
happiest days of my life (as I would realize years later). Darlene finally
decided to move out in after being discouraged by a lack of transportation and
inability to find a job. She was collecting some government aid, but it was
very inadequate. I took her and Devon down to the
Greyhound bus station in DeLand in May of 1991. That would be the last time I
see either of them until Devon was 13 years old!
1991: My friend and co-worker, Marita Haack, moved in with Doug and
I sometime in 1991. Marita was from
Berlin,
Germany, and it was
fascinating for me to have someone from Europe living in
my home. Marita lived with us for about 7 months. During this time I started to
notice that Doug’s behaviour (his substance abuse problem to be specific) was
getting worse. Looking back on it, I decided that Devon’s
moving out of our home really affected him more than even he realized. He was
no longer “Uncle Doug” and did not feel that he was important to anyone any
more. This was not true of course, and he never voiced such feelings, but
that’s what I think.
While Marita was living with us,
she and I took a trip to Alabama
where she and her fiancé were in the process of purchasing some land. On the
way back, we stopped off in Sylacauga where Marlene was now living. I saw Nana
(Mable Watts) for the first time since Mom’s funeral in 1984. I was amazed at
how terribly old she was looking. She had let her hair go completely white. I
had my video camera with me and got her on videotape. That would be the last
time for me to see my grandmother, but of course I did not know that at the
time. I met Marlene’s new husband, “Pardue.” I also saw my cousin Nico again
for the first time in many years. He was just about 4 years old when I last saw
him I think. Now he was 21 and driving! My dog, Thor, also joined us on this
trip. Marlene gave Marita a kitten, which she promptly gave the Vulcan name of S’aavik.
I believe it was while Marita was
living with us that a new house was built 2 lots down from our house. Soon our
new neighbors, Rex and Francine
moved in along with their two little boys.
Nikki Everett and me in my kitchen at 1815 Trumbull
Street, in Deltona, Florida.
The cake dish / punch bowl was a gift from Lola Kornegay and I treasured it for
years. Until my forced exodus
from Deltona, when I had to leave behind not only my home, my car, my dear
litter Thor, but about 80% of my personal belongings.
1992: Marita continued to live with us for 7 or 8 months, and them moved out sometime in 1992. Doug was continuing to
become progressively worse in his behaviour. Looking back on it, I realize he
must have been abusing drugs, but I did not see it at the time. He became more
violent, stole money from the ATM (with my card), cashed
in savings bonds stolen from my briefcase, forged checks and more. Over the
next year he started to drink even more excessively and get progressively more
violent. It was in March of 1992 that
the Toyota threw a rod and was no
longer derivable. Later people told me that when Doug had the car alone, he had
been treating it like a racecar. I do not doubt it and it is likely that he was
the cause of the damage to the car.
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During this time we relied upon
Rex (our new neighbor) to drive is to & from work. He was in the Navy and
worked in Orlando. It was a very
trying time. I was finally able to buy a small used car, a Renault, Alliance,
from Adam (Jack’s roommate).
One day when Doug and I came from
work, we got into a major argument. When we pulled into the driveway he was
screaming at me and started poking me in the chest with his finger hard enough
to hurt and bruise. That was the first
of three incidents.
The second incident took place on a Saturday morning around 11:00am. He was already drunk and had passed
out in his chair in front of the television. I knew his patterns and knew that
he would urinate on himself if I did not get him up and to the bathroom. I
tried to wake him. I was standing behind his chair, shaking him and calling his
name. He was unresponsive at first and then I saw a dark stain forming down his
pants leg. I was disgusted and slapped along side of his face. I knew from
experience that this would sometimes cause him to tense up and stop him from
continuing to urinate on himself (and the furniture). However, on this
occasion, I was surprised when he suddenly jumped out of the chair and attacked
me. He had me pushed up against the wall and was trying to choke me. Thor was
underfoot barking crazily (he always became agitated if he thought there was
any violence going on). I finally got
Doug off of me (after hearing something ‘pop’ in the wall behind me). I don’t
even know if Doug remembered attacking me, but I was getting very disturbed by
his behaviour.
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The third and final incident took place in my room one evening. I was
in my walk-in closet getting something and Doug was sitting on the bed. He was
drunk and acting very strange (I think he was on some kind of drugs, but I
didn’t know it then). He pulled out a big hunting knife and started threatening
me with it. He was acting very weird and I was concerned for my very life at
this point. Somehow I got through this incident without any violence, but it
was the last straw. I was afraid for my life and decided at that moment that
one of us had to move out. I did not care which one of us moved, but I could
not continue to live with him when I felt my life could be in jeopardy.
Of course, logic dictated which
of us should move. I owned the car. If I moved out, he would be stranded, lose
his job, and then lose the home we had built and all would be lost. However,
the car was not running at the time anyway, but the main problem for Doug was
that he drinking problem was getting worse and there was the ever-increasing
chance that he would lose his job. Besides which, he was the one causing the
problems and I was the driving force behind the house being built in the first
place.
April 1993: After 13 years of living together, Doug moved out on April 13th, 1993. It was a
month or two after that when I bought the Renault from Adam for $500. I
continued to have hopes that Doug could get his life back together and move
back in. I wanted to resume what for me was a “normal” life. Unfortunately, he
just got worse. He moved in with an acquaintance (“Henry” if I recall
correctly), who was just as much, if not more, of an alcoholic than Doug was.
There was a point where Doug told me that he had to drink a six-pack of beer in
the morning just to feel well enough to go to work! I don’t know if that was
literally true, but there was another incident that was even worse. He had been
prescribed Lithium to help with his alcoholism or depression or both. One
should not drink while taking Lithium, but Doug did so and quite heavily. He
ended up going into a catatonic state and an ambulance had to be called.
It was also right after Doug
moved out that I got my very first cellular phone. It was not one of the tiny
little things you might see today though, it was a “bag-phone” and had to be
slung over the shoulder and carried around (like a purse). I usually kept it in
the car.
A sad event took place somewhere
between April and July… I don’t remember the exact date. Our more recent dog,
Dax, died. I came home from work one day and call to her in the back yard, but
got no response. I found her lying dead. I fear it may have been from heat
stroke since she was tied to a runner in the back yard and her run line had
become tangled so that she could not get back to the shade and to her water.
She was a black dog, so that did not help. However, Putter (my neighbor) is
certain that she was up and running around after it had cooled down in the
evening. He thinks she was bitten by a rattlesnake. I guess I will never know
for sure. The next morning I buried her next to our other dog, Rex, in the back
yard. I had a regular little pet-cemetery forming.
July 25, 1993: Strangely, on July 25th,
the anniversary of the date that Doug and I met, I took in a new
renter/roommate, Chad Johnson. I knew him and his uncle, Mark, who live just a
few blocks away and were good friends of my neighbors, “Putter and Stephanie.”
Shortly after moving in with me, Chad
picked up a little puppy from “The Mud Hole.” She was supposedly half Pit-bull
and half Chow-chow, and she looked almost just like Dax, who had died recently.
He supposedly got her for me to replace Dax, but now that I know Chad
better, I realize he wanted a pet and was using my emotions to get what he
wanted. It’s okay though. It was one of the best things that ever happened to
me. I named her “Kira” … after Kira Nuris (play by Nana Visitor on Star Trek:DS9). Poor little Kira was so flea infested! It was
unbelievable. She was also passing blood due to a bad case of hookworms. The
Vet said she would not have live much longer than a week without my
intervention.
February 12, 1994: Skip had moved to California
sometime back and then had moved to Oklahoma
where he was living with Darlene and Devon in Chickasha.
On February 12th he moved back to Florida
and moved in with Chad
and me. The two of them did not get along very well (to put it mildly).
May 7, 1994: This is a day I will never forget, no
matter how much I wish I could. It was a Saturday and started out fairly
normal. I was busily doing some much-needed housework when the phone rang. It
was my neighbor, Rex. He was going to Daytona Beach
and wanted to know if I wanted to go. I couldn’t turn down the offer to go to
the beach, have some beers and oysters on the half shell! Chad
joined us and we went and had a good time; too good of a time maybe. After a
few drinks, including some shots of Tequila, it was starting to get late and we
head home. We were all quite drunk, and Rex was driving. Rex, if I have not
mentioned, is/was a very wild driver and I often knew him to drive at over 100
mph, weaving in and out of traffic with the stereo blaring; and that was when
he was sober. In this case, he was definitely not sober and was still driving
like a maniac. I lay down in the back seat and
remember once looking up over Chad’s
shoulder (he had fallen asleep) to see that we were participating in one of
Rex’s favourite tricks of passing people on the shoulder. I disapproved, but
had not control over it, so I lay back down. Shortly after I heard a scraping
sound and remember thinking that we were in the process of having a wreck. I
thought we were scraping up along side of something and thought how upset Rex
was going to be since he had just got a new paint job on his Iroc-Z, Camaro
(which he pampered). The following text will be from my website where I have a
page which describes the accident in detail, but which is not finished yet.
