Suzzanne Carlson

MY STORY

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Forward

1) Maroa

2) Hollywood

3) Decatur

4) Okeechobee

5) Spunky Pre-Teen

6) Freshman Year

7) Sophomore Year

8) Junior Year

9) Senior Year

10) After School

11) Failure to Insanity

12) Half Way Down

13) Darkest of Times

14 Was this a light?

15) Where Are YOU?

16) The Road Back!

17) New Adventures

18) Comfort Zone!

19) Goin' Truckin'!

20) Life after Wealth!

21) Til Death do us Part!

Dedications



Okeechobee, Florida
Pre-Teen

Vicki had taken an airplane ahead of us to Florida. She was staying with Aunt Betty until we could get there. In Mom's car was Janie and her 4 kids. In Dad's car was Debbie. I would switch between Mom's car and Dad's car. Dad's was filled up to the front seats, so I had to sit in the middle between Dad and Debbie.

Mom made sandwiches, and we had soda in ice chests. Along we decided to stop for a picnic in Clarksville, Tennesee. We talked on walkie talkies and Mom said she saw a sign for a camp ground. We turned down a long dirt road. Dad didn't see Mom hit the breaks. Dad was following to close as usual, and he ran into Mom. Mom had the boat, and Dad hit her so hard that he shoved the boat up through the back window of the car. Totaled the trailer hitch, damaged the boat, that Dad built, and destroyed the front end of Dad's car. It was a lucky thing, Mom and that all the kids and Janie and the cat were toward the front of the car, no one got hurt.

After lunch the grown-ups had to figure out how to get out stuff to Okeechobee. The kids played in the campground park until we were ready to get back on the road. We had to make the trip from Clarksville, Tennesee to Florida in one car. Mom, Dad, Me, Debbie, Janie and her 4 kids, and a cat. The car would only go 45 miles an hour since it was so overloaded.

We met some nice people who wanted to come to Florida for vacation anyway. Dad sold them the boat, trailer and the totaled car for a dollar in exchange for them bringing all of our stuff, and the box trailer to Okeechobee. We got what we could in Mom's car, but it was tight.

Grandma and Aunt Betty had moved to Okeechobee. My uncle had been hired by Okeechobee school for Boys. We were going to spend a few days visiting before going on to Hollywood.

We arrived in Okeechobee a couple of days before they got there with our stuff. I was selling newspapers for Aunt Betty by the drug store when I spotted them. I chased them for a block to the traffic light, before they spotted finally saw me.

It had been really late at night when we got into Okeechobee. We were all so tired. We just wanted to lay in a warm bed and go to sleep. Dad was driving, and we stopped at the first motel we came to. We got two rooms with two double beds in each room. Dad had a real way with people so he talked the owner into giving us a good deal until we could get someplace to live. It took 9 days to find a new home.

My Uncle told my Dad that he could get him a job at the Boys School as a Cook. I supposed they had decided to stay in Okeechobee. We always joked years later that once Dad smelled Lake Okeechobee, was wasn't going any further.

The first place we lived was a duplex apartment. Mom, Dad, Vicki. Debbie and I lived in one side, Janie and her 4 kids lived in the other side.

Some people who lived a few doors down that had a rabbit as a pet. Her name was Samantha, Sammi for short, and they had to move and could not take her. They gave her to me. She was my most precious pet. She was litter trained like the cat, so she had the run of the house. BUT she liked to chew phone cords so she had to have a cage on the screen porch.

Vicki had her baby on the first day of school. We had only been here for a month, and I wondered where on earth we were gonna keep a baby. Our little bedroom just got more crowded.

There was a small pond on the other side of some bushes beside the house, and I used to spend a lot of time sitting and watching the water. This became my new hiding place. It was quiet and no one bothered me. There was a little bigger pond across the street, but I didn't go there much.

At Haloween a long haired tabby kitten showed up. . Dad named him 'Spooky'. Now we had two cats and a rabbit and a baby. I loved the rabbit best.

The school was over 5 miles away, so I had to ride a bus to school. I had never ridden a bus, so I was unsure what to expect. The first day on the bus going to school, I met this boy. I thought he was kind of a snob at first. He called me chicken legs. Then he heard me tell someone that I had to write a paper in English class oner what we did for the weekend. All I had to write about was a game that I had played with my sister called horses. She always got to be the horse, I was always the cowboy trying to lasso her. After he over heard that, he kept asking me 'How's the Horses' It was annoying.

He was a year ahead of me in school. As I was going into my second period class, he was coming out of the same class. I had PE 1st period. He had PE Last period. So all day long, I would pass him coming out of class when I was going in. And then we had to wait for the school but after school. I could not get away from Frank no matter how hard I tried.

Eventually he told me he liked me. He told me where he lived and said I could come over sometime. I walked down the road in back of the apartments where he said he lived. I could see it from the road back then. I saw that he had a pool and decided he was just too rich for my blood. I came from poor stock. It didn't take him long to convince me that it didn't matter, and before we knew it we were 'an item'. His brother-in-law drove a dune buggy. It was a hippy thing in the 60's, and I used to watch for it to go by. I really don't understand why. I guess I wanted to see if Frank was on it.

I was still flying in my dreams. I could fly over the ponds, and all the subdivision. I loved the free feeling it gave me. I didn't tell anyone about it - that was my special thing. I never actually flew in an air plane again, but I did not have to guess that what I saw in my dreams was accurate. I had always wished that Uncle Leonard would fly his plane down for a visit and take us up so I could be sure. We lived really close to the airpor. We could see the spot light at night.

In a few months Janie moved into town. Her house behind the post office. I started spending a lot of time at her house. I liked being in town. I could walk to the swimming pool and I got to know her neigbors. I started going to church with her. When I was twelve I even joined her church.

I found out later, when Janie came back from Hawaii, Skip was not with her. He went somewhere to get special training to go to Vietnam. Laterh He came for a short visit, and then was off to 'Fight in Vietnam' just like in Debbie's song. That scared me a little.

I only had one memory of anything with the 'fighting' over there. When we were still in Maroa, I remember Mom watching the news, and crying. There was a story on the news. Someone had filmed a boy being caught in some kind of battle, and he was laying on the ground. I remember hearing him say "My legs! My legs! I can't feel my legs". Mom was crying about it. It was on the TV which I had always KNOWN to be entertainment, but this was upsetting her. I did not know at that time, that news was supposed to be real.

I talked to the 'invisible people' a lot about what I saw on TV about Vietnam. I didn't want Skip to be like that boy on TV. I didn't want Janie to cry like Mom did that day. In fact, I was talking to the invisible people a lot around then. For all kinds of reasons, I still sat by the pond, and talked, and listened.

During the summer we moved again, but it was just further into the sub-division of Basswood. I thought we were getting a bigger house, but turned out to be exactly the same design. It looked exactly like the apartment, except the screen porch was closed in, and called a Florida Room. That is where Debbie had her bedroom. I really can't say I remember sharing a room with Vicki and her son Roger, but I must have. I guess maybe that is why it didn't bother me to spend so much time at Janie's.

When my Nephew Roger turned a year old, Vicki wanted to throw him a big party. She wanted to have a clown, so the boy that I had a crush on agreed to be a clown for his party. Mom made the costume. We did his make-up and Frank became the 'clown' the party. We took all kinds of pictures. I kept them for a long time.

During this next school year, Frank was in the 8th grade. At that time that was high school. We were not at the same school, and did not ride the same bus. We did not see each other everyday, but we talked on the telephone - OFTEN. I had another boyfriend, and Frank had his 'nerd' friends. I don't know what he did during that year, and to this day, still do not care.

My 7th grade year was awesome. I found myself in all kinds of interesting situations. The next two years for me would be true freedom years. Today I can look back on it and realize how enlightening they truly were. These were years that I JUST NOW realized set me up as a survivor! I learned how to stand on my own, fight my own battles and be a little spunky. FOLLOW ME and see how talking to adults helped me to defend myself with words into Spunky Pre-Teen.




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