Atlanta We've Landed, Home at Last

This move was going to be different.  We were packing the house up and putting it in storage for a long time. I had to leave out what I thought I would need while we were living in this postage sized apartment that was fully furnished. The moving company packed us up in February 1999 and we moved into our new home on April 26, 1999.

Chappy always thought I had an ulterior motive, but for someone with a college degree and quite successful in business, he had no common sense for personal business.  I was not working when I moved to Atlanta.  I had not worked for seven months because why? Oh, we were moving all the time. 

Remember when we moved from Michigan to Indianapolis, we were there just nine months when he was transferred to Illinois.  We lived in Indiana for four years and moved to Illinois where he lived three months and I lived five months and now we were in Georgia and everything was in storage.

When we did the paperwork for the mortgage, I told the bank to just use Chappy's salary.  I knew from buying three other homes, that we would be approved for two and a half times his salary which allowed us a nice mortgage if we wanted to be in debt to our eyebrows.  There was no reason to figure in my "estimated" salary, we could avoid the headache of securing all that unnecessary documentation  by just using his.

Chappy didn't mind at the time. He had reached a point that he had worked hard achieve.  There was something he always wanted to give me that Killer never had.  It was not something I had asked for nor dreamed about, but he wanted to be able to make enough money that I didn't have to work if I didn't want to.  He had arrived at that goal with our transfer to Atlanta.  

The foundation

He told me that now I could do whatever I wanted. He wanted me to be happy. I had no idea what I wanted to "do." I had been working since I was fifteen years old. I was just a few months from turning thirty nine. My first job was to manage getting the house built.

When we looked at it in November 1998, it was just clay dirt and some poured cement walls. By the time I moved to Atlanta, it was  framed and the walls on the first floor had been nailed up.

February 1999

Min had to come see where her Chappy was living. I suggested since we lived in a one bedroom apartment, that she come when we moved in the house.  We were slated to move in at the end of April. No, she had to come down to see what this apartment looked like and see the area so when they talked on the phone, she knew where he was talking about.  I'd  have offered to send pictures, but I don't think that would have kept her home.

I was going stir crazy. Chappy still traveled and so I was in that apartment by myself a lot. I didn't know anyone and my days were spent with young Mexican men who only spoke English when it was pay day.

Precious had been returned to Indiana, but after we came home from Jamaica, a call had been placed to inform us that we could have the dog for good, but we were in the midst of moving again, so she couldn't come live with us until we were in the house.  I can't tell you how much I missed having that dog around.

I decided I needed some thing to do so I found a job.  I am not a morning person.  I hate early mornings and  if I had my choice in 1999, I'd have rather slept in, but I found a job as a merchandiser at the Publix Supermarket.

It was two mornings a week.  I racked magazines and paperbacks. Who would have thought you had to be tested to do this job, but you did.  I had a 10:30 interview.  I found the office I was to apply for this job and was surprised to find ten others who also had a 10:30 interview for the same job.  I had never applied for a job that mass interviews were conducted at the same time.

I passed the test and was hired.  You had to look at pictures and point out things that didn't belong in the photo.  I would not think many would fail this test, but many did.

The job required me to be at Publix at 6:30 in the morning. It was a twenty minute drive which required me to get up early.  I racked Tuesdays and Thursdays from 6:30 to 8:30.  You had to be out of the store by the 9 AM opening time.

There were people who did several stores a day. I was challenged to do one.  You brought totes up from the back. You were given a picture of the displays. You had to put hard covered books on the end of the display in the order of best seller.  You had to straighten up the magazine rack before you could stock it.  So you needed to know in what order they were displayed.  You were given a list of magazines to pull that were dated.  You had to restock the shelves with the new releases.

Pretending to do dishes in my new kitchen

Now, this sounds simple, but do you have any idea how many puzzle books there are?  You had to find Easy Puzzles,  Edition 19, dated April 1999 and replace it.  I can tell you, there are dozens of Easy Puzzle magazines, but not by a specific publisher with an exact Edition  and date. 

After you racked magazines, you had to clean up the paper backs, pull the dated and rack the new.  Again, easy, but do you know how  many Harliquen romance novels are published each month? Enough to make a housewife very horny if she read each edition I set out every week.

It is starting to look like home

Then you had to go to the checkout lanes.  Now here was an eyeopener.  Certain magazines were found to be offensive to those shopping at Publix, Glamour, Seventeen and even the Enquirer and Sun.  Those had to be racked behind a heavy plastic disc so the little blue haired cotton tops coming in for their prunes and coffee creamer didn't spit out their dentures looking at some buxom beauty on the cover of Glamour.

Now all they had to do was pull that disc toward them and holy moly, they probably would have gone blind standing there waiting to purchase their prunes.  If it were that offensive, put the magazines in your make believe book store located conveniently to the left of the checkout counters.

No, people wouldn't see them as they stood there waiting to buy there prunes. Hell, they couldn't see them in the first place, you placed a damn plastic disc over them! And if the offended just happened to be curious as they waited to purchase those prunes and pulled the disc forward, they wouldn't need the prunes because they will have just shit their pants looking at the cover of the magazine you've tried to hide from them!

650 Waterview Trail, Alpharetta Georgia

By 8:30 every morning I was on my way to the Shack.  I spent several hours watching the house being built.  I'd take off and explore the back roads so that I could show Chappy how to get around this city that was not built on a grid.  If you missed a turn, there was no going around the block to get back to where you were, you had to drive to the next county and turn on every Peach Tree, Peach Pear, Peach Pit Avenue there was.

I'd return later as the guys were finishing up and I scour the job sites for valuables.  Not valuables like trinkets left on the job site, construction material they threw in piles to be hauled away.  I'd pick over these piles of decking, nice treated lumber that they just threw in a pile to throw out.  I'd stack it up in the  basement of our new home and tell the Mexicans to leave it there.

I became friendly with the foreman on the job site and told him what I was doing. He knew not to touch my stock pile I was building every day.  I had spindles from staircases, boards that were used to build custom cabinets, just  slowly collecting. I had a plan.

I met the builder one day and suggested there was a lot of waste in building materials and that he could probably cut down on his expenses, you know so he could put a tile floor in one of  these homes as standard material.

Back of house

He assured me that there was no waste on his projects.  I made a bet.  I bet him I could find waste and if I did, could I keep it.  He told me that I'd not walk away with a thing except saw dust and then I took him to the basement in the home we were building. He was amazed at the 2X12 decking planks, the 2X4, 2x6, spindles, cupboard doors, plywood, solid oak that I had stacked in my "garage" in the basement. He wondered where I had found it and I took him for a walk through the back yards of the next five lots that were east of ours.  He didn't know what to say, but we had struck a bargain and I  had a lot of free material.

John Boy and Min thought I was nuts.  But when we moved in, I had enough scrap lumber  to build some nice little additions to the house. The attic had a second furnace upstairs, access to the stairs for the attic were located in the  master walk in closet. The closet was the size of a bedroom and the stairs were three feet wide and fourteen steps to the landing.  The decking I had squirreled away made for a beautiful floor in the attic to store boxes.

The 2X12 and other treated lumber I had stored away, built a very nice sturdy work bench in the basement with shelved for storage.  The spindles I had discovered, spruced up a rather boring entrance from the garage to the kitchen. Most homes just had two steps into the house, ours had a railing with spindles. The sheets of lumber used for framing the house in, was used to frame off that little garage I had designed in the basement.

It was going to cost $8000 to finish off the basement and Chappy and John Boy thought that was outrageous.  They would do that themselves.  I told Chappy it wasn't that much and it  would be done, we'd roll it into the mortgage but he was having a cow that the house was now at $302,000. I wanted at least the drywall and bathroom done, but John Boy said it could be done for less.  So, I saved plywood and hung it up on the studs so the garage portion of the basement was partitioned off, in the event the garage door was opened, critters didn't feel welcomed to join us at the dining room table.

In 1999, there was a drywall shortage.  We had moved into the house and John Boy and Chappy priced out finishing that basement.  It was going to run well over $20,000 for them to do it and a lot more for a contractor to come in and finish it.  I never said, "I told you so," but inside I chalked up another two cents offered by his parents that butted into our life and living arrangements. Chappy wanted to have his office down there and now he was not going to have that space to work from home if he desired.

I often wonder what would have happened had his parents, especially Min not butted in to our business so often.  If it were truly just Chappy and I calling the shots with no commentary from the peanut gallery.  I'm betting life would have been easier and our marriage would have lasted much longer than it did.