One Alvin police chase

 

In August, 1979, an alert Alvin Police officer named Joseph Esquivel was on night patrol near Alvin High School when he noticed a young man riding a blue English Racer bicycle at the corner of Johnson and Adoue, and carrying a toolbox under his arm.  Immediately suspicious, Esquivel followed.  Slowly at first, then faster as the suspect started to accelerate.  As both of them raced through the parking lot of First Baptist Church at Adoue and Hill, the man threw the entire toolbox at the cruiser – and missed.

At the corner of Cleveland and Taylor the suspect abandoned his bike and took off on foot.  Undaunted, Esquivel followed suit and the foot race was underway.  Two blocks later, the chase began to include jumping over fences and running through lawns in the dark in the middle of the night.  With Esquivel only a few feet behind him, the youth unexpectedly crawled through an open window at a house on Hardie Street.

And that’s where he was arrested less than a minute or two later, cowering under the covers of his own bed in his own home, at around 3 a.m.  It was later discovered that the abandoned bicycle had been stolen.  The toolbox was never claimed or reported stolen. 

Good work, Officer Esquivel, no matter where you are now.  You are probably one of Alvin’s octogenarians by now, so we honor you for your service.

One so-called lawn care business

 Settling into a new home requires a bunch of changes, doesn’t it?  New arrangements of artwork on the walls, different color schemes to match new room arrangements, switching to different utility companies, doing the Change of Address form for the post office, etc.  One of my least favorite among these is hiring a new lawn care crew.

So… to help me out, my lovely real estate agent had given me a list of four potential companies she had heard about here in Alvin.  And the fun began this morning when I picked one at random and looked it up on Google.  All I had was a name and a phone number, and I was hoping for, you know, some basic information like location, reviews, maybe a photo or two, etc.  AI jumped right in, of course.  Heavens to Mergatroyd.  In a matter of moments AI was as lost as I was. 

This particular company didn’t exist in southeast Texas.  No website, no handy google map, no Reddit or Quora reviews, not even a Facebook page.  Just my luck.  I expanded my search to include the entire U.S.A. and got a smattering of companies with the same name – in Idaho, Ohio, and Rhode Island.  Really?  Who knew Rhode Island was big enough to have lawns?

But I digress.  I ended up just calling the number.  A woman answered with “Hello?”  I said “Hello, is this a business?”  She said, “I’m at Kroger can I call you back in five minutes?”  I hung up without a word.  Half an hour later my phone rang, no caller ID so I ignored it as I always do for unidentified numbers.  Doesn’t everybody? 

I moved along to the next one on my list.  No answer.  No “leave a message at the beep” recording.  The third one was similar to the first, except it was a man and he was apparently outside an airplane hangar or maybe attending a rock festival in Rhode Island.  Not a business answer, just another Hello. 

I never made it to the last one on the list.  I had to go take a little break that sort of morphed into a little nap.  For the rest of the day I wondered if I’m really that out of touch with the 21^st century.  Is it really true that service businesses just don’t need to identify even their name to customers any more?  And is it really true that I might be ready for the Old Folks Home?  Then I wouldn’t care how they answered their phones, would I?   

Fourteen days of pain and chaos

You know that thing that friends do at the stadium when their team makes a touchdown?  Where they slap high-fives and scream and holler and yell and jump around and fist bump?  Well, that’s what Marla and I did this afternoon (well, except for the jumping part) when she plugged an HTMI cable into my PC.  I confess I shed a tear or two of happiness.  I’m finally reconnected to my world.  Hallelujah.

Was it really two weeks of misery?  Yes it was.  Friday June 12^th around noon I fell down and went boom.  Ouch.  Felt like a fool in front of dozens of my peers.  Tuesday my three angels showed up to pack the Dumble house even though I was the only one who couldn’t do a lick of work.  Wednesday the moving van showed up and hauled it all away.  If it hadn’t been for my friend Allen I might’ve postponed the entire thing.  He stepped right up to the plate and became my Hero of the Day.

Then came seven days of confusion.  You’ve undoubtedly heard about the missing mouse and the wayward monitor cord (which is still AWOL).  I cried and moaned and wailed for a solid week about everything – it’s really a good thing I wasn’t able to whine online, wasn’t it?  The strong, independent widow y’all know and love was an emotional mess, a pathetic helpless creature who wasn’t coping well at all.

In spite of myself, with a LOT of help from a LOT of friends, things began to take shape.  Little things, like AAA batteries for the TV remote, showed up.  Big things, like my king-size pillows, didn’t show up for several days.  I slept with an eight-inch Astros throw pillow under my head for three nights and was grateful to have it.  All my kitchen towels ended up in the bathroom and vice-versa.  See what I mean?

But today made it all go away.  I’ve fed my addiction to screen time for several hours.  Caught up on emails, paid some overdue bills online, filled out a Change of Address form, got a few more stats about my new blog’s health, and even did my word games and a hidden object puzzle.  I will sleep well tonight.

PS:  Thanks to everybody who helped.  Including but not limited to Marla, Donna, Cathy, Ned, Allen, Melvin, Paul, Debbie, Jerry, Bart, Bethany, Essie, Marijane and Margaret.  Friends rock! 

One Awesome Landlord

In addition to being an all-around Good Guy, Jerry Krampota is a third generation Texan with a Czechoslovakian heritage.  He’s a businessman, a neighbor, a fellow historian, a writer, and sometimes a comedian.  Plus, he’s been my landlord for the past 18 months and a good friend for more than a decade.

Tonight will be my last night here on Dumble Stret.  I’ll be shutting down my PC and getting it off the desk before bedtime.  The moving truck will be here bright and early tomorrow.  I’d like to share a story or two about my stay here if you don’t mind.  You know how us old folks are, right?

My best Krampota story is all about the possum who lived under the bathtub at my old house on Hill Street.  He must’ve missed me after I moved out (or maybe he just wondered why the house had become so quiet).  He crawled up through the floor of the little water heater closet and probably found a little snack.  That’s when I learned possums love to eat roaches.  So every time a realtor brought a potential buyer he probably went back below for a nap.  Except for that one time.  OMG.  I had to take the house off the market, and that’s when Jerry stepped up to the plate.

He took it upon himself to trap that critter once and for all.  He was relentless, checking several times a day until he discovered Possum’s game plan.  He tried to block off the door.  Possum came back anyway.  It was quite entertaining from my vantage point.  Long story short, Possum was finally located to somewhere out near Chocolate Bayou and we hope he is living happily ever after.

My second favorite Krampota story involves his lovely wife Peggy.  She’s not a native Alvinite but you’d never know it.  She’s listened to Jerry’s stories for more than fifty years, and her memory is excellent.  She volunteers at a local charity called the Landing Place, working with memory care patients.  She loves to cook.  She’s active in her church.  She’s always happy.  But the best part?  She usually invites me to join her family for her delicious meals on holidays, and she’s especially generous with the leftovers.

I’m really grateful to these good folks for adopting me and being my neighbors and earning my assessment of them as the best landlords in town.

 

 

Four Alvin Friends

 

It seems like weeks ago that I fell down and went boom, but it was only last Friday.  Three days ago.  I ought to be back up and walking and driving by now, I’ve told myself a dozen times.  But nooo… it seems my body has a timeline of its own these days, and it forgot to send me the message.  Such is the fate of an octogenarian, I suppose.

This morning bright and early, three ladies showed up at my doorstep armed with boxes and tape and markers and muscles and energy and good balance and excellent eyesight.  They brought laughter and conversation and hugs.  And they brought me hope and healed my heart.  They understood this was my first day to get out in public with a walker.  They laughed with me as I learned to navigate with the cotton-pickin’ thing.  They helped me get into the passenger seat.  Trust me, all you young-uns, it ain’t all that easy. 

After working their magic with boxes and tape for a couple of hours, they packed up their vehicles and off we went.  The delivery of my new refrigerator was scheduled, the new garage door opened without a hitch, the boxes of breakables were all put inside their appropriate rooms at the new place – and it felt so odd to just sit and watch them.  Frustration.  Guilt.  Sadness.  How can I learn to live like an invalid and how could I ever repay them?

By lunchtime we all realized the rest of the day would be rained out.  They at least let me buy them all a tortilla burger and/or a hot dog at DairyLand, a local groovy place since the 1960s.  After they drove me home and went on their merry ways, I got to thinking how lucky I am to have as my close friends one retired municipal judge, plus the one and only mother of our local high school’s head football coach, and a transplanted New Yorker who has been in Alvin so long she can remember more about this town’s history than most natives. 

One Day At A Time

What a difference a day makes, twenty-four little hours.  Well, that’s what Dinah Washington said in her song, and until today I never had a reason to believe differently.  Her version said the sun and the flowers came where there used to be rain.  I say there might be unpleasant surprises after an elderly person falls.

Yesterday around lunchtime I fell.  Mine was a pretty soft landing compared to dozens and dozens of stories I’ve heard from my friends and acquaintances.  The side of my calf was sore for a few hours and I felt sort of frazzled and over-tired by bedtime.  Other than that, I considered myself unharmed.

Thanking my lucky stars for my own foresight, I dragged out my husband's old aluminum walker.  He died eleven years ago, and it certainly wasn't a sentimental memory, but the practical side of myself had stashed it in a closet.  

Surprise.  I woke up at my usual time and went through my little routine.  Sitting on the edge of the bed, I noticed I’d slept uninterrupted (if you know what I mean) for at least two hours longer than usual.  Didn’t think much of it except that it was a good thing.  Getting dressed was uneventful.  When I stood up and headed for the kitchen I forgot to grab the walker, though, and immediately noticed I wasn’t quite as steady on my feet.  I didn’t fall, and I wasn’t dizzy or disoriented.  I knew exactly where I was and what I was doing.  I just felt a bit wobbly. 

Being me, I went back for the walker and brushed it off, telling myself it would go away in a while.  At this point it had only been eighteen hours or so. 

But lunchtime came and went.  I was getting tired again, so I stretched out on the bed and had a little nap.  Unusual but not unheard of in my case.  Whatever, I told myself.  Maybe it’ll take 36 hours or even 96 hours to recover fully.  I won’t be driving again until I get over the wobbles, and I know my friends will appreciate that.  My journey continues.

 

One Unexpected Event

 Yesterday I said I would continue the story of why I started this blog, but Heavens to Betsy, life intervened all day today.  So we’ll just have to keep on truckin’, won’t we?

It started as a normal day.  For the first couple of hours, at least.  The coffee was good, the scrambled eggs and hash browns were tasty.  Then I made the one-block trip to the Senior Center and apparently took a wrong step on the concrete sidewalk at the east entrance – down I went.  Landed on the left side of my calf about three inches below my knee.  Ouch.  I haven’t fallen down in more than forty years, probably, but I really wasn’t surprised.  After all, I’m eighty years old and it seemed inevitable.  Something about the law of averages, I think.

Oh well, I told myself, if I must fall, this is a fine-and-dandy place to do it.  I was in the shade, literally on the bright yellow ramp leading to the automatic doors that opened into the dining hall where dozens of my peers were just sitting down for lunch.

So I sat myself up and looked around.  Empty parking lot, no construction workers nearby.  Nobody appeared for the first few seconds.  Then here they came, all at once.  The director of the center sat herself cross-legged on the concrete next to me, and said she thought she would join me for a bit since I’d found a nice resting place.  Nobody seemed upset, probably because I wasn’t moaning or groaning or making a scene. 

After a few minutes, I allowed a few of them to get me on my feet and inside the building where air conditioning and a chair were waiting for me.  I’m not sure which one I enjoyed most.  Marla and Essie (the leaders of the pack) brought me water and Tylenol, ran their fingers around on my scalp and asked me a bunch of questions.  They had already watched the surveillance video and said my head hit the concrete so they had to make sure I had my wits about myself. 

I’m just fine, thank you.  By the time I left the building (escorted to my truck by Essie), all the pain was gone and I was back to my old self.  Literally.  Or maybe I should say my elderly self.

You’ll be happy to know I’ve learned my lesson.  I’ll be using Jim’s trusty old walker from now on.  And I might just go to bed a wee bit earlier and a bit wiser than last night.

Welcome

My name is Marie.  I was born in rural Arkansas a few months after the end of World War Two.  My family moved to southeast Texas when I was still in diapers.  I’ve lived in the Houston area for well over 75 years and have spent the last several decades in Brazoria County.

When I was fifty years old, somebody invented Windows 95 and I got an e-mail address.  It’s the only one I’ve ever had and I still use it every day.  When I was sixty, Texas City blew up, Hurricane Rita stranded us on I-10 for what seemed like days, and my first grandchild made his appearance in a suburb of Athens, Greece.

By the time I turned seventy, I had been a widow for several years.  Looking for a change of pace and a new lifestyle, I moved to a small town called Alvin.  It had less than 20,000 residents back then.  I found my niche at the Alvin Historical Museum and spent a happy decade in their back room as an archivist, historian, curator and board secretary.  Good times.

A few months ago, I hit another milestone.  Eighty.  I quit worrying about dying young and started counting my blessings.  All my major pieces and parts are cranking along nicely (heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, thyroid, etc.)  I only take one pill a day, and if I play my cards right I’m thinking I should make at least another decade.  Which brings me, finally, to the reason I’m starting this new blog.

But I’m not telling you the rest of the story just yet.  My fingers are tired of typing, you see.  And at my age, I’ve learned it’s okay to take a break when I need one.  Maybe you’ll come back for future updates.