Well, folks, I did it! It is the last day of November, and I posted every single day. It has actually been very pleasant, so I will probably keep posting more often, at least while I finish entering the information from Kelli's journals.
It was so interesting to read through the entries from 1980 and 1981--all the silly things I decided to post and all the important things that didn't get mentioned. Scouring for pictures was interesting. There were some loose pictures with Kelli's journals that I was able to scan, and I had an envelope of pictures from my parents, many of which were pictures I had sent to them, that I was able to use to flesh out the journal entries.
It was the pictures that really got me remembering things--for example, the picture of Kelli and Abbi in the Christmas package costumes was taken by our house on Anza Street, outside by the swimming pool. You can see the yellow of the house and the brown bench that ran alongside it parallel with the pool deck behind them in the picture. I had not realized that we were already in that house by 1981.
And the picture of the birthday party in 1981, the one that I said must have been in Arlene's yard because it wasn't the apartment building? Well, that didn't seem right either--I think it was the yard of the townhouse that we lived in for only a month. So, how we came to move...that is a story that the journal does not tell. And it is an interesting one.
While we still lived in apartment 8, before we became the managers and moved to apartment 2, Kelli and Abbi had become great friends with Antoine and LaShetta, the two African American children who lived in apartment 12. They played with them daily. But one day, Abbi came home crying. She had this huge bite on her lower back, kind of on the left side. A huge people bite. The kids said that LaShetta had bit her, but when I talked to Willetta, the mom, there was not much of either accepting responsibility or apology. After that, the kids were hesitant to play with those children--Abbi in particular was pretty frightened of them. It had been a horrible, icky bite that took awhile to heal.
One day, a film crew came to our building. We watched from apartment 8 as the crew filmed Antoine's dad (I can't remember his name...) driving into the parking lot, getting out of his car, going home, being greeted by his wife and children...they filmed a bunch of stuff. We didn't know why; we just watched it happen. Antoine's dad was very good looking and also very buff, and he made a great hero of whatever it was they were filming.
Soon after we moved to apartment 2, and now had the managerial responsibilities, there was a very loud and long party going on in apartment 12. Bruce had to ask them to tone it town--but that went okay because he was pretty good friends with Antoine's dad. But another time, there was a party, and Randy Gillenwater Sr., next door in apartment 1, called to complain. He had a visitor come to his apartment, and while he was standing at the door after ringing the bell, someone from the veranda beside apartment 12 peed on him. Randy was really angry about that--can't blame him for that! So Bruce had to go and talk to them upstairs again. That got to be a pretty regular occurrence--both the peeing from above (once Bruce opened our door and walked outside in time to see the sprinkles coming from above in front of his face) and the needing to talk to them about their partying too hardy.
Fast forward a few months...and one day, Randy Gillenwater and I and a few other apartment residents were served subpoenas to come to court as witnesses for the prosecution. It turned out that the filming we had seen was a special that one of the local TV stations made about reformed ex-cons, and our neighbor in number 12 was being featured as a model of success. Unfortunately...his wife was collecting welfare, and they had lied about a lot of things. The TV special had showed the dad at work, and the mom at work, and both of them driving their nice white cadillacs...and it happened that the welfare case worker had his TV tuned to that channel on the day the special aired. BUSTED! So, charges were being brought, and Randy and I and others had to serve as witnesses.
Things were getting really tense and dicey around our building, as you can imagine. Antoine's parents were getting less and less nice to the rest of the tenants. Tires were getting slashed. Bikes were disappearing. Gillenwaters tried complaining to the landlords, as did some of the other tenants. And so did we. But because the landlords were caucasian and the people in apartment 12 were of a different race, the landlords were really worried about getting hit with a lawsuit themselves, for discrimination.
The other subpoenaed people all moved out. That left us and Gillenwaters. We tried everything we could think of, and finally, we found a new place to live, and we gave notice as well. It was just too unpleasant, and we were worried about our children. Once a happy place to play outside, with all the children playing together, now there was misery. None of the kids wanted to go outside anymore. We wanted to live in our ward boundaries, because we loved our ward, and also because we loved the neighborhood school and wanted our girls to go there. But we had to hurry to find a place, and so we found a townhouse that was still in El Cajon, but not in our ward or school boundaries.
It was a very nice townhouse, with a living room and kitchen and laundry room and restroom on the first floor, and the bedrooms on the second floor. I think that was the location of the birthday party for Kelli and Abbi--it had a small fenced yard. Really small, but the fence in the picture (see October 1981) looks like the fence that was in that yard. I remember that the girls had their birthdays while we were in that townhouse--I remember that Abbi got a memory game for her birthday, and spending hours sitting on the floor in the living room playing with her. She was so good at that game--she could beat us all hands down; she was only three, but we didn't have to "let" her win because she was just really good at it.
And then, Brother Quick had a vacancy in one of his rental homes, and he called and offered it to us, and so we moved to the house on Anza street. The house was little and old and not nearly as nice as the townhouse, but the rent was really inexpensive, it was in our ward, just a couple of blocks from the school, and the yard was huge. And there was a swimming pool...
So, even though the house only had one bedroom, we moved there. We gave the girls the bedroom, and Bruce and I got a sofa bed and slept in the living room. There was an extra room, but it had a back door that opened onto the pool deck, so we didn't really want to use it as a bedroom. That was the room we put the piano in, and I taught piano lessons in there so the family still had the living room while piano lessons were going on. So that was where we were by late 1981.
As for the court case--I went and testified, answering the questions I was asked. I remember they asked me if the family owned two white cadillacs. I answered, "Well, they own two big white cars." I didn't know they were cadillacs until they asked me that question! I'm just that stupid about cars!
After we moved, the Gillenwaters called the landlords and gave their notice, too. That was too much for them--they had lost too many good tenants by then, so they evicted apartment 12 and kept the Gillenwaters. When the family from 12 left, they took everything that wasn't nailed down. All of the appliances--gone. They even took the extra appliances from the building storage room. Gillenwaters became the managers. In 1987, when we attempted to move back to San Diego (but it just did not work out at all!) the Gillenwaters still lived there, though they had moved to apartment 11, the only three bedroom apartment in the complex. They had four children by then, so that was a good move for them!
It was so interesting to read through the entries from 1980 and 1981--all the silly things I decided to post and all the important things that didn't get mentioned. Scouring for pictures was interesting. There were some loose pictures with Kelli's journals that I was able to scan, and I had an envelope of pictures from my parents, many of which were pictures I had sent to them, that I was able to use to flesh out the journal entries.
It was the pictures that really got me remembering things--for example, the picture of Kelli and Abbi in the Christmas package costumes was taken by our house on Anza Street, outside by the swimming pool. You can see the yellow of the house and the brown bench that ran alongside it parallel with the pool deck behind them in the picture. I had not realized that we were already in that house by 1981.
And the picture of the birthday party in 1981, the one that I said must have been in Arlene's yard because it wasn't the apartment building? Well, that didn't seem right either--I think it was the yard of the townhouse that we lived in for only a month. So, how we came to move...that is a story that the journal does not tell. And it is an interesting one.
While we still lived in apartment 8, before we became the managers and moved to apartment 2, Kelli and Abbi had become great friends with Antoine and LaShetta, the two African American children who lived in apartment 12. They played with them daily. But one day, Abbi came home crying. She had this huge bite on her lower back, kind of on the left side. A huge people bite. The kids said that LaShetta had bit her, but when I talked to Willetta, the mom, there was not much of either accepting responsibility or apology. After that, the kids were hesitant to play with those children--Abbi in particular was pretty frightened of them. It had been a horrible, icky bite that took awhile to heal.
One day, a film crew came to our building. We watched from apartment 8 as the crew filmed Antoine's dad (I can't remember his name...) driving into the parking lot, getting out of his car, going home, being greeted by his wife and children...they filmed a bunch of stuff. We didn't know why; we just watched it happen. Antoine's dad was very good looking and also very buff, and he made a great hero of whatever it was they were filming.
Soon after we moved to apartment 2, and now had the managerial responsibilities, there was a very loud and long party going on in apartment 12. Bruce had to ask them to tone it town--but that went okay because he was pretty good friends with Antoine's dad. But another time, there was a party, and Randy Gillenwater Sr., next door in apartment 1, called to complain. He had a visitor come to his apartment, and while he was standing at the door after ringing the bell, someone from the veranda beside apartment 12 peed on him. Randy was really angry about that--can't blame him for that! So Bruce had to go and talk to them upstairs again. That got to be a pretty regular occurrence--both the peeing from above (once Bruce opened our door and walked outside in time to see the sprinkles coming from above in front of his face) and the needing to talk to them about their partying too hardy.
Fast forward a few months...and one day, Randy Gillenwater and I and a few other apartment residents were served subpoenas to come to court as witnesses for the prosecution. It turned out that the filming we had seen was a special that one of the local TV stations made about reformed ex-cons, and our neighbor in number 12 was being featured as a model of success. Unfortunately...his wife was collecting welfare, and they had lied about a lot of things. The TV special had showed the dad at work, and the mom at work, and both of them driving their nice white cadillacs...and it happened that the welfare case worker had his TV tuned to that channel on the day the special aired. BUSTED! So, charges were being brought, and Randy and I and others had to serve as witnesses.
Things were getting really tense and dicey around our building, as you can imagine. Antoine's parents were getting less and less nice to the rest of the tenants. Tires were getting slashed. Bikes were disappearing. Gillenwaters tried complaining to the landlords, as did some of the other tenants. And so did we. But because the landlords were caucasian and the people in apartment 12 were of a different race, the landlords were really worried about getting hit with a lawsuit themselves, for discrimination.
The other subpoenaed people all moved out. That left us and Gillenwaters. We tried everything we could think of, and finally, we found a new place to live, and we gave notice as well. It was just too unpleasant, and we were worried about our children. Once a happy place to play outside, with all the children playing together, now there was misery. None of the kids wanted to go outside anymore. We wanted to live in our ward boundaries, because we loved our ward, and also because we loved the neighborhood school and wanted our girls to go there. But we had to hurry to find a place, and so we found a townhouse that was still in El Cajon, but not in our ward or school boundaries.
It was a very nice townhouse, with a living room and kitchen and laundry room and restroom on the first floor, and the bedrooms on the second floor. I think that was the location of the birthday party for Kelli and Abbi--it had a small fenced yard. Really small, but the fence in the picture (see October 1981) looks like the fence that was in that yard. I remember that the girls had their birthdays while we were in that townhouse--I remember that Abbi got a memory game for her birthday, and spending hours sitting on the floor in the living room playing with her. She was so good at that game--she could beat us all hands down; she was only three, but we didn't have to "let" her win because she was just really good at it.
And then, Brother Quick had a vacancy in one of his rental homes, and he called and offered it to us, and so we moved to the house on Anza street. The house was little and old and not nearly as nice as the townhouse, but the rent was really inexpensive, it was in our ward, just a couple of blocks from the school, and the yard was huge. And there was a swimming pool...
So, even though the house only had one bedroom, we moved there. We gave the girls the bedroom, and Bruce and I got a sofa bed and slept in the living room. There was an extra room, but it had a back door that opened onto the pool deck, so we didn't really want to use it as a bedroom. That was the room we put the piano in, and I taught piano lessons in there so the family still had the living room while piano lessons were going on. So that was where we were by late 1981.
As for the court case--I went and testified, answering the questions I was asked. I remember they asked me if the family owned two white cadillacs. I answered, "Well, they own two big white cars." I didn't know they were cadillacs until they asked me that question! I'm just that stupid about cars!
After we moved, the Gillenwaters called the landlords and gave their notice, too. That was too much for them--they had lost too many good tenants by then, so they evicted apartment 12 and kept the Gillenwaters. When the family from 12 left, they took everything that wasn't nailed down. All of the appliances--gone. They even took the extra appliances from the building storage room. Gillenwaters became the managers. In 1987, when we attempted to move back to San Diego (but it just did not work out at all!) the Gillenwaters still lived there, though they had moved to apartment 11, the only three bedroom apartment in the complex. They had four children by then, so that was a good move for them!
