Another Move

The Real Estate Agent who had helped us legally break the lease was trying to find us another rental. But, it was the holiday season and having to move quickly was proving to be a big hurdle. There just wasn't anything. Then I thought of L.C. I'd bowled with her for a few years. I didn't know her real well, but she had bowled with her husband and her parents on our Sunday evening couples league for a few years. L.C. had recently divorced her husband and a new partner was found to bowl with her and her folks. The divorce had been nasty. The Ex was a deputy sheriff with an attitude and a slyness that made several of us uncomfortable. She was about my age and she had gotten the house, but she was living with her parents and her house was empty. So that week at the bowling alley I talked to her. She seemed to like the idea of renting to us, but something was holding her back. I was desperate and pushed harder then my personality would usualy have allowed. L.C. finally admitted she was afraid of the house because there were snakes in it. Snakes? Was that all? She wasn't sure what kind, but in our area poisonous snakes are rare. Just garters and an occasional black snake. I assured her that wasn't half as bad as what we were already living with. (Actually meaning the furnace, not the ghosts.) She agreed t let us move in, at least till summer or we found something else.

W and I didn't really believe snakes were going to be a problem, especially in winter. The house was in great shape. How would snakes get in anyway? Even if they were in the basement, the shouldn't be a problem.

By the next Sunday at bowling, L.C. was our landlady. None of us ever saw a single snake in that house. L.C. and I came to the conclusion that her crazy ex-husband had been bringing them in to terrify her. She had already suspected it. Later when we moved out, L.C. moved back in. And stayed. She never did find another single snake in her house.

This was another farm house on a county (not township) road this time. One of those that has the barns on one side of the road and the house on the other. We had to park at the barn across from the house. It was a much bigger house and we settled quickly enough to have friends over for a party on New Years. That party was one of the last normal functions W and I ever had. L.C. let us stay, and we were still there late the following summer when my world turned upsidedown down again.

If it has occured to you that up to this point my life has seemed a bit of a soap opera, well....you haven't seen anything yet. Our New Years Party was 1981/82 and the next two years were going to get even more dramatic. I felt totally out of control and I was about to learn just who my friends were....and weren't.