August l975

Here is a picture very similar to the first
place we lived after we got married.



The actual location is now just a field
of yellow flowers and some trees.

We don't know what happened to the trailer we really lived in . Anyway, I have been on the lookout for a while now for a place that was similar. Billy and I both think this looks quite a bit like it.

We had a window air unit in the front room...so in the hot summer time we slept on a pull out couch in the front room. During this time Billy was a senior at the University here in Little Rock. I worked 5 hours a day
at an elementary school in the library.
Billy worked nights from 4 - 12 p.m.
He was a janitor and night watchman
at Arkansas Power and Light. After
the cleaning was done he had time to study
til he closed up at midnight. And there I
would be at home waiting... It was a good
year in many respects. Hard in the way
the first year of marriage is hard. But we were
happy.

We lived here about 13 months. Its just the first of 23 places
we have lived since we got married.

Very soon we will have our 34th anniversary!!!

second house

ok


this is not really the house. when I first decided to do this project a few months ago
I realized that the first two places we lived after we got married aren't there any more
and that we don't have any pictures of them. 33 years ago we didn't have a camera and
at the age of 19 I wasn't thinking 33 years into my future about if I would ever want a photo of either of these places.

So, this is not the house but it is very similar. The trim on the house was black. The porch is similar and the yard surrounding reminds me of the second place we lived after we got married.

That year 1976 we were 19 and 21.....we were sooo young. Billy had just graduated from the University at Little Rock. We were happy and still pleased with being married but it turned out to be a hard year financially. After College Billy got a job at a used car lot. It was just to be for a while til he got a Good Job....being a college graduate we were sure that a Good Job would come
soon. So, after a while...working at a used car lot he realized that in order to really do a good job selling used cars he might have to be less than honest. Since he did not consider this an option....he tried his best to sell used cars and be as honest and he could....however, it seems those
two concepts don't work well together. He realized that pretty soon he was going to be let go
so he jumped ahead and quit. In the meantime I was working 8 hours a day at a private daycare.
I really hated it. Not the kid part. I loved the kid part...but I found that I had little in common with the people I was trying to work with and I found out that the director was involved with
the owner of the daycare...and they were both married to other people...so the stress of this
at my tender age caused me to quit my job also.
So, there we were...jobless.... really young.....not knowing what we were doing!!
it was scary and tough!

We both signed up to work as substitute teachers for the county school system. So each day we would wake up and hope the phone would ring for us to go to work. Some days we both worked.
Sometimes, only one of us and sometimes neither of us. On the long cold winter days we both stayed home....we cuddled up in bed and watched tv. I remember feeling very content on those days. I wasn't one bit sorry to be married even if it was hard.

At some point during those months Billy decided he wanted to pursue more schooling....
in order to maybe be a preacher. We began to plan to move to Mobile for him to attend
a seminary there. We moved at the end of June 1977.

HOUSE SITTING

This is a place we lived for about nine months. It was a sort of house sitting thing. It is the biggest place we have ever lived. It was roomy and centrally located for stores and friends. I really liked it.

It also had a pool in the back and the kids swam almost every day that summer. It was really fun for them. In fact we all swam and enjoyed our time in this house very much.

We lived in this house on our first furlough from Mexico. It is across the street from Billy's dad's house and so was a perfect place to live and be really close to Papa during that year. Jordan was one and Ty was 8 weeks old when we moved in here. Aubrey was in the 7th grade. It was a comfortable house and the bonus was that a group from the church we attended that year paid our rent and filled the house with furniture.
We were blessed in this house...