When Adam was a little over a year old, Larry sold IHRA. They moved the sanctioning body to Waco, Texas. I did not want to move to Texas so I applied for a job at the old Dominion Bank. I was a bank teller. Back then there were a lot of tellers and the bank was always busy. It was a lot of fun but boy did we dread the first of the month and Fridays. This was long before direct deposit and we had a lot of people coming in to cash their checks. There were a few folks that apparently only came to town once a month.
Every night before we closed, once we had balanced, we would take our cash and put it in the safe. We had bundles of bound cash in our bottom drawer that also went into the safe. One Monday morning I came bee bopping in, went to my teller station opened the drawer and there it was, my bound money. Apparently I forgot to take it to the vault the previous Friday. These drawers are not locked so anyone could have opened it up and then I would have been hosed. My eyes grew wide, I looked from side to side to see if anyone was looking and then carefully slid the drawer back in its place. I said a prayer of thanks that day.
We were supposed to ask for identification if someone needed money out of their account or if they needed to cash a check (if you didn’t recognize them). Some people would get very offended if you asked for ID which always baffled me. One elderly man got so mad at me one time he had me in tears. One fella, who was very rich and owned a car dealership in town, would order money to be made like a pad so he could peel one bill off at a time.
Bev Sharrett was the head teller and always a lot of fun. She got pregnant, and before you knew it, almost the whole teller line was pregnant, including me. There was either something in the water or we all had baby fever. Kenny and I decided that once our new baby was born, I would quit work and stay at home. I began having contractions about six months along so my doctor put me on Terbutaline again and I had a pretty non-eventful pregnancy. Sam was born on a Saturday, November 18, 1989, again by cesarean. He weighed 7.5 pounds and was 19 ½ inches long.
Having a newborn and a two and half year old wasn’t easy. I didn’t realize how easy I had it with just Adam. Adam loved to go places and he was always so easy but Sam, not so much. He decided he didn’t like the car seat when he was a baby and cried as soon as you put him in it. Adam was a little jealous too, which is understandable since he had had all of my attention before his brother was born.
Since our family was growing, we decided to buy a bigger house and looked for something closer to Kingsport, where Kenny worked. We bought a huge house in Fall Branch. It had been on the market for awhile, probably because it was so stinky. The boys loved it because it had this huge unfinished room where we had most of their toys which they called the “Big Room”. We were out in the country but we had the sweetest neighbors that lived across the street, Leonard and Christine Gardner. Christine had a green thumb and provided me with so many plants that I didn’t have to buy anything. They also had a pool, which the boys loved. The boys and I would feed their cows fresh grass clippings or throw them pears that had fallen on the ground. The neighbors behind us were from Quebec. They had a wonderful trail behind their house that we would walk on. While we lived in Fall Branch, our family grew to include two more cats (Sidney and Simon) and Max, our poodle/terrier mix. The cats were strays and just showed up one day.
We joined the First Baptist Church in Fall Branch. I absolutely loved that church and our pastor Vic and his wife, Dot. They welcomed us with open arms and they were the nicest people you could ever meet, even when Sam was being sassy. Once during church, Sam was acting up. I kept shushing him, trying to make him be quiet. About that time, the pastor got a little excited. Sam stood up, put his finger to his mouth and said, “Shhhhhh … be quiet!”
Kenny had a lawn mowing business on the side and I did everything I could to save money so I could continue to stay home, including using cloth diapers. Going to McDonald’s was a treat back then. My aunt Sandy lived in Kingsport and the boys and I would go over there a lot in the evenings when Kenny was working. I would clean her house to earn a little extra money.
Adam went to Fall Branch Elementary which was kindergarten through 8th grade. I helped Adam’s kindergarten teacher so much that Sam had his own desk. She would watch him for me while I painted murals in the hallways at the school. She would carry him to gym class or wherever they went. Mrs. Shealy loved Sam and always included him like he was another kindergartner.
I loved my boys but they could be a handful and were always getting hurt. I just knew I was on someone’s list at social services of possible child abusers. Sam broke his arm when he was two, broke his leg when he was three and had 1st and 2nd degree burns on his feet after he stepped in some hot coals at a campfire when he was four.
Adam had his share of scrapes too. He fell out of a tree when he was about eight and almost tore his arm off. He broke his collarbone when he was about nine. He also broke his arm skateboarding when he was a teenager. It was so bad the bone punctured through his skin. I don’t know how they survived and I don’t know how I survived. At one point, I didn’t want them to even go outside.
They were hilarious too. They kept us laughing. When Sam was about three he was digging in his nose pretty good and Adam tattled on him. “Mom! Sam’s picking his nose again!” Sam replied, very smartly, “I’m gonna put it back!”
The boys began playing a lot of video games. They played a lot of Mario, Toejam and Earl, Sonic the Hedgehog and lots more. Gameboys came out then too. Dinosaurs, Batman and Ninja Turtles (Adam called them Binjin Turters ) and Power Rangers toys were all over the house. When Adam was finally able to watch the Batman movie with Michael Keaton, he was mesmerized. I think he still can repeat the whole dialogue of the movie.
Karen G. Bruce 