The Place Had Been Sold

I got to feeling good, so come spring, our feet got itchy. We went to work for Rabbi (Milt) Kaufman, manager of the Gooding's Million Dollar Midway, doing the painting on the rides, trucks, fun houses, main offices, etc.

Toward the end of the season, I started to have trouble with my right hip and May started having problems with her breathing. Because of this, we went up to Virginia and rented a rundown house for two bits a month. I did a little work on it. I fixed the kitchen floor, repainted the cupboards, painted the woodwork around the outside, bought furniture and moved in.

That winter I had to have surgery on my hip, having the joint replaced with a stainless steel joint. The next day, after the operation, they had me up and walking. After a week of physical therapy, they let me go home. Two months later, you would never know that I had a phony hip joint.

I was afraid to climb ladders or work on a walk board lettering trucks anymore, so I started making personalized auto tags at flea markets. Once in a while, I would letter the doors on a pickup truck.

About a year after we got the house fixed up and in good living condition, I started to wonder why the owner kept bringing people in to see the house. She would say that this was her brother-in-law, or he aunt, or her stepsister. What was happening was, she was showing the place to prospective buyers.

Finally, we received a letter saying that the place had been sold. She gave us thirty days to move out and the thirty days would be free. That was so kind of her, after all the work we did and the money we spent.

As luck would have it, the next week May found a nice house in Bristol, two days later, we moved in. The next year, the guy who owned it sold it. It seemed we couldn't win for losing.

By then we were getting up in years and May decided that we should spend the rest of her years near her brothers and sisters. Some were living in Marion, Virginia and some in Shady Valley, Tennessee.

We chose a happy medium between the two and bought a mobile home and moved onto a lot in a nice mobile home park in Laurel Bloomery, Tennessee. This was a small settlement located almost between where her two sisters lived.

Because I was born and raised on the go, it became boring for me to stay put for any length of time, so when springtime came around, I would hit the road with my van, and make the flea markets, painting personalized auto tags. Sometimes, I would be away for a couple of weeks at a time. After having an artificial hip joint put in my right hip, sitting in a chair, lettering auto tags and a few magnetic decals for trucks and cars was about all that I was able to do.

To be Continued