1979-198213438 N. 40th Place
Phoenix, Arizona
1979-1982Got little cardboard house with pool. Carole left. Crazy lady tries to kill kids. This one I have to tell.
We came back from Dallas on our RV trip. We first parked the RV next to our good friends, the Johnston’s: Bob, Sue, Peter, and Amy. I opened an office for US Graphics (Dallas) and we got an apartment. We wanted to live in Paradise Valley and we started looking for a home.
Looking for a home with Carole was impossible. I got so angry I made an offer on a John F. Long cardboard home. Wrong house. Wrong price. The house backed a major thoroughfare and had a plastic, in-ground swimming pool. I had offered $56k for a $48k house as long as we could assume the VHA mortgage. We met the wife, never the husband who, I think, was in Seattle.
Cardboard? John F. Long tract homes were made out of pressed paper. In order to increase the living space, the closet walls showed the studs. The master bedroom was smaller than the master bath in Plano. The other bedrooms were 9’ square. The offer was contingent on our assuming the VHA and pool loans, putting down $7k, and them carrying us $8k. We came to closing with the agents and the wife. The husband refused to carry us. He did agree to reduce the price to $52k and we came up with $4k more. This really pissed me off: he should have refused to accept the first offer. It got worse.
The title company screwed it up. Although they credited us with the impound account, they did not transfer it to our name with the lien holder (Houston, Texas: we believed there were no honest people in Texas). The husband showed up at the Los Angeles office of the mortgage company and collected the impound account. It took a year to get my money, as the mortgage company was as cheap as the house and the husband. The problem also was the mortgage company was illegally pumping up the impound account. There was about 3 years of expenses in that account. I hope they nailed the husband for his illegal action as it cost me a lot of time and interaction with the Arizona banking commission. I should have mailed his wife the porn magazines I found in the garage: they claimed to be born-again Christians. We had had enough of Texas bornagains to last a lifetime. We did get an action against the mortgage company when we proved that the Houston VP was dishonestly pumping impound accounts. The correct impound accounting seriously reduced our mortgage payment.
The plastic pool leaked and the neighbor’s palm tree nearest the pool steps grew like a weed. The other palm trees in the same row grew normally. I found and patched some holes but never all of them. The walk around the pool thudded when jumped on it. Scary. It was a nice, big, square pool and I swam laps at night. I enclosed the carport to make a garage. The pool table was in the garage.
For a while I worked out of the house in the spare bedroom. The neighbor across the street had dogs that barked all day. It turned out they were so vicious that I had to call animal control one day. The first animal control guy who rang the doorbell got locked in his car without his keys and the dogs surrounded his car. The dogs also were found dragging the neighbor’s baby away by its head. I got all of the neighbors to sign a petition and the dogs were gone. So was the neighbor: he and his wife went back to Boca Raton where people were more considerate of vicious animals. It was the first time I ever heard of Boca Raton.
US Graphic dropped me and I went to work across town at Inter-tel. Long commute, pretty good job. I rode with my boss and came home exhausted. We bought my KZ1000 motorcycle. I would come home from work so exhausted that I would collapse on the motorcycle in the driveway.
After the Dallas experience and the RV trip, I promised myself and Carole that I would keep regular hours. The problem was that I worked so hard; I came home exhausted after a 10-hour day. We owed $8k on credit cards. This is a lot to owe on a $24k salary with two loans and a wife and two kids and a swimming pool. We wanted Bree in a pre-school. Carole went to work and we under-withheld on her taxes. I worked as a contractor and so expensed the office. Carole’s working cost more than she earned for the year but it gave us a boost to get to the end of the year. The month we cleared, she got fired at the bank. She did not think I was sufficiently compassionate. We never did communicate well: I loved her so much but it did not matter: I should have read Tannen’s book: “You just don’t understand. Men and Women in conversation”. Her book nailed our situation.
We had a neighbor across
the street. He had two very vicious dogs. I mean these were
really
bad dogs. Typical of the area we all had grape stake or wooden
board
fences. Our house was on the continuous section of 40th
(north-south)
with side streets going east from our street. One of these ended
at
our front curb. So the side of this neighbor's yard faced our
street and
the front door of his house faced South exactly in front of our
house. These dogs were
in their backyard during the day. For all that I know, they were
there
all of the time. But during the day these dogs barked
continuously.
Not just at strangers or cars or passers-by of any sort.
Continuously. I had my office in a front bedroom. I
was working for
USDATA/US Graphics in Dallas. It was hard to work through the
noise.
Complaints to the neighbor fell on deaf ears. The dogs did not
bark
when he was home and what did he care what they did when he was gone?
He should have cared. His backyard neighbors had a baby.
One day
the dogs got out and the mother discovered one of the dogs dragging the
baby away by its head. The baby was not seriously injured.
Today an
incident like that would make CNN news. Not so much then.
One day,
following up on a complaint, the local dog catcher got into
trouble.
He made the mistake of pulling his truck up to the curb by the dogs and
walking around to the front door to ring the doorbell. Since the
dogs
were capable of breaking the fence (or maybe they jumped but I do not
think so) the dogs came racing around the corner and attacked the
man.
He managed to escape them by diving into the window of his truck,
There were no cell phones in those days and for some reason, he could
not drive away. He asked me to call for help. I was happy
to do this.
After this, I went around the neighborhood and collected signatures
to file a complaint with the county attorney about these dogs. Police?
The one thing (as documented in the next section) you could count on in
our neighborhood was that the police were not here to help -- if you
had a complaint, call an attorney not the police.
Everyone signed the petition. Enough trying to deal with this
guy. He did not
care. I think he was proud of how his dogs protected him from his
neighbors. In any case, he decided to fight it. I have no
idea what
the county attorney was going to do. He never contacted me or any
of
the other signers. But the neighbor hired a lawyer. The
lawyer
decided I was the instigator and spent a couple hours on the phone with
me asking me to withdraw the petition. This to me was not an
option.
I was glad to waste the neighbor's money.
The neighbor retaliated. He cut the ignition wires on my
KZ1000 and
a few other less major wires. This is an expensive prank since
the
KZ1000 ignition wires were hard-wired from the coils to the spark plug
connectors. The appropriate repair was to replace the
coils. He came
across the street when I discovered this and told me that I should be
more careful of my property. The threat was obvious.
But the petition was not dropped. When he left, he told me he
was
going back home to Boca Raton, Florida where the people were
friendlier. At the time, he could have been right but I wanted
nothing
to do with people who would tolerate dogs out of a Steven King
novel.
I learned later that Boca Raton was America's
version of Hell.
It was October. We had kept the RV. It was parked next to the house. I did not know about the boyfriend. The new neighbor across the street was a minister. The people in the house behind him were a couple with a baby. Bree was in first grade. Next to the house with the baby was a couple with two girls. The entire family was mentally deficient. Carole complained about the mother trying to run over children in her big Buick station wagon. I figured Carole could take care of it. Carole could do a lot of things. All of the houses in the neighborhood were similar: a box with a carport. We were one of a few who had enclosed their carport as a garage. Many enclosed it to get more room.
We had a crazy lady. She really was trying to run over the neighborhood children. She apparently got angry with anyone she thought slighted her kids. The boy across the street from her openly mocked them. Not that they did not deserve it but you just don’t do that. She would fill mailboxes (on the street on posts) with garbage. She would rush down the street when kids were playing or coming home from school in her Buick causing the kids to scramble for their lives. Mothers took turns escorting kids to and from school.
Before living here she had lived on the west side of 40th street. This was in a different grade school. She had hit a boy there and broke his leg across the knee. The situation suddenly got more involved. It turned out that the local Mormon bishop was the local police captain. This is why we got no police support: the police were on her side. No police support? Token but things never went to court. She should have been tried for attempted murder when she hit the boy. Instead the Mormon Church was paying her rent and legal costs. They moved her to her current home around the corner from us. She went to and from court in a big, black, limousine.
One day when I came home from work a little early there were 4 or 5 decrepit cars parked up the street. I came early, as I needed to go to the dentist. At the dentist I called the police about the abandoned cars suddenly appearing. When I returned from the dentist, the cars all came to life and screechingly converged at my driveway. The occupants came running at me with their guns drawn. I was not frightened. I was angry. They were obviously police and they obviously resented me calling the department on them. One of the actually said: “Don’t be afraid, we are the police” as he flashed his badge. With my experiences, it is the police that one should be the most fearful. As we stood there, the woman came down the block and tried to hit the kids. She missed the largest girl by 12’. The police said that 12’ feet could not be called a serious attempt. All the kids were on the grass. The police left. Nothing.
That night I took a couple railroad flares and placed them under the rear tires of her car. This disabled her but did not stop her. She took up her assaults on her bicycle. There was a wash between the neighborhood and the school. The infamous Indian Bend Wash was just a mile down the road. Bree had the bike I had made for her but she was too small to navigate the bike across the wash. She loaned it to a friend. The crazy lady came down and rode over the girl riding Bree’s bike. She did this in front of the day's mother-escort (including Carole) and some teachers. The crazy lady was arrested but quickly released with the intervention of her Mormon lawyer. The father of the girl did not believe the rumors of the crazy lady. He presumed it was an accident and went to the crazy lady's house to ask for an apology and an explanation. He was met with a gun. He became a believer.
The church again moved them to another home. This one across Thunderbird about as far as she had previously been moved across 40th street. Too close. One Sunday morning I heard a horn honking and tires screeching in front of my house. I ran out as my kids were playing there. I found them sitting on top of the APS power transformer that is in the corner of the yard. I saw the woman careening down the street. As I got my kids into the house, she made a second pass. I called the police. You have to understand the geography of Phoenix neighborhoods here. Phoenix has rolled curbs with the sidewalk contiguous to the curb. This reduces the needed setback for homes since this gives maximum grass and landscaping. But it permits you to drive up on the sidewalk and onto the grass since the curb does not have to additionally slope for driveways. This is good for rain runoff down the street but it also makes it easy to drive up on the lawn as the crazy lady had. You could see the tire tracks in the grass. My kids were smart or lucky or both.
The police would not even take a report. I did not see her actually on the grass and they would not take tire prints. These could be leftover tracks. I saw her on the street careening away. Not good enough. She was on her way to church and decided to improve her day.
At Thanksgiving we discovered Carole’s camping trip to Prescott in the RV included her boyfriend. Her gigolo really: he lived with his parents and had no income. My salary was paying for their entertainment. Those feelings are history. The divorce started with a deluge of lies from her side. I always knew she lied. I had accepted her lies. That was a mistake. It was always a sore point between us but I knew she did it. Now she lied to me. Sad. I was crushed. We had each worn ourselves out trying to be what the other wanted. We never worked together. She moved out. Now the crazy lady was my problem. Among other problems.
I discovered the Mormon Church involvement. This I understood and I could handle. When Carole and I had first moved to Phoenix, we had joined the Mormon Church. We soon discovered that this was a mistake and asked for formal excommunication. Which we got.
I called the police captain. He explained to me that the situation with the crazy lady was one of religious persecution and that the Mormon Church would defend her no matter what she was accused of. He was obviously as demented as she was. I was the one who had discovered the Mormon connection and it certainly was not an excuse for killing children. Attempted killing.
My dentist, Vinson Lee, while we lived on the west side of town was one of my baptism sponsors and was now the bishop over there. I called him and explained the situation. He told me that my other baptism sponsor was now at the Mesa temple in some sort of church position. I called James Allen and explained the situation. He did not believe it. He had heard about the persecution of the Mormon woman – the crazy lady. I told him that regardless of my being a devil for the requested excommunication, someone at his level better get involved before someone got killed because if word got out on the church’s continued intervention when this woman did kill someone, there would be an issue of persecution. I think he understood this. I shall never know but I think this call made a difference.
About this time the crazy lady was convicted of assault and battery on the girl on Bree’s bike. Carole lived with her gigolo. While the crazy lady lived across the block, lawn chairs were set out and the neighbors had walky-talkies. There was a 24-hour watch on her home to make sure she did not escalate in some unknown manner. This had gotten to be such a habit that the watch was maintained even when the church moved her across Thunderbird and up several blocks. She was still close to the wash that ran behind our neighborhood. I slept poorly so I would occasionally go out and become one of the watchers.
This crazy lady was persistent. My kids and I were at the Smitty’s store and she and her daughters came trotting down the aisle and tried to ram my kids with her cart. Too much. The next night I tossed a bottle of alcohol and a couple of railroad flares into her car's front seat as it sat in her carport. I then ran down the wash, into our neighborhood, and joined the watchers. A good alibi when the fire department sirened by twenty minutes later.
A couple of weeks later I saw the family walking back from the neighborhood grocery. The oldest girl was a couple hundred yards ahead of the mother and smaller daughter. I stopped on my motorcycle and told her that if I ever saw any of them again that I would not stop with burning the car. Now I had done it: they knew who did it – who would believe a retarded 10-year-old. The girl ran back to her mother and I watched their discussion. Her mother believed. Shortly after we again saw them in Smitty’s. They took a different aisle. Point made.
Carole called. The crazy lady had been convicted of the bike incident and it was time for sentencing. I should show up as part of the neighborhood show of force at the sentencing. I told Carole that the woman would never again harm my kids. Carole knew my pacifist background. We were also negotiating custody and property settlement. She asked why I would hold such a belief. I asked her who she thought burned the crazy lady's car? Carole hung up. Negotiations on the kids improved.
I heard the church moved the woman further away. I never heard from them again. I have rarely defended myself. I really was a pacifist. I was a pacifist until my family was threatened. Now I am not a pacifist: nobody hurts my children.
Shortly after I took the job with Vodavi and we moved to the Blanche house. As an aside, Carole never understood the financing of our 40th Place house. When I left Capex (Computer Associates), I had two blocks of stock. The first was cashed to create the basis for the down payment on the house. As I said, the other $8k of the down payment came from credit card debt. Since I did this the day of closing and things were a little less electronic in those days, nobody knew about the illegal credit card loans for the down payment. I think Carole understood this.
The other block of stock was my ESOT. ESOT's are the predecessor of the 401k. In 1970, the person who earned it owned the ESOT: it was not part of community property. It was mine but I did not tell her that. I put it in the pot. Without that, Carole and I would have had to split the house and each of us walk off with $10,000 less settlement. I could handle this as I had a good job. I knew she would need the money and so I gave it to her. It also made the property settlement incontestable: such generosity gave her 3 times what I ended up with. I also made sure that everything that I had from the settlement ended up with my kids. The money from the 40th place house was the start of Megan's college fund. In other words, at this point, Carole, Bree, or Megan has everything that I owned as of 1982. Today I own nothing more than 6 months old except some photos and I am making sure she gets copies of the photos. All photos were stolen in the RV theft of 2002 – we recovered most of the pictures taken before the divorce. None after the divorce were recovered.
The emotional loss of the divorce was overwhelming to me. I wore out several friends crying about it over the next couple of years. We got past the financial loss. I had a good job and have always been frugal. Frugal is hard for a compulsive spender.
When Carole left, the one piece of property she insisted on having was the Datsun 500 station wagon. It had been a great car for us and I sort of understood although I thought that she would be better off using the money to get a new car. I got a really great deal on a new car. We needed a car as the kids would not fit on the motorcycle. I shall always remember the Datsun 200SX as our family car. After the divorce I drove too fast on the bike and in the car. When you are depressed, you lose some sense of value.
We drove the car like there was no tomorrow. I only got the kids on every 6th weekend. We went to Tucson to take advantage of the Embassy Suite motel $49 weekend specials. We went to the Grand Canyon and hiked all the way to Indian Gardens. We did that with another man who also had two daughters. I carried his younger one all the way to the top except the last mile where I carried Megan. Talk about exhausted: I was on all fours for the last several hundred yards.
The divorce hurt the children. Bree’s teacher recognized the damage to Bree and she discovered that 6 kids in her class were having divorce problems. She paired them up. Bree was hiding in her schoolwork. Cherise, down the block, was failing but socializing OK. Putting them together got Bree out of her hole and Bree’s tutelage got Cherise back to grade. They would swim in the pool when I came home from work. They were inseparable at first but as time wore on their being together may have been my fault.
Bree was always a good student. No. Bree was always an exceptional student.
The management at Inter-tel was sympathetic to my situation. They ignored the non-productive months. They gave me money to pay the lawyers for the child-custody agreement, flawed as it was. When Steven Sherman left Inter-tel to found Vodavi, he permitted me to come to the new company and I was permitted to keep banker's hours to care for my children. Ed Termini, previously a consultant, was VP of Engineering and accepted me gladly. Kent Burgess, VP of Marketing, was more hesitant but became a strong supporter and a good but distant friend. I was employee number 6 of the fledgling company.
Remember the ‘telephone’ game in grade school: you whispered something to each person in a line and saw how badly the original statement was changed into something totally different? After the divorce, Carole’s and my arguments took place in the front yard when she delivered the kids. That is until the kids got inside and she was left yelling at the front of the house. She was smarter than that and soon gave up yelling at the house. One day a woman pushing a baby carriage asked me what happened to the crazy lady who yelled at my house. So soon people lost track of a real threat and transformed it into something else.
Oh. And the guy who sold us our house? He was as stupid as he was dishonest (the two do go together, I think). I received a call from a lawyer about 3 months after closing. The seller did not understand until he went to buy another house that once we assumed his VHA mortgage that he could not get another such loan. Until the VHA loan was paid off, he had to go the normal route for a loan. I told the lawyer that I would give up the loan as long as it was done at no expense to me: no fees, no points, no interest rate increase. I did not hold a grudge. Getting me any loan at all with my credit situation would have been impossible. I hate dishonest people and I enjoy seeing their plots backfire on them. Later, the guy who bought the house from me also assumed the VHA loan.