Friday, June 12, 2020

A Life in Four Colors Part Fifty-Nine

September 1975 to March 1977 was perhaps the most idyllic, perfect time of our marriage--and of our lives.

Susan had never really believed that she would get to go back to school. We had talked about it so many times during our engagement and our early married years, but Susan always assumed that something would come along to prevent it from actually happening. She was the first person in her family to graduate from high school and was convinced that she would never actually be able to go beyond that.

But she did. And she thrived at Coosa Valley Tech.

Susan took data processing at a time when punch cards were still common. She loved the classes, she loved the technical aspect of data processing and programming, and she loved the cutting-edge aspect of her chosen field. She felt like she was moving so far beyond the poverty that had defined her childhood that nothing could ever pull her back to those impoverished roots. That was a fear of hers in the early days--that we would somehow suffer setbacks that would take us back to the lifestyle she had so struggled to escape.

Susan had worked since before she graduated from high school. That was the family norm--get a job when you turned sixteen, quit school soon after, then keep doing whatever jobs you could find for the rest of your life. She refused to quit school, which already made her an exception in her family. And in the fall of 1975, she was able to quit work and focus on school full time.

When we came home after her first day of class, she wept. I feared that something had gone wrong at school, and started to comfort her. "No--these are happy tears," she said. "It's like a dream, but I don't want it to end."

And it didn't... add least , not for a year and eight months. She completed her course work at CVT--almost. She actually didn't finish he last six weeks of her final quarter there because she was hired at Management Science America in Atlanta in March of 1977. The school had helped her find the job, and they gave her credit for that final course figuring that she was getting on-the-job training that was far more valuable than anything she could ever get in the classroom.

While Susan was in school, I was beginning my teaching career at East Rome High School. I loved the school, my fellow English teachers (Sandra Jackson, Monte Sue Howell, Willie Mae Samuel, and Lynne Mitchell, all of who had been at East Rome for years when I joined the faculty), and I loved my students. I felt that I belonged in the classroom. I had a job that inspired me, and I was good at it.

We had more money than ever before in our marriage. While Susan wasn't working, she qualified for a form of unemployment that paid her a modest sum to attend technical school. And teaching, while it didn't pay a fortune, provided us with more money than we had previously earned when both of us were working at hourly jobs. So we were able to pay our bills, put money into savings, make double payments on Susan's VW, and still have extra money for fun spending. We were even able to afford to buy a new car for me to replace my 1964 Volkwagen with 247,000 miles on it--my first new car ever, a 1976 yellow Honda Civic.

Most importantly, though, we had the gift of time together. The school day ended for me at 4pm. Susan's school day ended at 4 as well. So we would often take one car to Rome, and I would drop her off at CVT on the way to East Rome, then pick her up shortly after four (it was only a five to ten minute drive from East Rome to CVT). For the first four years of our marriage, our lives had us going in different directions, not seeing one another until 5:45 to 6pm every weekday. But now we were able to commute together, then to see each other eight hours later.

Since we were in Rome, we would often spend the afternoon at Riverbend Mall, which was directly across Turner McCall Boulevard from East Rome High School. My classroom, which was in a more recently-constructed wing of the school, had a door that opened directly to the parking lot; I could see Riverbend Mall when I opened that door. Rather than going home to prepare dinner, we'd often eat at Morrison's in the mall, then walk around and window-shop at Miller's or Belk's and dream of a future wen we could buy anything we saw in those windows. We felt like we weren't that far away from that point, either--not because we were that wealthy, but because we didn't have particularly exorbitant tastes. Years living within a budget had trained us well.

After four years of not seeing each other for eleven to twelve hours a day due to differing work schedules and commutes, we were together for two hours in the morning and seven waking hours in the afternoon and evening, five days a week. Susan had homework and I had papers to grade, but we could be together, and we could take breaks together and listen to music together and talk to each other.

Susan flourished once the stress of her job in the payroll department of the Arrow Shirt Factory was lifted from her. She was almost exuberant about being a student again, and she and our dear friend Gary Steele (who was also at CVT, although in a different technical program) would talk to one another about classes and teachers and school events almost as if they were in high school again. I can't remember any other time when she was so continually happy, so joyful, so carefree.

We found time to do more work on our fanzine, Future Retrospective. We increased the frequency of  our trips to Cumberland Mall in Marietta (a much larger mall than Riverbend) from once a month to every other week, regularly visiting our friend Larry Mason at his apartment near the Buford Highway-Clairmont Road intersection (in 1975, this was a thriving area for young professionals). We would make the rounds of used bookstores and record stores, bringing home a fresh haul every time. We made regular forays to the twin musical meccas of Peaches and Oz, two supermarket-sized record stores that were metro Atlanta icons. We even began looking at houses--not ready to buy quite yet, but ready to find the kind of house we liked so that we would know what to look for when we were ready to buy.

It couldn't last forever. In early 1977, with graduation just a few months away, Susan began looking for a job. She had hoped to find something in Rome or Cedartown, but she found her opportunity in Atlanta with the aforementioned Management Science America, whose office was directly across the street from another mall—Lenox Square in Atlanta. A commute was out of the question, so in early March of 1977, we spent a weekend checking out apartments in Marietta (a half-hour commute for Susan and a fifty minute commute for me to East Rome, where i continued to each).

In retrospect, I wish that wonderful time had never come to an end--and I sometimes wonder how different our lives might have been had she never taken a job in metro Atlanta, allowing us to remain in Rome and Cedartown instead.  But 1977 wasn't a year for what-ifs. It was a year for opportunities and new experiences and a new career--and for the first time in our six-plus years of marriage, both of us were working full-time not just in hourly jobs, but in careers. The idyllic years gave way to two exciting years that marked the next chapter of our lives.




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