We are split up again

 

In 1958, Arthur Murray asked mom and Dale to help open a new dance studio in Ponce, Puerto Rico. 

Nonnie took me by Greyhound bus to Wooster, Ohio, the city where I was conceived.

I went through high school there until 1964 while mom and dad were a ballroom dance team in Ponce and later in the Pocono Mountains.

Roanoke Virginia Living near mom

My grandmother took me to Roanoke, VA in 1958. We stayed at the Patrick Henry Hotel, a Colonial Revival hotel on South Jefferson Street. 

Nonnie let me go down to the mezzanine of the hotel where I sat on a black leather couch to watch I Love Lucy on a 21-inch black and white television there. 

The show was the first scripted TV program to be shot on 35mm film in front of a studio audience and the first to feature an ensemble cast. It is considered the most influential sitcom in US television history. 

I also recall a kindly black porter who took me into the luncheonette and bought me a big hamburger with mayonnaise on it. He called it “a steak burger.”

Mom found us again. After much negotiation to which I was not invited, Nonnie, Dale, and mom came to a semi-practical solution. Dale transferred to Arthur Murray’s Dance Studio in Roanoke. Dale rented a U-Haul and moved us all to Day Avenue in Roanoke. 

To please Nonnie, we lived in two separate but adjacent apartments. This was only the third time in my first twenty years that I lived with, or at least near, my mother.

In 1958, one of Arthur Murray's biggest franchise owners asked mom and Dale to help open a new studio in Ponce, Puerto Rico. 

Dale and Nonnie were not getting along. Consequently, my mother and Dale left for Puerto Rico.

With them out of the picture, Nonnie took me by Greyhound bus to Wooster, Ohio, the city where I was conceived.

I went through junior high and high school there until 1964.

Kidnapped 5 times by "Nonnie."

In a weird attempt to keep me away from my mother when I was young Nonnie (my grandmother) kidnapped me five times and took me by bus to a new city. A few times, mom had to hire detectives to find us.

In Tyrone, PA we stayed with relatives, in Florida we lived in St. Petersburg for a while and then moved to Deland when mom found us.

We lived with my mom and stepdad for a while and then took off for Roanoke, VA. 

They followed us to Virginia and then accepted a job for ballroom dancers in Puerto Rico.

That's when we ended up back in Wooster, Ohio for my high school years while mom and my stepdad lived in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania.

Grandma kidnaps me 5 times.

Between 1950 and 1958 my grandmother kidnapped me five times to keep me away from my mother.

From age 4 to 12 I lived in six different cities.

I lived away from my mom for 20 years until I joined her in 1967.

Two houses in 77 years

 I have lived in apartments all my life.

From 1958 to 1964 my grandmother and I lived in a one-bedroom apartment, part of a duplex.

When I went to live with my mother and my stepdad in 1967, I lived for two years in their house. After the Navy, I lived with them again for a while until I got married in 1972.

I lived in apartments for the next ten years until my second wife Linda and I bought the house on Mink Road in 1983. When I divorced her in 1998, I left her the house, five cats and a car. 

Lori and I have lived in apartments from 1998 to today.