Author: janep38

I’m wishing and praying for recovery for my widowed friend Ed and high school friend Frankie. Frankie was so much fun in school. He was always smiling and making everyone happy. Get well soon Ed and Frankie!

My widowed friend Ed is battling cancer right now. They have told him that all they can do is try to control the cancer. His message to all of his friends is to be kind to everyone and be there for them. You never know when you will need that person. But sometimes family turns on you for no reason at all. But that’s ok cause they are hurting themselves more than you. There will come a time when you cant go back and do over. Since Troy passed I have learned a lot about people that I thought I knew but I really didn’t. I know them now unfortunately. Some people can really fool you. I think Ed’s advice shows what a kind, loving person he is. Too bad everyone isn’t like that. Sadly this world is so full of hateful people. Just love everyone even if they are different from you.

The move to Muncie was a good one. We were closer to our relatives and I no longer had to drive a sizable distance to work. We had our mobile home moved to a trailer court on Burlington Drive, it was such a short drive to work for me. Troy had a longer drive of course since he was working in New Castle. That is where we lived during the blizzard of 1978. It was unbelievable how much snow we got, it was days before we could get anywhere. Troy slowly dug out our road in the trailer court and eventually we were able to walk to the Marsh grocery store that was at the corner of Macedonia and Burlington. A bright purple mobile home moved in next to us, needless to say we were ready to move on. We didn’t stay too long in the trailer court, we bought a piece of land and we eventually moved our trailer there. The address was 2020 N. Reserve, it was an ok neighborhood. One that would get us to where we wanted to be. Troy made a career change while we lived there, he started working at Colonial Baking Co as an electrician, etc. I remember he started out making $6.96 an hour, and that was really good money back then. I was making $2.30 an hour at Ball Corporation. It was like we hit the big time, haha. His drive was much closer and that was a plus. We would spend 17 years in Muncie before moving on.

My post about our friends who never made it out of their twenties caused more reflections of days gone by. Right after we married we bought a mobile home from Thomas Mobile Homes in Kokomo. That’s where Troy was working at the time. I was working at Muncie so we decided to set our home in Fairmount which was right in the middle. Down the street from where we lived was the cemetery where James Dean was buried. We stayed there till Troy got a job in New Castle, we then moved to Muncie.

A week until our anniversary. Just another reminder that he’s no longer here. Brings back a lot of memories of our life in Indiana. I was thinking about all our Middletown friends, how some of them didn’t make it through their twenties. A couple of them took their own life and one was electrocuted on the job. When you grow up in such a small town, deaths like these touch everyone.

Remembering Easters of days gone by. Growing up I sometimes got baby chicks or ducks. I loved going to sunrise service at church with my best friend Thea Ann. We celebrated many Easters together. In later years, Troy and I always had an Easter egg hunt in our yard. One year we got the kids a bunny. We kept him for a while and then he went to live at our sons preschool. I’ll never forget the real meaning of Easter and how it affects our lives. I’m so thankful he’s in my life.