We spent her pregnancy in South Texas. We moved in with her Mother, and I went to work briefly in a cement factory. Six months of that nightmare and we were headed back to Dallas, this time to encamp with my Mom and her last husband. I went to work for awhile as an apprentice pressman in an offset printing company, while she got bigger, and bigger and my mother grew ever more resentful. I stayed grudgingly sober, proving a point and we grew farther apart.
She hated the fact I would rather read than watch game shows with her. She complained she was lonely. I bought her a ceramic parrot and some paint. Mr. thoughtful.
Our daughter was born in the county hospital, on the dole, as I had no insurance. A few weeks later she and our baby were headed back to her Mom's. I had a plan.
The idea came to me one day after our daughter was born and I tried to envision the next eighteen years in a dead marriage, being Joe Lunch bucket, hating life. Nope. No sir. Not for me.
I needed some distance and a way to make good money. I was sitting by my mother's pool working on the tan reading a National Geographic. There was an article on the Alaskan pipeline boom. That was it. Alaska...a new start, the real frontier, filled with individualists singing the lumberjack song. Okay, maybe not but it was as far as I could get without a passport.
I toyed with the idea of joining the French Foreign Legion instead. Flipped a coin, and it landed on Alaska. Maybe I could learn how to be a husband and a father while I was there. As I was clueless on both these fronts, any idea seemed to be a good one.
I herded them onto a bus and began preparing for my departure. First stop-The Army Navy store-...if I looked like I knew what I was doing, how could this possibly go wrong...
