In My Life I Have Lived Many Places

Okay, I'll start out. I grew up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan town of Wallace, with a population of about 200, most of whom I was related to. Being in the southern part of the UP, we have far more in common with Wisconsin than the Lower Peninsula of Michigan or Minnesota.

After high school, I worked for about a year, then spent two semesters at Northern Michigan University in Marquette, which is in the northern part of the UP.

Then, I left for California with a friend of mine, with a Volkswagen bus towing a Willy's Jeep. Yeah, I know that sounds backward. The VW bus had bunk beds; yeah, it was the very early 1970s. The VW bus broke down near Homestead, Iowa. Both of the vehicles belonged to my friend, so while he waited for his father (a district court judge in Michigan) to bail him out, I found work for a bridge construction/maintenance crew. Since they had three jobs in the Homestead-Amana-Cedar Rapids area, some of us rented an old farmhouse near Homestead, where we lived for a few months. Later, we moved on to some other bridges in Iowa and Nebraska, where the company put us up in hotels. My friend went on to California.

When the bridge construction jobs were over, I hitchhiked to California, where I lived with a friend in Pasadena for a few months, until I found a job as an assistant manager of an apartment complex in Buena Park. Later, I went to work for a towing company in Buena Park and rented a small house there.

Over the next twelve years, I took a few odd jobs before finding work with a paper bag company. I lived in Buena Park, Cypress, Long Beach, and Anaheim.

When Champion closed its paper bag plants, I was recruited by another paper bag company in Brownsville, Texas. I lived in Brownsville for six months before moving to Los Fresnos. In Los Fresnos, I was recruited to join their volunteer ambulance company, becoming an EMT and paramedic. After that, the city hired me as EMS director, health inspector, and building inspector. I lived in a couple of places in Los Fresnos.

Meanwhile, I had become an EMS instructor and was doing some teaching for Texas Southmost College. I was hired as a training officer for the ambulance company that served McAllen and Mission in Hidalgo County. During that time, I remained living in Los Fresnos, but the company also gave me a house trailer to stay in when I didn't feel like making the 60-mile drive home again.

I remained in Los Fresnos when I was later hired as the program chairman for Texas State Texas College's EMT program in Harlingen and McAllen.

Roughly six years later, I bought into a private ambulance company with a friend of mine and moved to Elsa and then to Edcouch, near McAllen, Texas.

In 2000, I was married, and my wife and decided to move to Maine. I sold my part of the ambulance company to my partner, and we bought a house in Millinocket. Although we've kept that house all along, we lived in Parkton and Fayetteville, North Carolina, for about a year and a half, in Levant, Maine, for about a year, and spent several springs and summers, and one winter in the St. John Valley of Maine, near where we have some land, living in Wallagrass and Fort Kent.

There, that's it.

 

During my lifetime, I have lived in three places where I did not feel the need to lock my doors. When I lived in Southern California, I often didn't lock my doors but I realized that this was a foolish thing to do. I have never felt the need to lock my doors while I was at home, except before going to bed. Anyone intending a home invasion could simply ring the bell or kick the door down. I had a car stolen once while I was in Long Beach, but it was locked up inside of my garage at the time. I didn't know it was gone until the police called to let me know that it had been abandoned in an alley a block and a half away. I hadn't been able to start that car for months, and I had a key, so I wasn't surprised to learn that the thieves were unable to get it to start by hot-wiring it. They did ruin my starter, though.

Growing up in Wallace, Michigan, no one that I knew locked their doors. The only key to our house was a skeleton key, of the sort that would fit the doors of anyone using a skeleton key, so our doors were never locked. Even if we went away for a week or two, the doors were left unlocked. We lived a mile and a half from an unincorporated town of a couple of hundred people, most of whom we were related to. If we ever saw a police car, it would be the state police, and everyone would know that they were looking for someone specific, and the adults would probably know who it was they were looking for. The township ballot included the position of constable and, until he died in the 1970s, the man who was always elected to this position, which came with no authority or pay, was the town drunk, who would often wear his badge while walking to the liquor store for another bottle. Everyone appreciated the humor in that, and I think they retired the position with his passing.

Oddly enough, I rarely locked my doors or took the keys out of my car while I lived in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. I'd lock my car when I was in the larger cities of Brownsville or McAllen, but otherwise I'd leave my keys in my car, and it wasn't that my car wasn't worth stealing since I bought a new truck while I was there. Being on the Texas-Mexico border, there was a lot of crime in the Valley, including people being shot fairly often, but nearly all of it was drug related, and those who were not in the drug trade were fairly safe. I would work 24-hour or 48-hour shifts as a paramedic, without locking my doors while I was away, and for most of the time that I was there, I was literally the only Anglo-Saxon (or white guy, as they would put it) in town. Leaving my house on an emergency, I apparently left my front door standing open once. Probably, it had bounced back open after I had slammed it on my way out. My neighbor called me at work to let me know about it because he was concerned that someone might have broken in. No one ever stole anything from me while I was in the Valley.

Lastly, here in Millinocket, there is no real reason to lock my doors, although, since I am married now, my wife often insists that we do so. She has given up on trying to get me to take the keys out of my car, though. There is some crime here but it's usually exaggerated. Burglaries are described as home invasions, for example. Most of the home break-ins are committed by the grown children of people who know the victims. There isn't much of that either, and the thieves are usually targeting people who are taking Oxycontin or other abusable drugs.

 

Welcome, Tom ! It sounds like you have certainly traveled around quite a bit over the years. I am sure that you must have some interesting stories to share with us. I myself, am waiting to hear about the "African spells" part of your life-journeys. What kind of work were you doing during your time in Africa ?

 

You have permission to post a link to it. You don't have quite enough posts to post links yet but I'll post it for you if you'd like. I think I have it set at ten posts, or maybe twenty, I don't remember now.

 

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