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Coming home to friends and family was good, too. It took a while to get settled in, and Basil went back to work as manager, Retail Sales and Service. Prior to that he was Manager, Hillcrest Station and the latest job was a good step forward and upward. For the most part, he had a very good crew as Manager of the Hillcrest Station with very good employees and in some cases, very good friends. One carrier in particular, Wayne DeBolt, worked very hard, and was always willing and able to help others out who were over-loaded. Another, who shall remain nameless, was always asking for favors. He wanted weekends off to visit our friends, Tommy and Evelyn Thomas. Basil never did give special favors to any of his employees, unless they had a real problem which had to be taken care of.
Most of them really appreciated their equal treatment. and as long as Basil was their managere not a single grievance was filed against him or his office.
I don't remember if I mentioned it or not but Basil and I decided he would retire on February 9, 1982 and we have never regretted the decision. Our life together since our working days are over has been simply wonderful and full of wonderful things and times spent with family.
I didn’t go back to work when we returned home. I kept busy, though, with what was going on in the lives of our kids. We missed not having Don Young living with us, but he visited whenever he could.
Nothing we could say would convince Marlana that it would be a good idea for her to go to college.
We started going on cruises after we came home from Washington, with our friends, Tommy and Evelyn Thomas. Our first cruise was to the Carribbean. We all enjoyed the rest and relaxation so much that we continued cruising with Tommy and Evelyn. We went to Alaska on one, and to the Mediterrane1n on another. We went back to the Carribbean and Alaska. When the granddaughters graduated from high school with the required grade point average, we took them on a cruise to the Carribbean.
Actually, the Eighties passed rather pleasantly for us. It is so nice to have Basil home to do whatever he wants to do. He has worked hard all his life, until he retired. My current health problems are a bigger burden for him that they should be. Don helps us out by driving us to doctors, etc., and by taking his Dad out to car shows and having Basil stand by to advise or help him restore and upgrade his ‘65 Corvette. Basil really enjoys that, so he gets to relax for a while. The car is now a show-piece and they take it to Cruise Nights around town. It really is a beautiful car, but the noise it makes would soon put me on edge! Basil and Don are very close. Don helps him with as much of the work as he can, and is always thinking of ways to get him away from the house to relax. By the way, Don retired from the San Diego Gas & Electric Company on June 1, 2003. His wife is still working and will retire one of these days.
Marlana now works for Hewlett-Packard, just up the hill from where we live. She lives in Escondido, so she doesn’t have far to drive at today’s high gasoline prices. The traffic on Interstate 15 is horrendous, so we don’t sally forth when people are either going to or coming from work. She doesn’t have far to go to work or to come here. I feel sorry for those who work in downtown San Diego—it must be very frustrating. All of our doctors are downtown, so we plan the time of our trips to see them very carefully.
(Update February 1, 2008) Marlana has since been forced to retire on disability due to a very serious automobile accident a few years ago that damaged her face and broke her neck. She had some very serious neck surgery and the bones failed to heal properly resulting in big problems that prevented her from continuing her work.)
The Eighties slipped by us and, for the most part, peacefully. We enjoyed our kids and our grandkids. We went to Texas just about every year to visit family and friends there. We had our long-time friends here in San Diego, with Tommy and Evelyn Thomas in Laguna Niguel as well as many others in the surrounding areas. We have been very lucky in life to have so many years to enjoy it.
Most of 1980 and 1981 were spent in Washington—which I dearly loved being able to explore, but would never like to live permanently. Most of our spare time there was spent exploring. The trip home with Dick Teichman was really nice. The weather across country behaved well, and we were able to visit family on the way. We introduced Dick to life in Texas! He liked it all—he was a good friend to come back to Washington and help Basil drive home.
He had a good job in the Bay Area. And he and Becky were raising our two granddaughters, Lisa and Cyndy. They both grew up to be beautiful girls—Lisa a brunette, and Cyndi a blue-eyed blonde. Both were good kids—still are. Lisa is now married to Jeff Bear (a really good kid) and Cyndi has not yet chosen a lifetime partner. Jeff and Lisa have three children—Nicholas, Ashley, and Chad.
Instead, she met and married Michael Martin, a sailor from Lancaster, Pennsylvania on June 13, 1970.
Can’t say we were ever really taken with Mike (a know-it-all). Michael Shea Martin came along on May 28, 1971. Genee was born June 16. 1972. She married Fred Atwater and has two children—Freddy (b, 5/27/1996) and Julia (b. 5/14/1999).
Marlana also went along on that cruise. Marlana had long since divorced Mike and married twice more before deciding marriage was not her thing. We flew Shea and Genee out to spend one summer with us. They didn’t want to go home. I fault both Marlana and Mike for not being better parents than they were. Currently, Shea is now living out here near us, and we are happy to have him visit as often as he can. Genee and Fred (whom we like very much) live in Las Vegas, where he is a major in the Air Force. Genee, as my father would say, got her tail over the dashboard about something (I know not what) and wrote a letter to me that she should have not written. I am too old and life is too short to put up with that sort of thing, so I have tried to avoid any moree confrontations that might lead to more hard feelings. Some things I do not have to (and will not) worry about.
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