Chapter 9…More 1968

Continuation of my life story....(The story began in May)

About this time I met a friend that we have become lifetime soulmate type friends. Irene. We have gone years without writing, but will always be close friends. Irene lives in Vancouver Washington by Portland Oregon and found me from a forwarded email she got from a friend. My old email address was (Phyllis@whidbey.net). She only knew one Phyllis from Whidbey so she emailed me and we keep in touch now. We used to have ESP together. I would pick up the phone and we’d start talking and about ten minutes later we would say “wait a minute, who called who?? The phone never rang!!” We would head out to some parties in the woods, and I would get my "weird" feelings, and start to panic and we'd get the heck outa there. We drove out one road while the cops were driving in the other road. people started to go by my "feelings". If they saw me start to act weird, we'd move the party. We can’t really remember where or when we met, but it was at some party. She was a year younger than me and lived in Oak Harbor with her parents. She only drank whiskey and coke and that was very seldom. I don’t think I ever saw Irene drunk. I can remember her smiling and laughing all the time. Boy did we ever have FUN!! She always had a Coke. She had as much fun as all of us, but didn’t get sick like me because I always drank myself into oblivion and she stuck with Coke. She was not an alcoholic like me, but she was always laughing at/with me. She met her husband through me. My father was a jailer at that time and the jail was about 4 blocks from my brown shack. My parents lived about 5 blocks away. One night about 4 guys came to my party and said they always wanted to come here. I asked where they heard about my parties, and they said they could hear them from the jail when they were there.
I was having a Keg party once when we ran out of beer. We had bought the beer at the Chiefs Petty Officers club, and called them and asked if we could trade in the empty, and they said to come on over, so 4 of us jumped in the car and went and bought the beer. About a mile from the club I ran out of gas. Along came Officer Sharp asking if all was ok. I told him we ran out of gas, and he looked in the back of the car and noticed the huge keg sitting in the back. I wasn’t worried because it wasn’t tapped. But….we were all under 21!! Four underage people at the party, and it was us that went for the beer!! DUH!! Well he gave us all a ticket for minors in possession of alcohol, and confiscated our keg. (the deputies later had a party with it!!). The guys had to spend a few days in jail because they were just out for other charges. I was having another party and knew the guys could hear my music, so I snuck up to the jail and tied a 5th of vodka from the window of the jail cell window and stuck a long plastic “relief tube” in it and stuck the other end through the window. Dad said the next day that the prisoners were all drunk, and he didn’t know how!! Hehehehehehe. Only in a small town!!!
Those parties continued for a few months. During that time my old boyfriend that was in Viet Nam started writing me and saying he was coming back in a few months. Swell. He showed up one night and didn’t like what he saw. I had long straight hair and wearing flowered bell bottomed hip hugger pants. We went our separate ways. My drinking was becoming a nightly occurrence and I blacked out a lot!! My boss was getting mad at me for coming in hung over and being late. Town was-a-talkin!! The guys got their own place and the parties started to move over there. I was on a three day binge and never showed up for work or went home. When I finally went home it was a shambles. Someone had gone in and threw all my albums out in the yard and really trashed the place. My parents were scared that I was kidnapped or murdered!! I was starting to get ugly in my drinking. I was kinda going with one guy and we got intimate one night. He got a job in Everett and we went different ways. Well a month or so later I discovered I was pregnant, and decided to keep the baby. My parents insisted that I marry the guy and I didn’t want to. He was going on with his life and I was in Coupeville. We were not in love. My sister was driving to Virginia Beach with her two year old daughter to get married about that time and asked if I wanted to go there with her. I jumped at the chance to get away from this small town gossip and parents that wanted to make me get married. So in the Fall of 1969 we went to Virginia Beach Virginia to start a new life!
Tomorrow, Virginia Beach here we come!!!!