More Pix Of Me By Stephanie Brundage

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Back in the sixties there still used to be a bunch of run down motels, "tourist courts" they called back them, along Biscayne Boulevard (U.S. Route 1), as well as trailer parks dating back to the days when house trailers were small enough, and automobiles powerful enough, that you could actually both tow it cross country and live in it when you got where you were going. Little by little the trailer parks dissapeared and the motels got demolished to make way for office buildings.

You'd drive down the road and see signs advertizing the sale of everything in the apartments. I bought a wall unit air conditioner and a couple of TV sets for next to nothing. The trailer parks, sans trailers, were often still nicely landscaped with rows of stately royal palms. We used to like to go there to take pictures.

My wife Stephanie shot these pix of me with a Minolta Autocord. I had as much hair then as I have now but no dusting of grey. Those bell bottom jeans were light brown and the high side zip boots with squared off toes were the height of fashion. Yup, I actually drove around town in that brightly painted VW Microbus.

Monkey Rides The Conveyor Belt

When I first met Peggy thirty or more years ago she and her boyfriend Richard were renting a duplex nearby. When Richard had come back from Vietnam he was having some mental problems and perhaps smoking a bit too much pot because he was getting a military disability pension, but for the most part he managed to work a bit of construction from time to time. Peggy was the stay at home housewife and they managed to get by. A few years later they managed to afford living in a rented house a dozen blocks away and her niece moved in with them. Her brother at that point was heavily in to drugswhen he wasn't in jail, and I never did find out where the little girl's mother was.

Stephanie, my wife at the time, encouraged Richard and Peggy to get married but they never did. Peggy was never able to read and write much beyond her name, and can only handle the simplest of math. A real job of any sort is of the question. Had they married she would have been eligible for widows' benefits when Richard died at about age forty, but they never did, so she manages to get by on welfare and food stamps. Now she lives with her dogs in a little trailer. She never found another boyfriend. Richard was the one love of her life.

I run into her by chance once in awhile, and on a rare occasion she'll call me. This particular day I took her to the supermarket. She'd just gotten her month's supply of food stamps and Monkey went along for the ride. Sometimes I run into the niece at Subway. She has some college, a good job, and a loving husband.

Last week I saw Peggy standing at the bus stop outside of the trailer park waiting for the bus. Good timing, because it was just starting to rain. I gave her a ride to the doctor and a folding umbrella in case it was raining on her way home. The 99 cent store sells these pretty decent made-in-China folding umbrellas. I usually buy them ten at a time and keep them behind the passenger seat in my truck. I'm always giving them away to people and I make sure that I keep one for myself. That one stays safely hidden behind the driver's seat.