CHAPTER 137. HEARTBEATS 1975
Old Man 1974 shuffled off into history to let Baby 1975 begin its short life. For us it slid over from one year to the other in our usual way, drinking at Bill and Grace Stones. There was no reason to see anything significant in a new year, just a flip of the calendar page from December to January. It would be more of the same-old-same-old
About the only change was getting a new car, an orange Toyota
Corolla with 5 gears on the floor (right in Chalet parking lot). It was a car I really enjoyed because I felt part of the road every time I drove it.
I was still working at Welded Tube and was still playing golf every weekend with Victor Ernest. It might seem we would have put the clubs away once winter set it, but the main concession to the season was to purchase a set of orange Titleist that would be visible in any snow covered fairway.
I was now certain we would never have children so the idea of enjoying ourselves was an even greater goal. There was no reason to be saving money, especially for things like retirement. That could wait until I was forty or older. Lois wanted to get a house, but why? We could afford to live in very nice apartments now with no upkeep to concern us and if the place deteriorated we could easily move elsewhere. Our money could go for travel or having fun.
was Mother’s Day and I gave my mother an African Violet. That week Lois found out she was pregnant again. By May 16 she was in the hospital getting her cervix sewed up. She had stubbornly refused to get her tubes tied, much to my consternation and against he doctor’s order. She wasn’t doing very well; she feared she was going to lose another one, but by the 17th she was feeling better. Everything was okay so far.
We celebrated our batch of June birthdays on June 22. We did this because my grandmother, mother and my birthdays were all in June, as was my parent’s wedding anniversary and Father’s Day. It seemed practical to have one big celebration. We went to The Farm for dinner. It is odd, we seemed to go to this particular restaurant quite often in those years, but I can’t remember the place at all. I have tried an online search with no success.
who after her time in the hospital was restricted in what she could do. I awoke to Lois’ calls in the early morning of June 30. At 5:40 I drove her to the John F. Kennedy Hospital in Stratford, New Jersey. (Left, Lois and me in July, 1975 in our Chalet living room.)
They took her directly into a labor room and hooked up an IV with some chemical designed to slow labor. They also attached a monitor that amplified the baby’s heartbeat. I sat with her most of the day and night. Sometime in the wee hours of July 1 they sent me out to a waiting room.
I paced a bit. I sat and tried to read one of the magazines scattered on a table to no avail. Finally, I just sat. My mind kept coming back to those heartbeats. I had heard them all day. They sounded strong to me. The baby was fighting to live. Why? Heartbeats thumped in my brain and it seemed they were the voice of God. But I didn’t believe in God, yet the more I thought about those heartbeats the more I concluded there had to be something that had created life. That idea simply would not leave me alone.
At 4:30 AM, Lois delivered the baby, which died. It was a girl. She did not make it past 22 weeks of pregnancy, the dreaded, dooming 5th month. We named her Amy. I went to work for half a day and then back to the hospital, where my grandmother joined us for the night. I went for a full day’s work the next day and back to the hospital that evening. On July 3 Lois came home. The hospital handled the corpse. On the way home Lois said that had been it, she had them tie her tubes after she lost Amy.
We escaped some of our current upset when I got vacation during the week of August 8. WE spent a day in Pennsylvania Dutch Country with Joe and Linda Rubio, taking in the
Strasburg Railroad, The Amish Farm and the general store in Bird In Hand.
On September 9 I attended my cousin, Little Francy’s wedding
and reception in Coatesville. I don’t believe Lois went with me. By September she had sunk into a deep depression, the worse I had ever known her to have. She lay in bed most of the time and didn’t want to do anything. I was at my wit’s end.
I sat down next to her on the bed. “Maybe,” I said, “we should try church again.”
“What church?” she muttered.
“How about the new one they build down at the bottom of the hill.”
Yes, a brand new church building had opened only a couple weeks before. It was along Blackwood-Clementon Road less than a mile from the exit of West Branch Avenue, the road our apartment
complex was alongside.
“What good will it do?” she asked.
“I don’t know, but we have to do something. It can’t hurt.
about it. It was a large red brick structure with a giant cross against a white background down its front. The parking lot was in back.
We walked around the side on a sidewalk and entered the front door. A tall man greeted us as we entered and handed us each a bulletin. He remained me a lot of John Cleese (right), of Monty Python’s Flying Circus fame. I expected him to do a silly walk down the aisle.
hello as we went into the sanctuary and down the center aisle. We selected a pew halfway down and took the two spaces near the opening, so we could easily escape if need be.
A tall man in a gray suit came over to us and welcomed us and shook my hand. He chatted with us a bit. After he returned to his own seat, I glanced down at the bulletin I held. Besides the name, Laurel Hill Bible Church, my gaze stopped on the next line, A Fundamentalist Independent Baptist Church.
Fundamentalist, I thought, what have I got us into?
I nervously looked about. The people looked normal, but I expected some would begin rolling in the aisles at any time. My instinct was to flee, to grab Lois by the hand and pull her out of there, but the service had started and I didn’t want to draw any unnecessary attention to us. We would wait and slip out as quickly as possible when the service concluded. All I ever heard about Fundamentalist churches was they were cults full of religious nuts, who screamed in strange tongues and tried to scare you with fire and brimstone rants about Hell.
I was sweating as if the flames of hell were already close. I was scared to death of these people.
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