CHAPTER 190: IMPRESSIONS OF MY LIFE: AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A RECHERCHE POET SUNEMPLOTED AND LOVING IT 2004

 CHAPTER 190 UNEMPLOYED AND LOVING IT. 2004 

 

After walking away from JDRF and finding myself unemployed again and turning 63 in June, I decided maybe this good. Time to sit back and escape all the drama and tension since I was cast aside by Wilmington rust. Yeah, I still bill to pay and a large IRS settlement I was paying on the installment plan, but now I had an income again. I had taken my ETC pension early, and would not get the full amount as I would have at 65, but it was still paying me almost $1,100 a month.  Lois and I had also taken Social Security when we turned 62. I can’t remember what that paid us in 2004, but today it is paying us over  $2,500 a month. It would have paid more if we had waited until 65, but we needed an income then and we can make it on $43,000 a year if we are careful. 

Not long after  becoming jobless, we had renegotiate our mortgage, which meant instead of being mortgage from at age 67, I now would’t be until I turned 91. You do what you must do, sometimes.

Noelle was now serving in Iraq barracked in a bomb out building in Kirkuk, Iraq until June of 2004. In June her unit would move to Kuwait until they were out of the war zone and  brought home. For awhile she was living in a tent.

 

Laurel was still at the Delaware Humane and living at
home as was Darryl who had landed a job with Radio Shack in February. He was working at their store in Christiana Mall.

 

Lois and I began getting out and about. On February 2 we went for our first Philly Overnight, special visits sponsored by the city at reduced rates. Beside a lower cost on your hotel, if you stayed two nights, you got free parking and a gift, plus champaign in  your room to welcome you.

We stayed at the Lathan at 135 South 17th Street. It was built in 19707 as an apartment building, then converted to a hotel in 1970. It is listed in the National Registry of Historic places.  In 2016 it was concerted back to being an  apartment building.

The Hotel was cozy and quiet and we had a nice view of the surrounding street, the main one being Walnut.  

We did get to eat at our

favorite restaurant, Astral Plane. It was such an eclectic place with the parachutes across the dining room ceiling to al the mismatched furniture and table settings. Great atmosphere and food. It had been founded in 1973 by an astrologer.  Sadly, it closed in 2021. 

It had been located 16 1798 Lombard.  Their drinks
tended to the strong side on one of our stays I had to hold Lois up on our walk back to the hotel.  One Manhattan too many!

Ronald Tipton and I had our own adventures On February 7, we visited Ronald’s future grave site  n Northwood Cemetery not long  after Ron purchased his future site. It was on the edge of the hill and one could see all of Downingtown from it.

A month later. on March 3, the two of us visited with our
third grade teacher,  Miss Elzabeth Ezrah. It was in her class at East Ward school that the two of us met and began our lifetime friendship back in 1950.  

She was 97 at the time we visited her, still walking into Downingtown to her pharmacy to pick up her medicines. She claimed she still remembered the two of us. The photo right is how she looked as a new teacher in 1930, 11 years before Ron and I had her in Third Grade.  She died in 2012 at the age of 105.

Lois and I visited Brandywine Battlefield  along the
Baltimore Pike. We had visited this park many times, and one summer behind a wide tree and the spring house above Washington’s headquarters, we had made love , being very brazen.  

Sometime during 2004 I put together my  Capano Tour of Wilmington.  Tom Capano, from a well-known and wealthy family, who had once been Delaware’s state prosecutor, murdered his lover, Anne Marie Fahey. (Her apartment house on left)

This was on my 55th birthday, June 27, 1996.  He bought a ice cooler (on the right)at a Sports Authority story and stuffed her body into it. 

With the aid of his younger brother, they took a boat 62 miles out to sea and threw the cooler overboard. He ended up shooting the cooler to make it sink, but sometime later some fishermen found the damaged cooler afloat and this left to Capano’s arrest.

He tried to pin the murder on another mistress named Debby MacIntyre, (left) who as it were bought a gun and had given it to Capano. 

In October 1998, Capano was
found guilty of murder and landed in the JamesT. Vaughn Correctional Center in Smyrna, Delaware. He was found dead in his cell on September 19, 2011.  He was 61 years  

I went about photographing major scenes during Fahey’s murder, from Fahey’s home at 1718 Washington Ave, to his home pm Grant Avenue to site long 1-95 where the cops pulled over his car and arrested him, a mile from my house.

 

From September 9  Lois and I began celebrating our 45th
wedding university. We began on the 14th by taking the dinner train  on the Wilmington & Western Line. This stopped for dinner at the Hunter’s Den Restaurant.  

We shared the train and meal and the ride with a group of Red Hat Ladies. 

We spend the 15th and
16th at another of our favorite places, staying over in the Bed and Breakfast.  This was the Duling-Kurtz Inn at Whitford, Pennsylvania.  

We stayed  in a two-room suite while there.  It had, of course, a bedroom

and a sitting room.

Our  room also had its own private garden.

It was a charming and romantic setting, and although we
had been married 45 years, we still were young enough to enjoy some romantic activities 

 

Beside the private garden, where one could snack or just enjoy the fall evening, it also had a pleasant and lovely breakfast room, which was stocked freshly ever morning.

  Early on he 16th, our actual wedding date, we left Duling-Kurtz and drove to Ambler in Bucks County.  We toured around the area, since this was our first time visiting the area, and it is very historic

While in Ambler we attended a performance at the Act II Playhouse. It was a very funny farce called “Moon Over Miami”, one of  those plays about confused identities with people running about and a lot of slamming  door.  I don’t think this play had any relationship to the 1941 (Ha, year I was born.) of the same name starring Bob Cummings, Don Ameche and Betty Grable. 

We booked a room for the night at the Joseph Ambler Inn.

This had a lovely, large ground for strolling about where you were greeted by three bears. 

It also had a very good restaurant where we ate dinner.  

The next day we packed up and headed home where we celebrated our Thanksgiving and Christmas. That was one of my favorite cats, Mark, looking down the steps.

 

The biggest gift was

Noelle was home from the war in time for Christmas, so we all got to celebrate together. In the photo, along with Mark the cat, from ;eft to right; Noelle, Laurel and Darryl.

Still unemployed we go through New Year’s into 2005,