The end of 1978 saw Tim's apartment lease and my apartment lease come up for renewal. Bud and I were now both working closer to Baltimore City and were looking at apartments in that area. Tim said it didn't matter where he lived since he was on the road constantly and wondered if the three of us might share a place. His thought was it didn't make a lot of sense for him to pay full rent for an apartment to store his furniture and clothing if he wasn't going to be in it very much. And, he would enjoy living closer to the city on the occasions when he was at home. So in January, Tim and Bud and I moved into a brand new two-story townhouse in a suburb of Baltimore called Parkville, Maryland.
When Tim had originally been hired by the clock company, he was brought in as Plant Manager. He had been working as Assistant Plant Manager for U. S. Furniture Industries in High Point, NC and his employment history was all in production. At the clock company, Tim was in charge of production but reported to the Vice President of Production. We had a clock show coming up in Scranton, Pennsylvania and one of the sales reps (that guy named Million I dated for awhile) and I were going up to handle the show. I was the Barbie Doll in this case, even though I did know enough about the clocks to actually sell them. My purpose was to be there and look pretty to attract male buyers. Yes, I know how chauvinistic that is, but hey, it works. We took Tim along to help load and unload and setup and dismantle the clocks. Tim and I were the only ones who sold clocks that weekend. Million tried valiantly but struck out, whereas Tim struck paydirt. Turns out Tim is a natural bullshitter and could sell ice to Eskimos. He had so much fun messing with the buyers' minds, and jerking them around in circles until they were so dizzy they would agree to anything. I, on the other hand, merely smiled (yes, I know I'm not normally a smiler -- it wasn't a normal situation) at the cretins and told them how many women would be drawn into their stores by our beautiful handcrafted clocks. I don't mean to insinuate all male buyers are jerks, but many of them are. You use whatever works best. Tim, of course, immediately realized he had missed his calling and upon returning to Maryland convinced the "powers that be" to let him try working in sales for awhile. He was an immediate success and eventually ended up as Vice President of Sales. He has been in furniture sales from that time forward.
We crammed all my junk from my apartment and all Tim's junk from his apartment and whatever junk Bud had (he had not yet had his own place) into a three bedroom unit. Space was at a premium, but we made it work. We selected an interior unit, thinking the end units would be more costly to heat and cool. That was a good thought. Unfortunately, when we moved in, the building was new and no one lived on either side of us. It was January in Maryland. It was cold! The first heating bill almost had us ready to move out. Fortunately, once we got the place heated, it didn't cost as much to keep it that way, and we soon had neighbors on both sides to provide radiant heat from their units.
We quickly settled into a routine. Monday through Thursday, Bud and I were there alone. Bud was working four-day weeks, 10 hours per day. I was working five days a week, 8 hours per day (sometimes more). When I left the clock company I worked as a temp for awhile. One of the places I worked was at the Exxon Corporate office in Towson, MD. This was during the first gas crisis, when gas prices changed daily (unlike hourly as they did in the latest crisis) and lines and rationing were the norm. What a mess! Then I took a full-time job as a corporate headhunter. Surprisingly, I did reasonably well at this job, but I had a hard time living with myself. What I did wasn't exactly illegal or immoral, but it made me feel a little slimy and kinda like I needed to take another shower. Tim, being in sales, was able to set his own hours, and decided since he was on the road from early every Monday morning, he would come back into town on Thursday night whenever possible and use Friday to catch up on his paperwork. That meant Bud and Tim were almost always home alone on Friday while I was at work. On weekends we usually had house guests; friends from out of town and whoever the femme du jour was for Tim. Tim went through women the way I go through books. He never had any problems with "breaking up" because there was never enough of a relationship to break. Somehow, he managed to remain friendly with almost all of them. Bud and I often needed a program to keep up with players.
To say our life was a bit unusual would be an understatement. Tim's mother was horrified we were "living together". I tried to explain to her we weren't living together, we were roommates; Bud and I were living together. I'm not sure she ever understood the difference, but she finally conceded it was good there was someone there to look after her son. Oh, if only she had known, she would have died. Tim was doing quite well financially, and Bud had a steady, good paying job (more about Bud and his money later). We often went to Carney Crab House, which was a short distance from our townhouse, and ate bushels of steamed crabs and drank gallons of beer. Sometimes we went sailing with Frank who owned at 27' sailboat and loved to sail the Chesapeake Bay. We regularly went downtown to the inner harbor simply to be near the water. I did not capitalized inner harbor because at that time it was not a proper noun. In 1979, the inner harbor consisted of mainly deserted and decrepit warehouses and hundreds of wharf rats the size of dogs. There was an old man with a pushcart who sold hot dogs and beer, and there was the wonderful aroma of spices in the air from the McCormick Spice factory still operating nearby. One day Tim's current girlfriend and I walked out to the edge of the landing in the harbor. There was a boat with four guys cruising by and when we stuck out our thumbs they came over and offered us a ride. We laughed and explained we actually were there with two guys, but the four in the boat said to get them and we'd all go. So the four of us hopped on the boat and these guys took us for a cruise around the harbor. They offered us beer, and then took us to a dive on a nearby island where we all played pool and ate and drank some more beer. Then they dropped us off where they had picked us up and went on their way. What a hoot!!! The Inner Harbor is a proper noun now, and a great place in and of itself. It is still a destination every time we return to Baltimore, but as the saying goes, "those were the days".
Because Tim and Bud were so flush (and I was holding my own), they started accumulating bottles of sparkling wine (which at the time was still allowed to be called champagne). We drank a lot of it, but we had bottles stuffed in closets, under love seats and sofas, in the pantry, in dresser drawers. It was truly comical, but never let it be said we weren't prepared for visitors. When we moved out a year later, we found some of the bottles we had somehow missed during the fun. Unfortunately, we also found shriveled up fruit and vegetables left over from one of our food fights (all in fun). Apparently, we didn't have any vermin to eat the stuff (thank goodness), but that's a surefire was to attract some. In February of 1979, Baltimore had a blizzard with over 20" of snow. We were all housebound for three days. Well, let me clarify that a bit. None of us could get our cars out for three days. After the first day, it appeared we might be running out of wine for dinner so Tim and I bundled up and walked a mile or so to the wine store. We didn't like the selection at that store, so we trekked another mile or so to another store. We found a good selection there and made our purchases (enough to last several days), then hoofed it back to the townhouse. After all, if we weren't going to be able to get out to go to work, we had to have something to keep us occupied. I'm not sure if it was the same snowstorm, or another one, but one of Tim's friends from NC named Greg came to visit. Greg drove a 10-wheel drive military truck he named Butch. Butch was able to drive through anything, and he did. There was not a snowdrift in the liquor store parking lot capable of stopping Butch, so our trips for wine were a little easier while Greg and Butch were visiting.
Since I worked on Fridays and neither Bud nor Tim did, they would often do household chores to help out. They always did all the cooking and usually helped with the cleaning, but on this particular Friday they decided to help with the laundry. As I mentioned earlier, we crammed 2½ apartments worth of stuff into our townhouse. That meant mucho many linens and towels and such. Having been in the military, I knew how to fold things very small in order to fit into tight places. Even at that, our linen closet was overflowing. When I got home from work on this particular Friday, Tim was headed up the stairs with a stack of freshly laundered towels, sheets and underwear. I glanced at him and offhandedly said "You can't put those away like that", meaning, of course, it would never fit. He stopped, looked at me, said "oh, okay" and came back down the stairs, opened the front door, and threw the entire pile of clean laundry out into the snow. After I got over the shock, I asked him exactly what the Hell he thought he was doing. He answered something to the effect of since I told him he couldn't put them away like that, he didn't. I was furious, but the boys thought it was hysterical. They said they had been "slaving" all day to get the place cleaned, get the laundry done, and get the dinner cooked, so I would be able to relax when I got home. But, what did I do when I got home? I criticized. This is not at all true, but they didn't want to see it my way. I picked the laundry up out of the snow (which was still clean), refolded it, and put it away. To this day, neither Bud nor Tim will fold laundry, using this absurd scenario as their excuse. Lame! Really lame!
When I realized I could not be an Executive Recruiter any longer, things started to go downhill in my relationship with first Bud and then Tim. When Bud had originally moved in with me, I told him he didn't have to worry about rent or utilities since I had already been paying them myself. I did ask him to contribute toward food (as I never was much for feeding myself) and to pay for his long distance calls if he made any. Bud actually resented the fact that I made more money than he did. Hello? I had been in the working world significantly longer than he, I was not a factory worker (though he was skilled), and I had paid my dues coming up through the ranks -- something he had yet to do. When I left my job at the Personnel Agency, I was without income for the first time in my adult life. I mistakenly thought since I had "carried" him for awhile and since we were in a relationship, he would pick up the slack until I could get another job. WRONG! He was of the opinion that his money was HIS and he hadn't agreed to be paying all this other crap. Talk about a rough way to discover you're in love with a piker. We had numerous disagreements about this subject and it finally culminated in my asking him to leave. According to his grandmother (who almost never forgave me), she had never seen anyone with such a broken heart before. Well, I'm truly sorry I hurt him, but he had hurt me too.
Around the time Bud left, I found another job, this time as a supervisor in a factory that made refractory bricks. I was totally out of my element. These guys were members of the United Steelworkers Union and I was the only female supervisor. I loved it. It was so unlike anything I had ever done. I wasn't afraid. I guess I should have been; some of them were more than just mean. There were gunfights in the streets where they lived. One guy cut off the ends of three fingers so he could receive the workers' compensation money. These were not men to be trifled with. But, once we got to know each other, they were just like any other burly group of guys. I was the supervisor, but they knew what they were doing. Unless someone screwed up, I didn't give them any gruff. Unlike most of the male supervisors, I treated them with respect for their knowledge and abilities. One day one of the meanest of the bunch walked up to me and handed me a 45 RPM record. The name of the song was Carla My Love. I had never heard of the song or the artist. I was a little worried about why he gave it to me until he explained he had overheard a conversation in which I said I wondered why no one ever wrote a song about someone named Carla. He gave me the record to show that someone had.
With Bud gone, Tim and I found we had a difficult time being roommates. We didn't bicker much, but there were plenty of periods of long silences. We both decided about the same time that it just wasn't working out and started looking for separate places to live. In January, he went his way and I went mine. Our three ring circus was now divided into individual acts and it appeared we had come undone.
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