Smorgasbord Letters from America – March 1986 – Pool Parties, lost puppies, New Furniture by Sally Cronin

When I was given the folder of my handwritten letters to my parents when my father died in 1996, I was amazed that he had kept them for ten years. But so pleased that he did. We tend to remember the major events, and we had plenty of amazing experiences in those two years of living in the United States, but it is easy to forget the everyday…

March 18th 1986

Dear M & D.

Another St. Patrick’s Day over, we must have been the only two in Houston who didn’t attend the parade and celebrate it!  I hear they even turned the river flowing through San Antonio that we walked along with you last year, green. One of our friends who comes from New York said that around 40 million Americans have Irish ancestry…for a small country Ireland has managed to do what greater nations have failed to… infiltrate every continent. There were a contingent of Irish at the Alamo on both sides as there are some Mexican families with Irish surnames..

We are still looking at options should be stay here after David’s contract finishes in January 1987. The sticking point is still for me to get a visa because we would both have to work if we are to afford a house etc. David is still in talks with agencies and we have had an idea of what I might do…With my previous job with Savills in Norfolk, I am looking at what is needed to take the Real Estate exams here. Once we have an idea of which state we would like to live in, I will check that out. I would be interested to go through the course anyway to keep my brain active.

On the subject of houses, we have come up with a plan to save quite a bit of money. We currently pay rental for all the furniture in the apartment. We get a certain allowance from the company but that does not cover all the rental or the furniture. So I have been to a rental company that also sells used furniture to complexes who offer fully-furnished. We pay 200 dollars a month for the furniture and I have paid 500 dollars for everything needed to replace it. With 9 months left this means a saving of 1300 dollars that we can put towards our new home.. here or back in the UK. David’s company has confirmed that it will bring back all our belongings including my car and any furniture so either way we will get good use from it. We sold our house in Tring with a lot of the furniture included because we didn’t want to pay a lot of storage whilst we were away. So it will be useful. It is all high quality stuff and a fraction of the cost of buying brand new.

Sonia rang me so we could talk about Emma’s visit in the summer and we are looking at June for three weeks. We just need to confirm our whereabouts but she doesn’t have to book the flight until 21 days before. It will be lovely to see her and cannot believe she is now 15… Debby and I have some trips up our sleeves including a girl’s weekend to San Padre Island which is fabulous. We will rent a beach house for three days.

David has a lot of travel planned for the next three weeks with trips to Las Vegas and San Diego in the first week in April. I will send him off with ten dollars to put in the poker slot machines for me… but don’t expect to see any winnings back! And I will fly out to meet him in San Diego for the weekend as we have some air miles to redeem and I can get a bonus ticket for 50 dollars extra. I do love that west coast and we are looking forward to exploring the southern end of the highway.

Walter has a bunch of friends coming in next week for a few days and I am cleaning his carpet for him with a rented machine from the store. I don’t mind as he is very good about making sure we are okay. We are having two of his friends stay with us, there is a big party planned for their first night around the pool with a BBQ and water volleyball and another on the Sunday at his place. I don’t think there will be much time for sleep.

I am now playing water volley ball for the boys team… I am tall and having played netball am quite useful by the net. We sometimes play other apartment complex and I am not sure if I am the mascot or the ace up their sleeves…They call me Sledgehammer.. I have been called worse… There is a song of the same name which seems to get played a lot.

We nearly got a dog…..yesterday I found a small puppy wandering around Kroger’s car park and I saw it nearly go under the wheels of a truck. I managed to coax it towards me and picked her up and brought her home. I rang the SPCA but they couldn’t take her last night so we decided to keep her or at least find her a good home.  I took her for a walk around the outside of the apartment complex which has some grass, and as we passed the family section some children ran up and called her name. Seems like she had got out of the window left open for her in the truck when they were shopping at Kroger’s so it had a happy ending. But both of us were a bit disappointed.

Anyway.. time to head over and clean a carpet… and get the guest bedroom ready for the visitors. Write again next week..

love from us both S&D…

Thanks for dropping in today and I hope you have enjoyed the latest adventure. I am so glad we made the most of our two years in America..most of the partying stopped on our return to the UK and I was back to work full-time.