I want to say I was around 11 or 12? Again, I try to keep my memories in order but sometimes when thinking about them, I cannot really remember my age or what order they occurred. I think sometimes I combined the memories also. My Mom came home again and of course with another man (I think?). To tell you the truth, the amount of times my Mom has come and gone from our house throughout the years by hitch-hiking from Michigan to Arizona or California is actually incredible. It is incredible because it is a long way to walk and hitch a ride and it is incredible that she didn't show up dead. I am sure some things may have happened, or someone tried to do something bad to her throughout her many hitch-hiking adventures. But again, with her little spurts of violence (downright crazy violence) I am not fully sure someone would actually do something to her. Plus she was very strong. So if someone tried, they would probably get a good fight. This man that showed up this time was not allowed to stay at our house, I think my Grandparents really didn't like this one. He was tall, skinny, with dark skin and bushy curly hair.
This part is a little confusing for me so I know it may be confusing for you...When I speak about the men she came home with, a lot of these moments were when I was 9, 10, or maybe 11. When I put two and two together, I truly think it was during the time she was with my sibling's Dad. I know she spent a lot of time during that 3-year span in Michigan in the Lansing area. She came home to Alpena more often during this time span to visit. Plus she had Tess in Arizona and a picture of the two of them while in California.....Therefore, they traveled to and from California and maybe a few pit-spots in Phoenix because they did know some friends, not-so-good friends in Phoenix.
Anyhow, she was home, and she did not have a man with her but she did come home with a man, not sure where he went. During the visit, the man was arrested. For what? I did not know. This is what my memory serves me. I do remember someone was picked up because she was very off, very nervous (she usually acted pretty nervous but I am not sure if it was withdrawal or not). During her visit, my Mom, my Aunt Angie, Grandma, and I were driving home from town. My Grandma drove a butter yellow Chevy Impala. You know the ones that had a full seat in front so three people could sit in the front seat? That is the car we were driving home in. My Mom sat in the back seat with me. My Grandma was driving and my Aunt was on the passenger side. My Grandma drove fast..." like a bat-outta-hell" my Grandpa usually would say, down the Long Rapids road. It felt like it was fast back then and it was a windy two-lane road surrounded by woods. We didn't have to wear seat belts so the windiness would make the ride home a little more adventurous! If I could take you to the Long Rapids road, I would be able to tell you exactly where this happened. As we were driving, we see a man walking down the road on the dirt shoulder and as soon as we starting approaching him, which was pretty quickly because my Grandma drove fast, my Mom leans into the window and follows him with her head as we pass him. I can see this happening to this day. It was sunny, with so much green in the trees. We were all happy.
We all knew who that man was, even I knew that feeling of "uh, oh".
We got home, probably about 20 minutes after we got home my Mom says she wants to go to the corner store. The Male's store.... everyone went to the Male's store to pick up this or that and kids would ride their bikes there to get candy or pop. She grabbed my Grandma's bike (it was a cruiser style of bike, reminded me of the bike the lady rode at the beginning of the Wizard of Oz), no one could stop her because she was a grown woman and she was going to do what she wanted to do one way or another. Now, I had no idea my Mom was such an athlete to be able to #1 ride a bike, and #2 ride the single-speed bike to the store. Now I do know though that she did have the endurance, she was always able to walk several miles to hitch a ride to-and-from the West Coast!
An hour later, my Mom never returned. My Grandpa went to the store to see where she was. No Susie. My Grandpa drove around a little bit in the direction it would take her to leave our area and leave Alpena....No one on foot anywhere. There were only two directions to leave and the next main roads to get out of Alpena and from the house we lived in was a good 10-15 miles away! Gone....and the man my Mom found so interesting walking on the road....gone..... disappeared. We couldn't figure out how they even hitched a ride that quickly out of the area we lived! We lived in the country, folks stuck to themselves in our area and wouldn't think of picking someone they didn't know especially picking up a hitch-hiker. Gone......Again..... My Grandpa went back to the store a day or so later and asked Mr. Male if he had seen a bike and Mr. Male said there was one underneath the Thunderbay River overpass bridge right by the store. It was still there, no one took it. My Grandpa brought it home and it looked as though nothing happened. A few days after my Mom calls us from Phoenix. Whatever she brought with her this trip she didn't take with her. Only maybe a purse which she would have taken to actually buy something at the store if she took that.
** About 2 weeks ago I spoke to my Grandma about how she felt about my blog. She brought up this memory also and told me what she remembered: She said one day my Mom told my Grandma that her back was hurting her and she needed to go to the doctor. (Remember she had a bad back due to her gymnastics accident when she was a kid, and always thought she needed the pain pills....or that was her excuse) From what my Grandma remembers, she and the man went to a doctor and when the doctor left the exam room they stole a prescription pad. They wrote out prescriptions for whatever they were trying to get and then tried to get the so-called prescription filled at one of the local pharmacies. Well, long story short...they got caught and put in Jail. "The man" had someone bail him out and of course, my Mom got out. I think when he was walking down the road he may have been coming to find her.
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