The house on Macrae Street in Haltom City after painting it
to get rid of the pinto bean color.

The big  move to Haltom City took place on July 14, 1987, but to catch up on what had happened since my last journal entries meant going back to the last few months of living with Jim in Arlington. Moving from Jim's house to start a new life with Rhonda -- and our Schnauzer puppy, Suzee, was supposed to be a positive thing, and it would eventually get around to being that. Sadly though, I knew it was also the final nail in the coffin as far as my rock and roll music career was concerned. I'd had more than my share of good times playing music, but I had enough presence of mind when it was over to understand that it hadn't been in the cards for me to make a life out of it. To do that and be successful took far more raw and natural musical talent and ability than I possessed. 

I'd been around the business long enough to have seen the real deal time and time again -- up close and personal. Some of them were good friends from around Ft. Worth: Buddy Whittington would end up taking Eric Clapton's old gig as guitar player for John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers.)  Besides, the live music scene had taken a dark turn since Savvy had disbanded. One almost had to have a death wish in order to brave the kinds of things going on in the clubs any more. The nightclub experience had gone from being a really fun time for all --  to being a ringside seat to hell. I didn't have the stuff for it. Heck, I didn't have a single piercing or tattoo! How did I manage that? When we were in our heyday, my long hair was the only tell-tale giveaway that I wasn't a "mainstream" kind of fellow. Nothing that a good pair of scissors couldn't take care of though. 

People in rock bands don't generally take relationships too seriously, and the seriousness of the relationship between Rhonda and I didn't really completely start to sink in for me until she began talking a lot about moving out together. The choices were few. I could have perhaps hung out as a bachelor living at Jim's house for another couple of years. (Jim didn't get married until 2004, so I may have had another 15 years or so living in his spare bedroom. That would've made my parents proud!)  There was no denying for me though that life had taken a serious turn. The ugly head of responsibility kept rearing up and roaring at me. "It's time to GROW UP, little Stevie!" it would seem to say in a voice which, until then had only been reserved for demons in my nightmares. 

I didn't realize at the time how conflicted I still was between needing closure from the old ways so I could move on with the next chapter of my life - versus longing to go back to the days when my biggest worry each day was deciding what to wear on stage that night. It wasn't an ache, such as one might experience after the breakup of a relationship, but rather a constant awareness that things were going to be very different in days to come. I was still trying to adjust my constitution to dealing with the daytime version of the world - which was very different from my nocturnal past. No matter. I was determined to make it happen, and make the best of it. I was just getting off to a very slow start. "Baby steps" I kept saying to myself. Still, despite my bravest attempts at having a positive attitude about it all, I still sometimes found myself feeling a bit like a puppy dog not wanting to leave its familiar places -- but not wanting to get left behind either. 

If the truth were told, I suppose I really didn't know if I was ready for that move any more than a skydiver knows his chute is going to open. You can always THINK -- but you can never KNOW. I was aware that spending that many years in the rock and roll life created somewhat of a Peter Pan Principal - I felt like I was always going to be twenty-four -- but in fact I was thirty-two and counting FAST! Because I wouldn't be getting that time back, there was a lot of growing up to be done in a hurry so I decided to jump out of the proverbial plane. I didn't even look to see if I had a parachute or not. It wouldn't matter. I couldn't stay where I was any longer. It was time to jump. It was time to move into that house on Macrae Street in Haltom City with Rhonda. Or was it?

I quickly discovered that July was the worst time to move. It was extremely hot and so we boxed things and did the inside stuff during the day, then I spent the night loading, driving, then unloading a U-haul truck. It took two big loads in the truck and several car loads over the next few days. Our little rent house on Macrae Street was originally intended to be no more than a transitional layover along the way for us. If things worked out, we'd get a bigger place later on. Maybe even buy a house some day. That was the plan anyway. As with most plans, however, there were a couple of hitches in ours that would take only a short while for Rhonda to discover. It would take longer for me.

At first, as with any move, we were excited to get things set up and operational. The three bedrooms worked out great. After setting up my gigantic water bed in the master bedroom (which I'd been dragging around with me since first joining Savvy), I took the smaller of the remaining bedrooms for my studio / office, while Rhonda utilized the bigger one for all her clothes, shoes, and makeup that wouldn't fit in the master bedroom. The larger one would've been nicer for my office / studio, but it was right next to the master bedroom and I usually stayed up late recording music, playing computer games, or entertaining friends. I could make a little more noise in the smaller bedroom without disturbing Rhonda quite as easily. 

Suzee loved the new back yard. She wasted no time checking out every nook and cranny. The inside of the house was in really nice condition, but the outside would need painting. Rhonda hated the reddish-brown pinto bean color. She also didn't like the fact that the front and back yards didn't have very much grass growing, but with her green thumb it wouldn't take long to have it looking like a country club putting green. We were in such a rush to move that we overlooked a couple of other things that wouldn't matter at the time, but would later become major hassles. The two bathrooms were connected - shotgun style. Only the master had a bathtub / shower in it. The other was just a vanity and toilet. It was all we needed for just the two of us. For the time being it would work out just fine. After all, this was supposed to be a transition for us and not a permanent homestead.

Once everything was in place and we were settled in, there was little left to distract us from the day to day issues that had been put off or overlooked during the move. Rhonda should have been beaming ear to ear with delight after pulling off the moving coup as smoothly as she did, but she didn't seem happy at all. I didn't pay much attention to it. I figured it would take a while to adapt to the new surroundings and the new arrangement. But Rhonda's unhappiness kept becoming more and more pronounced. Something was wrong and I had a theory about what it might be. My theory went something like this...

 Its no secret that guys in bands usually have an easier time getting good-looking girlfriends. Rhonda was no exception.  But one day, after there is no band any longer, and the spotlight and the glitz and the glamour has faded, those girls often find themselves waking up next to a barely familiar stranger and asking, "What the hell was I thinking???"  

We'd been living on Macrae Street in Ft. Worth a little less than a month when it hit Rhonda. I wasn't aware that the problem was as severe as it was. My logic told me that no matter what I might have possibly done to upset her, the fact that we'd just uprooted and made such a big move meant we would be making every effort to work out any problems. That was going to be difficult as long as Rhonda wasn't talking about what was bothering her. 

I had a sense that Rhonda was having serious second thoughts about me. After all, I'd been severely socially demoted. Rhonda had a great career with the phone company, while I was practically starting over from scratch. There was still plenty of work trickling in from the "mascot" gig to pay the bills, but I didn't see that ever becoming a "career" at the time. I'd been without a car of my own for a year and a half. While living at Jim's, I'd been allowed to use his little pickup truck, which was an extra vehicle he didn't use too often. But after the move I was completely dependent on using Rhonda's car for anything other than work related trips. Work wasn't a problem because a driver always picked me up in a company vehicle, then dropped me off back at home after the job was done. Transportation hadn't seemed like too much of a big problem to ME, but that - along with several other issues - had been getting under Rhonda's skin for quite a while. Truth be told, I had no idea how big of a storm was brewing with her. 

While Rhonda was doing her best to cope with her secret frustrations, I was beginning to have some issues of my own. For fifteen years of my life I'd conditioned myself to need to be in the middle of a party seven nights a week. I was sure there were still lots of parties going on after moving to Macrae Street, only I just wasn't being invited to them any longer. Surprisingly, that didn't bother me as much as I expected it to. Whenever I thought of pointing my feet towards the door to go looking for something happening at night, I could sense roots coming out of the floor and winding around my legs - a mental metaphor for the "grounding" process that was taking place in my life. I thought of this as a good thing for me, but it wasn't something that brought joy and happiness. There was still some kind of emptiness within me that I couldn't put my finger on. Perhaps it was just loneliness because after all, Rhonda wasn't happy. 

I was starting to feel a bit like the main character in a book I'd read recently;  Robert A. Heinlein's classic sci-fi novel, "Stranger in a Strange Land." Some days I felt like I may as well have been an alien from another world, gagging on grok - or a fish out of water staggering around on dry land for the first time, only to look around and see the pond had dried up and I couldn't go back. Nor was there rain in the forecast either. There was only one way to go, and that was forward. Feeling confident that whatever our problems were we would work them out, I just did my best to adapt to the new deal and the new surroundings. I could adapt all I wanted and it wasn't going to help. Ironically enough, after only living on Macrae Street for four months, Rhonda finally told me what she'd been up to. She'd decided our relationship wasn't working for her and she'd been making secret plans for another move. Only this next one didn't include me... 

CHAPTER 10

AFTER SAVVY MENU

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