I'd just found out about the plot a few days before Rhonda's birthday. Unfortunately, I'd invited several of our closest friends over for a surprise party and it was too late to cancel. That was one awkward evening! We had to put on happy faces and pretend everything was normal, but the tension between us was obvious. (I know because I still have the video shot that night..) I had everyone hide in the garage with the lights out, waiting to surprise Rhonda when she came in from work. What they didn't know was that I had to tell Rhonda about the party in order to get her to come home that night. She faked her surprise very well. 

Despite the heavy situation going down between Rhonda and I that night, one humorous thing about that party had to do with the snacks. Buying decorations and snacks for the event had been a grim task. I was heartsick and could barely function. Still, I managed to put up a banner, blow up some balloons, and purchase about $100 worth of snacks and drinks. I thought I'd done a good job until everyone started making jokes about the food. I didn't realize I'd only bought CHIPS. Every brand of chip you can think of. No dip. No sauce. Just Doritos, Fritos, and the like. People came expecting to eat, and all I had was CHIPS! Carla Valentine kids me about that to this day.

The nightmare of knowing Rhonda would soon be leaving hit me hard and I continued to reel from the shock for a few days. On one particularly bad night after a shouting match I walked out of the house in a rage. It was dark out and there had been an ice storm that day. Everything was covered in slippery ice. It didn't matter though because I didn't have a car anyway. I started walking. I didn't have a clue where I was going but I knew I needed to get away from that house. After only one block, my feet were starting to freeze. (I was wearing tennis shoes.) But I kept going; up Browning to Denton Hwy, then South. There was very little traffic due to the weather. The wind was gusting and I knew it was a stupid thing to do, but I had to walk off my anger and frustration. 

Almost four miles later, I found myself standing in front of my parent's house. I could imagine how nice and toasty it would be inside, but my pride wouldn't let me knock on the door. I was embarrassed that things were in such a mess, and didn't want them to know I'd just walked all that way in the cold. My mother would've had a stroke if she'd seen my wet, purple, frozen feet. So after standing and staring at their house for a couple of minutes, in humiliation I turned and started back towards home. 

The walk home was many times more miserable than the walk to my parent's house. I was already frozen to the core and simply exhausted. It was so bad that with only one mile left to go, I couldn't stand it any longer and called my friend Paul from a convenience store to come and get me. "The Ice Hike" was one of the low points of my life, made worse by not having a car to drive off in. With a car I could've "cooled off" instead of "freezing."   

As if things weren't rocky enough, soon after Rhonda's birthday, she lost her beloved Grandfather Cunningham - and her Great-Grandmother (everyone called her Mee Maw) - both within the same week; Christmas week! That sent her reeling emotionally. She'd always been very close to her Grandfather. He was a flannel shirt-wearing, no nonsense man's man. Despite his strong conservative values, he was always very welcoming to me, no matter how long my hair was at any given time. Either that entire family was truly ok with my relatively wild-looking exterior, or they hid their displeasure exceptionally well. They only had to deal with me on major holidays, and because Rhonda's parents were divorced and both remarried, there were twice as many locations to go to. There wasn't time to hang at any one place for too long at a time. We had to load the presents in and out and keep it moving.

Strangely enough, after the holidays died down, Rhonda seemed to get back to her old self again. Part of the change was simply the unexplainable actions of a woman - but other parts I attributed to our coming together during her grieving period over the loss of her relatives. Then there was the fact that I finally got wheels!  I did notice that things seemed to greatly improve once my brother Chris stepped up and loaned me the cash to buy that car. It was an act of generosity that couldn't have come at a more opportune time. I bought a used '81 Toyota Celica. It was a decent little car. Fun to drive. Kind of sporty - considering I'd been driving a '77 Volare' since 1979!  Having transportation of my own eased tensions a lot.

When tax time rolled around in April of 1988, I was in pretty bad financial shape. There was enough money coming in to pay rent, utilities, and for other essentials, but I was going to owe a chunk of change to settle with the IRS and didn't have a clue how I was going to pay for it. But like a miracle, my parents came to my rescue. Being retired and fighting cancer, I knew dad couldn't afford to be giving me money like that -- but he wouldn't take no for an answer. I can't say enough about how much my parents and my brother helped me during that time. My family's help was a Godsend. It would be the last and only time I would have to borrow from them.

Of course Dad couldn't let the opportunity pass without giving me one of his classic lectures about responsibility, but he wrapped it up by convincing me that he had faith in me, and that he was certain I would soon hit my stride. His words were comforting, and would also prove to be true. Meanwhile, work with the mascot gig was becoming more and more involved and the money was getting better too. We were settling into our new neighborhood and Rhonda seemed to have gotten over her emotional crisis. Things were going pretty well. However, there was a problem lurking within me. I didn't know what it was, and wouldn't for a couple of years to come. Something wasn't right with my health and I knew it. Almost every day I would feel slightly dizzy. There was a constant nagging pain in my lower back. While working in bands all those years, I'd learned to work sick and deal with pain. It just wasn't an excuse for missing work, so I ignored the symptoms as long as I could. Finally, I started going to doctors to try to find out what was wrong. Each time I was treated as if I were a nutty hypochondriac. Each time the prognosis was the same: I was told there was nothing wrong with me except the fact that I was experiencing stress and wasn't getting enough sleep. No matter how much I contested their findings, the results were always the same. 

Eventually I gave up on doctors and quit trying to find out was wrong. I did the only thing left to do. I simply adapted to the way I felt and kept on going. For me, "normal" was about 75% of what was "normal" for everyone else -- except when I was working. Then I always gave at least 110% without fail. Showbiz was in my blood. No matter what my condition was on any given day -- the show always went!

After a few months of improved prosperity, Rhonda hit me with another shocker. She brought up the subject of marriage!  Only a few months earlier she'd been planning to dump me, and now she was talking marriage. Life was so damn strange sometimes. We'd been through so many ups and downs and survived them all. At times we almost seemed indestructible as a couple. While this talk of marriage seemed completely insane to me - coming so soon on the heels of our recent problems, it was perfectly in character for Rhonda. She'd had a dream, or a conversation with someone, or had seen an episode of Oprah. Something planted the marriage idea in her head and that was that. 

My knee-jerk reaction was to try to dance around the subject at first, but eventually the idea started to appeal to me. In a sense it was good that Rhonda was taking the initiative to move things along because if progress had depended on me, we still would have been living at Jim's. 

Coming Soon: Chapter 11

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