Page 169 - People & Places In Time

Interior Dimensions
The balcony at my apartment on Fulton in 1970
That said, the size of the kitchen mattered little, because if I cooked at all it was to add bullion to fried rice. Going to college on the G.I. bill did not always leave much money for food.
Besides all the built-ins and expansive glass there was one small detail that thoroughly defined two of the rooms. It was a series of down lights set into the nine-foot coffered ceiling along the living room and front bedroom’s glass walls. The carpeting in the living area was red with red bulbs in the ceiling lights. The large bedroom had blue carpeting and blue lights. The apartment came furnished with oversized forties style furniture and a decidedly art-deco feel
At some point during our time as roommates, Chuck had begun dating Joyce Miller who was living in Exeter. Eventually they would marry, but in the meantime, Chuck spent nearly all his time, when not in school, at his home in Exeter, to be closer to Joyce. I was now alone much of the time in this best of all places to live. Soon enough though, I was not so alone, when Holly moved in. This worked for a time, until her mom found that she was not living with the girlfriend she had thought, in another apartment across town.
Holly and her Mom Mary Pagel
The two years attending Fresno State with Holly before we married and the two years following our wedding, remain among the happiest in my life. Holly lived at home with her divorced mother, Mary Pagel. Their home at 3939 North Sherman became my second home. The first time I was in the house, was for a study date with Holly; I’m not sure if we had even been on a real date yet. Likely not an uncommon way for a boy to meet a girl’s parents for the first time. Never the less from that point forward I was to spend a great deal of time in their home.
Mary made her home my home; looking back at the ease by which
all this happened, I don’t’ find the words to express the significance it holds in memory though, there is one instance that followed Holly and I becoming engaged. I was alone in Mary’s kitchen and on my way out to somewhere
for what isn’t of importance. I wrote a note explaining whatever I was doing and casually signed off as “your son, Jerry” and left. When Mary came home from work later that afternoon and now alone in her kitchen, she read my note.
Several years before I would meet her mother, Holly’s older brother Billy was killed in an automobile accident. I would discover some time later, when Mary showed me the saved note, just how much the reference I had made to myself as “your son” meant to her. Not actually of course, but to some small extent I had become a replacement for Billy; Mary’s deceased son. I was in love with her daughter, but I have loved Mary Pagel from that moment she allowed me to become such an intimate piece to her life.
During this time, Holly and I had taken a weekend trip to Monterey and while traveling down Highway 99 back to Fresno we recovered an eight-month-
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Me seated in my “Fultonia Apartments” livingroom with some ot the built-in book shelves in the background. Beside me is a table I built from an old window and one of the speakers for a stereo system I also built.