I had hoped the actual process of moving to Houston might offer me an opportunity to “bond” with Ken and it did. He had recently turned fourteen and I thought that time together, before the rest of the family joined us at the end of July in 1977, would allow us to develop a better relationship than the one I had with my father when I was a teenager.
We stayed at the Holiday Inn near the airport. Our plans called for us to transfer to a local motel on Main Street, only a couple of blocks from Baylor Med where I would be employed at the beginning of the following week. The Tides II motel offered a more reasonable weekly rate than the tourist site near the airport.
The morning after our arrival, I left Ken at the Holiday Inn to drive the short distance to Spring, Texas and the FM 1960 area where we would be living, once the moving van arrived with our belongings. Back then, the Farm-to-Market Road with the number “1960″ was a relatively quiet, suburban area some 30 miles from the Medical Center where I would be working. I needed to go to the Jetero Bank to check on the transference of funds from Massachusetts and to meet with our realtor to confirm that the paperwork for buying our new home in Ponderosa Forest was on track.
On the way to Northwest Houston, I thought the car lacked pick-up. As I slowed down to pull into the realtor’s parking lot, the brakes felt very soft, and the brake-light came on. When I got out of the car, I smelled burning rubber and saw smoke enveloping the rear wheels. I had been traveling at 60 mph for the fifteen-minute drive from the airport with the emergency brake engaged! The damn brake-light had never turned on! Somewhat concerned about the spiraling smoke, I quickly asked for a recommendation for a handy garage. The people at the realtor’s office suggested a place called Power Pak, a block away. I immediately followed their suggestion.
The service man in the garage put my car on the rack and tried to pry off the hub caps which were too hot to touch. He suggested a new brake job might be needed at $60.00! Oh well, what’s money, I thought. I had half-expected something like this would have happened. On our way to Ohio from Syracuse, where we had dropped Deb off at the university she would be attending, a similar unreleased brake caused overheating, but without the smoke! The current, potential repair would not be finished until at least 2:00 P.M. They offered to have one of their young employees drive me back to the Holiday Inn to get Ken and check out. I accomplished the transactions, and we were ready to return to the garage, but first we had to ask the motel’s maintenance man to jump the battery on the garage’s tow truck!
While we waited for the repair to be completed, Ken and I wandered around the Ponderosa shopping center and had a Whataburger, a ‘burger that was totally new to us! Upon returning to the service station, I learned that, once the brakes had cooled down, the mechanic thought they would not need to be replaced. And there was no charge for anything! Now that’s Texas, I thought.
We then drove to the Jetero Bank. The funds I had transferred from Amherst had been received and were available for use. In addition, our application for a car loan had been approved. All the Texans we met seemed to be very accommodating; I thought this might be a very good move for us, after all.
Ken and I then went to Lone Star Ford and bought a Pinto, at a total price of $3,787.51, after negotiations. Officially, the color was light green, but to my eye it was yellow. We would pick it up once Karen and the family had arrived.
That evening, Ken and I checked into the Tides II. (It might be noted that Tides I was a few blocks away!) He liked the pool and location, but the usual southern scuttling insects in this motel were a little more noticeable than at the Holiday Inn. Later, I learned these critters were “German cockroaches” and were associated with surrounding trees and not with the filth of the northern species. Nevertheless, they were still icky!
On the other hand, the surrounding odor of Tides II was significantly better than what we had encountered at the Holiday Inn. We decided it was circling airplanes that give the Inn its pungency and precluded outside activity around the pool. In LA it would have been called smog. We also went that evening to the Galleria to look around, marvel at its indoor skating rink, and have a Mexican meal. Ken decided he did like real tacos.
Ken was very good during our early days sharing a motel room. We had some differences but no major problems. I was glad he had come along. Our only consistent problem was he spoke so low I had to ask him to repeat half of what he said! All in all, I think he liked Houston, but his visible enthusiasm was underwhelming most of the time.
In the evening he watched TV while I poured over maps of Houston to determine where we had been driving on all of those intertwined freeways. I planned to do more exploring on the weekend when I thought the traffic might be lighter. I quickly learned that Houston traffic is never “lighter,” except, maybe, at 3:00 a.m. Nevertheless, we did do some exploring during the next few days.