I haven't written here for awhile. The weather has been mostly overcast until the last couple of days and the sun came out and it was over freezing so some of the snow started to melt. But now, last night we have a dusting of snow and they are calling for about 3" of snow on Sunday/Monday. I am sick of winter this year. It seems so long and dragged out. We haven't really had a bad winter but am really ready for Spring this year.

I have been longing for a trip to Florida even though I know it is out of the question. I have no money and two of my bills have increased and that is almost another $100 out of what I get in each month. I don't know how I am going to do it. It just gets worse and worse. I have shut off the lights and put the temp down to 65 at night and the bills still keep going up but the social security check is still the same. I never thought I would be struggling this bad at this age. Poor me one more time. LOL At least I am alive and kicking so they say.

When we moved to Florida there was very little around us and no friends. There was a house next door with a couple of other houses which I believe they rented out. On the other side was a large building that became an auction house. There were businesses across the highway (Alternate Route 41 or Nebraska Avenue) but little else close by. My address there was 100007 Nebraska Avenue, Tampa, Florida. I believe the first real girlfriend that I had there was Pat Pless who lived on the next corner down the sand street. Pat's dad repaired semi's. Pat's mom was a stay at home mother and had a wooden leg. I have no idea how she lost her leg. She had an older sister Olive. Pat and I would go to the sink hole and grab the rope that someone had tied to a tree and would swing out over the sink hole. Thankfully I never fell into the water as I didn't know how to swim. The last time I was in Florida there are fences around the sink holes in the area. A sink hole is a large pond that is connected usually to another sink hole by underground water. Pat and I would also play in a cement block building that someone had started to build and never finished. If a snake was in the building we didn't go back there for a long time. We usually walked on the top of the cement blocks.

Pat's mom was Italian and the house always smelled of spaghetti sauce. I remember one time going out to the causeway with them and going crab hunting. We collected buckets of crabs and then when we got back they were put in the spaghetti sauce. From what I remember the sauce had a wonderful taste.

Pat was younger than me and went to Catholic school so we didn't see each other too often.

I was alone a lot living in Florida. My mom and dad were always busy with the restaurant and motel. When I had nothing to do I would sometimes wash the clothes from the motel. Our washing machine was outside. It was a wringer washing machine and we had one utility tub out there. I would wash the clothes and then hang the stuff on the clothes line. I was about 11 at the time.

There was very little to do in the neighborhood we lived in so I went to the movies quite a bit. The theater was in the town of Sulphur Springs which was a mile or more away from our place but it was only about 8 blocks from school so many days I would walk from school to the theater. I also went just about every Saturday. One Saturday I met a boy there and really liked him. He was nice to me and we talked through the movie. I met him there a few times and then never saw him again. He probably moved away. In those days, did not realize that his parents were probably pickers or worked on someones farm. His name was Gabriel Rodriquez.

Because I liked the movies so much I started writing letters to the studios for photographs of the movie stars. I still have many that I collected. I also collected pictures from movie magazines. Naturally Mom eventually threw them away. She didn't like anything extra laying around. I used to keep the pictures in a cardboard doctor's kit (it was a toy). My favorite star was Cornell Wilde. Funny I never sent for his picture.