New Boston, Ohio. Boy what a place. This is where the turning point of my life began. There was a lot of fun times there, but then again, I guess I could consider it the worst time of my life. Our first house we moved to in New Boston was up on a little hill on a main street. You had to walk up quite a few steps to reach our home and yard. There isn't a whole lot I remember about that house, but what I do remember has really had an impact on my life. I sit here and wonder just how much I should write down here, how much I want to let everyone know about our time at that house. Guess I shouldn't leave anything out, no matter how bad, so here goes:
Like I said, I don't remember much, like how long we lived there, etc.... but I do remember a little "old" man that lived right next door to us. He was lonely, he liked us to visit, even paid us sometimes to do a few chores for him. He also molested us. Oh, he did it in a way that he felt justified. He also did it in a way where it wasn't totally molestation, but it was just that, nonetheless. He would "touch" us, and have us "touch him". Needless to say, it only occurred once that I can remember. After that, we stopped going over there. It didn't affect me mentally, guess it wasn't enough to do that. Then again, who knows, maybe some of my insecurities have stemmed from that very thing. I don't know if my sisters Janice and Julie remember this. Janice should, she was there with me. Julie may not, she wasn't there when he tried his "charm" on us, but I believe we had told her about it. Regardless of whether they remember, it did happen. Another thing I remember about that house is a song that was out and popular, I loved it. Actually there was two, one being "lightning striking again", and would you believe the one that I really liked, more than that one, totally escapes me. Now I see why I wanted this on paper.
Well, we moved on after that. We moved to a little two bedroom house on a side street between Gallia and Rhodes. The heat was not a furnace, but a gas stove in the livingroom. This is where our heat came from for the whole tiny house.
By this time there was Julie, Me, Janice, Tammy, Nancy, and Samantha. Samantha was just a tiny little thing, a baby. Julie was dating. She usually doubled with our cousin, Kathy, and her date. I remember once when Julie and Kathy was out on a date, and mom was gone somewhere, me and Janice were babysitting for a bit. I was in the kitchen, cooking some macaroni and butter for us to eat, when a couple guys knocked on the door and asked for Julie and Kathy. We told them they were not home, but they came in anyway, and made advances to us. I remember being scared, but they finally left without "harming" us. I was 13 and Janice was 12 at the time. But there were great times too.
Julie was too old to want me and Janice tagging along. She was 16 and allowed to date. I used to envy her for that. I couldn't understand why she could go certain places that I couldn't go. Just like all little sisters, right? Janice and I were always hanging together. We had this friend named Diane Broughton. Don't know why I remember that name after all these years. The three of us, and some other friends, actually sometimes boys, would run around New Boston together. One of our favorite places was way up on a hill, (people up here would call it a mountain, lol). We would pack us a little lunch and hike up to the top, then walk for miles. There was a little stream up there that we went to a lot and we would sit there to eat our food. There were grapevines up there hanging from trees, and we would swing on them. This was actually all fun for us. I know today that children would bore easily spending a day like this. Another place we liked to go was to the Steelworkers Hall to teen dances. We had a blast there. It was such a thrill for us "teens" to dance a slow dance with a cute boy. The one dance I remember loving to dance to was House of the Rising Sun. Sooooo romantic. We were honestly all good kids. We could be trusted. However, there was one incident we did, not terrible, yet wrong. I will come to that in a bit. It even involved the police. But first I want to tell you about another two friends of ours. I won't mention their names though. Horrible deal
One was our age, she had a little sister. She had a step-father, T.W (again, won't give the name). He was, looking back, a very ugly, scarey man. He seemed so darned nice though. Always buying things for the two girls. Let them have slumber parties often. You see, their mother worked third shift so he was there to watch them. He had all kinds of goodies for us to snack on, took us places. He was just the ideal dad. Or was he?????? One night we were all in bed. The one our age had bunk beds. I was on the bottom with her, and I believe Janice was on the top bunk with our cousin Bev. Bev hung with us a lot too. I woke up and heard crying somewhere in the house. I layed there and figured out it was the little sister. She was probably around eight years old. Not sure. I woke my friend up and told her, she said "leave it alone, she will be ok", I couldn't figure out why she didn't want to check on her. This crying went on for about half hour. I told her I was getting up and checking it out. She begged me not to, and had to end up telling me the low down, and I do mean it was low down. Seems the ass stepdad had been raping both of them for quite some time.
I kept begging her to tell her mother. She said she couldn't because if she did, he would kill her mother. I had to keep this inside me for a while. Then I told. I didn't tell because it was the right thing to do, I told because I thought it would keep me out of trouble with the police. Now here is where the police come in that I mentioned earlier, lol. Janice, Bev, Diane, and me were in a candy store looking around. We wanted some so bad, and never had the money to buy that kind of stuff. Remember I told you that John, my stepfather, lived in Cleveland and sent money home weekends, then finally the weekend money stopped. All we had to live on was social security of $66 a month, from where my father died. How we ever did that, I will never fathom. But we did, barely, but we did. Well, we took some candy, can't remember how much, but must have been quite a bit, cause the police were called on us. They took us to the police station. I am sure it was a "scare tactic", and it worked. Boy did it work. So I spilled my guts. I told about our friends and their dad. The police really sorta spazzed out. He left the room, then came back. He forgot about the candy we took, but wanted us to stay there for a bit. It was for our safety. Well, eventually some police walked past the room we were in, with T.W. He looked in at us and gave a wicked look. They locked him in a cell, and you could hear him howling like an animal. It was scarey. To make a long story short, he was convicted. Our friend never spoke to us again. We tried to talk to her, but she told us we ruined her life. Her mother quit her job, and so on. I lost a friend, it bothered me for a long time, but I realize now that I did what was best.. Basically this was all of our New Boston life that I can remember. All but one thing. It will be covered on the next page. "Teen Years" |
