The Vitro years, Part 2.

I remember the drive from Groton Connecticut to Maryland vividly. We had a little blue Chevy Spectrum. The car had no power and was actually Japanese. It held together ok, I must admit.

The Van carrying the plywood boxes that had been filled with everything we owned were on a separate trip, of which I had no idea how it was going. It was all boxed up, loaded and disappeared a day earlier.

The drive was interesting, because I had not been through New Jersey before. The north side of the state by NYC was skanky. As you move south it gets nicer, but we were only seeing it from the interstate. My son got to see the World Trade center towers for the first time as we passed through New York.

Sorry, I am being self indulgent. We drove to Maryland and arrived near the new location very late at night. We pulled up to the same Ramada Hotel that I had stayed at when I had interviewed for the job in Maryland, right on RT28 at I270. We went inside and waited for someone to show up at the empty front desk. A young guy showed up and said they were booked up for the night. I was very tired and immediately got a bit angry and asked if they did not have “anything” available. The kid backed down and said he had the honeymoon suite open and we could have that. It was ironic, because I never had a honeymoon and we got the room at the rate of a regular twin. The room was mediocre, but nicer than average.

In the morning, my new life started, I woke up and the Navy was not there to wipe my ass anymore. It was just us and must say the “team” had some flaws. I won’t go into details here, but ask me if you want more about that.

We moved into the apartment unseen, right off Clopper Road and I immediately hated the place. The cheap wood tile floors creaked everywhere you walked and the people below us were very loud. The same creaky tiles were in the apartment above us, so that was noisy too. I learned to accept the nuisances and slowly settled into my first bit of adult life without the Navy teat to suck on.