It wasn't something we set out to do purposefully. We moved to Hendersonville, TN from Louisville, KY a year after we got married. TJ was working in a job at that time that had him traveling to Nashville for several days every week, so it just seemed like the logical thing to do at the time. We bought our first little house, and Sydney was born in Hendersonville. During the 3 years we spent there, TJ decided to get his MBA at Belmont University. He wanted to work in healthcare administration. Once he finished up his degree, you would think that it would be easy to get a job here in the health care mecca of the Earth. Not so. After an exhaustive job hunt, we landed in...Monroe, GA.
When I describe Monroe, I tell people it's like Mayberry on the Andy Griffith show. There was one restaurant, one grocery store, a McDonalds, and that was about it. It was also as if civil rights had never arrived. Black people and white people literally lived on opposite sides of the train tracks. People were happy on the outside, but it was almost like there was an undercurrent of something more volatile just beneath the surface. In order to pay our rent, we had to walk into the bank and give a check to the teller and just tell her to put it into our landlord's account. We could also pay in cash if we wanted. Once I even left the rent in the bathroom drawer because we were going to be out of town, and my landlord just came over and got it and locked up after herself.
We rented a house directly across the street from the hospital, Walton Regional Medical Center. (Regional was an understatement.) After a few months there, we decided that I was going to go back to work too. So, 18 month old Sydney went off to a wonderful day care, and I went to work at the hospital as well, in the Human Resources Department. I loved my job.
TJ and I didn't advertise that we were married, just because it was a little odd to both be in administration at the same hospital. Sometimes we would drop Sydney off at day care and then drive to work, rather than walking across the street. On one particular day after we did this, a new girl from TJ's office came to my office, closed the door behind her and said "I saw you driving in with TJ. You do know he's married?!?!?" Ha! She thought TJ and I had "pulled an all nighter".
The house we lived in had two apartments under it. The entrances to the apartments were around the back of the house, so we never saw the people that lived there. Shortly after we moved in, the people in one apartment moved out, and new tenants moved in. A girl and her boyfriend. One day, I was sitting in my office and I could see a police car in my driveway! I walked over and asked the officer what was going on (as he was using a flashlight and peering into my car), and he said they were looking for the new girl that lived in the apartment, and he wouldn't tell me why. Ummmm. Oookay. After work another officer showed up at our house and asked "Are you April?" When I said no, he made me get my drivers license to prove it. After I was established as Ellen, he said if we see or hear the new tenants come home, we should call 911. Say what?!?!! A couple of days later, we did see her come home, and we called 911 as directed. The dispatcher acted like we had just fallen off the turnip truck and claimed she had no idea what I was talking about. About an hour later the cop shows up again, asks for my proof of ID and then tells me to call 911 of I see her again. Oh Lordy podunk Georgia. Get it together!
Two days later a friend comes to my office and says "Is everything okay? Your stuff is all over the lawn." I look out the window of my office, and my landlord has apparently decided to evict April the convict. My rental was the only one with a lawn, so there was her stuff sitting all over it. Everyone that we worked with thought we were getting evicted. We moved to Orlando shortly after that, but Monroe (pronounced Mun-row) will always have some interesting memories associated with it for us!
Monroe, GA came back to haunt visit me last year. I got a call on my answering machine from the Monroe police department's evidence unit. I lost my wallet once in Monroe in an abandoned parking lot when I stopped to help baby Sydney do something in the back seat. Apparently, 8 years later, they finally decided to call me and tell me that someone had turned my wallet in. Did I want them to mail it back?
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