The Story of Therapy Dog Tails 432
Where Everyone Gets a Dose of Puppy Love
CHRONOLOGY 62: Cartoonist 4
Fri., June 12, 2015
… In fact, I see that Geoff forwarded to me something from Denbeaux concerning Christina Trust v. Haverstock. He forwarded this to me at 1:47 yesterday afternoon, which was just a couple of hours before he came down to show me Raquel but he said nothing about forwarding me something about the house. I’d say he never even looked at it but just sent it on to me. He’s the one who hopes to live there but he won’t have anything to do with actually making that happen. That is not the son that I raised.
I’m hoping to be divorced by the end of the month and to get the utilities out of my name before leaving here for good early in July. If they stop paying the utilities, I don’t think it will impact me that much. They will just turn off the service and that will be that. It will look bad on my credit but then I don’t anticipate changing my credit in the near future. I’ve got all the credit I need for now. I just have to make sure I keep up the payments on them - Union Plus, Firestone and Best Buy. That’s it. I am in good standing with all of them with maybe a red flag with Firestone because of Geoff.
So if I don’t get the utilities out of my name, that won’t stop me from doing what I plan to do. I hope I can do that and that L … Z helps to get them in her own name. But maybe they’re just hoping to keep living there without paying a mortgage / property tax, which could happen for a while, I guess - I haven’t looked at what Geoff forwarded and won’t until Sunday when I ask Dale and Barb to take a look at it with me. The worst case scenario for me is that they lose the place and we get stuck with a tax bill that we both have to pay since we always filed jointly. I anticipate using the TIAA Cref money for that and / or setting up a payment plan with the IRS that we both can live with. At least, that I can live with. Without Dewitt who knows where or how they will be living.
But that won’t matter to me. I wish them the best but I have to get on with my own life. I gave them enough. I gave them my life with the option of keeping it forever and they just used, abused and finally betrayed that. Sooner or later they ought to learn the lesson that you can’t do that. I don’t know that they are capable of learning that lesson but at least it will be there in front of them.
4:14 p.m. Rathskeller. G. #5.
I’m dreaming up a silly formula to relate the temperature in Phoenix to that in Linden using Cordoba as a constant.
Phoenix = Linden
Linden times 2 = 180
Minus Cordoba constant (73) = 107.
I just sent this silly thing to her and she is thinking not about my silliness but about the temperature in Cordoba. That is the thing about Paula Kratzer. She may like to laugh but she is fundamentally brass tacks. That’s why she’s been so successful and why she has invested well enough to take care of herself and what she always was from back when I knew her as an econ major at Wooster.
The question now becomes: can I actually write TD lines while drinking pint #5? I do have today’s New York Post with me here so I could turn to that. But let’s give TD a shot first. There is nothing to lose ….
4:54 p.m. Rathskeller. G. #6.
I just ordered another chicken tender / fries appetizer and hope to hang in here another hour or so before going back to Dewitt and maybe listening to some music for the rest of the night if there is no one around, which is what I’m always hoping. Right now I’ve been chatting with Paula, who is at work but is taking some time to go back and forth with me.
5:19 p.m. Rathskeller.
Well, dinner has arrived and so have other people. There were 4 guys sitting at the bar here all afternoon. Now there are 11 guys at the bar (one a female) and another 7 at tables not counting me. I guess people really do get off work at five ….
5:41 p.m. Rathskeller. G. #7.
This one is on the house, as they generally do although I thought they gave me #6 on the house. Maybe this is a Friday rule since they probably have more business today than on other days
6:31 p.m. Girl and the Moon. 823. G. #8.
I’m back from an afternoon of journal writing, chatting with Paula, and Therapy Dog drafting at Ye Olde Rathskeller where I had the same thing for dinner as I had for lunch and it was a bit too much overall. I wrote a lot in the journal for today, so let’s fetch that first ….
Done. I intended to write in the TD Master List and I even got to do some of that even though I spent the first 2 hours writing in the journal about how I hope to find some success from here on so that Paula can be redeemed in some sense. That would be a great thing to see. If I could get some success finally, it would justify and explain her inexplicable attachment to me. I’d like that more than anything else in this life at this point.
7:14 p.m. I Want More (Lovin’). G. #9.
There is no one here so I might as well take advantage of one of my last Friday nights at Dewitt.
7:49 p.m. Cold Sweat (45). G. #10.
8:28 p.m. Put Your Mind at Ease. G. #11.
8:55 p.m. Two Heads. G. #12.
9:20 p.m. You Are My Sunshine. G. #13.
9:49 p.m. When the Music’s Over. G. #14.
10:12 p.m. I Wonder What She’s Doing Tonight. G. #15.
Mon., June 15
6:01 p.m. Rathskeller. G. #2.
REPLY! Cast your fate ….
I’m here to celebrate the end of my teaching career. That is certainly something to celebrate. I’m here at Ye Ole Rathskeller, a place I wish I had discovered sooner. I wish I had discovered it when I discovered the Cranford Hotel. At the same time, I’m glad I didn’t discover it then because while at the time in 2012 I thought that the Cranford would be a good thing for me and for L … Z and me, now I’m actually glad - see how my thinking is evolving as I type? - that I didn’t discover this place because I like this place and it is going to end up being the one place in this area that I will have to myself. I never took L … Z to the Jam and I’ve never brought her here. I have brought Paula here, however, and so my memories of this place are going to be nothing but good.
So how do you feel, Dave, having taught your last class? [Although I had only drunk one beer when I sat down and opened up the AIR, this occurred and it reminded me of that great, very drunken back seat ride back to Managua with Mark Beisel and, I think, Dave Robertson.]
It feels great, Dave. Thanks for asking. I never did much like teaching and these past 14 years have been a nightmare.
You got into teaching way back in the 70’s, didn’t you?
Yes, Dave, I took a job in Saudi Arabia as a means to travel to Egypt. I wanted to see the pyramids. My wife at the time, Paula Kratzer was doing well at Continental Bank in Chicago where she had supported us for about 4 years, but she was excited about going to the third world and seeing a bit of the world and so that’s what we did. I couldn’t have done it without her.
So then you decided to become a teacher?
When we got back from the Middle East, I got my teaching certificate but only because I needed it for a job that I was offered in Managua.
So again it was to travel rather than to teach?
That’s right. The teaching job in Saudi Arabia was not a bad job, once I connected with some of the other teachers there who were learning on the job as I was - all except Alan Dart and Ray ???, who were real EFL teachers. Rich Schmierer, Steve Phillips, Sam Boggess and I were just learning as we went but we learned a lot from them and the excitement of being in such a foreign place and doing all of that traveling - Cairo, Alexandria, Luxor, Bombay, Kashmir, New Delhi, Kathmandu and all over Europe — that made the job worthwhile.
And in Managua?
The same was true there. It was such fun being there that I didn’t mind the teaching job although it was worse than teaching ESL or EFL in Dammam because I was teaching privileged kids who were Americanized. It was foreshadowing of what was to come, I guess.
Then you came back to New York?
I made the mistake of leaving Paula, who had been so good to me, for another woman in Managua and came to New York only because of her. That’s when teaching became a chore. I never wanted to go to New York but I thought I’d make the best of it by trying my luck as a novelist. My luck, however, had run out as soon as I left Paula for this other woman.
Where did you teach?
I taught at a private school on the upper east side of Manhattan from 1982 until 1988. The students weren’t bad and the classes were small but I never liked doing the work associated with teaching and learned that there. I liked being in the classroom but never wanted to spend the time outside making lessons and grading papers. If you aren’t ready to devote your life to that, you should not be a teacher.
So you got out of teaching?
Yes, I got out during the 90s when my 2nd wife’s business took off and I was glad for that. I was glad to get out of teaching and life was good for a while until the relationship went to her head and she forgot that I was the primary reason for the success she was having. Once that went to her head, things deteriorated but I hung on and hung to the belief that love exists and that she and I were meant for each other. I should have admitted the obvious even then in 1996 when she joined a cult and took the cult members for her family over me.
So how did you end up teaching in the New York City public school system?
We bought a house although we were not managing our money well. So we needed money and I went back to teaching for us - for the marriage, for the house and to try to maintain the lifestyle for our little family of three - we’d had a son in 1983. But the marriage had already deteriorated beyond repair although I didn’t admit that. Initially I thought I could work in the DOE for a couple of years just to get our feet back on the ground and that happened. After one year our financial situation was vastly improved but it was then that her business collapsed and we became almost entirely dependent on my teaching salary. That meant I was in it for the long run - in something that I never wanted to be in but I was willing to do that for the family.
That was 2002?
Right and it was 2002 that Greg Green brought the Threads my way. That was exactly what I needed. Before I had had traveling to get me through the ordeal of teaching. I didn’t have the travel anymore and things hadn’t worked out with my novels in New York because I just never made the right connection. The family was falling apart and the marriage and so I needed something to replace that and the travel. Greg provided that with the opportunity to write, perform and record my or our own music. That got me through the miserable job of teaching for the DOE from 2002 until 2007 ….