So we packed our bags and moved. We moved into some apartments off of Camp Bowie. It was a sad little apartment. It really looked like the projects. It was during this period that I would leave John for the first time. He was getting in over his head again with drugs. He wasn’t working. He was stealing again. This time he was stealing from me. He took a couple of checks from the back of my checkbook and actually wrote a check to the drug dealer. I didn’t know drug dealers took checks. Our rent check bounced, we got an eviction notice, my car was repossessed, and John was missing. I had had enough. I called my parents and said I’m ready to just leave.
My dad happily arrived to move me. Since I didn’t have a car, I needed to be close enough to work to walk. So I moved into a duplex off of Carroll Street, between Seventh Street and White Settlement Road. I remember my dad picking up the broom at my apartment and asking me if I wanted to take the broom. I said “I read somewhere that moving the broom would bring bad luck.” He threw that broom as hard as he could and said “We’ve had enough bad luck.”
Somehow John found out where I was living. One morning as I was getting ready for work he knocked on the door. He came in. Begging for forgiveness and making all kinds of promises, he wouldn’t leave. I left and walked to work, leaving John at the house. When I got to work I called my dad and told him that John was at my house. My dad drove right over there to physically remove him. John did leave. He had two black eyes and my dad broke his hand.
During this period I discovered that not only did John’s check writing cause our rent check to bounce, but a lot of other checks bounced. Apparently since he wasn’t working he was home when the mail arrived. When a certified letter came about a bounce check, he would sign for it and throw it away. I don’t remember how much I had in bounced checks, but it caught up to me. A sheriff’s deputy showed up at my parents’ house in Riverside with a warrant for my arrest. My father hired a lawyer and I had to go with the lawyer to the jail and turn myself in. Since I went with my lawyer, I didn’t have to be place in a cell. But I was booked. I was finger printed, a mug shot taken, and then I was asked about John Hudgins whereabouts. They knew exactly who he was and they were looking for him. I got out of that fix by the skin of my teeth. I paid off the bounced checks before the case went to court. Because I had never been in trouble before and had paid off all the bad checks and I had a job, the case was dismissed. So I don’t have a record. But there are mugs shots somewhere.
John was jailed again. This time when they released him, they released him into a half-way house on South Riverside Drive. He was there for quite a while. He was required to go to Drugs Anonymous meetings. He was meeting with a court ordered psychiatrist as well. He got a new job. It seemed as if he was really making an effort. Much to my father’s disappointment, I took John back.