Palmer rode the bus back to LA around Thanksgiving, picked up the car at the storage area, where he had stored it for several months. Unfortunately he did not know enough about cars to drain the oil out of the car before storage, and put it back in before taking off to Texas.
Deming, New Mexico. Our car broke down beside the road near Deming around Thanksgiving on our way moving from California back to Dallas. It was cold and windy. The car ran out of oil and was smoking. It ruined the engine.
A car stopped behind us and there were 2 drunk men, a drunk woman, a young boy and a young girl in it. I was out of the car and near theirs’ when I got in the way of the woman jumping out the passenger side to keep one of the men from finding what she threw out the window. They were dressed like cowboys and Palm was dressed like a business man, but they thought he was a hippie-type from his hair. Palm was out trying to flag someone down to take us to the nearest town. His hair was very curly, but when the wind got a hold of his hair, it looked long. Somehow I heard one of them say something about a gun and I ran back to our car. Another car stopped just then and took him to town after getting the drunks to drive off.
When Palm found someone to haul our car to town, he returned and we rode in the wrecker to the garage. Always with Palm, it was dangerous. He was an angry guy and the mechanics were circling us at the garage, when we arrived in Deming. One said, “You better not be trying to take us to the cleaners.” I didn’t understand what that was all about and Palm never would explain. He must have said something when he first got there that pissed them off, as usual. We finally got it settled that they would put an engine in for a certain amount of money, probably twice as much as somewhere else.
We stayed in a fleabag hotel and left on the bus the next day. The bus took all night to get to Dallas and there were some really wild characters on the bus. Just listening to their conversations was enough to scare you. I could not go to the bathroom even once. The bus’ bathroom stunk to high heaven.
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Back to the Post Office, back to work.
Shortly after I returned to Dallas, I began to work on the machines.
One employee I worked with was an older man named, John, who had many years at the Post Office under his belt. He was a dirty old man and ogled all the young women. He made several passes at me, even though he was married. One time he came up to me and ran into me full force. He almost knocked me down. I was afraid and ran off. After that he began following me in the building. I noticed he was going out of the building at lunch and coming back high. He quickly escalated to acting crazy.
After work one night, he drove up in his “bug” and opened the door for me to get in. Palm was due to pick me up any minute in front of the Terminal Annex. I stood inside the doors. When John slammed the door and started walking toward me and stared at me with his fists clenched, I ran toward the guard inside. The guard had seen his actions. He told me to tell my husband. When I did, I got really scared because we went to the Postal Inspectors and they said they would keep him away from me. That never happened and he was warned many times, to no avail. Palm did nothing to stop the situation. He was a coward.
Finally, I came into work one Sunday at the Parcel Post Annex. We were not at our regular job. We were working overtime and were told when to go home each night. I found out John had left the building before they announced we were to go home for the night. He came in later and was found working. The supervisor discovered he hadn’t clocked out and took John into the office to counsel him, since he had done this before. The supervisor and John got into a fight and John started strangling the supervisor. Thank heaven the microphone to the whole building was on and someone stopped John, just in time. He ran from the building. When I came in Sunday the supervisor told me to watch for John because he tried to strangle him. John didn’t show up that Sunday but did Monday, at the Terminal Annex. According to the rules they couldn’t put him off the clock because too much time had passed. (John’s brother was in management and always got him out of trouble.)I don’t know how they got him to rehab, but they did, and he came back to work sober. I was scared the whole time. I was violently ill at first. Attempted murder and no charges were filed? Amazing!! The supervisor, who was almost strangled, quit being a supervisor.