NOTE: If you would prefer to listen, click here for an audio version of this blog post. When prompted, click the following: Photo 1 Photo 2 Photo 3 Photo 4 Photo 5 Photo 6 Photo 7 Photo 8 Photo 9 Photo 10 Photo 11 Photo 12 Photo 13 Photo 14
NOTE: Click here for Part 3: Home # 1 – Waterside Apartments in Lakewood; click here for Part 5: Home # 3 – 4565 S. Independence.
For our first 6 months in Denver, I worked as an assistant manager at a couple of McDonald’s restaurants. However, I quickly realized there wasn’t really a future for me there and, in March 1978, I took a job with Mountain Bell Telephone Company. It was around this time that Joanna and I got serious about looking to buy our first house. One Saturday morning, we went directly across Wadsworth Blvd. from our apartment to a Century 21 real estate office and told the agent on duty that we were interested in looking at houses.
His name was John Volz. John not only helped us find our first house; he became a good friend. When he married Marilyn a couple of years later, Joanna and I were invited to the wedding. We wound up having dinner at each other’s houses from time to time, our kids were born close to the same time and invited to each other’s birthday parties, and John and I made it a yearly practice to meet up for dinner, followed by a Denver Nuggets playoff game – which was, almost inevitably, a loss to the LA Lakers. John and Marilyn moved to upstate New York around the same time we moved to Texas; we have remained lifelong friends, always exchanging Christmas cards, and our family even visited them in Liverpool, NY, when we were up that way in the late 1990s. And it all started because Joanna and I were looking for a house!
I have a strong memory of the day – Sunday, April 9, 1978 – that John first took Joanna and me to look at 1365 S. Vallejo in Denver, because I had my transistor radio with me. You see, it was the last day of the NBA season, and David Thompson of the Nuggets was in a close battle with George Gervin of the Spurs for the scoring title. The Nuggets were playing that afternoon as we were looking at houses. David Thompson scored 73 points, and my attention was torn between houses and David Thompson. (I’m sure Joanna occasionally nudged me to turn my attention back to the matter at hand.)
As it was with Waterside Apartments, our first house – 1365 S. Vallejo – has changed. For one thing, it sure looks a lot smaller to me now! But the main thing is that the bright red-brick house of 1978 is now a dull gray. Why would people paint over brick in the first place – and GRAY? Seriously? You be the judge: here it is in 1978, and here it is in 2024. (Okay, I just ran this past Travis, and he says it looks okay. To each his own, I guess, lol)
I have a few strong memories associated with this house. Joanna and I lived here for just over 2 years, from June 1978 to August 1980. In that time, we adopted two dogs from the Dumb Friends League, a premier Denver animal shelter. We got a schnauzer whom I named Bob – yes, after my best friend, Bob Morris – just after Christmas 1978. Having grown up with dogs, I had been wanting one, but Joanna really didn’t want one. We spent Thanksgiving at the home of our friends, Nancy and Tim Davis. Nancy, who worked with Joanna at Mobil, nagged Joanna that day, saying, “Come on, Joanna, let Bill get a dog!” Nancy was so persistent that Joanna ultimately gave in!
We had Bob for a little over a year when I started suggesting that we get him a “friend.” The poor guy was alone all day while we were at work, so I thought we should get another dog to keep him company. Joanna and I went back to the Dumb Friends League, where we saw two little sisters who were black-and-white pekingese mix. We were able to play with each of them in a private room. I fell in love with one of them. She had an underbite, and I was afraid no one else would pick her. So, on Feb. 2, 1980, we took her home with us and named her Rae. (Bob and Ray were an old-time radio comedy team.)
A couple of months later, when I brought Rae home after taking her to get her puppy shots, I walked into the kitchen, and she suddenly fell limp in my arms. I shook her and shook her, and yelled at her until, finally, she spit up onto the floor and revived. This was just the first of many close calls over the years, and every time it was Bill to the rescue. This little girl Rae – perhaps because she had seen just how much I loved her and would never give up on her – became extremely attached to me.
We had Rae for over 18½ years until her passing in October 1998. Joanna used to tell me of how, whenever I was gone, Rae would lie by the front door, waiting for me to return. Ironically, Bob – the dog that Joanna let me get only after Nancy Davis’s persistent haranguing – became attached to Joanna, and Joanna, in turn, fell in love with that little dog Bob, whom we had for 14½ years until his passing in August 1993. So Bob and Rae were together, becoming constant companions and friends (except when Rae occasionally became growlingly possessive of the food bowl) for 13½ years.
It was also at this house that I received a call from Bob – the human Bob, that is – at around 10:30 on a Saturday night in 1978. Receiving a call from Bob wasn’t unusual. For decades, we talked on the phone several times a month, often for 2 or 3 hours, about politics, old TV shows, old movies, you name it. But this night was one for the books! Bob’s phone calls were always hard to bring to an end. I would say, “Bob, I really need to get to bed,” and he would inevitably say, “Just one more thing . . .” and an hour later we would still be talking.
Well, this particular evening, Bob had been drinking a little, so he was rambling quite a bit. Around midnight, I fell asleep on the couch, with the phone to my ear. I woke up around 4 or 4:30 a.m., to find that Bob was STILL talking, hadn’t missed a beat, hadn’t even noticed that I hadn’t responded in HOURS! When we finally said goodbye, that call had lasted at least 6 hours! Funny thing was, Bob was never charged for it. In those days, a long distance call of that length, even at the discounted night & weekend rates, would have cost at least $40. We concluded that some guy in a central office had looked at the record of that call and said, “That’s a mechanical error. No one would talk THAT long,” and just wrote it off. Whew!
In August 1978, Joanna and I were visited by our old OBU friend, Warren Lee. It was Warren who had been responsible for Joanna and me getting together. He was president of the Chinese Student Association in the fall of 1972, when they invited me to be among the first group of non-Chinese students to pledge the Chinese Student Association. Warren and I were both resident assistants in Brotherhood Dorm that year. One night in the dorm office, Warren told me that he was going to assign Joanna Wong to teach me Cantonese for the CSA initiation contest, and he made it very clear that he was trying to set us up to be more than just teacher and student. I thought nothing of it at the time, but Warren’s wish – for Joanna and me to hit it off – came true in a big way. We so enjoyed this visit from him in 1978.
This house was also where I got one of the most shocking – and sad – pieces of news of my life. On Thursday evening, November 1, 1979, a minister from one of the local churches called to tell me that Ron Russey – an old friend from OBU days, one of my dearest friends and greatest influences in my life – had been killed the night before when his car ran off the interstate in New Mexico and flipped over, breaking Ron’s neck. Ron and I had just rekindled our friendship that year. Ron and his wife, Carol, had moved to Longmont, CO, where he was pastor of Longs Peak Southern Baptist Church. Joanna and I had driven up to Longmont twice that year to hear Ron preach and have lunch with Ron, Carol, and their daughter DeAnn. I flew to Oklahoma the next day for his funeral that weekend. I’ll never forget the tears I shed in that house that evening. It was one of many times in our marriage that Joanna and I would comfort each other.
After we moved out in 1980, we kept 1365 S. Vallejo as a rental until 1989, when we sold it, 2 years after we moved to Texas. When family visited us in July 1981, though we had moved out of the Vallejo house almost a year earlier, we took them over and showed them our first house. In this photo, we see, at the back, my niece Stephanie, Joanna (in maternity clothes), Joanna’s mom, and me; and at the front, Joanna’s niece Wyman, my nephew Michael, and Joanna’s nephew Wilkie.
Speaking of renting the house, that led to a couple of interesting incidents. One was truly disturbing. We rented to a young couple; the man claimed to be the brother of a well-known former Oklahoma University quarterback. The couple wound up divorcing, with both of them deciding to leave the house. When we went in to check for damages, we found a big hole in a wall in the living room, which the husband had smashed with his fist during one of their fights.
The other incident was, on one level, I suppose, disturbing, but we really didn’t know what to make of it. We rented to a Mexican couple. One day, the woman called us and told us there was a ghost living in the house. They had a rocking chair down in the basement, and that chair suddenly started rocking on its own. Ghost? Who knows?
I’m not sure the hassles were worth the income we got – it wasn’t great. It was a relief to finally sell it in 1989. My question is: Why did we wait so long?
More photos
Here are a few more snapshots of 1365 S. Vallejo when Joanna and I lived there: (1) Joanna & me, Christmas 1978; (2) Joanna; (3) Joanna again; (4) Daddy & me with Bob; (5) me; (6) our living room; and (7) Bob in his doghouse.