Hippie Boy A Girl's Story by Ingrid Ricks

Author:Ingrid Ricks [Ricks, Ingrid]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

THOUGH DAD HAD said we could keep the Texas apartment as our home base, I knew he was struggling to keep up the rent. The next time we were in Dallas to stock up on tools, Dad told me to pack up the dishes and bedding from the apartment so we could store it in the office.

“Why do we need an apartment when we’ve got the open road to call our home?” Dad said after returning the apartment keys to the office manager. “Apartments just confine us.”

I couldn’t help but feel bad because I had started fantasizing about living with Dad permanently, and I knew that without a regular place to live, that was out the window. But I also knew that money wasn’t flying the way Dad had said it was.

We nearly always reached our five hundred dollar daily goal when we were working, but it was becoming clear to me that one hundred and fifty dollars a day wasn’t enough. If the truck broke down and Dad had to spend the day fixing it, or any other unexpected expenses came up, it immediately put us in the hole. Along with covering the office lease and gas and living expenses on the road, Dad was also supposed to send money to Rhonda, who had quit her job as a grocery clerk when she and Dad married. Then there was the mounting child support he owed Mom.

Every time Dad called home to talk with the other kids, Mom grabbed the receiver and berated him for not paying child support.

“The next time your mom mentions something about child support, tell her that she ought to be sending me child support during the summer to take care of you,” he would rage after slamming down the phone.

I knew Dad was just blowing off steam but I hated feeling caught in the middle between him and Mom. I understood now that despite Dad’s argument of not wanting to support Earl, the truth was that he rarely had the money to cover his child support obligation. But I also knew how desperately Mom needed the child support, and I started panicking about all the money I was costing Dad—which in turn made it harder for him to pay Mom.

Though we ate cheaply, I estimated that the cost for my food alone came to nearly fifteen dollars a day, and I knew that if it weren’t for me, Dad would be spending more of his nights sleeping in the back of the truck instead of renting a room at Motel 6, which cost us between thirty and forty dollars a night. Dad had fired what he referred to as his “piece of shit” sales crew when we started selling ourselves in mid-June. But by early August, the money pressure was getting to be so great that Dad decided the only way out was to find guys to sell for him again.

“I just need to multiply what we’re doing sales-wise and we’ll have so much money coming in we won’t know what to do with it,” Dad said, explaining his plan to me.

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