A bucket of chicken.
We were married on Dec 7, 1991. Two things are significant about that date - it was the 50th Anniversary of Pearl Harbor Day and it was near the end of the year. I'm no tax professional but what I do know is that when we filed our taxes in 1992 for the 1991 tax year, we went to a "married filing jointly" status, which for us during that time, only meant one thing... refund! As for my father-in-law, well... he lost a dependant on his taxes and I'm not sure how much damage that did, but I'm sure it was not a minor hit. Sorry, Mr. Hudson!
But for the newlyweds, it was a much needed refund. I've mentioned before that we struggled from day 1. Things were very tight and credit was almost nonexistent for both of us. We had no credit cards, I was barely making rent in our apartment in Hoover and paying for a used, blue '86 mustang LX and Kristi was driving a red '82 tercel that her dad sold to us for $1.00. I believe I owe this man some money!
I have no idea how much we got back in the refund but this was during the time before direct deposits, and income tax refunds only showed up on Saturdays in the mail... yes, a paper check, kids. We had an apartment at Alpine Village on the 2nd floor... 2077-D. We had a set of metal and concrete stairs that went to the lower level outside, all of this was outside, and we could sit at the top of the stairs and see the parking lot, some of the other apartments across the parking lot, but most importantly, we could see the mailman making his rounds. On that Saturday, we sat at the top of those concrete stairs, talking about how broke we were and what we would do first with this new "fortune" we were about to get. And it had to show up before noon because the banks closed at noon and we needed to cash that thing that day! It showed up, we drove to the bank and cashed it and the first thing we got was a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken. No one called it KFC back then. We came back home and ate that chicken like we were the king and queen of Hoover!
I have no sentimental or life-lesson comments to close this up with. It was just us.
No comments:
Post a Comment