point, we purchased the house, not sure how with bankruptcies, but we did. Nothing could have surprised us more after we arrived that night to the house in Pompano Beach on 14th Avenue. The living room was a mishmash of early American and French provincial furniture. What a disaster. There were 2 living rooms in one with neither side blending with the other. On one side featured a Yellow and orange flowered couch with a mosaic inlaid round turntable coffee table and two yucky end tables. The other side there was a purple and white striped couch with white coffee and end tables all with gold painted trim. Just picture that in your head! Yikes! But that was not the worst… What I did not know until years later,Tom had gotten caught up in a counterfeit ring which was totally unknown to my mother. What a shock it was! I could hear my mother laughing & crying hysterically in the living room saying,“I knew it, I knew it!” That was why Tom fled to Florida to escape the Feds. The very next day, Grandma Kay (Tom’s step mom) gathered up Linda,Tommy and me and took us to Sea World in Ft Lauderdale. As we were getting into the car, I saw several men in black suits entering the house. I wondered who they were, and it was years later that I found out that they were the FBI who arrived to bug our house to catch the counterfeit ring, that just so happened to be Dave Valenti and his father-in-law. How did Tom know them? Well, they met in Pennsylvania and played poker periodically. The group of card players would put money in a pot and after a time, the pot would be used to go on a trip, and so we did for a week in Atlantic City, New Jersey. All the kids went from 4 families. We had a blast. I often wondered why we went on this trip and recently in 2023 found out from my mother how this happened. I remember being in the hotel room with my sister on the balcony. I noticed that there were girls coming out of a salon just below our room, and the devil in me had an idea…. I had a water balloon (where it came from I have no idea) and dropped it
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