Jeannie MacArthur

Jeannie MacArthur was my friend. I loved her as a friend, a mother and a sister. I spent about ten years of my life being totally infatuated with her. She was everything I wanted to be. She was outgoing and happy even though her life was quite sad. Jeannie lost a son about six months before I met her and can you believe I told her that I knew just how she feels because I was going to lose my son too? (I know, I know, I should be kicked out of FMO!) To her amazingly generous credit she did not even punch me once. She just got teary and said "Colleen, just pray to God that you never have to do this."
Freebird was played at her son's funeral too and when Jeff heard that he was all over it. He made me promise to crank it at his funeral too. Jeannie was a bar owner and I was a bartender back in the day so when the jukebox man came in one day I told him I wanted Freebird put on the box as a special gift for Jeannie. Turns out that was a cruel thing to do. The song made her hysterical every time she heard it. Later we were on a dart team together and when we were in an away bar and that song came on we had to go home as soon as someone played it.
Jeannie's husband, feeling guilty for beating her to a pulp, bought her a brand new Mustang convertible. What a beauty! I was working that night but she employed one of the customers to cover the bar for us so that we could go out and show off the car. We wound up at another bar where we should have known many people but nobody we knew could be found. It didn't take her long before she found some guys to show her new wheels to anyway. These particular gentlemen expressed a need to get to Payson, AZ that night, something about a sick mother so of course, we took them there. It was a lot of fun until we got to Payson and these handsome cowboys stole Jeannie's brand new Mustang right out from under us.
Well, that was it. We knew we could never come back to Phoenix or Jeannie's mean husband would kill her so we decided to live in Payson. It is a beautiful town and not nearly as hot as PHX so we got a Motel by the week and I got a job at a local bar. My mom had my kids fir the summer so I thought I could have them a place soon and never look back. On day five there was a barfight and I had to call the police. The two officers who showed up were the same two who came the night the car was stolen. They informed us that they had been looking for us for four days, they had recovered the car without a scratch! Back to Phoenix we came with our tails between our legs.